On the other hand, deliberative democracy periodically takes on sign-
iWcantly more subdued hues in Habermas’ discussion. He often seems so
intent on emphasizing the necessity of complex markets that it remains
unclear precisely what social and economic reforms—beyond some sensible
improvements to the (increasingly fragile) welfare state—he has in mind. He
frequently describes popular deliberation as merely inXuencing, counter-
steering, or ‘‘laying siege’’ to the state administration, justifying this relatively
modest aspiration with the claim that communicative power ‘‘cannot ‘rule’ of
itself but only point the use of administrative power in speciWc directions’’
(Habermas 1996 , 300 ). He even endorses the possibility that a truly vibrant
deliberative democracy necessarily plays a limited role in the actual oper-
ations of political decision-making most of the time: typically, ‘‘courts deliver
judgments, decisions, bureaucracies prepare laws and process applications,
parliaments pass laws and budgets, party headquarters conduct election
campaigns, clients exert inXuence on ‘their’ administrators’’ with civil society
necessarily left at the wayside (Habermas 1996 , 357 ). Even those facets of
government most closely tied to civil society may have to accept a truncated
role: ‘‘the initiative and power to put problems on the agenda and bring them
to a decision lies more with the Government leaders and administration than
with the parliamentary complex’’ under normal political conditions (Haber-
mas 1996 , 380 ). In this version of his model, only during unusual or excep-
tional conditions (as deWned somewhat imprecisely by Habermas) can we
expect a genuinely robust deliberative democracy, in which the argumenta-
tive give-and-take of civil society eVectively dominates the political machin-
ery, to surface.
In the second section of this chapter, I turn to consider one of the likely
conceptual sources of this tension. For now, I merely hope to show how the
ongoing critical theory debate about deliberative democracy and globaliza-
tion reproduces it.
Contemporary critical theorists generally endorse the view that a delibera-
tive model of democratic legitimacy is especially well suited to the demands of
globalization. Indeed, this is one of the main reasons they adduce for the
superiority of their approach. Habermas defends this position by noting that
his model ‘‘loosens the conceptual ties between democratic legitimacy and the
familiar forces of state organization’’ (Habermas 2001 a, 111 ). Although dem-
ocracy always needs some conventional (and typically state-based) forms of
decision-making and representation, the deliberative model ‘‘tips the balance’’
in precisely the right way by underscoring the centrality of a ‘‘functioning
critical theory 89