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3.2. Public debate: a tool to be improved to address
regulatory frameworks for new technologies
For more than two centuries — specifically since the
French Revolution — French society has faced difficulties in
inventing efficient relationships between popular sovereignty
and the power of representative government. In his books,
Pierre Rosanvallon shows how, through different times in its
history, the French nation has tried to give a more accurate
reality to the concept of popular sovereignty. Of course,
the very essence of our democracy lies in the electoral
vote: the fact remains, however, that “more active and more
complex sovereignty” can lead to a government more
faithful and attentive to the general will, without denying
the tremendous ambiguity linked to that latter term. In a
society increasingly disenchanted with politics, the question
then arises of how to give shape to this “more active
sovereignty”.
In some areas, particularly the environment, comes the
idea that the representative of the people must be informed,
before making any decision, by a more direct link with
citizens, a link that can take the form of a discussion among
citizens.
This view could be supported by Habermas’ early works,
in particular the theory of communicative action, in which
he considers the possible attainment of universality through
discussion, or rather thanks to a real discussion among
participants during which they should achieve impartiality
through successive adjustments that require them gradually
to adopt the perspective of all other participants. The
decision on the rationality of a standard shall be suspended
to obtain not only an agreement among the participants, but
more precisely a unanimous consensus motivated by the
recognition of the best arguments.
This ‘discourse ethics’ is based on a number of conditions
that must be respected, including inter alia:
• The condition that everyone capable of speech and action
is entitled to participate and to make a contribution, and
everyone is equally entitled to introduce new topics or
express attitudes, needs or desires.
• The condition that no relevant argument is suppressed or
excluded by the participants.
• The condition that all the participants are motivated only
by one concern: finding the best argument.
• The condition that the debate must be free from any
restrictions that may prevent the manifestation of a better
argument that can determine the outcome of the discussion.
It must, however, be noted, as Habermas often wrote,
that the rules as stated in his discourse ethics can only
be reached in a very approximate way, and that the rules
followed by the participants in a public meeting of 1,000 to
1,500 people are very far from those set out.
Public meetings are therefore only an imperfect way
forward. From the outset, the National Commission for
Public Debate has dropped the goal of finding a consensus in
its debates. More fundamentally, Rosanvallon emphasizes in
his works the great difficulty of obtaining a given expression
of the sovereign people: its expression (except in a
referendum) is multiple and diverse, and it varies over time.
One of the former vice-presidents of the CNDP, Georges
Mercadal, also points out that “it is not possible to claim
that the meeting attendance, by the number and mode
of recruitment, may be representative of the French
population”. He further states that “interventions [in public
meetings] are overwhelmingly opposed to the projects” and
that “projects are often of national interest, while the debate
is confined to the areas of environmental impact”. In these
circumstances, public debate is an imperfect object that
cannot be a representative assessment of the acceptance
of the project and cannot be a substitute for representative
democracy.
Georges Mercadal then proposed to “consider the
public debate as a criticism of the project [coming from
the society], presumably exhaustive because exercised by
the most concerned people. The assessment remains the
responsibility of the representative system, which must both
consider that criticism and distance itself to preserve its
judgment. This makes public debate the form of reflective
dialogue … which may fill a gap often denounced in French
democracy”. In that sense, the main function of a public
debate is to enlighten the representative democracy on the
meaning of the decision it must take, by providing it with all
the arguments and suggestions expressed during the debate.
It also allows the public to participate to some extent in the
decision (even if the co-construction of the decision seems
very difficult, if not impossible).
The previous section, however, showed us that the current
form of public debate, applied to new technologies, was
facing a number of difficulties that could even result in
making it impossible for a debate to be held. The staging
of a national debate to decide the future of a technology
constitutes a great opportunity for the most extreme
opponents to gain the attention of the national media by
preventing meetings from being held. A solution can possibly
be found in retaining the benefits of public debate while
trying to avoid its blockage by quite a few persons.
The current form of public
debate, applied to new
technologies, was facing
a number of difficulties
that could even resultin
making it impossible for a
debate to be held.