Deliberative Democracy and Divided Societies

In a world where the impact of internal conflicts is spreading ever wider, there is a real need to rethink how democratic ideals and institutions can best be implemented. This book responds to this challenge by showing that deliberative democracy has crucial, but largely untapped, normative implications for societies deeply divided along ethnic lines. Its central claim is that deliberative norms and procedures can enable the citizens of such societies to build and sustain a stronger sense of common national identity. More specifically, it argues that the deliberative requirements of reciprocity and publicity can enable citizens and representatives to strike an appropriate balance between the need to recognise competing ethnic identities and the need to develop a common civic identity centred on the institutions of the state. Although the book is primarily normative, it supports its claims with a broad range of empirical examples, drawn from cases such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lebanon, Macedonia, Northern Ireland and South Africa. It also considers the normative implications of deliberative democracy for questions of institutional design.It argues that power-sharing institutions should be conceived in a way that allows citizens as much freedom as possible to shape their own relation to the polity. Crucially, this freedom can enable them to reconstruct their relationship to each other and to the state in ways that ultimately strengthen and sustain the transition from ethnic conflict to democracy.

This is a lucid discussion of the central values of deliberative democracy that thoughtfully brings those values to bear on the hard cases of divided societies. -- Professor Albert Weale, University of Essex O'Flynn combines normative political philosophy and empirical comparative politics to ask a crucial question: how can the accommodation of difference be reconciled with the construction of an overarching identity? This is a clearly-written book on a vitally important topic and a surprisingly original account. -- John McGarry, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Nationalism and Democracy, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada This is a lucid discussion of the central values of deliberative democracy that thoughtfully brings those values to bear on the hard cases of divided societies. O'Flynn combines normative political philosophy and empirical comparative politics to ask a crucial question: how can the accommodation of difference be reconciled with the construction of an overarching identity? This is a clearly-written book on a vitally important topic and a surprisingly original account.

Ian O'Flynn is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Newcastle. He is co-editor (with David Russell) of Power Sharing: New Challenges for Divided Societies (Pluto Press, 2005).