Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Civilly disobedient citizens in democratic societies are rather beautifully characterized by Jürgen Habermas as 'ambivalent dissidents' (Habermas, 2004, 9). This status reflects the complex quality of a mode of protest that -- according to Habermas -- might appear to simultaneously challenge and uphold constitutional democratic principles. On the one hand, those who set themselves against democratic decisions through public acts of law-breaking 'could in the final analysis transpire to be the enemies of the constitution'. On the other hand, these citizens may 'contrary to their image...prove themselves to be the true patriotic champions of a constitution that is dynamically understood as an ongoing project -- the project to exhaust and implement basic rights in changing historical contexts' (Habermas, 2004, 9).1
Despite this allusion to the 'ambivalence' of civil disobedience, Habermas has consistently emphasized the second of these two interpretations. When he defends civilly disobedient citizens as the 'guardians of legitimacy' in a deliberative democracy, it is their image as 'the true patriotic champions of a constitution' that comes to the fore (Habermas, 1985, 103). I share Habermas's intuition that civil disobedience can be defended as a powerful resource for upholding democratic principles. The contention of this article, however, is that Habermas does not support this intuition as well as he might. In particular, I argue that he does not present us with an adequate account of the democratic justification of this mode of protest. This failing may be taken by some critics as a basis for rejecting a Habermasian approach to civil disobedience, in favour of an alternative account.2 I propose a different response, which looks to resources within Habermas's theoretical framework in order to overcome the limitations in his account as it stands. To this end, I appeal to Habermas's notion of 'social power' in order to provide a robust and original defence of civil disobedience within a deliberative democracy.
The article begins by outlining the broader theoretical framework of Habermas's writings on civil disobedience, introducing some of the key elements of his deliberative democratic theory. With this groundwork completed, the second section focusses on his attempt to defend civilly disobedient citizens against two common criticisms: that they undermine the stabilizing function of law in democratic societies and that they violate...