Constitutionalizing Deliberative Democracy in Multilingual Societies

Deliberative democracy is a process that promises a good faith engagement among all segments of the polity with the purpose of pursuing the public good. Multilingualism is perfectly compatible with a version of deliberative democracy. In fact, multilingualism may even be better in promoting delibera...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBerkeley journal of international law Vol. 25; no. 2; p. 117
Main Author Addis, Adeno
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berkeley University of California Press Books Division 01.05.2007
Subjects
Democracy
Linguistics
Multilingualism
Negotiations
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Summary:Deliberative democracy is a process that promises a good faith engagement among all segments of the polity with the purpose of pursuing the public good. Multilingualism is perfectly compatible with a version of deliberative democracy. In fact, multilingualism may even be better in promoting deliberative democracy to the extent that it facilitates 2 important considerations for genuine deliberation: it will allow the various linguistic groups to present themselves in the deliberative process fully both in the quantitative and qualitative sense. Quantitatively, something like linguistic federalism will allow more members of linguistic minorities to participate in the deliberative process. Qualitatively, linguistic minorities will be able to present themselves more fully to the deliberative process because the use of their language would have allowed them access to the entire range of their history and culture. Free and unconstrained public deliberation will be possible only when all are able to participate fully on all matters of common concern.
ISSN:1085-5718