Deliberative Democracy 1

Contemporary Political Theory, 2007, 6, (218–245)
r 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1470-8914/07 $30.00

www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt
Feature Article: Political Theory Revisited
Habermas and Foucault: Deliberative Democracy

and Strategic State Analysis
Thomas Biebricher1
Department of Political Science, University of Florida, 234 Anderson Hall, PO Box 117325,
Gainesville, FL 32611-7325, USA.
E-mail: biebrich@polisci.ufl.edu
The paper explores ways to bring the approaches of J. Habermas and M. Foucault
into a productive dialogue. In particular, it argues that Habermas’s concept of
deliberative democracy can and should be complemented by a strategic analysis of
the state as it is found in Foucault’s studies of governmentality. While deliberative
democracy is a critical theory of democracy that provides normative knowledge
about the legitimacy of a given system, it is not well equipped to generate
knowledge that could inform the choice of strategies employed by (collective)
actors from civil society — especially deliberative democrats — vis-à-vis the state to
pursue their goals. This kind of strategic knowledge about strengths and
vulnerabilities of a given state is provided by Foucault’s reading of the state as
driven by varying governing rationalities. Since, particularly in his later works,
Habermas finds strategic action normatively acceptable under certain circum-
stances, I argue that societal actors could profit from an integrated approach that
incorporates Foucault’s strategic analysis into the framework of deliberative
democracy. This approach would yield critical knowledge of both a normative and
strategic, action-guiding nature.
Contemporary Political Theory (2007) 6, 218–245. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cpt.9300280
Keywords: Habermas; Foucault; governmentality; deliberative democracy; critical

theory
But, then, what is philosophy today [y] if it is not the critical work that
thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor
to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently,
instead of legitimating what is already known (Foucault, 1990, 9).
Introduction
El Sueno de la Razon produce monstruos is the title of a famous etching by
Francisco de Goya from his series Los Caprichos. The ambiguity of the
etching’s title makes it a seemingly perfect metaphor for the fundamental
Thomas Biebricher
Deliberative Democracy and Strategic State Analysis
219
relation between the works of Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas

(see McCarthy and Hoy, 1994): The Spanish word ‘el sueno’ can be interpreted
as either ‘dream’ or ‘sleep’, with the etching itself, depicting a young person,
potentially a writer or artist, leaning unconscious over a desk with nightmarish
creatures approaching from the background, providing no definite answer.
Thus, the title may be understood as either a Modernist motto ‘The sleep of
reason creates monstrosities’ or a sceptical statement that seems more in line
with Postmodernist or Poststructuralist positions, ‘The dream of reason creates
monstrosities’. Accordingly, the former statement could be seen as capturing
Habermas’s commitment to some kind of reason while the latter somewhat
corresponds to Foucault’s intuition of reason being complicit with effects of
power, which makes it dangerous to dream the dream of reason.
To be sure, this contrastive metaphor seems appropriate given that
Habermas and Foucault are usually assumed to be located on opposite ends
of the philosophical spectrum (Dean, 1994; Ashenden and Owen, 1999), not
the least because Habermas himself has strongly distanced himself from
Foucault’s classic archaeological and genealogical approaches (Habermas,
1987).2 However, there is less clarity about the relation between the later work
phases of both, Habermas and Foucault. The former modifies his two-level
theory of society into a discourse theory of the rule of law and democracy,
whereas the latter modifies his genealogical approach to the microphysics of
power, in order to pursue the project of a strategic analysis of the state based
on the notion of Governmentality. The task of this paper is to explore potentials
of a fruitful and constructive dialogue between those two mature paradigms,
the concept of deliberative democracy and governmentality respectively.
If Goyas etching provides a metaphor that can be used to contrast the
approaches of Habermas and Foucault, his own comments on this very etching
No. 43 in the Capricho series can serve as a motto for an effort to spell out ways
in which they complement each other: ‘Fantasy/Imagination, abandoned
by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of
the arts and the origin of marvels’. Thus, while the etching itself seems to
imply a dichotomy between two positions, Goya’s own comments imply the
need for a mutually beneficial articulation. In this paper I will follow the lead
of the latter.
The argument runs as follows:3 In 1992 Habermas formulated a normative
theory of democracy and the rule of law in Between Facts and Norms. This
theory can be captured by the label deliberative democracy. Its main claim is
that the legitimacy of a political system, a fortiori a liberal-democratic one,
rests on its level of responsiveness to more or less informal inputs from a
functioning public sphere. Thus, the theory provides critical-normative
knowledge regarding matters of (il-)legitimacy of empirical (democratic)
political systems.
Contemporary Political Theory 2007 6
Thomas Biebricher
220
Foucault, on the other hand, engages in an historical analysis of changing

governing rationalities that supposedly animate and give coherence to the state.
It is a highly idiosyncratic account of the state that aims to grasp it as a
strategic relation or strategy. Foucault’s ultimate aim is to provide a strategic
account of the state analogous to his strategic account of disciplinary
institutions that will prove instructive for practices of resistance (Foucault,
1989a, 262 and 1989b, 225).
I would like to suggest that Habermas’s concept of deliberative democracy
can greatly benefit from a strategic account of the state and that it is possible to
formulate an integrated approach without falling into the trap of ignoring
strictly incompatible assumptions that underlie complementary elements. The
result of combining the two approaches, or, to be more precise, importing a
Foucaultian analysis into the Habermasian framework, would be an approach
that yields critical knowledge, both normative and strategic.
I am aware that projects such as the one attempted here is in need of
extensive disclaimers and efforts of justification directed at Habermasians and
even more so to Foucaultians. In itself this appears to be symptomatic of an
intellectual field that rewards constructing strong oppositions and often
personified dualisms, and it is one of the reasons why I think it is important to
engage the two thinkers in a productive mediation. I will return to this point in
the conclusion. For now I would like to address imaginable objections to the
most fundamental presuppositions of this attempt — most likely attributable
to defenders of Foucault’s position.
As stated above, the dialogue of the two positions amounts to incorporating
Foucault’s analysis into Habermas’s framework. It is hardly surprising that
this would meet with criticism from some Foucaultians because it seemingly
implies the superiority of Habermas’s framework over Foucault’s. Addition-
ally, his framework of analysis would be used for ends that are said to be
strongly at odds with his position, that is, those of Habermas’s deliberative
democracy. Let me try to defuse this concern on a variety of levels. With regard
to the former contention I consider myself fiercely agnostic, in other words,
there is no absolutely superior or preferable framework, there are only relative
strengths and weaknesses in both approaches that are mostly attributable to
their various elements and the way in which these are articulated within a
framework among other things.4 While I consider the linking of theorems
suggested here to be productive and promising this does not meant that it is the
only way to develop useful combinations of the two approaches. Others may
argue that it would make more sense to incorporate Habermas’s deliberative
democracy into Foucault’s framework of governmentality. This may very well
be possible, however, this is not the arrangement that I find to be the most
promising one (not the least because of the relatively fragmentary character
of Foucault’s analysis of governmentality) and that interests me the most.
Thomas Biebricher
221
The efforts of this paper are inspired by a pragmatic attitude towards theories
and their reciprocal relations: the point is not to overemphasize the differentia
specifica of a given theory it its most radical formulation and use it to
defend the purity, autonomy or even superiority of the theory vis-à-vis its
rivals — a practice that readily fuels an exaggeration of the multiple
dichotomies found in the social sciences and philosophy. The point is to
playfully search for new articulations of elements and nexuses found in various
theories that are seen to be productive and useful for whatever ends they are
supposed to serve while keeping an eye on the dangers of a naı̈ve eclecticism.
Interestingly, one of the strongest endorsement of such a use of theories that
deflects both objections raised above I take to be coming from Foucault
himself:
But a book is made to serve ends not defined by the one who wrote it. The
more there are new, possible unforeseen uses for it, the happier I’ll be. All my
books [y] are, if you like, little tool boxes. If people want to open them, use a
particular sentence, idea, or analysis like a screwdriver or wrench in order to
short-circuit, disqualify or break up the systems of power, including eventually
the very ones from which my books have issued ywell, all the better!
(Foucault, 1989g, 149, my emphasis).
Thus, since Foucault’s screwdrivers and wrenches are neither reserved for
purely Foucaultian ends nor to be employed for projects in which they
dominate over the use of other tools only, I take my approach to be squarely in
line with Foucault’s own view regarding theories and concepts.
The paper is structured as follows: I will start out by providing brief sketches
of deliberative democracy and governmentality. On that basis it will be possible
to make the argument that Habermas’s relative lack of a strategic account of
the state actually constitutes a deficiency of deliberative democracy in the sense
that it could greatly benefit from such an account. After a brief outline of what
such an integrated approach could look like and of what use it might be with
respect to a hypothetical example, I will confront some of the prima facie
theoretical impediments to such an effort.
Discursive Politics — a Normative Theory of Democracy

The concept of deliberative democracy that Habermas develops in Between
Facts and Norms has its roots in his earlier works. It is set in the general
framework of analysing society that has found its classic formulation in the
Theory of Communicative Action. Here Habermas distinguishes between
systems (economic and political) of purposive rationality on the one hand
and the life-world, which in its societal aspects is located in the private and
public sphere on the other. Deliberative democracy places considerable
emphasis on the functioning of the public sphere, which, of course, relates
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222
back to Habermas’s theoretical/historical study The Structural Transformation

of the Public Sphere, published two decades before Between Facts and Norms.5
I cannot do justice to the rich and complex approach that Habermas
formulates in his analysis of law and democracy. However, for the present
purpose a sketch of Habermas’s basic intuitions with respect to deliberative
democracy should prove sufficient.
Deliberative democracy is the short formula for a normative theory of
democracy that tries to provide us with criteria to evaluate the legitimacy of a
given liberal-democratic political system. Thus, a political system is legitimate
to the extent that it remains ‘open to renovative impulses from the periphery’
of the public sphere (Habermas, 1996, 357). There are two interrelated criteria
that serve as Habermas’s normative yardstick. On the one hand, the political
system has to exhibit a certain level of responsiveness vis-à-vis the public sphere
and the demands and needs being voiced there. On the other hand, a
‘functioning’ public sphere is required. Neither of these two criteria is sufficient
in itself. Only if both conditions are given to a certain extent is there a prima
facie case for a legitimate democratic system.
Let me briefly spell out the meaning of these propositions. First of all, the
term ‘public sphere’ is in need of clarification. Habermas defines it as a
‘network for communicating information and points of view [in which] the
streams of communication are, in the process, filtered and synthesized in such a
way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions’
(Habermas, 1996, 360). While this descriptive definition is supposed to apply to
public spheres in general, the crucial distinction that Habermas makes is the
one between functional and dysfunctional public spheres. A functioning public
sphere is characterized by a number of attributes: it is supposed to be inclusive,
egalitarian and conducive to rational discourse. Habermas pictures a patch-
work of sub-spheres that are osmotic, allowing information and opinions to
travel from the sub-cultural periphery to the centers of a mainstream public
sphere. In a functioning public sphere even actors from the periphery of civil
society have a certain chance of voicing their demands and finding a potentially
broad audience. Moreover, debates in an ideally functioning public sphere
would filter out faulty information and provide critical validation of opinions
regarding a certain topic. This would lead to ‘rational’ results, although,
strictly speaking, those debates remain open-ended and the ‘results’ would
always be tentative and open to critical re-evaluation.
To be sure, this is an ideal, albeit one extracted from the normative
presuppositions built into existing political institutions, used as a normative
yardstick, because Habermas is perfectly aware of the fact that most empirical
public spheres differ strongly from these conditions. The center of empirical
public spheres tends to be dominated by corporate actors (particularly interest
groups and political parties) and the mainstream mass media. Corporate actors
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223
can and will make use of their access to political, financial and organizational
power resources to promote their respective agendas. At worst, they may enter
into an alliance with various outlets of the mass media. This serves as an
effective gate-keeping mechanism against peripheral actors and issues seeking
access to this arena. This constellation leaves the public sphere unable to live
up to any of the criteria of functionality. Inclusiveness is hampered due to the
gate-keeping of corporate actors and the mass media that restrict access to a
monopolized mainstream public sphere and confine dissenting views that are
not backed by power resources to sub-cultural spheres that often lack any
effective influence on the political system. Even if challenging views and actors
make it into the mainstream, in the absence of financial and organizational
support they are likely to find it hard to keep up with the well-organized public
relations machinery of lobbyist groups or political parties. Thus, the right to
speak in this arena is distributed in an extremely inegalitarian way. Finally, to
the extent that corporate actors who manipulate and distort public
communication to promote their particular agendas dominate the public
sphere, rational debate has to be considered a highly unlikely event and thus we
cannot expect ‘rational’ results.
In fact, even in the unlikely case of a functioning public sphere there would
still be another condition to be met by a legitimate democracy, which, of
course, borrows its basic intuition from traditional versions of democratic
theory. Only to the extent that the political system proves sufficiently porous
and responsive to the debates in the public sphere and takes up the respective
input from civil society can it be considered a legitimate system. However,
Habermas is adamant in claiming the inadequacy of a Rousseauian direct
democracy under the conditions of modern nation states. The level of
complexity and differentiation reached on the basis of this mode of societal
integration cannot be mastered by the classical democratic procedures.
Accordingly, Habermas has introduced the notion of the political system in
the Theory of Communicative Action as a sub-system specialized in organizing/
governing societies. Habermas assumes that the complexity of modern
conditions necessitates a routine mode of system operation, which is a more
or less autopoietic self-programming of the state bureaucracy. Nevertheless,
since the main regulatory device of the political system, the law, consists of two
dimensions, its facticity and validity, the latter dimension serves as an
inextricable analytical and normative link between the political system and a
debating public sphere. Under postmetaphysical conditions, the validity of
a norm, the presumption of its normative rightness, can only be derived from a
more or less formal consensus of those affected by that norm. Thus, in systems-
theoretical jargon the output of the political system has to show some imprint
of the input from civil society as it is formulated through debates taking place
in the public sphere. Habermas is realistic/pessimistic enough never to assume
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224
that this official circulation of power6 will ever become the rule rather than the
exception. This is due to the complexity of issues the political system has to
deal with, which would overburden the discursive resources of a public sphere
in the long run. However, the minimum condition for a democratic system that
aspires to be legitimate is its responsiveness to inputs from the public sphere
under the unusual circumstances of life-world crises that might be accom-
panied by heightened levels of political mobilization and participation.
Consequently, the maximum legitimacy in this respect would be reached at
the point when any further responsiveness to inputs from the public sphere
would result in jeopardizing the political system’s specific ability to administer
society in a highly efficient way on the basis of complexity reduction fueled by
a self-programming bureaucracy.
The point to be stressed in this context is that Habermas assumes that more
responsiveness of the political system compromises its systems-theoretical
merits and therefore at some point the trade-off would have a negative balance.
However, between this point and the absolute minimum responsiveness in
times of outright life-world crises there is a potential of heightened legitimacy
through increased responsiveness. It is with regard to the realization of this
potential that we speak of a more or less legitimate political system —
assuming the functioning of the public sphere.
To sum this up, Habermas formulates a normative theory of democracy that
attempts to reformulate the basic intuitions of democratic theory since the
early modern period in a way that makes them applicable to the highly
complex and differentiated societies of the Western world. The normativity of
this approach resides mainly in the public sphere and its link to the political
system. On the basis of our evaluation regarding the functioning of the public
sphere and the responsiveness of the political system it is possible to assess the
legitimacy of a given democratic system. In this sense, the concept of
deliberative democracy can be considered to provide critical-normative
knowledge.
Let us now turn to a quite different approach to the state and democracy as
it is found in Foucault’s historical analysis of governing rationalities.
Governmentality — A Strategic Analysis of the State

The very fact that Foucault eventually tried to formulate an account of the
state is slightly surprising considering his remark: ‘Yes, I avoid a theory of the
state, I want to and I have to avoid a theory of the state — just like one can and
must avoid an indigestible meal’ (Foucault, 2000, 68, my translation).
Foucault’s historical studies of governmentality have to be placed against the
background of his classical genealogical framework to make its idiosyncratic
approach to the state more understandable.
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225
Foucault’s analyses in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality

Vol. 1 employ an analytics of power that in many respects proves to be quite
incompatible with state theory. Foucault uses the label of a micro-physics of
power to signify an emphasis on the capillary aspects of power that shift
attention away from assumed centers of power such as the state or the
productive sphere. In fact, Foucault argues that the analysis of modern power
should drop the assumption of a center of power in general. The ubiquity of
power that is controversially postulated by Foucault does not stem from an
emanating point that pervades all of society, it stems from power relations
residing even in the tiniest arteries of the social body. Foucault’s main attention
in these works never lies with the state that at best serves as an instance of
codification of local tactics into more global strategies.
In the late 1970s, Foucault embarks on a reformulation of his analytics of
power that questions the methodology of the microphysics of power and attempts
to broaden its scope. Beginning with the final chapter of The History of
Sexuality Vol. 1, the state acquires more and more importance in Foucault’s
thought. Here he introduces the notion of regulation that accompanies the
disciplinary mechanisms and is employed by the state with respect to the
population as a whole — in contrast to disciplinary institutions forging
individuals. This ascendance of the state culminates in the research agenda
based on the notion of Governmentality as it is formulated and rudimentarily
carried out in the lectures Foucault delivers at the Colle`ge de France between
1977 and 1979.
To be sure, Foucault by that time is clearly aware that the impact of the state
on societal power relations is more complex than his disciplinary analyses
suggest and that it will take a reformulation of his microphysics of power to
achieve an analytical grasp of the state. At the same time, Foucault is unwilling
to formulate a theory of the state, which for him is synonymous with an
essentialist and ahistorical account. The notion of governmentality signifies
Foucault’s solution to this conundrum. He approaches the phenomenon of the
state through historically shifting governing rationalities/mentalities that he
conceives as reflected practices animating the state apparatus. In other words,
what the state is varies over time and with differing rationalities. To use a
metaphor, governing rationalities are the manuals according to which the raw
material of apparatuses and institutions are assembled into a coherent
ensemble with a particular profile; it is the operational logic of the state
(Foucault, 1994a).
Foucault’s own historical analysis of governmentality starts with the notion
of a pastoral power that he traces back to ancient Middle Eastern thought
(Foucault, 1994b). In early occidental modernity, the paradigm that combined
the secular governance of the state with an essentially religious pastoral power
supposedly bursts asunder and is followed by ever purer versions of a reason of
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state governmentality, like German cameralism and French mercantilism.

This family of reason of state rationalities is subsequently replaced by the
ascending governmentality of Liberalism that Foucault traces down to its
contemporary versions of a Chicago School Neo-Liberalism and a Freiburg
School Ordo-Liberalism (see Gordon, 1991).
Rather than delving deeper into the fascinating details of this historical
reconstruction, for the present purposes it is necessary to spell out the structure
of what Foucault at times considered a framework for a ‘critique of political
reason’ (Foucault, 1994b, 298). What Foucault wants to provide is a
historically grounded strategic analysis of the state via the governing
rationalities that are embodied in it. This is a kind of critical knowledge that
is complementary to the type provided by Habermas. The studies of
governmentality do not explicitly inquire into the legitimacy of a given system.
They want to generate knowledge that can be used to inform political actions
of resistance:
What the intellectual can do is to provide instruments of analysis, and at
present this is the historian’s essential role. What’s effectively needed is a
ramified, penetrative perception of the present, one that makes it possible to
locate lines of weakness, strong point, positions where the instances of
power have secured themselves by a system of organization dating back over
150 years. In other words, a topological and geological survey of the
battlefield — that is the intellectual’s role (Foucault, 1982, 62).
Strategic critiques such as the one Foucault has in mind operate on the
assumption that we have to understand the way (institutional or state) power
works in order to be able to resist it. That was the way Foucault framed his
argument with regard to the disciplines. Political theory as well as political
activists were still clinging to a conceptualization of power that Foucault takes
to be obsolete. This outdated account of power could hardly inform political
action in a beneficial way, and that is what Foucault attempts to do: Locating
the ‘lines of weakness’ and ‘strong points’ in a system of power, so oppositional
strategies can profit from these analyses. This basic intuition can be developed
in different directions. Oppositional action might be helped by insights into a
particular ‘state project’7 that tries to give coherence to the state, its
apparatuses, institutions and (collective) actors according to a particular
governmentality. If, for example, tensions between actors and institutions can
be identified, if the appearance of natural coherence is shattered by an
historical inquiry that emphasizes the way the coherence of the state is being
(re-)produced, then one might be able to point out the seams that tie together a
state project as potential lines of weakness. Oppositional practices might
attempt to drive political wedges wherever these kinds of cracks are already
showing or may open up. Accordingly, it is crucial to understand the way state
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227
power functions to resist it effectively. What kind of identities does a ‘liberal’

state try to produce? On what level does it try to apply itself? On what basis
does state power function? Is it law, the norm or an amalgamation of both?8 To
echo Foucault’s commitment to think about power in strategic terms, one
might say that the most efficient way to sabotage the workings of a system is to
find its neuralgic points and vulnerabilities in general to direct action to these
points.9
There is one final issue to be addressed here regarding my interpretation of
Foucault’s work as a whole and the link between the genealogical micro-
analytics of power and governmentality specifically: I take it as a given that
Foucault’s work cannot be treated as a monolithic bloc in the light of the
multiple shifts and what some consider breaks in it. That is to say that the
notion of governmentality is not entirely compatible with the more radical
assumptions of the micro-analytics of power although it can be seen as an
attempt to save some of the latter’s insights and incorporate them into a more
defendable and comprehensive framework — which unfortunately remained
fragmentary. The limited scope of the paper does not permit me to explore
these issues in a more detailed way.10 But just consider the very basic fact
that the governmentality research agenda directed at the state is somewhat at
odds with Foucault’s famous earlier demand to ‘cut off the king’s head in
political theory’, that is, to shift attention away from the topics of state and
law. This implicitly challenges the methodological maxims developed for the
study of micro-power.11 This is important for the argument presented here
since my suggestion refers to specific elements or concepts in Habermas’s and
Foucault’s works that correspond to specific underlying assumptions that
change over the course of their works. In other words, my argument would
be simply incommensurate with both Habermas’s early notion of an ideal
speech situation and Foucault’s early 1970s subscription to ‘Nietzsche’s
Hypothesis’ according to which societal relations need to be conceptualized
along the lines of perpetual war. However, since both assumptions have been
thoroughly revised and de-radicalized by the time deliberative democracy and
governmentality are developed, respectively, I do not take these to be valid
objections.
Let me summarize the Foucaultian framework outlined here. The govern-
mentality approach conceives of governing rationalities as leaving an imprint
on the profile of the state, the way it is internally integrated and reproduced as
well as the ends and means of governmental or state power. Foucault, thus,
presents a historically informed and anti-essentialist account of the state that,
ultimately, is supposed to produce strategic and potentially action-guiding
‘effects of truth which might be used for a possible battle, to be waged by those
who wish to wage it, in forms yet to be found and in organizations yet to be
defined’ (Foucault, 1989a, 261 262). The question to be addressed now is why
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228
deliberative democracy would benefit from such a form of analysis and

whether it is possible to articulate those two frameworks in a plausible way.
Towards a Dialogue between Habermas and Foucault

Deliberative democracy and state analytics
An initial rebuttal of the proposed articulation of Habermas’s deliberative
democracy with Foucault’s strategic state analytics might look like this: The
bedrock of Habermas’s critical theory of society in all of its stages and versions
since the mid-1970s is the concept of communicative rationality and action.
Communicative action is emphatically non-strategic in that it tries to establish
coordination of action not on the basis of influence or force but on the basis of
a rational consensus between participants in a given situation. Championing
communicative rationality as the standpoint from which to criticize societal
developments, Habermas simultaneously describes other forms of reasons as
only defective or truncated versions of this broader concept (Habermas, 1989).
It is not entirely implausible to derive an implicit commitment to purely
communicative action as proper political practice from this strong and
categorical dichotomy between communicative and strategic action that seems
to be laden with normative undertones (Flyvberg, 1998, 226). If one accepts
this as an adequate description of Habermas’s views on the forms of political
practice taking place in the public sphere — an unconditional commitment to
communicative action within the public sphere and, additionally, vis-à-vis the
political system — then incorporating a strategic account of the state into the
unambiguously consensual framework of deliberative democracy would
introduce a severe inconsistency. In other words, even if the Habermasian
actors had access to the kind of strategic knowledge Foucault’s analyses are
supposed to provide, they could not use it because of an obligation to strictly
consensual action.12
As a matter of fact, however, Habermas has never explicitly stated that non-
consensual action is impermissible to actors subscribing to the normative ideas
of deliberative democracy. Moreover, in Between Facts and Norms and other
works published during that period, Habermas makes it quite clear that under
certain conditions strategic action might be justifiable. Throughout Between
Facts and Norms Habermas consistently stresses the spaces of strategic freedom
opened up by individual rights. Particularly, in the economic sphere, individual
rights constitute a range of possible actions exempt from moral considerations
and purely purposive in character. Actors can choose to purge all moral or
non-purposive considerations from actions situated in this field. How could
this kind of strategic behavior be justified normatively? Habermas argues that
to the extent that the boundaries of these spaces of strategic freedom have been
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229
agreed on consensually by the members of a community/jurisdiction, strategic

actions within those boundaries may be considered legitimate.13 Generally,
one can find a much more explicit treatment of strategic action in the works of
this period combined with a cautious embrace of some kinds of strategic
behavior as legitimate options for political practice (Habermas, 1998a).
Consider, for example, the increased significance of compromises in the
framework of deliberative democracy. While one might have assumed that
only a consensus resting on a rational agreement of the participants could
satisfy the Habermasian normative standards, compromises that are the
outcome of bargains — which by definition make use of power resources —
can be considered legitimate to the extent that the rules providing the
framework for a bargaining process are fair, that is, can be agreed on by the
participants (Habermas, 1998b, 245).
The conclusion to be drawn from this is that Habermas does not normatively
condemn strategic behavior under any given circumstance. To the extent that
actions fall within consensually agreed on boundaries of strategic freedom,
these actions have to be considered legitimate. Since I see no reason why this
freedom to act strategically under certain circumstances should only apply to
actions in economic and not political contexts, the same kind of freedom
would accrue to actors from civil society addressing the political system. Thus,
there is no reason why actors committed to deliberative democracy should not
make use of strategic analyses of the political system/state that they are
confronting.
Could this normative acceptability of strategic action even be stretched a
little further? If strategic action within legally codified boundaries that carry
the presumption of a rational consensus with them is acceptable, could there be
conceivable cases where strategic action disregarding the law is acceptable?
Consider a variety of scenarios in which Habermas has conceded the legitimacy
of such behavior.
Habermas is adamant that there can be no obligation to non-strategic action
in a lawless or essentially strategic environment. However, most of Habermas’s
analyses deal with Western industrial societies that he takes to be sufficiently
juridified so individuals can usually act non-strategically without having to fear
serious repercussions if they do not take on a wholly strategic attitude to the
social world. Still, it might be asked whether illegal strategic behavior might
not be justifiable under circumstances where the legal order has not been fully
established yet and the illegal action aims at a fuller realization of rights. This
situation would apply to transitional societies in which actors try to establish
and consolidate the rule of law and to the international realm that has resisted
the processes of juridification having taken place particularly within Western
societies. On a more general level, this problem can be understood as a version
of one of the perennial controversies in political theory: The relation between
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ends and means. Concretely, could illegal behavior directed at establishing the
rule of law be acceptable, or could non-consensual action aimed at establishing
more possibilities for consensual deliberation to take place be considered
legitimate? Furthermore, to what extent do even the juridified societies of the
West resemble an essentially strategic setting in which non-strategic behavior
would amount to defeatism? Is a public sphere in which actors regularly
make use of power resources to struggle for influence a strategic setting in this
sense? Does the regular practice of lobbyists circumventing laws and rules of
conduct mean that other actors need to be released from an obligation to
communicative or even legal action?
Habermas, as I see it, is still undecided on these questions, but remarks
like the following show some awareness of the fine line which the project
of deliberative democracy needs to walk: ‘Hence, action that is oriented
toward ethical principles has to accommodate itself to imperatives that flow
not from principles but from strategic necessities’ (Habermas, 1990, 106, my
emphasis).
Consider also a case where Habermas has constructed an argument through
which illegal strategic behavior for ‘legitimate’ reasons is normatively
condoned, if only with reference to a realm of only rudimentary juridification.
The highly controversial NATO bombardments in the Kosovo War were
endorsed by Habermas (1999), if only grudgingly, with reference to a future
cosmopolitical right that would enable individual citizens to demand a kind of
international police action against their own government. While the NATO
action might be illegal under present international law it can be justified
in anticipation of a yet to be established legal order of cosmopolitical right.
The alternative would be to cement the status quo of an international legal
order based on the rights of sovereign nation states with its inability to legally
intervene in cases where states turn against their own citizens, for example.
Thus, it becomes clear that normative justification of strategic behavior is not
even categorically confined to legally sanctioned spaces of freedom. Finally, it
is worth noting that this point can even be extended to thoroughly juridified
contexts where Habermas has maintained the legitimacy of civil disobedience.
This form of political action is seen as a symbolic violation of the legal order
intended to provide publicity for a certain topic after all other forms of action
have been exhausted (Habermas, 1985). Habermas himself has been cautious
to use the term in a very narrow sense. But even given a restrictive meaning,
in my view the concept can cover many forms of unconventional, somewhat
disruptive and strategic political practices as long as they fall short of
intentional violence against people and large-scale damage of property.
Consequently, if Habermas finds strategic behavior acceptable under certain
conditions that are likely to apply to actors in civil society confronting the
political system and if, secondly, the legitimacy of a democratic system is
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increased in proportion to the chances non-corporate actors have to make the

political system responsive to their demands, then it seems as if there is a strong
argument in favor of providing strategic knowledge to actors that may improve
their chances of successfully engaging with the political system.
In my view, Habermas’s framework is deficient in this respect because it has
only few action-oriented insights to offer to those actors. This is not to be seen
as a fatal flaw to deliberative democracy and neither does it mean that strategic
considerations are entirely absent from Habermas’s perspective on the political
system.14 However, accounting for the strategic profile of the political system
can hardly be considered to be a relative strength of Habermas’s framework.
Neither does this seem to be his main interest nor does his systems-theoretical
conceptualization of the state with its implicit discounting of individual and
collective agency help with it. Thus, my point is that deliberative democracy
might not ‘need’ a strategic account of the state in the strict sense of the term
but it could certainly benefit from a more thorough look at its strategic
implications for political action. Incidentally, this does not necessarily imply a
commitment to a Foucaultian framework. It might turn out that generically
similar kinds of strategic analysis found in the works of Poulantzas, Bourdieu,
Gramsci or others might be more suitable for the task.
I assume that the gains of such an integrated approach have already become
quite clear. It would be an approach that would yield critical knowledge that is
normative as well as strategic, thus, exceeding the limits of both the original
frameworks. After all, the governmentality approach by itself might be able
to help us choose our strategies in a more expedient way but does not tell us
much about the legitimacy of a given political system — at least I do not
consider this a specific strength of the paradigm.15 Finally, the productivity of
such a combination ultimately cannot be decided upon abstractly. It has to be
assessed by more specific (case) studies and by the actors themselves. Thus,
while I do not mean to suggest that there is always a perfect fit between the
ends that deliberative democrats pursue and the strategic knowledge provided
by a Foucaultian analytics of the state, I think that a case can be made for a
matching in specific contexts.
In order to make this contention more plausible, I will provide a brief sketch
of one among many possible forms in which an analytics of the state could
assist deliberative democrats’ efforts. Deliberative democrats are adamant in
their conviction about the desirability of deliberative settings as they are
portrayed in Between Facts and Norms and a steadily growing literature on the
topic (see, for example, Gutmann and Thompson, 2004). One of the main
strategic questions confronting the project of promoting deliberative settings
— next to the questions of how to frame this demand and on what level
to approach the political system/state — is to decide where these efforts are
most urgently needed and/or where they are most effective. In other words,
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deliberative democrats have to decide whether their focus should be to further

deliberations in the classic democratic institutions at the core of the political
system, namely legislative chambers, or whether they should be more
concerned about strengthening the institutional power of these at least
rudimentarily deliberative settings vis-à-vis the executive branch, etc. This
strategic decision, which has implications for the allocation and use of
organizational and financial resources of deliberative democrats is one that
could and should receive instructive insights from a Foucaultian perspective.
After all, the decision ought to take into account the (historical) transforma-
tions of the state/political system because in the absence of such an
understanding their efforts might very well wind up to be futile.
Foucault’s reconstruction of historically shifting governing rationalities
grants particular significance to liberalism and neo-liberalism. Among the
characteristics of neo-liberalism or advanced liberalism that he himself and
even more so his followers have emphasized is a phenomenon that might be
referred to as a growing ‘de-statization of government’ (Rose, 1996, 56). The
one of the many aspects of this phenomenon I would like to focus on is a shift
from centralized government to de-centralized governance through the
establishment of organizations, agencies or groups that blur the public–private
distinction and have gained considerable autonomy from centralized govern-
ment and electoral accountability. The archetype of these are Britain’s
Quangos (Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations). However,
similar bodies can be found in virtually all advanced liberal democracies,
particularly in education, community development and welfare state matters
such as health care. The neo-liberal governmentality applauds this form of
governance because it defuses the problems of ‘ungovernability’ due to rising
expectations of citizens, vis-à-vis the political system by delegating powers to
these bodies that are located somewhere between the state and society. The
political system’s core thus effectively renounces immediate political respon-
sibility for the tasks of these organizations and attempts to establish modes of
governing ‘at arms’ length’ (Rose, 1996, 57). Additionally, this form of
governance might prove to be more economical and, while often perceived to
be a retreat of the state, might actually help the state to project its powers
beyond the formal state apparatus (Jessop, 2002).
My point is that deliberative democrats are in need of these analyses to give
them a sense of perspective regarding the strategic significance of such a shift.
The latter lies in the reduced ability of the core quasi-deliberative institutions of
the political system (first and foremost the legislative chambers) to control
these agencies and organizations effectively. Thus, the Foucaultian diagnosis of
a de-statization of government might prompt deliberative democrats to draw
the strategic conclusion that it is relatively ineffective to push for more
deliberative procedures in the core legislative institutions because of this shift
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233
and instead promote increased democratic accountability for Quangos. This

might take the form of targeting these bodies with regard to the composition of
the supervisory boards that are often made up of government bureaucrats and
private investors or businessmen that do not necessarily represent communities
in the emphatic sense. It could also address the responsiveness of theses bodies
to deliberations in (local) public spheres.
What else could a Foucaultian account offer these or other actors? Along the
lines suggested here, Iris Marion Young has argued that deliberative democrats
cannot rest content relying on the force of the better argument but instead need
both ‘engage in discussion with others to persuade them that there are
injustices that ought to be remedied and to protest and engage in direct action’
(Young, 2001, 689, my emphasis). It seems that particularly the latter forms of
political action could greatly benefit from a strategic account of the state that
spells out the weaknesses and points of vulnerability that may be exploited by
oppositional actors to push for their demands. More concretely, in the absence
of already existing deliberative settings the voicing of respective demands is not
unlikely to be met with resistance or simply inaction from those inhabiting
powerful positions. Resorting to somewhat disruptive political action may be
the only option to overcome this resistance. I think that these kinds of action
could be conceptualized and justified as forms of civil disobedience as indicated
above. However, these practices, which try to pressure ‘the state’, that is office
holders, bureaucrats, etc., can benefit tremendously from an understanding of
the state’s strategic selectivity and the way it is open to demands framed and
communicated in certain ways while it is resilient with regard to others.
Given the restricted scope of this paper I will confine myself to these
somewhat sketchy examples. Importantly, I do not mean to limit the
imagination of others by outlining a definite form of an articulation. Thus,
the examples given here have a strictly illustrative purpose.
In the final section of this paper I would like to confront some potential
stumbling blocks for the approach suggested here, in order to defend it against
the charge of a naı̈ve eclecticism and thereby clear the way for productive
mediations between the Habermasian and Foucaultian frameworks.
Potential Stumbling-Blocks
Habermas and Foucault certainly are located on opposite ends of all kinds
of theoretical and philosophical spectrums in many different respects. Still,
I would like to argue that the relation between the two frameworks does
not foreclose the potential for a productive dialogue because it would be a
gross simplification to simply view it as a dichotomy of mutually exclusive
poststructuralist and modernist approaches respectively. While their respective
critiques of the (human) sciences do appear to stand in a dichotomous relation,
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things look differently when it comes to their way of thinking about ethics and
morals or the welfare state.16
In the following I will address some issues that might be seen as general
obstacles to the integrated approach that has been sketched out in this essay.
I cannot hope to refute these objections exhaustively, nor do I suggest that
these are the only objections that could be raised (see, for example, Ashenden,
1999; Dean, 1999). My aim is simply to show that the underlying assumptions
of the two approaches and their respective ends are not wholly incompatible.
Hence, the theoretical option of an integrated approach should not be
discarded outright.
Let me start out by confronting an objection that might accuse an integrated
approach of confusing the meaning of the term ‘strategy’ in both accounts. It
might be argued that strategic action means something completely different for
Habermas and Foucault. While the Habermasian notion is quite close to a
conventional rational choice interpretation of action (Habermas, 1989, 142),
Foucault at times uses the terms ‘strategy’ and ‘strategic’ without linking them
explicitly to individual actions. What might be problematic about this colorful
term is that Foucault might mean something very different when he speaks of a
strategic account of the state than what I have assumed so far. The term
‘strategy’ might appear, for example, as the counterpart of ‘tactic’, and a
strategy then would be the result of an integration and articulation of local
tactics into global strategies. Thus, the state itself would be a ‘strategy’
understood as a codification and integration of more limited tactics of power.
Some state theorists have interpreted Foucault in this way (Jessop, 1990) and
I believe that this is a very productive way of reading him indeed. The point to
this way of conceptualizing the state as strategy is to emphasize its composite,
heterogeneous and somewhat unintended nature:
There are different strategies which are mutually opposed, composed, and
superposed so as to produce solid effects which can perfectly well be
understood in terms of their rationality, even though they don’t conform to
the initial programming; this is what gives the resulting apparatus its solidity
and suppleness (Foucault, 1978, 10).
Governmentalities, accordingly, are to be understood as discursive strategies
and deciphering them yields insights into the operational logic of a given
institutional ensemble.
However, Foucault also employs the term in ways that are much closer to
Habermas’s interpretation of intentional individual/collective action oriented
towards success: ‘One may also speak of a strategy proper to power relations
[y] to designate the procedures used in a situation of confrontation to deprive
the opponent of his means of combat and reduce him to giving up the
struggle’ (Foucault, 1994d, 346). Furthermore, Foucault speaks of knowledge
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‘that can be used as weapons; knowledge that would at the same time be a
strategy, an armour or an offensive weapon, that’s what interests me’
(Foucault, 1989b, 139). The best way to sum up what I take Foucault’s
strategic analytics of the state to be engaged in is provided by Foucault himself:
‘Deciphering a layer of reality in such a way that the lines of force and the lines
of fragility come forth; the points of resistance and the possible points of
attack’ (Foucault, 1989a, 261).
Hence, while Foucault uses the term ‘strategy’ in differing and somewhat
idiosyncratic ways, treating the state as a strategy (in one sense) in itself is a
precondition in order to generate action-guiding knowledge in the sense
outlined above that might be of use for actors from civil society.
A more substantial objection to an integrated approach might be a disparity
between the aims of a Habermasian deliberative democrat and the way
Foucault conceptualizes resistance possibly fueled by the strategic knowledge
generated through his analyses. More specifically, in a Habermasian frame-
work the demands and needs voiced in the public sphere and directed at the
political system will often involve demands that certain subject positions be
recognized through the granting of individual/collective rights (Habermas,
1998a). At first sight this goal seems to be entirely incompatible with the
Foucaultian concept of resistance: ‘The liberty of men is never assured by the
institutions and laws that are intended to guarantee them’ (Foucault, 1989c,
339, 1994e, 109). While it appears as if Foucault’s position was one of utter
disregard for the significance of rights for political activity, this is only one
side to the story. At times, Foucault certainly assumed that law was an
inflexible and blatantly obsolete form of power to be replaced by the
disciplines. Yet, in the years following the publication of Discipline and Punish,
the idea that law can incorporate different rationalities becomes more
dominant. In other words, the law may be colonized by the disciplines and
thereby change its meaning and the way it functions (Hunt, 1992). This anti-
essentialist interpretation pertains to the notion of rights as well; thus it is
possible for Foucault to entertain the ‘possibility of a new form of right, one
which must indeed be anti-disciplinarian, but at the same time liberated from
the principle of sovereignty’ (Foucault, 1980b, 108) and at times he even
suggests that ‘against power one must always set inviolable rights’ (Foucault,
1994f, 453). Consider also the following formulation in Foucault’s famous
resolution with regard to Vietnamese refugees, the so-called Boat People:
‘There exists an international citizenship that has its rights and its duties, and
that obliges one to speak out against every abuse of power, whoever its author,
whoever its victims’ (Foucault, 1994g, 474). Whether Foucault invokes this
right in order to performatively undermine the discourse of rights and make
way for a new form hinted at above (Keenan, 1987) is of secondary concern in
this context. The point to emphasize is Foucault’s obvious acknowledgement
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of (new) rights as a significant aspect and legitimate aim of political struggles.

The demand of rights does not necessarily introduce a split between the
deliberative democrat and Foucault’s resisting individuals.17
Another typical political aim of the deliberative democrat used in the
hypothetical example above, the proliferation of deliberative contexts to install
more discursive modes of societal decision-making might stand in conflict with
the general profile of a strategic analysis suggested by Foucault. Does the latter
not assume that increased communication tends to intensify power relations?
Does the History of Sexuality Vol. 1 not state, that one major aspect of the
functioning of modern power is ‘the incitement of discourses’ (Foucault, 1978,
17)? Has he not asserted that ‘the more talking goes on, the more power there
is’ (Foucault, 1989d, 157), and suggested ‘developing silence as a cultural ethos’
(Foucault, 1994g)?
As plausible as it may sound initially, the assumption that silence is an
appropriate counter-strategy to a power that incites us to talk about ourselves
and spill information that might be employed to tie us to a particular identity
and control us more efficiently is refuted by Foucault himself. The History of
Sexuality Vol. 1 puts forward the methodological ‘rule of the tactical
polyvalence of discourses’ stating that ‘discourses are not once and for all
subservient to power or raised up against it, any more than silences are’
(Foucault, 1978, 100–101). Just like in the case of law/rights, Foucault’s anti-
essentialism builds some rudimentary bridges between his and Habermas’s
accounts. Still, there is a difference between not advocating non-communica-
tion as a political strategy on the one hand and endorsing more communication
and ‘the right to speak’ as a political goal as is the case in deliberative
democracy on the other. But even this latter notion might be somewhat
compatible with Foucault’s thought on public communication. Asked about
the problems of public debate Foucault states:
Why do we suffer? From too little: from channels that are too narrow,
skimpy, quasi-monopolistic, insufficient. There is no point in adopting a
protectionist attitude, to prevent ‘bad’ information from invading and
suffocating the ‘good’. Rather, we must multiply the paths and the
possibility of comings and goings (Foucault, 1989e, 305).
Thus, to a certain extent there is an overlap between what Foucault proposes
and what deliberative democracy aims for. To be sure, there are differences.
Foucault would be suspicious of what Habermas sometimes calls discursive
filters that should work towards rational debate and consensus, because they
would try to achieve what Foucault thinks should not be attempted: preventing
the ‘bad’ information from circulating. As far as the proliferation of channels
of communication and arenas of debate are concerned, I see more agreement
than disagreement between the two approaches. In addition, consider the way
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Foucault describes the work of the G.I.P., a prison reform group he co-
founded that gave prisoners a forum to formulate their demands, feelings and
interests:
Rather, it is because to speak on this subject, to force the institutionalized
networks of information to listen, to produce names, to point the finger of
accusation, to find targets, is the first step in the reversal of power and the
initiation of new struggles against existing forms of power. If the discourse
of inmates or prison doctors constitutes a form of struggle, it is because they
confiscate, at least temporarily, the power to speak on prison conditions
(Foucault, 1989f, 79).
Both thinkers seemingly advocate an inclusive public sphere in which even
voices from the periphery (prisoners) may be heard. And one of the most
promising strategies to achieve that might be the proliferation of communica-
tion channels outside of the mainstream public sphere, which is monopolized
by the mass media. Both, Habermas and Foucault could strongly agree on this
point, I suspect.
Finally, it might be wondered whether Foucault’s mostly anti-normative and
strategic reading of the state is at all compatible with the normative theory of
democracy proposed by Habermas. First of all, the approach suggested tries to
incorporate a Foucaultian analysis into a Habermasian framework — and to
repeat myself, this is not meant to imply a general superiority of Habermas’s
approach, it is an arrangement that I find to be promising without wanting to
foreclose others. So the primary question in need of clarification is whether
Habermas could find an import of strategic analysis acceptable. Hopefully,
I have already made this point sufficiently plausible. The objection would
mainly apply to an import of Habermasian normative theory into the more
nominalist governmentality framework. But even if we counter-factually
accepted Foucaultian concerns as a logically adequate objection to the
approach outlined in this paper, one could point to some instances where
Foucault clearly envisions some kind of normative relation between state and
society/citizens. The Boat People resolution cited above, for example, is a plea
for more responsiveness on behalf of governments and speaks of ‘duties’ that
governments have and ‘rights’ that citizens hold vis-à-vis governments. One
might counter this by pointing out that the resolution is a specific political
intervention that makes use of certain established notions and terms for
rhetorical/strategic reasons and that these statements find no echo in
Foucault’s substantial theoretical work. While I acknowledge the more
insulated character of these statements, the normative dimension could also
be seen at work in the concept of parrhesia that can be found in interviews as
well as lectures and some essays that Foucault had worked on not too long
before his untimely death. Foucault asserts that ‘it is possible to expect from
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governments a certain truth in relation to final aims, [y]: that is the parrhesia
(free speech) of the governed, who, because they are citizens, can and must
summon the government to answer for what it doesy [y] Yet as governed
we still have the perfect right to pose questions about the truth’ (Foucault,
1989g, 453). Without having to go deeper into the details of the concept
of parrhesia, which signifies more than just ‘free speech’, it seems clear that this
concept presupposes a normative relation between citizens and governments.
Again, one finds the notion of ‘right’, which is intrinsically linked to a justi-
fied expectation on behalf of the citizens and thus to a duty or obliga-
tion on behalf of governments. While I doubt that Foucault would have
endorsed formulations like the one just quoted in his earlier work phases, the
later Foucault might have found a normative theory of democracy less
objectionable.
In sum, the prima facie objections to an integrated approach are not strong
enough to discard the latter at once. Although they are rudimentary at times,
there are some links between the two approaches that make it defendable
against the charge of naı̈ve eclecticism and, thus, it should qualify as a topic
that deserves further discussion.
Conclusion
In this paper, I have tried to outline a critical approach to the study of the
state/democracy that incorporates Foucaultian elements into a Habermasian
framework of deliberative democracy. Before I retrace the steps of the
argument let me address what I think is at stake in this encounter between
Habermas and Foucault apart from the purchase deliberative democracy gets
from a strategic analysis of the state. At the most general level, the issue is
related to different ways of reading political theory and theorists. Most of the
extensive literature on Habermas and Foucault, and even most of the relatively
few attempts of comparison, tend to stress the dichotomy between the two
writers; how one defends modernism, the subject/intersubjectivity, reason and
morals while the other undermines all of these to some extent in the name of a
nominalism of anonymous knowledge and/or power regimes. Associated with
this body of literature are fierce attacks and defences that quite often amount
to polemics. I believe that the incentives of the academic field encourage
readings of authors that focus on their idiosynracies or differentiae specificae
vis-à-vis others in ways similar to the mechanisms Bourdieu’s analysis of the
academic field refers to (Bourdieu, 1998, 2002). Especially new and emerging
research traditions have to assert their autonomy from already established
ones, researchers that align themselves with an author or a ‘paradigm’ partly
defend the investments of their own cultural capital and the conditions of its
accumulation by defending theoretical positions, which explains the fierceness
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239
of the exchanges. Finally, controversies between ‘schools’ and authors often

yield more publicity and attention and in return more prestige and possibly
institutional leverage than approaches that focus on congruence, correspon-
dence or just family resemblance.
While I do not mean to doubt for a moment that contrastive studies often
provide important insights, their polemical aspect is likely to undermine a more
pragmatic orientation towards theories as tools that can be assembled in
different and innovative ways.18 Concretely, while it may make sense to
emphasize the differences between Habermas and Foucault for certain
purposes and while this may be warranted particularly with regard to earlier
works of both, I think it is just as important to undermine these multiple
dualisms and dichotomies particularly with regard to the later work stages of
both. Not only do the former make us neglect potentials for developing
composite theories building on relative strengths, they also often disregard the
many ways in which both authors have relativized earlier positions over the
course of their career. The integrated approach presented here tries to take
these revisions seriously. True, this means that it can save neither the ideal
speech situation nor Nietzsche’s hypothesis; in other words we will not get the
most radical version of both theories. But given that Habermas and Foucault
themselves have discarded or at least strongly qualified these notions, why
would we as commentators on their works fetishize them unless it was for the
reasons related to the incentives of the academic field referred to above?
With this in mind, let me briefly recapitulate the steps of the argument now.
Habermas formulates a sophisticated normative theory of democracy and the
rule of law that can be summarized as a theory of deliberative democracy.
According to this approach, the legitimacy of a given (democratic) political
system mainly hinges on two conditions. It is legitimate to the extent that the
public sphere provides an arena for inclusive, egalitarian and rational debate,
and the political system exhibits responsiveness to the demands and grievances
voiced in these debates. The focus of this paper has been on the second
condition of responsiveness, which from the point of view of actors from civil
society translates into the question of how to increase the responsiveness of the
political system to societal demands.
Foucault’s approach to the study of the state largely brackets questions of
legitimacy but focuses instead on strategy. The framework of governmentality
conceptualizes the state as animated and integrated by historically shifting
governing rationalities. By making these rationalities intelligible and providing
a strategic account of the state that outlines potential strong points and
vulnerabilities, Foucault’s analytics of the state aim to assist (collective) actors
in choosing effective strategies of resistance vis-à-vis the state. In contrast to the
normative knowledge generated through a Habermasian analysis, Foucault’s
approach yields strategic knowledge that may inform political action.
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240
The approach proposed in this paper integrates the strategic state analysis
into the framework of deliberative democracy. Theoretically, the productivity
and consistency of such a ‘cooperation’ rest on Habermas’s view on the
acceptability of strategic action on behalf of activists promoting deliberative
democracy. While it might be assumed that he restricts political action to non-
strategic options, Habermas to my knowledge has never condemned strategic
action categorically. Additionally, the works in which the concept of
deliberative democracy is developed in particular assume normative accept-
ability of certain forms of strategic action, the main criterion being consensual
boundaries to the field of potential strategic action typically exemplified in
individual rights.
In the absence of contradicting textual or systematic evidence to the
contrary, it has to be assumed that these spaces of strategic freedom apply to
societal actors as well when they approach the political system. Consequently,
actors would be entitled to make use of the knowledge generated through
a strategic account of the state, which could help them choosing effective
strategies when confronting the political system, which, in the case of success,
would in turn increase the legitimacy of the system. Hence, the lack of such
a strategic analysis of the state can be interpreted as a deficiency in Habermas’s
approach, potentially remediable through an incorporation of Foucault’s
concept of governmentality — or an alternative framework that provides
strategic knowledge of the state. Thus, an integrated approach would benefit
from the normative strengths of Habermas’s concept of deliberative democracy
as well as the strategic insights of Foucault’s studies of governmentality and
consequently would provide critical knowledge of both normative and strategic
character.
For deliberative democrats this means that in addition to the normative
arguments grounded in Habermas’s theories of communicative action that may
be mobilized to convince others of the desirability of more deliberative settings,
less governmental secrecy etc. they would be provided with a strategic
understanding of the state/political system that describes it as vulnerable to
some ‘strategies’ (for example, particular issues that are raised, the time
horizon of these demands, the discursive and non-discursive way in which these
issues are framed and presented) pursued by some actors/identities more
than others. It is a description of the strengths and weaknesses of state power
associated with a particular governmentality that informs actors where their
opposition might be most needed (against the veining relevance of legislatures,
or in order to circumscribe the de-statization of government) and/or where
and how it is most efficacious (exploiting the biases of a governmentality,
for example, the emphasis on freedom in liberalism may be used to push class
issues as issues of misrecognition/discrimination and thus a lack of freedom
instead of equality). Finally, the integrated approach maintains that in
Thomas Biebricher
241
addition to the options described here, deliberative democrats may resort to

disruptive forms of political action (protests, sit-ins, culture jams) that may
amount to forms of civil disobedience. Especially, since these forms of practice
come with relatively significant costs (organization of protests, fines/law suits
in the case of civil disobedience) their impact, their symbolic meaning, what
they are supposed to reveal, the kind of public outcry they are supposed to
generate needs to be pondered carefully. Knowledge of how the state power
that one is combating operates seems to be an indispensable ingredient to this
process.
To sum up the argument, I have addressed some of what I take to be likely
objections to the approach and presented arguments and textual evidence to
defuse these potentially controversial issues that might prove disintegrative to
the approach. While the arguments by no means aspire to refute objections
apodictically, they should be considered sufficient to warrant a closer
examination and further discussion of an integrated approach.
Thus, whether such an approach proves to be internally consistent and also
productive is a question that ultimately lies beyond the scope of this paper, the
main task of which it has been to bracket conventional theoretical divisions,
in order to find new ways of fostering critical engagement.
Date submitted: 26 May 2005

Date accepted: 6 December 2005
Notes
1 The author would like to thank Leslie Thiele, Margaret Kohn and two anonymous reviewers of
Contemporary Political Theory for their insightful comments and criticisms
2 I cannot address all of the many issues that are at stake between the two authors here. Ranging
from the status of the subject to the relation between power, reason and discourse, to the tasks
of science, philosophy and literature and their respective views on history, there are many points
of contestation between them.
3 See Biebricher, 2005b for a similar but more rudimentary version of the argument made in the
context of a general comparison of the works of Habermas and Foucault.
4 For a defence of Foucault against the overly dismissive criticisms of Habermas and an analysis
of the underlying misunderstandings that fuel these attacks, see Biebricher (2005a).
5 For a self-critique of this earlier account of the public sphere, see Habermas (1992).
6 In the ‘official’ circulation of power communicative power generated in the public sphere
prevails over the social power of corporate actors and is fed into the political system that
converts it into administrative power in the form of outputs. For systems theorists such as
Luhmann, this is the self-description of the political system but not the way it actually functions.
7 For the notion of ‘state project’ that closely resembles that of governmentality, see Jessop (1990,
351–353).
8 On Foucault’s notion of law and norm see Biebricher, 2006.
9 It is important to note, though, that Foucault considers his analyses as nothing more than
analytical offers to resisting actors that they may use them if they find them appealing or discard

Thomas Biebricher
242
them if they find them implausible. In other words, Foucault raises very limited truth claims
with his analyses, sometimes explicitly admitting to their almost fictional character (Foucault,
1994c, 242). The following quote captures his position quite well: ‘It is absolutely true that when
I write a book I refuse to take a prophetic stance, that is, the one of saying to people: here is
what you must do – and also: this is good and this is not. I say to them: roughly speaking, it
seems to me that things have gone this way; but I describe those things in such a way that the
possible paths of attack are delineated’ (Foucault, 1989a, 262).
10 See instead Jessop (1990, 220–248), Biebricher (2005b, 293–305) and particularly Lemke (1999)
for an account of the changed assumptions (methodological and other) of governmentality in
contrast to genealogy.
11 For an account of Foucault’s explicit self-critique of the micro-analytics of power along
the lines of ‘Nietzsche’s Hypothesis’, see his lectures Society must be Defended from 1975
to 1976.
12 See Young (2001) for a critical examination of such an approach to political action.
13 One must not overestimate the novelty of this idea within the Habermasian framework. As early
as in the Theory of Communicative Action he is aware of the fact that ‘the subject of civil law can
feel himself justified in acting, within legal bounds, purely with an orientation to success’
(Habermas, 1984, 257). However, it is only in Between Facts and Norms that Habermas explicitly
acknowledges that these actions are not only legal but may also be legitimate.
14 The same goes for Arato and Cohen (1992) and Dryzek (2000), who discuss non-communicative
political action within the general framework of deliberative democracy. See also Habermas
(1962 Chapters V and VI).
15 Again, this is not to say that Foucault’s thinking about the state is entirely void of normative
intuitions. As will be shown further below, Foucault at times invokes notions of legitimacy, right
and democracy. For an insightful elaboration on Foucault as a proponent of ‘radicalized liberal
democratic theory’ see Simons (1995, 117–118).
16 A systematic comparison of Habermas and Foucault is yet to be published in the English
speaking world. Kelly (1994), McCarthy and Hoy (1994) and Ashenden and Owen (1999) come
closest to this task. See Biebricher (2005b) for an attempt to provide a comprehensive
comparative analysis.
17 Even if one were to argue that Foucault’s claim to rights is always tactical and ‘the product of a
perpetual battle of representations’, I wonder if that ultimately separates him from Habermas
(who, incidentally, introduces a new, deliberative paradigm of law and rights beyond ‘liberal’
and ‘social’ paradigms that are the ones at which Foucault’s criticisms seem to be directed):
‘All rights talk, whether singular or natural, is to some extent tactical, for it is always a case
of using it to pre-empt and/or facilitate a possible action or rage of actions’ (Ivison, 1998, 143
and 142).
18 Consider Foucault’s own critical thoughts on ‘polemics’ in contrast to ‘dialogue’: ‘Has anyone
ever seen a new idea come out of a polemic? And how could it be otherwise, given that here
the interlocutors are incited not to advance, not to take more and more risks in what they
say but to fall back continually [y] on the affirmation of their innocence’ (Foucault,
1994h, 112–113).
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Contemporary Political Theory, 2007, 6, (218–245)

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Feature Article: Political Theory Revisited

Habermas and Foucault: Deliberative Democracy

Keywords: Habermas; Foucault; governmentality; deliberative democracy; critical

relation between the works of Michel Foucault and Jürgen Habermas

Foucault, on the other hand, engages in an historical analysis of changing

Discursive Politics — a Normative Theory of Democracy

back to Habermas’s theoretical/historical study The Structural Transformation

Governmentality — A Strategic Analysis of the State

Foucault’s analyses in Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality

state governmentality, like German cameralism and French mercantilism.

power functions to resist it effectively. What kind of identities does a ‘liberal’

deliberative democracy would benefit from such a form of analysis and

Towards a Dialogue between Habermas and Foucault

agreed on consensually by the members of a community/jurisdiction, strategic

increased in proportion to the chances non-corporate actors have to make the

deliberative democrats have to decide whether their focus should be to further

and instead promote increased democratic accountability for Quangos. This

of (new) rights as a significant aspect and legitimate aim of political struggles.

of the exchanges. Finally, controversies between ‘schools’ and authors often

addition to the options described here, deliberative democrats may resort to

Date submitted: 26 May 2005

Contemporary Political Theory 2007 6

Contemporary Political Theory 2007 6

Contemporary Political Theory 2007 6

Contemporary Political Theory 2007 6

Contemporary Political Theory 2007 6

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