Multilingual Deliberative Democracy: A Theoretical Reflection on the Promise of Multilingualism for Deliberative Democracy

In recent years, there has been an increase in research on deliberative democracy to explore how deliberative practices may efficiently exist under varying conditions. In most cases, the literature has focused on divided societies, but very little research has been done to address the question of “what if this divide is linguistic”. Kymlicka argues that “democratic politics is politics in the vernacular”1, leading to the question of whether democratic politics is possible in multilingual societies.2 Patten, among others, claims that linguistic diversity might seriously impede effective deliberative democracy.3 After all, deliberation requires a certain amount of trust and mutual understanding (....)