This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 0090591709332336v1 37/3/323    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Chambers, S. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Rhetoric and the Public Sphere

Has Deliberative Democracy Abandoned Mass Democracy?

University of Toronto, Canada

The pathologies of the democratic public sphere, first articulated by Plato in his attack on rhetoric, have pushed much of deliberative theory out of the mass public and into the study and design of small scale deliberative venues. The move away from the mass public can be seen in a growing split in deliberative theory between theories of democratic deliberation (on the ascendancy) which focus on discrete deliberative initiatives within democracies and theories of deliberative democracy (on the decline) that attempt to tackle the large questions of how the public, or civil society in general, relates to the state. Using rhetoric as the lens through which to view mass democracy, this essay argues that the key to understanding the deliberative potential of the mass public is in the distinction between deliberative and plebiscitary rhetoric.

Key Words: Rhetoric • deliberative democracy • public sphere • mass democracy • mini-publics • plebiscitary rhetoric

This version was published on June 1, 2009

Political Theory, Vol. 37, No. 3, 323-350 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0090591709332336


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?