Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

317Deliberative Politicstional channeling of the state's monopoly on force: "An MDPsociety disperses power, influence, authority, and control awayfrom any single center toward a variety of individuals, groups,associations, and organizations. And ... it fosters attitudes andbeliefs favourable to democratic ideas. Though these two featuresare independently generated, they also reinforce each other."48Thus democratization is fostered not simply by the polycentricdistribution of power emerging in functionally differentiated societies;the decentering of power must be associated with a liberalpolitical culture supported by corresponding patterns of politicalsocialization. Only in the framework of such a political culture canthe conflictual tensions among competing forms oflife, identities,and worldviews be tolerated and handled without violence.In Dahl's view, the most important bottleneck to advances beyond ·the present level of democratization lies in the specialization of thetechnical steering knowledge used in policymaking and administration.Such specialization keeps citizens from taking advantage ofpolitically necessary expertise in forming their own opinions. Thechief danger consists in the technocratic variant of a paternalismgrounded in the monopolization of knowledge. Privileged accessto the sources of relevant knowledge makes possible an inconspicuousdomination over the colonized public of citizens cut off fromthese sources and placated with symbolic politics. Dahl thus sets hishopes on the technical possibilities of telecommunications; withthe term "minipopulus," he proposes a type of deliberation anddecision making that, at once functionally specialized and decentralized,proceeds through specially informed assemblies of representatives.49The abstract and somewhat utopian tenor of thisrecommendation oddly contrasts with the intention and structureof the investigation.Dahl wanted to show that the idea and procedure of deliberativepolitics do not have to be externally imposed on the reality ofdeveloped societies, because this type of politics has had a securehold on the institutions of such societies for a long time. He fallsshort of this goal, because he does not plausibly integrate thenormative arguments that justify democratic procedures with theempirical analysis of their implementation, however incompletethat implementation might be. I see one reason for this in Dahl's