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Deliberative Democracy: Final paper
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The post-truth era as a threatto deliberative democracy
Why the spread of disinformation harms the epistemic, ethical, and democratic functions of
deliberative democracy and how to solve this problem.
By Debby Snijders (s1001299)
Course: Deliberative Democracy (MAN-MPOL045)
Date: 29-04-2022
Words: 3432
, The post-truth era as a threat to deliberative democracy
Introduction
The 24th of February, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. The situation, and the terrifying messages and
images that spread on the news, as well as on the internet, has shocked most of the world. On the
other hand, the case of is very different in Russia. The Russian government spreads a lot of
disinformation about their intentions and actions in the Ukraine war. The news that does reach the
Russians is either embellished, or complete fake news (Benjakob, 2022). Citizens in Russia do not
encounter the same information about the situation as the rest of the world. As one can imagine, a
meaningful discussion about the current war in Ukraine would not be possible in Russia right now,
considering the spreading of fake news about the Russian activities and intentions going around. A
discussion between the Russians and the rest of the world would result in a discussion between two
parties with entirely different starting points, which makes it very unlikely for the two to agree with
one another. A discussion based on disinformation will never be a meaningful discussion.
Deliberation, and specifically political deliberation, is very hard to achieve in this particular situation,
and a decision based on disinformation would not be a meaningful decision.
Political deliberation is one of the attempts of political scientists to improve the political environment
of today’s world. Political deliberation can take on several forms, for instance the form of
participatory budgeting, where citizens extensively discuss and decide about a part of the public
budget, or the form of a mini-public, where an assembly of citizens considers and decides about or
advocates on a certain topic. Deliberation in practice mostly comes down to several citizens, a part of
a society, deliberating with each other about a certain, usually complex, political puzzle. The decision
the deliberators come up with can be advisory or binding to political actors.
The last decades the theory of deliberative democracy as a democratic innovation has become a
popular topic to study among political scientists (Dryzek, 2005). Initially, political theorists created an
ideal type of deliberative democratic theory. Once empirical political scientists started testing this
theory in the real world, they came to the conclusion that the theory was utopian (Thompson, 2008).
Political deliberation amongst citizens often does not produce the benefits that the normative
scientists expected. A possible explanation for the difference in outcomes between the normative
and empirical studies can be the difference in assumptions in advance (ibid.). An important
assumption of deliberation is that all actors enter the deliberation process as equals, something that
is almost never fully the case in the empirical world (Lupia & Norton, 2017). Entering political
deliberation as equals also means starting the deliberation with the same information about the
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