Deliberative democracy and meta-agreement

Abstract

The social choice theory presents a significant challenge to democratic theory. Arrow’s impossibility theorem shows that it is not possible for some normative conditions – regarding the voting procedure guaranteeing its fairness and that the outcome of voting be coherent – to be satisfied at the same time. This brings into question normative justification of democracy to the degree to which it is based on the voting procedure. The single-peakedness condition was proposed as one of the possible ways to solve the Arrow’s problem. In this paper we will explore to what extent the conception of deliberative democracy may contribute to achievement of single-peakedness which subsequently guarantees coherent social choice. In this context we will particularly explore the thesis that public deliberation leads to meta-agreement which might subsequently imply single-peakedness. We approach this thesis by probing its empirical and normative adequacy.