When Deliberation becomes Majority-Construction: Constitution-Making in Turkey and Hungary

Theories of deliberative democracy assume that politics need to be carried out in a mode where decisions are the result of deliberation between parties or individuals involved (Habermas 1998). Critics remark that deliberative democracy in its ambition to arrive at a consensus tends to deploy a principle that glosses over differences and eventually produces decisions where the most powerful interests succeed in realizing their agenda (e.g. Mouffe 2000). Considering this debate for constitution-making processes this article will show that in polarized societies, when politics is extremely contesting and not consensual, deliberation about fundamental principles of social organization might easily be turned into struggles between majorities and minorities, where the majorities often successfully impose a large part of their construction of societal organization onto minorities. Recent constitution-making processes in Hungary and Turkey will serve as cases to illustrate how easily something presented as deliberation is instrumentalized in the majorities interest.