Justification Crisis: Brexit, Trump, and Deliberative Breakdown

• Published date: 01 August 2021
• Date: 01 August 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591720968596
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591720968596

Political Theory

2021, Vol. 49(4) 554 –583

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591720968596

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Article

Justification Crisis:

Brexit, Trump, and

Deliberative Breakdown

Brian Milstein1

Abstract

This essay explores the problem of legitimation crises in deliberative systems.

For some time now, theorists of deliberative democracy have started to

embrace a “systemic approach.” But if deliberative democracy is to be

understood in the context of a system of multiple moving parts, then we

must confront the possibility that that system’s dynamics may admit of

breakdowns, contradictions, and tendencies toward crisis. Yet such crisis

potentials remain largely unexplored in deliberative theory. The present

article works toward rectifying this lacuna, using the 2016 Brexit and Trump

votes as examples of a particular kind of “legitimation crisis” that results

in a sequence of failures in the deliberative system. Drawing on recent

work of Rainer Forst, I identify this particular kind of legitimation crisis as a

“justification crisis.”

Keywords

democracy, deliberative systems, legitimation crisis, Brexit, Trump, Rainer

Forst

1Research Associate and Lecturer (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter), Goethe University Frankfurt,

Frankfurt am Main, Hessen, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Brian Milstein, Research Associate and Lecturer (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter), Goethe

University Frankfurt, Research Centre “Normative Orders,” Hauspostfach EXC 14, Frankfurt

am Main, Hessen 60629, Germany.

Email: brian.m.milstein@gmail.com

968596PTXXXX10.1177/0090591720968596Political TheoryMilstein

research-article2020

Milstein 555

The 2016 Brexit vote shocked the Western world, topped only by the unex-

pected election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency several months later.

With fortunes rising for populist and charismatic figures around the globe,

many people have come to fear that liberal and democratic values are in grave

danger. Yet we are still just beginning to grapple with the challenges recent

events pose to democratic theory, let alone deliberative-democratic theory.

This essay explores the problem of legitimation crises in deliberative sys-

tems. For some time now, theorists of deliberative democracy have started to

embrace a “systemic approach.” Whereas earlier deliberative democrats

tended to place their stress on the ideal of deliberation or its institutionaliza-

tion in particular sites and forums, proponents of the systemic turn explore

ways to effectively theorize and instantiate deliberative democracy at a mass

scale, across multiple actors, institutions, and stages, possibly even including

nondeliberative elements that nonetheless support the overall deliberative

quality of the system.1 But if deliberative democracy is now to be understood

in the context of a system of interacting parts, then we should countenance

the possibility that that system’s dynamics may admit of breakdowns, contra-

dictions, and tendencies toward crisis.

The present essay works toward exploring such crisis potentials, using the

Brexit vote and Trump’s election as examples of a particular kind of legitima-

tion crisis that results from incongruities between deliberative system com-

ponents. Drawing on recent work of Rainer Forst, I identify this particular

kind of legitimation crisis as a justification crisis.2

In the process, I aim to develop two more general points about legitima-

tion crises and deliberative theory. The first concerns how deliberative demo-

crats may account for such crises within the deliberative system, and what an

examination of crisis potentials within a deliberative system tells us about the

functions and contributions of its various components vis-à-vis the system as

a whole. The second concerns how deliberative theory may actually contrib-

ute to our understanding of legitimation crises in contemporary democracies.

As I argue, the Brexit and Trump votes exhibit features that set them apart

from many accounts of legitimation crisis but that pose interesting questions

for democratic theory. While both results were formally democratically legit-

imate, they nevertheless appeared erratic or alienating to much of the public.

In a democracy, the legitimacy of official decisions relies in the end on their

traceability to a sense of collective democratic will, whereby the “winners”

as well as the “losers” of a given decision can understand themselves as equal

coparticipants in the shaping and making of it.3 Yet a crucial implication of

the theory of deliberative systems is that the fostering of such a sense of will

and coparticipation is dispersed across multiple components. Far from being

generated spontaneously, it must be operationalized through a series of