Hayekian strongPolitical Economystrong and the Limits of Deliberative.pdfVIP

POLITICAL STUDIES: 2003 VOL 51, 722–739 Hayekian Political Economy and the Limits of Deliberative Democracy Mark Pennington Queen Mary, University of London Inspired by Habermasian critiques of liberalism, supporters of deliberative democracy seek an extension of social democratic institutions to further a reinvigorated communicative rationality against the ‘atomism’ of market processes. This paper offers a critique of deliberative democratic theory from a Hayekian perspective. For Hayek, the case against the social democratic state rests with the superior capacity of markets to extend communicative rationality beyond the realm of verbal discourse. One of the charges most frequently levelled at liberalism by the social democratic left is that, by treating individuals as isolated ‘atoms’, it fails to recognise the com- municative significance of the social settings in which individual ‘selves’ are shaped and created. From the rational egoists of social contract theory, to the utility maximisers of modern neo-classical economics, liberal political economy, argue the critics, is concerned primarily with the organisation of rational self-interest to the neglect of examining from where the ‘rational self’ derives. As evidenced by recent issues of Political Studies, a contemporary manifestation of this critique is expounded in the Habermasian advocacy of ‘deliberative democracy’ (see, for example, Smith and Wales, 2000). In this paper, I take issue with the normative claims of Habermasian theory, arguing that its critiques of liberal institutions and of the market economy in particular may be misconceived. Having sketched the primary arguments of the deliberative democrats, I show that, far from neglecting the communicative function of social institutions, th