Partisan Deliberation in Action

AbstractThis chapter shifts the focus from the circumstances of deliberation to actual deliberative practice. It begins by distinguishing two different types of disagreement within the partisan groups: ones about organizational matters and ones about issues concerning society at large. It then goes on to examine several exemplary text passages that illustrate how partisans ‘deliberatively’ handle these kinds of disagreements. The central point that emerges from the analysis is that party activists engage in acts of reason giving that may reasonably be interpreted as satisfying the twin demands of uptake and mutual engagement. One of several interesting specificities of partisan deliberation is that it is marked by tensions between pragmatically-minded partisans and more ideological ones. This, it turns out, is also an important source of diversity within party groups. Another notable finding is that the political principles underpinning partisanship can facilitate mutual justification. The ‘normative consensus’ that characterizes partisan collectives plays a crucial role in this connection: partisans’ pre-deliberative agreement on a certain set of political principles ensures that appeals to those principles are immediately resonant. This makes reaching agreements and compromises easier. The upshot is that even though deliberation in party branches is a particular kind of deliberation, it is undoubtedly good deliberation. If this is any indication, then there is plenty of potential for involving these partisans more in the party’s wider deliberations and giving them bigger deliberative tasks