> [WS:] But this sounds awfully naive. How on Earth are we going to
> have a deliberative democracy in a social environment other than
> department faculty? It would be difficult to imagine it working at
> the university level - let alone society at large.
Ironically enough, some of the worst examples of deliberative democracy that I have ever seen have occurred in faculty meetings. On the other hand, I've been involved in a number of extremely productive deliberative democratic structures during my years of activism, most recently in our union reform effort. Historically, the UAW sit down strikes, the beloved communities of SNCC, and the SDS have used deliberative democracy to a great deal of success.
Additionally, I think that deliberative democracy, through its difficulties and demands, is an extraordinarily productive epistemological device. It really demands that you think differently about processes of discussion and debate, about one's relationship to forms of collectivity. When one first enters into these processes, there is frequently a lot of discomfort, but I think that can be made productive, both at the individual and the collective effort. It's also worth noting that it is a skill that you can develop, and that developing those skills makes those meetings much shorter and more easy to get through.
Finally, one of the notable elements of the last UAW 2865 election was the continual misunderstanding of our (Academic Workers for a Democratic Union) commitment to this process. The former leadership would mock us for our lengthy and frequent meetings. What they never understood is that when we left those meetings, we were all on the same page, and that our actions were made productive because of those meetings. Also, the process allowed us to avoid some of the obvious errors made by our opponents. Not because the members of AWDU didn't come up with some really bad ideas (we all did at different points) but because those ideas were subjected to the collective democratic process, and someone generally pointed out why the bad idea was precisely that (this is not to say that the process is perfect, we made some mistakes... just less frequently.)
robert wood