Excavates the experiential structure of Habermas’s communicative action.

_Excavates the experiential structure of Habermas’s communicative action._.

In 2010, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research started a series of citizens’ dialogues on future technologies. In the context of the German history of public participation in technology-oriented policy making, these dialogues are unique for at least two reasons: The Federal Ministry retains the responsibility for the entire process and is heavily involved in its planning, organization and communication, and the number of participants and process elements is significantly higher than in most other participative events. The paper (...) presents insights into the political background of the citizens’ dialogues, its general concept as well as first observations from the dialogue rounds on energy and high-tech medicine. In addition, it discusses reactions of other political actors and expectations regarding legitimacy and representativeness of the dialogue results. (shrink)

Researchers have explored questions concerning public participation and consent in geoengineering governance. Yet, the notion of consent has received little attention from researchers, and it is rarely discussed explicitly, despite being prescribed as a normative requirement for geoengineering research and being used in rejecting some geoengineering options. As it is noted in the leading geoengineering governance principles, i.e. the Oxford Principles, there are different conceptions of consent; the idea of consent ought to be unpacked more carefully if, and when, we (...) invoke it in the discussion. This article offers a theoretical reflection on different conceptions of consent and their place in geoengineering governance. More specifically, I discuss three models of consent, i.e. explicit consent, implied consent and hypothetical consent, and assess their applicability to geoengineering governance. Although there are different models of consent, much discussion of geoengineering governance has committed only to explicit consent. I note that such a commitment springs from a specific ideal political order. Accordingly, we should be wary of any naïve commitment to it so long as the political order we hope for remains open to debate. Finally, I illustrate two approaches to introduce consent into a geoengineering governance framework. (shrink)

Globalization arguably generated a governance gap that is being filled by transnational rule-making involving private actors among others. The democratic legitimacy of such new forms of governance beyond nation states is sometimes questioned. Apart from nation-centered democracies, such governance cannot build, for example, on representation and voting procedures to convey legitimacy to the generated rules. Instead, alternative elements of democracy such as deliberation and inclusion require discussion to assess new instruments of governance. The recently published standard ISO 26000 is an (...) interesting example of transnational governance. ISO 26000 was developed in a lengthy multiorganizational process for the purpose of giving guidance on the social responsibility of organizations. By assessing the specific case of ISO 26000, this study sheds light on the question of how legitimacy beyond nation-state democracy is ensured or constricted. Centering on the idea of deliberate democracy and democratic legitimacy, the study offers in-depth insights on the normative legitimacy of the development process of ISO 26000. Positioned on the interface of business studies and public policy, this article contributes to the academic literature on transnational governance and on the role of multistakeholder processes in shaping the role of business in society. (shrink)

In a recent article, Iris Marion Young raises several challenges to deliberative democracy on behalf of political activists. In this paper, the author defends a version of deliberative democracy against the activist challenges raised by Young and devises challenges to activism on behalf of the deliberative democrat. Key Words: activism • deliberative democracy • Discourse • Ideology • public sphere • I. M. Young.

Political theories in general and deliberative democracy in particular have become quite popular in business ethics over the past few years. However, the model of deliberative democracy as generally referred to in business ethics is only appropriate for conceptualizing interaction between business and society which occurs within a context which is more or less institutionalized. The model cannot account for “unregulated” interaction between business and civil society. The authors argue that scholars need to resort to the so called “critical strand” (...) of deliberative democracy if we want to conceptualize interaction that happens without the involvement of decision-making institutions as political action in a deliberative sense. Adopting this approach allows us to identify cases in which unregulated interaction between business and civil society is preferable over institutionalization. (shrink)

A conception of legitimacy is at the core of normative theories of democracy. Many different conceptions of legitimacy have been put forward, either explicitly or implicitly. In this article, I shall first provide a taxonomy of conceptions of legitimacy that can be identified in contemporary democratic theory. The taxonomy covers both aggregative and deliberative democracy. I then argue for a conception of democratic legitimacy that takes the epistemic dimension of public deliberation seriously. In contrast to standard interpretations of epistemic democracy, (...) however, the conception I put forward avoids procedure-independent standards of correctness. Instead, it relies on a procedural social epistemology and defines legitimacy entirely in terms of the fairness of procedures. I call this conception of democratic legitimacy `Pure Epistemic Proceduralism'. I shall argue that it should be preferred over `Rational Epistemic Proceduralism', the conception of legitimacy that underlies the standard interpretation of epistemic democracy. Key Words: legitimacy • deliberative democracy • epistemic democracy • social epistemology. (shrink)

Modern society is challenged by a loss of efficiency in national governance systems values, and lifestyles. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse builds upon a conception of organizational legitimacy that does not appropriately reflect these changes. The problems arise from the a-political role of the corporation in the concepts of cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy, which are based on compliance to national law and on relatively homogeneous and stable societal expectations on the one hand and widely accepted rhetoric assuming that all members (...) of society benefit from capitalist production on the other. We therefore propose a fundamental shift to moral legitimacy, from an output and power oriented approach to an input related and discursive concept of legitimacy. This shift creates a new basis of legitimacy and involves organizations in processes of active justification vis-à-vis society rather than simply responding to the demands of powerful groups. We consider this a step towards the politicization of the corporation and attempt to re-embed the debate on corporate legitimacy into its broader context of political theory, while reflecting the recent turn from a liberal to a deliberative concept of democracy. (shrink)

Public participation is increasingly an aspect of policy development in many areas, and the governance of biomedical research is no exception. There are good reasons for this: biomedical research relies on public funding; it relies on biological samples and information from large numbers of patients and healthy individuals; and the outcomes of biomedical research are dramatically and irrevocably changing our society. There is thus arguably a democratic imperative for including public values in strategic decisions about the governance of biomedical research. (...) However, it is not immediately clear how this might best be achieved. While different approaches have been proposed and trialled, we focus here on the use of public deliberation as a mechanism to develop input for policy on biomedical research. We begin by explaining the rationale for conducting public deliberation in biomedical research. We focus, in particular, on the ELS (ethical, legal, social) aspects of human tissue biobanking. The last few years have seen the development of methods for conducting public deliberation on these issues in several jurisdictions, for the purpose of incorporating lay public voices in biobanking policy. We explain the theoretical foundation underlying the notion of deliberation, and outline the main lessons and capacities that have been developed in the area of conducting public deliberation on biobanks. We next provide an analysis of the theoretical and practical challenges that we feel still need to be addressed for the use of public deliberation to guide ethical norms and governance of biomedical research. We examine the issues of: (i) linking the outcomes of deliberation to tangible action; (ii) the mandate under which a deliberation is conducted; (iii) the relative weight that should be accorded to a public deliberative forum vs other relevant voices; (iv) evaluating the quality of deliberation; and (5) the problem of scalability of minipublics. (shrink)

Consulting the public about the ethical approaches underlying health policies can seem an appealing means of addressing concerns about limited public participation in development of health policy. However ambiguity surrounds questions of whether, or how consultation can really contribute to more defensible decisions about ethical aspects of policy. This paper clarifies the role and limits of public consultation on ethics, beginning by separating different senses of defensibility in decisions on ethics. Defensibility of ethical decisions could be understood either in the (...) sense of legitimacy in virtue of reflecting the opinions of the public whose interests are affected, or in the sense of being able to withstand and respond to challenges presented in ethical debate. The question then is whether there are forms of consultation which have the potential to realise more defensible decisions in either of these senses. Problems of adequately accounting for the views of those affected by policy decisions casts doubt on the plausibility of using consultation as a means of determining the opinions of the public. Consultation can have a role by bringing new ideas and challenges to debate, although it is uncertain whether this will increase the defensibility of any decision on ethics. (shrink)

The paper argues that the current global market is organized by a system of transnational law whose development is best characterized as ambivalent. On the one side, legal juridification can lead to a hegemonic system of international law that lacks legitimacy, paradoxically creates extralegal spheres, promotes the ‘privatization’ of political areas, and, thereby, reduces the competences of states. On the other side, legal codification can also function as an engine of transnational democratization and as a barrier to an unhampered growth (...) of transnational administrative and executive power. Scholarship on the idea of legitimacy in law and transnational governance in political and legal theory has to reflect these aspects of juridification on a world scale. Most approaches to the issue, however, have serious flaws: they neither offer an adequate empirical diagnosis of the de-embedding of international economic and legal processes, nor do they provide convincing proposals as to how such processes could be domesticated. Against this background, the paper lays out a critical analysis of legal codification processes as well as proposing an account of democratic governance, based on a realistic conception of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Much of the appeal of deliberative democracy lies in its emancipatory promise to give otherwise disadvantaged groups a voice, and to grant them influence through reasoned argument. However, the precise mechanisms for delivery of this promise remain obscure. After reviewing Habermas's formulation of deliberation, the article draws on recent theories of argumentation to provide a more detailed account of such mechanisms. The article identifies the key emancipatory mechanism as explicitness in language. It outlines the primary modalities of this mechanism: expressing (...) differences of opinion, mobilising a shared standard of inference, and recognising and excluding fallacious appeals to irrelevant factors such as force or authority. It describes how these modalities are enhanced at a secondary, reflexive level that recognises the partiality and defeasibility of particular argumentative exchanges. Such qualifications, it is argued, support a model of deliberation across discourses that allows a clearer appreciation of its potential and limits. (shrink)

The recent decades have seen established liberal democracies expand their surveillance capacities on a massive scale. This article explores what is problematic about government surveillance by democracies. It proceeds by distinguishing three potential sources of concern: the concern that governments diminish citizens’ privacy by collecting their data, the concern that they diminish their privacy by accessing their data, and the concern that the collected data may be used for objectionable purposes. Discussing the meaning and value of privacy, the article argues (...) that only the latter two constitute compelling independent concerns. It then focuses particularly on the third concern, exploring the risk of government surveillance being used to enforce illegitimate laws. It discusses three legitimacy-related reasons why we should be worried about the expansion of surveillance capacities in established democracies: Even established democracies might decay. There is a risk that surveillance capacities that are used for democratically legitimated purposes today will be used for poorly legitimated purposes in the future. Surveillance may be used to enforce laws that lack legitimacy due to the disproportionate punishment attached to their violation. The democratic procedures in established democracies fail to conform to the requirements formulated by mainstream theories of democratic legitimacy. Surveillance is thus used to enforce laws whose legitimacy is in doubt. (shrink)

We lack analyses of the judiciary from a systemic perspective. This article thus examines arguments offered by deliberativists who have reflected about this institution and argues that the current state of deliberative democracy requires us to rethink the ways they conceive of the judiciary within a deliberative framework. After an examination of these accounts, I define the deliberative system and describe the different phases deliberative democracy has gone through. I then single out elements common to all systemic approaches against which (...) I test whether the regard that the authors show for the judiciary in deliberative terms can be maintained and argue in the negative. I conclude by pointing at the necessity to think about the definition of deliberative systems, and to the value of these discussions for debates on the legitimacy of judicial review when it is exercised under the form of judicial supremacy. (shrink)

We lack analyses of the judiciary from a systemic perspective. This article thus examines arguments offered by deliberativists who have reflected about this institution and argues that the current state of deliberative democracy requires us to rethink the ways they conceive of the judiciary within a deliberative framework. After an examination of these accounts, I define the deliberative system and describe the different phases deliberative democracy has gone through. I then single out elements common to all systemic approaches against which (...) I test whether the regard that the authors show for the judiciary in deliberative terms can be maintained and argue in the negative. I conclude by pointing at the necessity to think about the definition of deliberative systems, and to the value of these discussions for debates on the legitimacy of judicial review when it is exercised under the form of judicial supremacy. (shrink)

This article explores the interface between public deliberation and interest politics. It empirically examines how and when actors with vested interests support and oppose processes of direct citizen deliberation, such as citizens’ juries. An analysis of four cases finds that interest groups and activists respond to citizen deliberation in a variety of ways from cooperative engagement to disruptive disengagement. The research suggests that partisan actors are most likely to support citizens’ forums when the ideational and political context offers instrumental reasons (...) to go public. The article explores what this strategic approach to public deliberation implies for the practice and theory of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy grounds its legitimacy largely in the ability of speakers to participate on equal terms. Yet theorists and practitioners have struggled with how to establish deliberative equality in the face of stark differences of power in liberal democracies. Designers of innovative civic forums for deliberation often aim to neutralize inequities among participants through proportional inclusion of disempowered speakers and discourses. In contrast, others argue that democratic equality is best achieved when disempowered groups deliberate in their own enclaves before entering (...) the broader public sphere. Borrowing from each perspective, the authors argue that there are strong reasons to incorporate enclave deliberation among the disempowered within civic forums. They support this claim by presenting case study evidence showing that participants in such forums can gain some of the same benefits of deliberation found in more heterogeneous groups, can consider a diversity of viewpoints rather than falling into groupthink and polarization, and can persuade external stakeholders of the legitimacy of the group’s deliberations. (shrink)

This work studies the issue of political representation from the perspective of a specific legal culture, the exercise of political rights in the context of the occidental democratic system, a concept that has undergone a profound evolution to the present day. The essential aspects for an analysis of this progression are voting, decision making, and the relationship between representatives and their constituents. Overall, the phenomena making up the crisis of representation have been explained as a result of changes that have (...) affected the operation and structure of modern states constituted as representative democracies. The idea is that a well-functioning representative system comes primarily from the form of government and electoral system in which it develops. (shrink)

We critically assess integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) and show that the concept particularly lacks of moral justification of substantive hypernorms. By drawing on Habermasian philosophy, in particular discourse ethics and its recent application in the theory of deliberative democracy , we further advance ISCT and show that social contracting in business ethics requires a well-justified procedural rather than a substantive focus for managing stakeholder relations. We also replace the monological concept of hypothetical thought experiments in ISCT by a concept (...) of practical discourse to better govern business activities on the macro-level of organizational actors such as firms, governments, and NGOs. (shrink)

Que las democracias deliberativas sean las que ocupan hoy el centro de la reflexión democrática se debe tanto a su potencial interno como al desgaste de una realidad política alejada cada vez más de lo que pensábamos –esperábamos- de la democracia. En este contexto se enmarca el presente artículo cuya propuesta de un enfoque mesodeliberativo pretende aportar a la discusión sobre la articulación institucional de las teorías deliberativas dos aspectos íntimamente vinculados: el valor de la sociedad civil y la perspectiva (...) de la ética en el diseño institucional. Ambos aspectos no acaban de encontrar su lugar en las diferentes iniciativas deliberativas actuales y, sin embargo, son piezas fundamentales para el logro de una teoría democrática completa y crítica. Para defender esta propuesta daremos los siguientes pasos. En primer lugar, se justifica la necesidad de este nivel mesodeliberativo dentro del llamado enfoque sistémico de las democracias deliberativas. A continuación, ante la pregunta de qué instituciones y por qué, se introduce un concepto ampliado de sociedad civil siguiendo la propuesta de una democracia de doble vía, en discusión con la concepción habermasiana. En tercer lugar, se despliegan algunas de las aportaciones básicas del diseño institucional para el desarrollo de este nivel mesodeliberativo y el papel que cumple y puede cumplir en él la perspectiva ética. Por último, se esboza este papel a partir del principio kantiano de publicidad como eje central para el desarrollo de la perspectiva ética en el diseño institucional. (shrink)

The increasing centrality of business firms in contemporary societies calls for a renewed attention to the democratization of these actors. This paper sheds new light on the possibility of democratizing business firms by bridging recent scholarship in two fields—deliberative democracy and business ethics. To date, deliberative democracy has largely neglected the role of business firms in democratic societies. While business ethics scholarship has given more attention to these issues, it has overlooked the possibility of deliberation within firms. As argued in (...) the paper, a combination of reforms based on the ideas of workplace deliberation and business deliberation is necessary in order to promote the prospect of deliberation in different business contexts. The paper also discusses the importance of more democratic firms for deliberative democracy at large and, in particular, for the recent debate on deliberative systems. Finally, the paper suggests new areas of investigation to better understand the prospect of democratic deliberation in business firms. (shrink)

As universities in the United Kingdom gear themselves up for the next Research Excellence Framework, REF2021, with peer review at its core, we critically re-visit the idea of peer review as a gold standard proxy for research excellence. We question the premise that anonymous peer review is a necessary and enabling condition for impartial, expert judgement. We argue that the intentions and supposed benefits underlying peer review and its associated concepts have become congealed in received discourse about research quality. Hence (...) we explore the key conceptual issues raised by the nested assumptions and concepts that come into play in peer review as currently practised: primarily those of secrecy, anonymity, legitimacy, trust, impartiality and openness. After delineating the benefits attributed to peer review, we contrast its declared virtues with its problematic features. We locate peer review in an audit culture in which the reviewer is an academic labourer. Drawing on recent trends in moral and political philosophy, we question the usefulness of the ideal of impartiality when tied to secrecy. Then we raise more deliberative, intersubjective possibilities for a revised understanding of peer review in the context of an academic community. Finally, we suggest ways in which the academic community could pursue quality in research by recasting peer review to be less secret and more open. (shrink)

This paper argues that, because Science and Technology Studies lost contact with political philosophy, its defense of public participation in policy-making involving technical claims is normatively unsatisfactory. Current penchants for political under-laboring and normative individualism are critiqued, and the connections between STS and theorists of deliberative democracy are explored. A conservative normativity is proposed, and STS positions on public participation are discussed in relation to current questions about individual and group rights in a liberal democracy. The result is avenues to (...) normatively defend public participation, by analogy with identity politics and Habermas, while also theorizing its limits.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------. (shrink)

A campaign to pass city council resolutions opposing an American invasion of Iraq in the Fall of 2002 and Spring of 2003 provided an opportunity to examine contrasting styles of public argument. This paper examines an extensive set of news and editorial articles as well as the actual deliberations before city councils. An argument’s style constructs a relationship between the speaker, audience, and issue through the strategic use of language. Two conflicting styles of argument were apparent in these deliberations: a (...) protest style and a dissent style. Each style operated within a different normative frame that managed tensions between unity and division, participation and its lack, and inclusive and exclusive reasoning. While protest and dissent styles conflict, each frames important relationships for public discourse and deliberation. (shrink)

Deliberation is widely viewed as being intrinsic to republican citizenship. Neo-Roman republicans such as Philip Pettit value deliberation primarily for its role in rendering coercive political authority non-arbitrary and thus non-dominating. Accordingly, a deliberative public sphere is seen as necessary to foil domination in politics. In this article, I consider a countervailing view shared by two otherwise very different theorists – Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Bourdieu’s account of social practice, deliberation can harbour subtle forms of symbolic violence in (...) ways which neo-republican theory struggles to account for. Rousseau’s ‘communitarian’ politics of austerity is, I argue, undergirded by a similar concern that complex political discourse will represent a mystifying ‘sophistry’, encoded in differentiating signifiers, and thus become an insidious site of domination. Both perspectives, I argue, help to illuminate important blind spots in the neo-republican account of political deliberation in its relationship to domination. (shrink)

John Dryzek's justification of deliberative democracy rests on a critique of instrumental rationality and a defence of Habermas's idea of communicative rationality. I question each stage of Dryzek's theory. It defines instrumental rationality broadly but only criticises narrow applications of it. It conflates communicative rationality with Habermas's idea of ‘discourse’ – the real motor of Dryzek's democratic theory. Deliberative democracy can be better defended by avoiding overstated criticisms of instrumental rationality, by altering the emphasis on communicative rationality, and by focusing (...) more on different models of politics than different models of rationality. Dryzek's theory can thus present deliberative democracy as a better means to better ends – a more powerful and more positive position. (shrink)

The public sphere should be regulated so the distribution of political speech does not correlate with the distribution of income or wealth. A public sphere where people can fund any political speech from their private holdings is epistemically defective. The argument has four steps. First, if political speech is unregulated, the rich predictably contribute a disproportionate share. Second, wealth tends to correlate with substantive political perspectives. Third, greater quantities of speech by the rich can “drown out” the speech of the (...) poor, because of citizens’ limited attention span for politics. Finally, the normative problem with all this is that it reduces the diversity of arguments and evidence citizens become familiar with, reducing the quality of their political knowledge. The clearest implication of the argument is in favour of strict contribution limits and/or public funding for formal political campaigns, but it also has implications for more informal aspects of the public sphere. (shrink)

Today many scholars seem to agree that citizens should be involved in expert deliberations on science and technology issues. This interest in public deliberation has gained attraction in many practical settings, especially in the European Union, and holds the promise of more legitimate governance of science and technology. In this article, the authors draw on the European Commission’s report ‘‘Taking the European Knowledge Society Seriously’’ to ask how legitimate these efforts to ‘‘democratize’’ scientific expertise really are. While the report borrows (...) from deliberative democrats’ normative accounts of legitimacy, the authors identify a tension between the principles for legitimate rule prescribed by deliberative democratic theory and the report’s celebration of diversity and dissent. While this inconsistency suggests that the legitimacy of deliberative governance arrangements is justified on empirical rather than normative grounds, it remains an open question whether studies of science and technology offer enough empirical support for such a justification. In this article, the authors address this pressing question and propose three possible responses. (shrink)

One of the main contentions of the framework for Responsible Innovation (RI) is that social and ethical aspects have to be addressed by deliberative engagement with stakeholders and the wider public throughout the innovation process. The aim of this article is to reflect on the question to what extent is deliberative engagement suitable for conducting RI in business. We discuss several tensions that arise when this framework is applied in the business context. Further, we analyse the place of deliberative engagement (...) in several theories of business ethics. We conclude that there remains a tension between the ideal of RI and the way in which the competitive market operates. Hence, RI scholars should reflect more critically on changes that are required in the market in order to make RI possible, modify the ideal of deliberative engagement for RI in business, or attempt to strike a balance between these two responses. (shrink)

In our time, innovation is considered an important way to address societal problems. That we expect so much from innovation to solve the challenges of our time, makes the question what could count as ‘responsible innovation’ more pressing. And that is what this thesis is about. The aim of this thesis is to offer philosophical reflections on responsible innovation in the business context. Since that is still a quite broad topic, the main title suggests its further focus: deliberation and food. (...) The first focus originates from the idea in the academic literature on responsible innovation, that innovators should not just assess by themselves what ‘responsible’ is, but should invite others to think along with them about the social and ethical aspects of innovation. Chapter 2 to 4 zoom in on this aspect of responsible innovation. The second focus has to do with the specific context of application, namely food and the food industry. Chapter 4 and 5 relate the topic of responsible innovation to this context. The question I raise in chapter 2 is whether the ideal of inclusive deliberation is suitable for innovation processes in businesses. I argue that this is not so easy, and provide different reasons why companies might not be willing to involve societal stakeholders into their innovation processes. First, the requirement of deliberation can be tension with the ability of companies to exploit their innovations commercially within a competitive market. Second, deliberation requires a certain degree of transparency about the innovation strategy of a company. Companies might not be willing to provide this transparency, because they fear knowledge leakage to other companies. Third, companies are controlled most often by people with a financial stake. Therefore, we can expect that financial considerations are decisive in the investment decisions of companies. This could conflict with the ideal of responsible innovation to ‘democratize’ innovation processes. Hence, I suggest that scholars should modify the ideal of deliberation in order to make it suitable to the business context, or they should suggest changes in the governance and regulation of markets so as to make deliberation more workable. Chapter 3 discusses the place of conflict and self-interest in deliberation. It starts with a discussion of the literature on stakeholder dialogue. In this literature, the ideal dialogue is presumed to aim at consensus. This also implies that participants avoid conflict and set self-interested considerations aside. I argue that this ideal of dialogue is problematic, especially for a dialogue between companies and NGOs. I show that companies can never completely set aside their profit-orientation, and hence that this ‘self-interest’ always influences their input in a dialogue. Furthermore, conflict and criticism can be necessary to make clear that societal problems require more attention, whether from the general public or from companies. Since the market is an imperfect institution, we need critical citizens and stakeholders such as NGOs to assess the behavior of companies. A certain degree of conflict between companies and NGOs may therefore be more desirable than a focus on consensus. For these reasons, I develop an alternative approach to dialogue in which conflict and self-interest have a legitimate place, and can even play a productive role. In chapter 4, a case-study is conducted to better understand how participants in a dialogue deal with conflicts. In this case-study, I analyzed different dialogues organized by the foundation ‘Ik Kies Bewust’, which issued a front-of-pack health label. In my analysis, I investigate the conflict between, on the one hand, the value of public health and healthy food, and, on the other hand, the commercial interests of companies. In the responses of companies to this conflict, three patterns became visible. First, companies frame their critics as not constructive, because, in their view, they only criticize but do not help to improve the label. Second, they stressed that they are really and genuinely motivated to make food healthier or to make a healthy food choice easier. Thereby, they seemingly tried to counter the image that they are just motivated to make profit. Third, they called on the government to take more control over the label, because this would make the label more reliable and more broadly adopted. I qualify these responses as defensive, which means that the conflict between commercial considerations and public interests is suppressed or ignored. An active response would require to recognize and confront the conflicts and dilemmas that companies face. The case-study makes clear how difficult it can be to engage in dialogue with critical stakeholders. In chapter 5, I reflect on how food innovation can be responsible. In trying to answer this question, I take a certain detour, by starting a discussion about the place of food in a life well-lived. For this purpose, I use the philosophy of Albert Borgmann. On the basis of my analysis of his philosophy, I argue that there are good reasons for engaging with food in active way, for example by growing your own vegetables and home-cooking, instead of consuming food merely passively. I also draw some implications for food innovation. In my view, people responsible for food innovation should critically assess whether new products or services enhance engagement or disengagement. Is it desirable, for example, to develop even more and better pre-packaged meals, or should we stimulate consumers to cook by themselves? I argue that it would be problematic if our overall pattern of dealing with food is characterized by disengagement and convenience, and hence that food innovation should not only go in this direction. (shrink)

Frente al sistema político liberal, basado en la agregación de intereses egoístas, los teóricos de la democracia deliberativa defienden la superioridad epistémica de la deliberación como método de toma de decisiones. En mi artículo pretendo tratar algunas de las cuestiones fundamentales concernientes a la democracia deliberativa como una teoría epistémica. Primero analizaré los elementos definitorios de la superioridad epistémica de la deliberación. Después expondré las diferentes formas en que los autores articulan el valor epistémico de la deliberación en sus propuestas. (...) Finalmente, abordaré los retos a los que se enfrenta esta concepción epistémica de la democracia para alcanzar las expectativas depositadas en este nuevo proceso de toma de decisiones. (shrink)

The relationship between the necessity to ensure that information is shared in the stages of deliberation and the overcoming of what Dryzek (2001) called constriction of deliberative economy is directly related to the proponents and opponents’ propensity to submit and add information differently, in a plural manner. This article describes the salient features of the deliberative turn in order to defend that this propensity is not individual. The evolution of the public space in science and in politics are both paradigmatic (...) examples to appreciate that individual deliberation, and even mere aggregation of opinions, are consistently interpreted only if they are part of social practices and collective institutions aimed at defending tolerance towards positions, beliefs and interpretations that are different or even confronted. This paper argues that the so called model of contestatory deliberative democracy contributes to the acquisition of knowledge precisely because it fosters a plurality of epistemic states associated with practices as consensus and dissent. (shrink)

It is hard to disagree with the idea of responsible innovation (henceforth, RI), as it enables policy-makers, scientists, technology developers, and the public to better understand and respond to the social, ethical, and policy challenges raised by new and emerging technologies. RI has gained prominence in policy agenda in Europe and the United States over the last few years. And, along with its rising importance in policy-making, there is also a burgeoning research literature on the topic. Given the historical context (...) of which RI emerges, it should not be surprising that the current discourse on RI is predominantly based on liberal democratic values. Yet, the bias towards liberal democratic values will inevitably limit the discussion of RI, especially in the cases where liberal democratic values are not taken for granted. As such, there is an urgent need to return to the normative foundation of RI, and to explore the notion of ‘responsible innovation’ from nonliberal democratic perspectives. Against this background, this paper seeks to demonstrate the problematic consequences of RI solely grounded on or justified by liberal democratic values. This paper will cast the argument in the form of a dilemma to be labelled as The Decent Nonliberal Peoples’ Dilemma and use it to illustrate the problems of the Western bias. (shrink)