among citizens serves only to taint and oppress it. Inevitably, according to Rousseau, the authentic will of citizens can only be warped if individuals are subjected to acts of persuasion and influence. Ultimately, as far as he was concerned, the democratic legitimacy of a decision lessens as citizen participation (discussion, debate, argumentation etc) increases. This is because the will of all and the general will are most reflective of one another before the process of citizen deliberation takes place. Shapiro also takes issue with the deliberative conception of legitimacy and does so on relatively similar grounds. 115 He argues that such a heavy emphasis on the deliberation process as the source of legitimacy is often misplaced because in doing so, one must assume that those forwarding their opinions and ideas have no ulterior motives. Such an assumption, he claims, is simply naive, and that interest and power are often the primary motivators for the forwarding of supposedly moral causes. Consistent with Rousseau's conception that this process grants a disproportionate degree of influence to minority interest groups, the general will becomes distant from the will of all and, ergo, the decisions made are less legitimate. By contrast, in regarding the process of discussion and debate as the primary source of legitimacy, deliberative models not only arouse public participation, but, by definition, are dependent on it. Gutmann and Thompson’s model presents a number of rational justifications for this and demonstrate the vitality of public involvement and activity to the working of such systems. Central to their model is the need for presenting, evaluating and responding to
115 Ian Shapiro, ‘Enough of Deliberation: Politics is about Interests and Power’, in Deliberative Politics , ed. by Stephen Macedo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 28-37 (p. 29).
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