Why Engaged Deliberation?

Amidst the many crises confronting liberal and democratic societies and the success of regressive political parties and movements, an emerging body of literature debates on the elaboration of normative political theories geared towards the generation of ameliorative, emancipatory, and democratic political change. To date, such a literature has primarily concentrated on the definition of progress, the identification of opportunities for political action, and the determination of appropriate agents of change. It is against this backdrop that our paper zooms in on the positionality of normative political theorists and reconsiders the constraints that should define their interaction with potential agents of change who, in their claims and actions, express an ameliorative, emancipatory, and democratic commitment. To do so, we first explore the question of whether (and on what basis) such commitments should influence not only the kind of claims theorists make, but also their methodology. We demonstrate that the construction of a an ameliorative, emancipatory, and democratic political theory should be understood as a normatively and practically constrained dialogical process, where theorists should visibly express their commitments to valuing the agency of individuals as deliberative agents and to generating meaningful political change here and now. Against this backdrop, we then investigate the epistemic and normative relationships of authority between parties involved in a deliberative process that aims to generate meaningful political change here and now. In so doing, we define a new way – engaged deliberation – to transform normative theorizing into a collaborative, dialogical, process structured around the idea that agents of change should set the tone, introduce a topic, or influence the direction of the back-and-forth. Finally, we delve into the existing body of literature on intraparty deliberation and deliberation within social movements. Our contention is that engaged deliberation should not be confined to specific settings; rather, it can manifest anywhere as long as (I) participants express their dedication to the emancipatory ideal of dismantling barriers that impede individuals from feeling responsible for the trajectory of society, and (II) theorists express their commitment to generate meaningful political change in the present.