The Nature of Political Theory

290 The Nature of Political Theory

contrast to some liberal scepticism about public reason. Theorists, such as Taylor
and Sandel, at one point, explicitly linked republicanism with communitarianism.
For such theorists, freedom is a crucial value. Taylor’s ‘civic freedom’ is not though
negative freedom, but rather ‘democratic participatory self-rule’, which he links with
positive freedom. Positive freedom, for Taylor, is central to establishing a conscien-
tious citizenship, public morality, and common good. As we have seen, many current
republican theorists reject this. For example, both Pettit and Viroli see a transformed
notion of ‘negative liberty’ (non-dominatory liberty) as crucial to the republican
perspective. They therefore deny the conceptual link between communitarianism
and republican democracy.
Like communitarian republican theories, Habermas’s deliberative theory is crit-
ical of the individualized (subjective and instrumental) understanding of interests
within liberal democracy. Deliberative democracy is a model for organizing the public
exercise of power, in the major institutions of a society, on the basis of the principle
that decisions touching the well-being of a collectivity are perceived to be the outcome
of aprocedure of free deliberation(as outlined earlier). Democracy is therefore a process
of communication and discourse that helps form a public. It does not, however, allow
the citizen to reason from the standpoint of a private subjective consumer. Demo-
cracy is the institutionalization of intersubjective public reason, jointly exercised by
autonomous rational citizens. The public sphere of deliberation (premised on validity
claims) about matters of mutual concern, is essential to the legitimacy of democratic
institutions. Some communitarian writers have been attracted to this conception of
democracy. However, Habermas views both republicanism and communitarianism
as committing the same basic error. Both rest on an overly homogenizing consensual
model of community identity. For Habermas, this homogenizing vision overburdens
the democratic process by forcing politics into an artificial collective identity. He thus
separates out deliberative democracy from communitarianism and most exponents
of republicanism. Habermas has also used the communicative theory to analyse com-
prehensively conceptions of law and human rights, particularly in his bookBetween
Facts and Norms(1992).

Conclusion

It should be emphasized that Habermas does not engage in any systematic construc-
tion of a vision of a rational, democratic, or just society (see Habermas 1990: 211).
He rather takes one step back from this and suggests that participants in public
dialogue within a society can construct that vision for themselves by grasping and
understanding what is implicit in their everyday communicative (not instrumental
or strategic) endeavours. They simply do not need a neo-Kantian, republican, or util-
itarian political philosopher, as adeus ex machina, or authoritative figure, to declare
the principles of the just society. Dialogue will embody valid norms and when these
are made explicit, then a community of speakers will rationally premise their sub-
stantive ethics, justice, legal, and democratic institutions upon them. For Habermas,