The concept of deliberative democracy has been rarely used in the domain of international relations and specifically foreign policy (except for Risse and Schimmelfening, and to some extent Dryzek et al.). Overwhelming body of theories and empirical research focused on the national level or regional integration (e.g. European Union). This is not surprising since it is the state and state-like (sui generis) entities where citizens are legally and virtually empowered to influence their governments. However deliberative democracy breaks with the traditional picture of democratic governance (in)directly guided by the People putting emphasis on the process of opinion- and will-formation. In this context elected representatives put forth foreign policy proposals backed by sound arguments trying to publicly justify the preferred course of action. The extent to which claims they make are not openly and rightly contested, decisions based on these justifications are legitimate and thus democratic (as if made by people themselves). Otherwise representatives should revise their proposals and adjust the arguments accordingly in order to respond to the criticism. Therefore deliberation understood as public justification (Rawls, Gaus) is oriented towards limiting power of the decision-makers who should constantly seek post-election authorization in order to build up, widen and strengthen the legitimacy base for their undertakings.
This paper is aimed at elucidating the above sketched deliberative foreign policy formation by analyzing the contentious case of 2003 invasion of Iraq. I will focus on the public debate prior to the decision of military intervention, or “the deliberative moment” (Goodin) when public justification in favor of the entire operation was presented and then challenged – with a possibility of altering the war option. I will compare how it unfolded in two countries which actively participated in its preparations, one as the initiator (USA under Republican majority), the other as the supporter (Poland under left-wing leadership). In both cases public deliberation has failed to effectively countervail and thus limit the representatives’ quasi-discretionary power. In this light deliberative democracy can easily become a façade for highly dubious and hypothetically illegitimate decisions, especially in key areas and issues of public policy-making.
