one. Is there some way by which we might sensibly test the capacity of
Habermasian deliberative democracy to advance both critical theory and
progressive politics?
Fortunately, Habermas and those inXuenced by him have themselves
pointed to the existence of one possible test. Over the course of the last
decade, Habermas and his sympathizers have turned much of their attention
to the pressing question of how democracy needs to be reconWgured in light
of the sizable challenges posed by globalization. Following the broad main-
stream of present-day social science, they recognize that the multi-pronged
process of globalization challenges both the normative legitimacy and eVec-
tive regulatory capacity of the liberal democratic nation state. If democracy is
to thrive, it needs to meet the numerous threats posed by globalization (Held
1995 ). Of course, critical theorists are hardly the only scholars busily exam-
ining the conXict-laden nexus between globalization and democracy. Distinct
to the Habermasian approach, however, is the belief that its vision of delib-
erative democracy is best capable of providing persuasive resolutions of the
normative and institutional quagmires of globalization. From this perspec-
tive, the most diYcult challenge to contemporary democracy also provides an
unambiguous corroboration of the impressive normative and empirical cre-
dentials of Habermasian political theory.
Although broadly sympathetic to this view (Scheuerman 2004 , 187 – 224 ),
I would like to register a number of reservations. Habermasian deliberative
democracy remains profoundly ambiguous in its political and institutional
ramiWcations. At some junctures, it points the way to a radical overhaul of the
political and economic status quo; at others it makes its peace with present-day
political conditions. This programmatic tension is reproduced in recent critical
theory research on deliberative democracy and globalization (Section 4. 1 .).
Unfortunately, this tension derives at least in part from conceptual slippage
that weWnd in the Habermasian account. The potentially misleading imagery of
an ‘‘anonymous’’ and even ‘‘subject-less’’ deliberative civil society sometimes
contributes to a problematicconceptual bifurcation between deliberation and
democracy. Deliberation without the meaningful (deliberative) involvement of
concrete ‘‘subjects’’ is, in reality, no longer democratic. Lively deliberation is
not, in fact, ‘‘subject-less,’’ and the fact that lively argumentative give-and-take
often makes it diYcult for us to determine the genesis or initial ‘‘possession’’ of a
speciWc insight hardly renders it altogether anonymous either. This conceptual
slippage, I submit, opens the door to a troubling tendency to condone overly
defensive models of deliberative democracy for the global stage (Section 2 .).
critical theory 87