Talking, voting and violence. Divisive issues and the limits of democratic deliberation

Deliberative democrats claim that deliberation is the best procedure for handling moral conflicts.. Morally conflicting issues involve religion, race, language or ethnicity. Such issues raise questions concerning the boundaries of civic inclusion and national identities. Moral conflicts involved in these issues can assume an either/or character and are therefore potentially difficult to solve with procedures such as bargaining and compromise. Deliberative and democratic procedures are supposed to have the advantage of creating understanding and recognition through dialogue, provided that this dialogue meets normative criteria, such as reciprocity and reasonableness, publicity, the scope of accountability, various liberties and fair opportunities. In this paper I will focus on one of these criteria, that is reciprocity. My aim is not primarily to discuss reciprocity as a theoretical and normative concept, but to develop a more politically oriented model of deliberation that includes strategic behavior and institutional conditions. My general argument is that the claim that deliberation is the best procedure to handle moral conflicts does not always go together with the democratic ambitions that deliberative democrats hold as well. It is crucial to specify under what conditions moral conflicts are to be (re)solved by deliberation and democratization