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Deliberation, East meets West: Exploring the cultural dimension of citizen deliberation

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Abstract

The current conceptualization of deliberation may represent Western Enlightenment ideals in that it values rationality, publicity, equality, argumentation and reasoning. This essay explores the potential of deliberative democracy in non-Western contexts, such as the Confucian East Asian societies where it is often considered that the public sphere is less developed and people are reluctant to engage in public argumentation. Herein, several cultural traits of the collectivist East Asian societies relating to deliberation are identified, including the lower value of public talk, the strong influence of social position in talk and the unique traits of their cognitive reasoning processes. Considering these traits, the promises and perils of deliberation in the East Asian context are discussed.

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Notes

  1. For a good review of the ‘empirical dimension’ of deliberative democracy, see the two special issues of Acta Politica, Vol. 40 (2005).

  2. One may argue that East Asians are not at all reluctant to engage in public argumentation. For example, recent mass candle light protests in South Korea, the martyrs of the Tiananmen Massacre in China, the often-violent behavior of Taiwanese and South Korean legislators suggest that they are active in publicly voicing their views. Such phenomena, however, also suggest that public deliberation seldom happens in these societies. That is, rather than engaging in the calm, rational deliberation suggested by many Western theorists, East Asians, who may lack Western-style deliberation traditions and who have had authoritarian regimes, prefer such modes of expression as protest and often violent behaviors. Again, with political and cultural factors confounded, this present a challenge to the analysis.

  3. There may be important cultural differences between these countries. However, designating them as a ‘Confucian’ culture is widely accepted. See, for example, Hofstede, 2001.

  4. Also see Kazuhiro Soda’s 2007 film, ‘Campaign’, which offers a microcosm of the hierarchical nature of Japanese society in an amusing manner.

  5. The term ‘individuality’ is somewhat different from individualism in that it denotes a modern philosophical thought related with Enlightenment philosophers.

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  1. Department of Communication Studies, Pace University, 41 Park row, 5th Floor, New York, 10038, NY, USA

    Seong-Jae Min

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Min, SJ. Deliberation, East meets West: Exploring the cultural dimension of citizen deliberation. Acta Polit 44, 439–458 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2009.10

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