The Imperfect Dialogic Democracy. Habermas’s Discourse Principle and Experimental Studies on Collective Reasoning

Abstract

Habermas believes that the foundation of democracy is to be found in the discourse principle. Also, some cognitive and experimental studies have suggested that democratic procedures can promote a debate between different opinions and ideas, thus improving the decision-making performance of public authorities. However, Habermas believes that, while, on the one hand, the democratic community is based on the premise that participants in the discourse collectively strive to find the best solutions, on the other, the democratic process allows citizens to irrationally misuse their political rights. If, therefore, reasoned decision and dialogue have an important role in the justification of democracy, but it is a limited role, we propose the idea of an imperfect dialogic democracy.

Keywords

• Jürgen Habermas
• Collective Reasoning
• Cognitive and Experimental Studies
• Democracy
• Decision Making