The Mild Voice of Reason: Deliberative Democracy and American National Government. By Joseph M. Bessette. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 289 p. $32.50 ©.

This thoughtful and compelling book is the product of more than fifteen years of study and reflection spanning several phases of the author's unconventional early career. While moving from a university, to Chicago Democratic politics, to the Reagan-Bush Justice Department, and back to the academy, Bessette wrote several essays on the deliberative function of American political institutions. As he points out in a footnote, he was apparently the first political scientist to write about "deliberative democracy," a term that has now come to have wide currency. His 1980 essay on "The Constitution and Deliberative Democracy" (in Goldwyn and Schambra, How Democratic is the Constitution?) and an earlier unpublished convention paper on "Deliberation in Congress" were both widely cited, making Bessette possibly the most influential contemporary student of American politics who was not employed in academe.

The Mild Voice of Reason is the culmination of Bessette's work on deliberation in American government. It is illuminating on several dimensions of this subject. Bessette offers an insightful interpretation of the Founder's theory of deliberative democracy and the rationale for their design of the Constitution. Bessette argues that the Founders intended to create an entirely democratic constitution, resting squarely on the ultimate authority of majority opinion. However, they insisted that this authority was properly vested in a deliberative majority opinion: not whatever a majority, possibly uninformed or inflamed by passion, happens to want at a given moment, but rather what the majority would want if it considered a decision rationally, with all the relevant information, in favorable circumstances for deliberation. Often this deliberative majority opinion can only be expressed by the people's representatives, and the constitution was designed to permit them to do so.

In my view, Bessette buys into the Founders' rhetorical posture too fully, often suggesting that the deliberative opinion expressed by representatives is somehow the actual "deeper" or "genuine" opinion of the public itself. In reality, the notion that a majority of the public would hold the same opinion under appropriate circumstances is only a hypothesis. And Burkean representation, however essential to successful government, is not as easily and fully reconciled with democratic principles as Bessette suggests.

Drawing on numerous case studies of legislative debates and profiles of individual legislators, Bessette presents a massive display of evidence that the Founders' hopes for American political institutions, and in particular Congress, have been in large part fulfilled. In a tour de force of secondary analysis, Bessette shows that some of the major case studies that sought to demonstrate the centrality of bargaining to the legislative process actually show that deliberation about the merits of policies is central and bargaining matters only at the margins. He uses published profiles of legislators like Edmund Muskie, Wilbur Mills, Pete Domenici, and Dan Quayle to refute simple political self-interest interpretations of the legislative process. These legislators seek to excel in the job of legislating, and they invest heavily in activities that have no electoral payoff but contribute to legislative deliberation.

Bessette presents insightful analyses of how contemporary American government performs the deliberative function-showing the contribution of presidents, bureaucrats, and lobbyists, as well as members of Congress, and emphasizing the extraordinary variety of relevant channels for useful communication. He also argues, however, that institutional protections for the deliberative process have seriously deteriorated from neglect and misguided reforms.

Students of American national institutions who are interested in deliberation, information processing, or the quality of policymaking will have much to learn from this book.

Paul J. Quirk
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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