Deliberative Democracy and Democratic Education: A Critical Perspective

Democratic theory has taken a deliberative turn according to many democratic theorists (Dryzek: 2000). Deliberative democracy aims to improve and transform democracy by encouraging citizens to participate actively in democratic processes. Active citizens can, according to some deliberative theories of democracy (Gutmann: 1987) be created through democratic education. For this reason, it is not surprising that deliberative democracy has been endorsed by many working on democratic education. Over the last few years, deliberative democracy and democratic education have grown closer to each other. Although there are many reasons for the close ties between deliberative democracy and democratic education there are several reasons to scrutinise this relationship in more detail. Firstly, deliberative democracy is a contested theory in itself although it has grown in influence over the last decades. Secondly, some deliberative theories seek a transformation of liberal democracy to more radical democratic models. Thirdly, deliberative democracy is ambitious on behalf of both voters and democracy, and it is unclear if educational institutions are prepared for being such a transformative arena that some deliberative theories require. The close relationship between deliberative democracy and democratic education has largely gone unnoticed by most of the literature on democratic education. Therefore, this article aims to subject the relationship between deliberative democracy and democratic education to a critical analysis. We start with discussing the development of deliberative democracy as a democratic theory before we discuss two influential views on democratic education. In the third and final section of this article, we discuss some of the implications of this close relationship and criticise the role of deliberative democracy in democratic education.