Reconciling historically excluded and disadvantaged groups: Deliberative democracy, recognition and the politics of reconciliation.

Bashir, Bashir (2006) Reconciling historically excluded and disadvantaged groups: Deliberative democracy, recognition and the politics of reconciliation. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis provides a critical examination of four approaches to democratic inclusion. These approaches are: egalitarian theories of deliberative democracy, identity politics and its post-structuralist critics, and integrative approaches. The thesis presents each approach as a successively more effective way of addressing democratic exclusion. Each theory is measured against the demands of accommodating the claims of groups that have suffered some form of historical exclusion and injustice. The thesis explains the significance of the demands of historical injustices in relation to these approaches and concludes that deliberative democracy and the politics of recognition require supplementation by a politics of reconciliation. Drawing on the idea of reconciliation from conflict resolution and international relations, the thesis explores the way in which democratic inclusion can be supplemented. The politics of reconciliation is fundamentally crucial for the task of accommodating demands of historically excluded social groups primarily because of its emphasis on confronting the past, acknowledging injustices, taking responsibility and offering an apology for causing these injustices and embracing the concrete and specific experiences of historical oppression and exclusion. Briefly, the distinctiveness of reconciliation stems from its serious engagement with the specificities and particularities of real and concrete experiences of historical oppression and exclusion. The originality of this thesis lies in providing a supplement to and therefore transforming the politics of recognition and deliberative democracy and their ability to address political problems of excluded social groups. This thesis does not aim to replace deliberation and recognition with new substitutes but seeks to offer a new interpretation of these theories and supplement them with reconciliation. Briefly, the thesis offers a new interpretation to familiar issues in different disciplines and the novel task has been to bring them together. The application of the ethic of reconciliation, from International Relations and conflict resolution, to the politics of recognition and deliberation makes a significant contribution to the field and the opening of a new research agenda for normative theories of democratic inclusion.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Political Science, General
Sets:	Collections > ProQuest Etheses Departments > Government
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/2416

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