Making Hidden Presupposition Explicit: How Citizens Outside Citizen Assemblies Participate in Deliberation

Abstract

Well-known deliberative institutions are subject to critique because they involve a limited number of citizens in the decision-making process, excluding the general public. This paper identifies this critique as a concern regarding political equality. Based on a relational egalitarian interpretation of political equality, this paper argues that addressing political inequality requires not only discussing potential mechanisms for the general public's inclusion in the deliberative process but also articulating the value of their participation to ensure that their discourses are treated with the same weight as those of citizens inside deliberative institutions. Drawing on insights from linguistics and the philosophy of language, this paper proposes that individuals with less background knowledge can positively contribute to deliberation by asking questions that unveil the implicit presuppositions in deliberative discourses. Analyzing discourse samples from the 2015 Taiwanese public consultation, this paper further demonstrates how individuals can effectively employ this approach in real-life deliberative settings.