Agonism, Deliberation and the Democratic Dialectic: Towards Participatory Democracy

This paper engages with agonist and deliberative democratic theory by framing the two as aspects of participatory democracy. A normative framework for understanding possible democratic societies; the democratic dialectic, is proposed(Bernard, 1999). This framework is developed by exploring competing conceptions of liberty, equality and solidarity that comprise the dialectic. An examination of these suggests three distinct models of democracy: liberal, social and participatory.   While actually-existing liberal and social variants of democracy fail to realise their democratic potential, a possible third typology; participatory democracy could optimise the democratic dialectic. This assertion is supported by empirical case studies of workplace democracy and local community democracy which emphasise participation to different degrees of success. The paper suggests that agonism and deliberation may both be useful aspects of broader structural transformation towards participatory democratic innovations that emphasise social empowerment in everyday life.