Situating the Police in the Deliberative System

• In Event: Reinvigorating Democratic Legitimacy Through Democratic Innovation and Protest

Abstract

The Black Lives Matter movement and the systemic character of police brutality to which it calls attention points to a lacuna in the literature on deliberative systems: deeply entrenched policing practices have placed substantial hinderances to the achievement of empowered inclusion and equality. Drawing on Mark Warren’s “problem-based” approach to democratic theory, we argue that the police should be taken as a component of the deliberative-democratic system that profoundly affects the bases of “empowered inclusion” (defined as the capacity of citizens to not only be included but to “demand and enforce their inclusion”). We argue this position with regard to five policing practices: search-and-seizure, detention, use of force, surveillance, and crowd control. In doing so, we draw several lessons for deliberative democratic theory. First, empowered inclusion is as much a precondition of political and deliberative contestation as it is the topic of it. Second, deliberative systems theory needs to become a bit more “systemic” in its perspective and incorporate institutions such as the police and the criminal justice system into its purview. Third, BLM can be understood not as a simple protest movement but as a symptom of a broader legitimation crisis. As such, protests such as those by BLM are the necessary avenue for reclaiming political equality within the public space and a necessary first step towards empowered inclusion.

Authors

• Brian M. Milstein, University of Limerick

• Afsoun Afsahi, University of British Columbia