The democratic mind: between deliberation and representation

This paper seeks to bring together insights from what seem so far to have been two separate debates. Both focus on what, borrowing from Robert Goodin, I call the “internal-reflective” (as opposed to “external-collective”) realm of democratic life: the set of mental experiences individuals undergo when engaging in democratic practices. On the one hand there is Goodin’s own account of “democratic deliberation within” (Goodin, 2000), which depicts the ideal mental activities of participants in deliberative processes. On the other hand, there is a longer and more diverse tradition of theorising in terms of representation about the specific mental process involved in political thinking, ranging from Arendt’s “representative thinking” to Rawls’ “representational use of judgment”. In light of the recent normative rapprochement between deliberative and representative ideals of democracy, I propose to investigate the overlap between the mental activities involved respectively in “deliberating with others” and “representing others”. In doing so I am particularly concerned with bringing to light the mental experiences that might trigger in individuals the ethical transformation that has been identified as a potential (and desirable) outcome of both deliberative and representative processes.