Défense publique - Ramon van der Does

Le Recteur de l'Université catholique de Louvain fait savoir que

Ramon van der Does

soutiendra publiquement sa dissertation pour l'obtention du grade de Docteur en sciences politiques et sociales

“Homo, hunter-gatherer, Habermas: An inquiry into deliberation and human nature”

Abstract

Many political theorists and pundits deplore the way we talk politics. Conversations among elites and ordinary citizens alike arguably often show a lack of argumentation and mutual respect. This has spurred widespread interest in finding new ways to stimulate deliberation, that is, respectful political talk marked by a give-and-take of reasons.

A fundamental critique is that deliberation goes against human nature. This view of deliberation and human nature has so far received little scrutiny but has had major implications for how we think about what deliberation requires. Some maintain that interventions to promote deliberation are futile and others that deliberation requires substantial institutional tinkering and corrective pedagogy. In this dissertation, I critically engage with this commonly held pessimistic view on human nature and deliberation from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective.

Theoretically, I ground our understanding of deliberation and human nature in the existing literature on human evolution, in particular work in the field of evolutionary psychology. Doing so allows me to advance an alternative view on deliberation: human nature dictates that deliberation under certain conditions will feel intuitive to most people. I put forward what I call the ‘group hypothesis’ of deliberation, which holds that deliberation formed an adaptive response to the problem of intra-group political disagreements, a problem recurrently encountered by our distant ancestors who used to live as (semi-)nomadic hunter-gatherers. Based on broader insights from evolutionary psychology, I expect that when people today disagree about politics with others from their in-group (i.e. the group to which they (feel they) belong), they will still be inclined to deliberate. Conversely, disagreements with others from an out-group should reduce people’s propensity to deliberate.

Empirically, the dissertation relies on diverse sources of data to test these expectations: ethnographic evidence on political decision-making in historic hunter-gatherer societies; longitudinal-cross-sectional data on the propensity of political representatives to deliberate in mass societies; and experimental data on the drivers of deliberation in informal talk among citizens. While I find little support for the expectations derived from the group hypothesis, the findings provide relevant insights for future work to start building a research program on human nature and deliberation.

The dissertation makes three key contributions to the literature on deliberation:

• It grounds discussions about human nature and deliberation in the literature on evolutionary psychology, moving past mere philosophical speculation;
• It shows how an evolutionary perspective can help to integrate research in the field of deliberation and incorporate insights from diverse disciplines such as anthropology and biology; and
• It engages in theory-building based on existing evolutionary insights and novel empirics in an attempt to kickstart a research program on deliberation and human nature.

Membres du jury

Prof. Virginie Van Ingelgom (UCLouvain), co-promotrice
Prof. Min Reuchamps (UCLouvain), co-promoteur, secrétaire du jury
Prof. Nathalie Schiffino-Leclercq (UCLouvain), présidente du jury
Prof. Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore), évaluateur externe
Prof. Graham Smith (University of Westminster), évaluateur externe
Prof. Jean-Benoit Pilet (ULB), comité d’accompagnement
Dr. Florian van Leeuwen (Tilburg University), comité d’accompagnement