Anarchist deliberation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Deliberative democracy is underpinned by ideological preferences that lend unity to an otherwise diverse theoretical paradigm. It is, in particular, shaped by concepts and values associated with liberalism and social democracy, which inform its political goal of embedding deliberative reforms in existing systems of representative democracy. At the same time, practices associated with deliberative democracy are emerging in very different contexts to those envisaged by deliberative democrats. An upshot of this is that deliberative democracy is increasingly undergoing a process of contestation, whereby alternative ideologies revise and rearticulate its core ideas. This article focuses on anarchist deliberation, analysed here as a form of collective organization forged by successive generations of radical activists and underpinned by core values of anarchist ideology. This practice is also presented as a central component of a deliberative anarchism, a normative perspective that constitutes an insurgent challenge to standard theories of deliberative democracy.