Philosophical Papers
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Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating?
Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
To cite this article: Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani (2020) Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating?,
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Philosophical Papers
Vol. 49, No. 1 (March 2020): 1–29
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating?
Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
Abstract: Prevailing literature argues that arguing is the only appropriate mode of deliberation.
The literature acknowledges bargaining, storytelling, and other forms of communication, but is
unwilling to describe these as deliberation, properly speaking. The claim is that describing them
as such would amount to concept stretching. My first thesis is that arguing exhausts neither the
legitimate modes of deliberation nor the modes for effective deliberation. To do this I further
develop a two-type categorization of issues I have employed elsewhere to show that argument
alone is sufficient for bringing closure to issues in the first category, but bargaining is needed
to reach agreements on issues in the second category. I observe that the more agreeable
variant of the second category of issues constitutes a great deal of issues deliberated outside
the purely theoretical classroom. Progressing from these observations, my second thesis is
that bargaining is in fact the preeminent way of reaching agreements in political
deliberation. To illustrate this, I demonstrate that normative differences and distributive
consequences are inherent features of political issues.
Introduction
A prevailing trend in the literature on the identity of deliberation has sought
to protect the sanctity of arguing by screening out other forms of discussion.
Maeve Cooke (2000: 948) defines deliberation as simply an ‘exchange of
arguments… ’. Robert Goodin (2005: 183) remarks that there seems to
be an ‘impressively broad consensus’ regarding ‘what counts as “good” dis-
course and deliberation’. Jurg Steiner (2008: 186) complains that the
concept of deliberation is being ‘stretched’ to mean ‘talk of any kind’. He
writes:
Deliberation does not simply mean talk of any kind; the concept has a very
specific meaning. For fruitful and rigorous research, this specificity must be
kept. If the concept is stretched too far it begins to mean everything and there-
fore nothing. (Steiner 2008: 1)
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2 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
Scholars favour a model in which we speak the truth (Steiner 2008: 187) and
‘[t]here is assumed to be no conflict of interest between any of the parties to
the game… ’ (Goodin 2005: 183). Steiner is particularly concerned about
distinguishing deliberation from ‘bargaining’, arguing that the two are
not the same (Steiner 2008: 188). What emerges is that it is argument that
properly constitutes deliberation.
The literature therefore dismisses bargaining and conceives ‘delibera-
tion’ particularly by contrasting it to bargaining. The assumption is that bar-
gaining is normatively deficient and is therefore incapable of generating
sufficient legitimacy. Jon Elster (1986: ll9; 1992: 15–19) has argued that bar-
gaining is for the market setting and arguing for the political forum, and
that the discourse model of the market is not suitable for discussing politics.
The term ‘bargaining’ has thus been relegated to the interest-driven dis-
cussions that are the focus of game theory, in which (mostly business) par-
ticipants make purely strategic moves to gain better payoffs (either
material or in terms of utility). Decades of this kind of usage have earned
bargaining the mundane image of a game theoretical term. Because of
this role of bargaining in game theory, political philosophers and political
scientists have generally shied away from the term ‘bargaining’ when discuss-
ing deliberation.
I will show that this view of bargaining arises from insufficient knowledge
of the role of bargaining in everyday deliberation, and political deliberation
in particular. To begin, I appreciate the need to properly define delibera-
tion, as this helps us in our search for what really counts as deliberation.
But in this article, I argue that the definition of deliberation as argument
would not tell the entire story, since arguing is actually unsuitable for dis-
cussing a certain category of issues. To do this, I further develop a two-
type categorization of issues I have employed elsewhere: issue Types 1 and
2. I then discuss the plausibility of arguing in the two categories respectively.
In Section 1, I outline what I mean by bargaining. In Section 2, I outline the
twomajor kinds of agreement in deliberation. In Section 3, I further develop
two categories of issues we normally deliberate upon. I show that argument
is appropriate to only one of these categories. In Section 4, I explore the
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 3
limits of arguing and the role of bargaining in Type 2 issues. In Section 5, I
explore the magnitude of the role of bargaining in reaching political agree-
ments. In Section 6, I conclude by responding to few key literature and,
lastly, redefining deliberation.
1. Bargaining
To avoid the inaccurate definition of bargaining as negotiating (which we see
in many dictionaries), I would define bargaining here as the deliberate adjust-
ment of preference-based positions through the exchange of offers and
counter offers. I distinguish it from negotiation because negotiation is
simply any discussion aimed at reaching a common agreement. This is a
broader activity that involves a mixture of bargaining and (both explicit and
implicit) arguments (see Laar and Krabbe 2018). The presence of (especially
the explicit form of) argument in negotiation muddles the special distinction
that bargaining stands for. By contrast, bargaining is pure and simple in what it
means (exchanging offers). Bargaining is therefore that component which dis-
tinguishes negotiation from a purely argumentative debate.
I choose to work with ‘bargaining’ rather than ‘compromising’ because I
wish to focus on the action of adjusting preferences in a barter trading,
rather than focus on whether or not the action and resultant agreement
are based on second-best choices for the parties (for which we prefer the
term compromise).
2. Two Kinds of Agreement
Much (though not all) of deliberation is aimed at common agreement or
consensus. In this article I will demonstrate that we either argue or
bargain to agree, depending on the issue. Sometimes we do both, but, as I
shall show, we generally bargain where we cannot argue. Not all issues are
resolvable on the basis of argument. In some we begin with arguments, but
we can only bring closure by making and accepting offers. And it is quite
impossible to restrict the concept of deliberation to the issues concluded
by argument alone.
4 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
To begin, there are two kinds of agreement. When we all agree that the
result of 2 + 2 is 4, it is an arithmetic agreement. Such an agreement is auto-
matic: it is ensured by calculation. We do not need to bargain to reach such
an agreement. As I will show, deductive arguments generally lead to such
agreements: one has no logical choice but to agree. Probabilistic arguments
(which we see in inductive reasoning) are also to some extent arithmetic, as I
will show. But all other agreements that are not reached through arithmetic,
mathematical, deductive and inductive logic are strictly bargained agree-
ments. I have categorized issues whose deliberations lead more or less to
arithmetic agreements as Type 1 issues (or argument-centric issues), and
the other issues (the bargain-demanding issues) as Type 2 issues (or
bargain-centric issues).
3. Issue Categories1
There are two broad categories of issues we deliberate upon. The first are
what I call Type 1 (or argument-centric) issues. This category consists of
mathematical, scientific, logistic and factual or empirical issues. We are fun-
damentally mathematical in discussing these issues, in the sense that they
involve mostly arithmetic forms of calculation. Beginning with mathematics
itself, the premises 2 + 2 lead to the conclusion 4, and there is no controversy
in determining that the distance between houses A and B is, for instance, 12
miles. We do not need to bargain or adjust anything in order to arrive at these
conclusions. The conclusions already exist and are waiting to be discovered.
Mathematics is itself derived from logic, and in logic we learn of the two
basic forms of arguing or reasoning: deductive and inductive reasoning.
Deductive arguments are derived from mathematics proper, and guarantee
the certainty of their conclusions. For a popular example:
1 The two distinctions I make in this section (first about distinguishing between Types 1 and 2
issues, and second between logistic and normative values) are advanced in more detailed discus-
sion in another article (Ani 2019). But the analysis of deductive and inductive arguments, and
majority of the examples are original to this essay. Those examples taken from that (and
another) essay are acknowledged.
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 5
Premise 1: All men are mortal.
Premise 2: Peter is a man.
Conclusion: Peter is mortal.
This form of argument is purely mathematical. All we needed to do to arrive
at the above conclusion is, first, observe that the term ‘man’ in premise 2
indicates that Peter is a member of ‘all men’ in premise 1. If all men are
mortal, and Peter is a member of all men, then Peter must certainly be
mortal. No other conclusion is logically possible from these premises
(such as ‘Peter is immortal’ or ‘A fire cabinet is mortal’). This is a classic
example of a deductive argument. The nature of deductive arguments
show that no matter how complex a mathematical-type issue is, it is really
easy to resolve since a logical solution already exists waiting to be discovered.
Inductive arguments, on the other hand, are basically probability argu-
ments. They make inferences based on analogies, generalizations, statistical
syllogisms, and predictions. And we know that analogies, generalizations and
predictions are not as mathematically accurate as deductive arguments.
Here are classic examples:
For generalizations:
Premise 1: Michael is strong.
Premise 2: Bob is strong.
Conclusion: All males are strong.
For analogies:
Premise 1: Carlos is a rich young guy and has dated at least ten girls in the
last two years.
Premise 1: Mason is a rich young guy and has dated at least ten girls in
the last two years.
Conclusion: Kenneth is a rich young guy and may have also dated at least
ten girls in the last two years.
6 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
For predictions:
Premise: John (Sledgehammer) Hughes has won his last thirty boxing
fights.
Conclusion: He will win his next fight.
For statistical syllogisms:
Premise 1: 90% of the residents of Hunter town can competently handle
a gun.
Premise 2: Robert is a resident of Hunter town.
Conclusion: Robert can competently handle a gun.
Or
Premise 1: Many of our students are motorists.
Premise 2: James is our student.
Conclusion: James is a motorist.
Since they are more or less probability arguments, inductive arguments are
not as certain as deductive ones. But inductive arguments are nonetheless
Type 1 issues for two reasons. First, inductive arguments apply only to
empirical issues, and certain issues of logistics. Empirical and logistical
issues are calculable, even if based on probability. The second reason
emerges from the first: although inductive arguments do not yield con-
clusions that are as certain as those of deductive arguments, inductive argu-
ments still lead to consensus because we tend to compare strengths of
probability. And we can compare probabilities relating to empirical issues
because they (probabilities) are clearly calculable. This means that we all
agree arithmetically by tending to prioritize options with the highest (or
lowest) probability as the case may be.
Computers are in fact argumentative machines. Most of their operations
are deductive and inductive (including ranking options according to
strengths of probability). This by itself is evidence of the mechanistic rigidity
and predictability of argumentation, as well as its capacity to be replicated. I
have mentioned elsewhere the argument-based dialogue software that Tang
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 7
and Parsons (2005) created as a deliberation technique in the area of artifi-
cial intelligence. This software mostly sifts through inputted data to arrive at
a solution. So when the authors write that it ‘can be used to arrive at consen-
sus on a course of action through argumentation’ (see Ani 2019: 307), one
realizes that it employs deductive and inductive techniques of building infer-
ences, and deals broadly with mathematical, empirical, scientific and logistic
issues.
Logistic issues (by which I mean issues surrounding the organization and
execution of an operation) are really mathematical, deductive and probabil-
istic issues. The bottom line is that they are tractable (or not intractable).
When we deliberate upon them, we clearly rank them according to utility,
aesthetics, reliability, and so on. They are, as such, Type 1 issues. When,
for instance, it has become clear that there is a high rate of insecurity (bur-
glary) in a university department, deliberation in a departmental meeting is
likely to lead to the suggestion that the department should increase secur-
ity.2 Such a suggestion should easily achieve consensus. It may be objected
at this meeting that those involved in these crimes are unemployed, and
are living in poverty. Such an opinion could then argue that the department
should write to the municipal government to invest more in job creation.
But this idea does not compete with the previous idea in an exclusive way.
Creating jobs is hardly enough reason not to provide better security. Both
ideas are likely to equally achieve consensus agreement, their utility values
are very clear, and we cannot be locked in an intractable disagreement
over which to pursue. The only impediment to their simultaneous
implementation may be the inadequacy of resources, which, in this case,
is not likely. A couple of stronger padlocks could be what is needed to
increase the security of the department and a letter to the local government
is the department’s major sacrifice in trying to increase jobs in town.
2 I use this example in Ani (2019: 305–306) but in this paper, the second proposal is about
creating jobs to reduce unemployment rather than about improving community relations.
The reason for the modification here is to compare it to deliberation on a similar topic at a
higher level (such as a parliament).
8 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
As we saw in the example above, both ideas share an auxiliary relation-
ship, in the sense that, barring the limitation of resources, it would not
hurt one by pursuing the other. For another example, the board
members of a football club may agree in a meeting that their team has
not won a trophy in the last couple of years. A suggestion may be that
they have not been remunerating their players handsomely. A consensus
decision to increase pay is somewhat guaranteed if the suggestion is
accompanied by evidence that other clubs are in fact paying higher. An
objection might be that the team manager is not performing as much as
needed to push the players to greater heights, and is therefore not the
right sort of person to accomplish the task. But even if this suggestion is
proved, it does not really harm the decision to improve players’ pay. What
we may have are two non-exclusive agreements: improve pay and change
the team management.
Even when logistic alternatives are directly opposing in such a way that we
must accept only one, we make our preferences based on comparing utility,
aesthetics, and costs. One of the alternatives may be quicker, more efficient,
more aesthetically attractive, more costly, and so on. If we were to select a
hotel in town for the accommodation of international scholars coming to
visit the department, the choice is relatively easier and non-controversial
because what we do is more or less comparing the available hotels in
terms of cost, comfort, range of services, distance from the university and
department, and so on. These qualities (of logistic alternatives) are very
clearly calculable. When logistic alternatives are supplementary, we may enter-
tain the supplement if we have enough resources. When logistic alternatives
complement one another, there is indeed no controversy.
In another article I have mentioned that if someone needed to wed and
she preferred an outdoor wedding, a suggestion during deliberation that we
would best fix the date in the middle of the dry season to reduce chances of
rain to the minimum would easily attract consensus. No values and beliefs
are in conflict here (except in the unlikely circumstance that someone
had a superstitious belief in wedding outdoors in rainy season, even at the
cost of being beaten by rain). Indeed, there is likely only one universal
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 9
value shared by everyone: no one likes being beaten by rain. When we all
share a single value (or interest) on an issue, then our disagreements
could only be empirical. And empirical disagreements are easily resolved
by appealing to empirical facts, rendering bargaining unnecessary.
Sometimes deliberation may result in the birth of a new solution to a
problem by combining the good features found in already existing or
already suggested solutions. But such a new solution is a product of eclectics,
not of bargaining. Let me cite an example fromHelen Landemore and Scott
Page (2015: 235).3 In this example, a dark bridge links a neighbourhood
community to a city’s downtown, and there is such a frequent rate of mug-
gings on this bridge that people are afraid to use it after dark, making life
quite uncomfortable for members of this community. They meet to deliber-
ate about how to prevent muggings on the bridge and how to achieve this at
minimal cost. For this deliberation, the city planner’s office prepares three
alternative approaches as follows,
(A) have the neighbors walk each other home and organize watches, (B) station
a police car near the bridge after dark, and (C) install public lighting on the
bridge. (Landemore and Page 2015: 235)
One can see that option A is cumbersome; option C, whilst being the cheap-
est, may not completely eradicate muggings; and option B, whilst clearly the
most effective, is the costliest. One can see that deliberation in this context
might involve aggregating the options to produce new solutions. For
example, to reduce the cost of option B, someone could suggest we
combine option C with installing an emergency telephone. Landemore
and Page (2015: 235) call this option D. They argue that option D could
easily attract agreement because human beings have an inner oracle,
which they describe as an ‘ … inner intuition that can reveal the correct
ranking of any proposed solutions’ (Landemore and Page 2015: 234).
The idea of the inner oracle is that human beings have the intuitive
ability to detect better arguments.
3 I cite this example to make relatively the same point in Ani (2019: 313–314).
10 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
However, I argue in this article that this oracle is nothing other than our
ability to detect superior deductive, scientific, empirical, and logistic alterna-
tives. I will demonstrate that this ability is restricted to these types of issues,
and we do not clearly possess this oracle when we deliberate on Type 2
issues, to which I now turn.
By Type 2 issues I refer to value-laden issues. Values are things (beliefs,
notions, ideas) we hold dear, or interests. We are often jealous of what we
hold dear, and are less amenable to transforming our views about them as
easily as we transform our positions from mathematically/empirically incor-
rect positions to correct ones. In addition, many of our competing values,
beliefs or interests may not yield a mathematically or scientifically superior
alternative in comparison exercises. If they could, it could have been quite
possible, for instance, for the whole world to abandon all other religions in
favour of one religion, to unite behind a single political blueprint, or we
could have witnessed the disappearance of the diversity of interests in
general. The persistence of divergence in this issues indicate that we lack
a very clear oracle in deliberating about them, and the oracle is weak
because these issues lack the scientific (or at least calculable) grab-
handles possessed by Type 1 issues.
To be more specific, I would divide Type 2 issues into two groups: logistic
values and normative values.4 Logistic values are those values that are close
enough to the empirical world to benefit somewhat from the epistemologi-
cal tractability of Type 1 issues. Mundane interests in general are in this cat-
egory, as well as strategic values (or values and preferences about strategy).
If, for instance, I am interested in a contract worth ten million dollars, and I
realize that I need a partner to execute this contract, rational calculation
demands I agree to split the profit with her.
Since logistic values are still values, it makes no sense to say that we could
rank order them in an order of mathematical or objective accuracy. But the
above example shows that because they are values or preferences about
items in the empirical world, participants in a deliberation can adjust
4 For more detail, see the explanation of this distinction in Ani (2019: 310–313).
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 11
them toward some kind of common agreement. The example demonstrates
that participants in business and political negotiations have to adjust their
respective interests toward a centrist position to achieve a deal.
Even when we deliberate to fix an appointment or meeting, we are all
required to adjust our respective values or desires about what we need to
do with our time. To illustrate this, I will borrow an example from Ani
(2014: 314). Let us imagine that we want to fix a morning meeting. I am a
participant in a deliberation to fix the time, and I value doing some work
between 4am and 10am. My value (or interest) naturally pushes me to
suggest a time beyond 10am (say 11am). This is because I prefer to spend
the 4–10am period studying to achieve a particular ambition that I desire,
praying to satisfy a certain religious belief that I hold, or that I simply
hold some precious self-discipline that I value. A colleague who has the prac-
tice or habit (which is a value) of getting to her office before 11 am would be
more disposed to suggest a time before 10am. To give her enough time to
get through the city’s traffic, she may be compelled to suggest the neigh-
bourhood of 8am as our meeting time. But 8am falls within my valued sche-
dule. Ultimately, each of us would need to reconcile our different values (or
preferences or interests) to arrive at a centrist position. If we settled on 9am
for our meeting, the result is a compromise resulting from the centralizing
adjustment of varied values: it means I lost an hour from my valued routine
andmy colleague equally sacrificed an hour from her pre-office routine (she
would need to find a way to get to her office in two-plus rather than three
hours).
As we have seen from the above examples, a good deal of deliberation in
the practical world is on logistical values. Almost every time we speak with
one another, we adjust petty (and sometimes bigger) logistic values here
and there to reach agreements, very often effortlessly and unknowingly.
This suggests that bargaining occurs almost any time we deliberate.
However, there are values that are not so luckily adjustable, for the major
reason that they are quite metaphysical, and we cannot assess them by effec-
tively assessing their effects or ramifications in the empirical world. These
are normative values. Examples of these values are metaphysical notions of
12 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
the world, religious beliefs, and certain ideologies. Since their empirical
consequences are either inaccessible or too long-range to be summarily
assessed, it is difficult to persuade the holders of these values or beliefs to
change or adjust them. A familiar example is persuading a person to
change her metaphysical beliefs if we could not demonstrate that such a
belief has immediately perceivable negative consequences.
Some of the major debates of our day are intractable for the reason that
they are linked to metaphysical notions of the universe. For example, a
person’s position about legalizing abortion is almost certainly based on
her metaphysical views of the universe, her beliefs about the nature of
man, and her beliefs about man’s place in the universe (none of which
we can verify for the purpose of discussing with rock-hard logic). A person
who believes that man is a composite of body and spirit is quite unlikely
to approve the legalization of abortion because of her belief that abortion
exterminates not simply flesh and bones but an entire divine plan on
earth. In convincing such a person, experiments trying to prove that life
does not exactly begin at conception (or that an embryo is not fully a
human life) are also likely to miss the point. On the other hand, a person
who believes that we are simply advanced machines (epiphenomenalists
and emergentists, for an instance) and those who see sex (including illicit
sex) as a natural physiological need that is not at all sinful would likely see
no problem with legalizing abortion. To convince a pro-lifer would in
most cases mean persuading her out of her core metaphysical beliefs. But
people’s metaphysical beliefs are almost always the products of their
entire childhood upbringing, or the result of an extremely inspiring or har-
rowing (in sum, ‘powerful’ or what some people call ‘peak’) experience in
life. Daily experience tells us that changing people’s metaphysical notions of
the universe is a long and quite unguaranteed project. I am not sure we
could make it an additional objective of an abortion debate.
Chiara Lepora (2012: 10–11) divides the compromises we make into
three broad categories, and identified compromises that require one to
abandon their core beliefs or moral principles for their very opposites as
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 13
the most difficult (and most self-compromising) kinds of compromises.5 She
argues that such a compromise makes the compromiser feel she has done
something wrong, and does not reduce the feeling of responsibility for
such a wrong, making the compromiser experience moral discomfort
(2012: 17–19) and a feeling of herself being compromised (2012: 19). It
seems to me that the abortion debate requires such a compromise, since
persuading a believer in the human soul to agree to legalize abortion
(even if for only cases of rape) is to get her to adopt the opposing belief
that abortion is not a termination of life and soul.
At this point we can distil that, although Type 2 issues are bargain-centric
in principle, it is easier to bargain over logistic than over normative values.
But in addition, moral principles hold the special distinction of being logis-
tic values (values about which action to prefer to which action) as well as nor-
mative values (since they are views about what we ought to do). They are
normative because they concern what is right and wrong, rather than being
mere preferences and interests, as we see in other logistic values. Notions
of what is right and wrong (as we see in moral principles) bear an
uncanny resemblance to notions of what is correct and incorrect (as we
see in Type 1 issues). But notions of right and wrong are only psychological,
and are not as objectively shared as is obvious in Type 1 issues. It is, however,
this right-wrong nature of moral principles that makes it harder to bargain
over them.
As mentioned, material and existential interests generally belong to logis-
tic values, and they are usually adjustable. But there is one kind of interest
that I would rather rank with normative instead of logistic values. It is the
desire to dominate,6 and this is why we find it frequently difficult to convince
tyrants to abandon their tyranny unless they are convinced through the use
of force. However, it may be easier to convince holders of this desire to
adjust or change its mode of expression. For example, it may be difficult
5 I cite Lepora in Ani (2019: 311) to make this point.
6 I hint at this kind of interest in Ani (2019: 312), but I advance the argument here in greater
detail.
14 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
to persuade an ambitious student to abandon his desire to dominate his
peers, but we could convince him to exercise his feelings of superiority by
producing superior academic grades than by bullying and beating his
fellow students. The former is a normative value he holds (belief in dominat-
ing others), and the latter is a logistic value he may adopt in the service of his
normative value (to dominate through academic performance). In this
example, we are able to convince him to change his logistic values
because we could compare the values on the basis of their known empirical
consequences. On the other hand, there is no way to assess the desire to
dominate: its empirical consequences depend completely on its mode of
expression, and this example shows that the consequences could be negative
or positive depending on the mode of expression. This is why the mode of
expression (rather than the desire itself) is subject to deliberative transform-
ation through reason giving.
The above example shows that certain logistic values could be adopted in
the service of normative values, and whilst we may not be able to convince
persons to adjust their normative values, we may convince them to adjust
the logistic values in the service of their normative values. Certain political
interests are in the service of political ideologies. We may not change the
ideologies, but we may convince their holders to change the interests in
the service of the ideologies. As an example, it may be difficult to convince
far-right politicians to abandon their ideology, but it is possible to persuade
them to abandon a certain political strategy by convincing them that it serves
their ideology no good.7
We thus emerge with the conclusion that it is easier to settle value dis-
putes that either lend themselves to empirical facts or have empirical conse-
quences. This quality is lacking in (ultra) normative values. The outcome is
that we may navigate logistic values in deliberation, but we cannot bet with
deliberating over normative values. Normative values (being in many cases
metaphysical notions, religious beliefs and articles of faith) are only revisa-
ble by presenting countervailing normative values (metaphysical notions,
7 This example is taken from Ani (2019: 312).
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 15
religious beliefs and articles of faith). And even this does not help much,
since meaningful comparison to the empirical world remains missing. In
addition, normative values (such as ideologies, metaphysical beliefs and
articles of faith) are often held with some amount of jealousy and tenacity.
It is also clear for obvious reasons that logistic values are not held with as
much tenacity, jealousy and faith.
4. The Roles of Argument and Bargaining in Deliberating the Issue Types
My earlier analysis of the nature of an argument shows that it is an activity
premised on deductive or at least probabilistic calculation. When we make
arguments regarding deductive, scientific, empirical and logistic issues, we
clearly perceive (through our internal oracle) which argument is better.
For this reason, argument is needed for ending deliberation on Type 1
issues. When, however, we talk about how to reach agreements or decisions
after deliberating on Type 2 issues, the scenario is a bit more complicated.
Let me begin with deliberating on issues laden with logistic values. And I will
demonstrate this with the example of the deliberation to fix the time for a
morning meeting.
My argument:
Premise: I normally do my research between 4 and 10 am in the morn-
ings.
Conclusion: So I would prefer a meeting after 10 am.
The other participant’s argument:
Premise 1: I normally go to my office before 11 am.
Premise 2: To get to my office before 11 am, I need to start preparing by
8 am and get into traffic by 9 am.
Conclusion: I will not be able to attend a meeting happening after 10 am.
Offering these arguments gives us the mutual chance to see each other’s
schedules, and to begin to reflect about how we could mutually adjust our
schedules to a common position about a time for a meeting. If it is important
16 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
to hold this meeting, it begins to dawn on us that each of us needs to sacrifice
a hour of her schedule in order to move closer to the other’s schedule, and
that if the other does the same, we have a deal. Let me illustrate this mutual
adjustment.
My proposal: I could agree to a meeting by 9 am by giving up an hour of my
valued research, provided you could likewise give up an hour of your
three-hour office preparation time (by probably preparing an hour
earlier than usual).
My colleague’s response to my proposal: Okay, I could probably squeeze out
time by 9 am (by preparing quite earlier) to have a brief meeting. If
the meeting ends by 9.30 am I will probably find a way to reach my
office in an hour and a half.
My response. Then let us meet by 9 am. We have a deal.
We should note that the proposal above and its response are technically
not arguments (there are no premises and conclusions). They are bar-
gains: we traded chunks of our schedules. When a person offers to do
something as an incentive for another party to do another thing, she is
bargaining. What this means is that when we deliberate on issues in
which logistic values are at play, we begin with argument and end with
bargaining. Arguments lay out the stakes (which are, of course, interests
and values), and bargaining adjusts them. To be fair, arguments are
still at play when we decide what precisely count as ‘fair agreements’.
But the adjusting that produces this kind of agreement is still up to bar-
gaining. I disagree that ‘argument’ here is used to mean ‘deliberation’
as a whole and that the distinction is between ‘deliberation’ and
‘bargaining’.8
8 This is what Jones and O’Flynn (2012: 124) do when they argue that it is ‘deliberation’ rather
than bargaining between parties that decides ‘what would constitute a fair resolution of their
differences… ’.
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 17
Next, I will explore the mechanics of what we normally do when we delib-
erate about issues laden with competing metaphysical (or at least norma-
tive) values.
Claim of person A: I believe in God.
Question from person B: Why do you believe in God?
Supporting premise from person A: Because Hemade heaven and earth.
Clarification from person B: But you are not sure of that.
Response from person A: Okay, I just believe in God. The reason for my
belief is not as important.
Claim of person B: I do not believe in God.
Question from person A: Why do you not believe in God?
Supporting premise from person B: Because there is no concrete evi-
dence He exists.
Clarification from person A: But that does not imply He does not exist.9
Response from person B: Okay, I just do not believe in God. The reason
for my belief is not as important.
The first observation about the above dialogue is that arguments do not
really work when deliberating about metaphysical (and most other norma-
tive) values. This is because the beliefs are about concepts or entities cut
off from the empirical world, and therefore from any chances of concrete
assessment. What it means is that we end up advancing only claims (not
arguments) when we try to persuade people to adopt or change certain
purely metaphysical beliefs or notions. Since it does not make sense to
argue about metaphysical beliefs, we mostly technically bargain with believers
or non-believers in a metaphysical belief by at best offering countervailing
metaphysical beliefs. The example above shows that even if arguments
take place in such interlocutions, they normally do not achieve anything
9 There are cosmological arguments supporting the existence of God (such as that God exists
because only He could have designed the complex universe), but this kind of premise is not
verifiable. The lack of verification does not also mean that He does not exist. The issue is
simply not directly tractable in real-world deliberation.
18 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
substantive, it is bargaining that does. But we normally classify these discus-
sions as deliberation: we think that we are in fact arguing.
Typical examples of contemporary normative debates are the debates
about abortion and same-sex marriage. These debates have become intract-
able because positions on both sides of these questions are not entirely
detached from certain fundamental ideologies or approaches to life (such
as being a conservative or a liberal), and these approaches to life in turn
derive from certain metaphysical notions of the universe and man’s place
in it. As long as the metaphysical (or normative) notions themselves do
not yield tractable discussion, they would continue to polarize the
debates. Just as arguments are unable to automatically convert people from
being conservatives to being liberals and vice versa, arguments show equal
weakness in resolving debates laden with these normative notions. This
may be why Paul James (2017: paras 1–3) reports that same-sex marriage
debates have become ‘a culture war, ugly and unproductive’ and ‘do not
lend themselves to simple answers’. Indeed, he writes that at best, ‘They
require careful negotiation between social relations, private decisions, and
public law’ (para. 3). He refers to the abortion debate as having settled
into an intractable conflict between two slogans, the ‘right to life’ (conserva-
tives) and the ‘right to choose’ (liberals and feminists), a ‘standoff that is still
searingly painful’ (para. 4). He concludes, ‘My argument is simple: There
are two conflicting ontologies… and the difference cannot be resolved by
giving one preference over the other’ (para. 25).
We can sometimes see these fundamental normative differences coales-
cing into differing political parties, with the USA being the most prominent
example. Republicans are generally more conservative, more traditional,
and more attached to their religion. In contrast, Democrats are generally
more of academics and researchers, liberals and even atheists. These funda-
mental normative differences predictably ensure that Republicans are
against abortion, gay marriage, are less sympathetic to immigration, and
more emotionally patriotic (in the sense that tends toward international iso-
lationism). The opposite almost always applies to Democrats (although
these distinctions are by no means neat).
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 19
Even the debate about climate change in North America is beginning to
suffer from these normative (and interest) entanglements.10 Republicans
tend to be more involved in older businesses that cause climate change,
whilst many Democrats are from academia or the newer businesses that
embrace green energy or are less environmentally threatening. Whilst
Republicans have career reasons to be less sympathetic to slowing down
older capitalist modes of production because of the health of the environ-
ment, Democrats may be more enthusiastic. So, obviously, the gay marriage
and climate change issues are not merely political disagreements that call
for resolution through argumentative debate: the disagreements stem
from life-long belief formations that are not easily accessible to argumenta-
tion, as well as from career choices that are (in most cases) too late to
reverse.
Even in societies regarded as relatively homogenous, there are funda-
mental differences in political philosophies. Ryan Muldoon writes that liber-
tarians, egalitarians and utilitarians (amongst others) do not merely
disagree in choosing the sorts of policies we should favour, they disagree
more fundamentally regarding what the world is like, and ‘what we should
be measuring when we talk about what makes a policy better or worse’
(Muldoon 2017: para. 5). Where libertarians are concerned about negative
rights that protect from the interferences of others, egalitarians are more
concerned about the distribution of resources, and utilitarians are more
focused on increasing welfare even at the cost of equality or increased nega-
tive rights (ibid.).
In heterogeneous societies, tribalism, ethnicity and racism add an extra
layer of normative-looking baggage to the diversity of preferences, interests,
values and opinion forming. This is because ethnicity and racism show the
rigid feature of normative values, but they also generate corresponding
interests (logistic values). For an example, almost every political issue in
South Africa and other African countries is tainted with racial and tribal
10 John Dryzek made this point when I discussed the deliberative entanglements caused by
values with him (at University of Canberra, November 2017).
20 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
interest differences, because of the distributional consequences of these
issues. Of note is the long-standing interest war between the Fulani and
other tribes in Nigeria, which taints every political issue from how to use
and share the proceeds from crude oil to how to ensure general security.
In an academic classroom, these are mostly simple Type 1 issues. But con-
flicting interests and allegiances cause the issues to lose their Type 1 simpli-
city. Instead of simply dividing the oil revenue by the number of states and
regions, we witness arguments for unequal distribution. Indigenes of the oil
producing communities typically demand a lion’s share of the wealth,
arguing that the rest of the vast country should be content with the remain-
der. In addition, whoever is in power tends to find means to benefit
members of her region more than others. Arguments are made in
support of these positions. But arguments cannot bring agreement. This is
because simple arithmetic no longer applies, and bargaining is the only
saviour. The fortunate aspect is that although ethnicity and racism are as
rigid as normative values, we could at least reach agreements on their result-
ing interests, since these interests are logistic values (and therefore
adjustable).
The following are conclusions in this section: (1) in deliberating issues
involving logistic values, arguments are appropriate only to the extent of
assessing the values by assessing their empirical ramifications; (2) we
begin with arguments when deliberating issues laden with logistic values
or interests, but we mostly end such deliberation through bargaining; (3)
it seems quite weak to speak of arguments (and sometimes even bargaining)
when deliberating over issues involving metaphysical notions, fundamental
orientations, worldviews or approaches to life, except if we could find and
focus on some logistic values they generate.
5. The Magnitude of the Role of Bargaining in Pluralist Democratic
Politics
I have shown that bargaining increases with decrease in the logical and
empirical clarity of issues. But we have also seen that the need for bargaining
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 21
increases with increase in the magnitude and intensity of interests and logis-
tic values concerning issues being deliberated. Purely Type 1 issues do not
require bargaining to resolve—their resolution being a question of arith-
metic or simple extrapolation. But purely Type 1 issues constitute a minority
of issues being discussed daily. Purely scientific, mathematical and logistic
issues feature prominently in the deliberation of lower-level groups such
as academic departments, small groups, and fact-finding committees. But
the proportion of these argument-centric issues decreases in deliberation
at higher levels, such as in democratic politics. Let me give an example by
focusing on political deliberation aimed at solving societal problems, distri-
buting resources or making laws, under conditions of democratic pluralism.
Politics arises when there is an empirical issue of some sort and there is inter-
est—and value-laden disagreement over what to do about it—even when
there is otherwise consensus on the empirical question. This means that
all problem-solving political deliberation contain a mixture of Types 1 and
2 issues, at least under conditions of democratic pluralism. But there is
also a question of proportion: circumstances are political to the extent
that Type 2 issues (values and interests) dilute the logical straightforward-
ness of Type 1 issues.
To return to one of the examples I gave of Type 1 issues, I mentioned
that deliberation about insecurity in a departmental meeting will likely
reach a consensus over the suggestion to increase security, and could just
as easily reach another consensus to write to the municipal government to
invest more in job creation to reduce a high rate of unemployment: one sol-
ution does not impede the other. But if we recast this deliberation in the
light of conflict of interests and the scarcity of resources in pluralistic demo-
cratic politics (the best examples being in a parliament or general politics at
national levels), the clarity with which the same issue could lead to consen-
sus is reduced, and the need for the role of bargaining increases. If there is
increasing insecurity in a country and there are two proposals in a parlia-
ment to increase security and to increase jobs, the two solutions may not
be as benignly compatible as they are in a departmental meeting. Increasing
security in a department may just entail buying a few bigger padlocks (which
22 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
any faculty member may donate). Increasing jobs as suggested in the depart-
mental meeting only entails writing a letter to government. The costs of both
solutions are insignificant. But to increase security and jobs at the national
level, national budgets are not unlimited, they are usually marked by scar-
city, and their funding has distributive consequences. To increase security
and fund job-creation programmes at the national level, money would
need to come out of already existing parts of the budget, since we cannot
raise taxes indefinitely without risking resistance and conflict. This entails
conflicts of interest. Cutting money from health would attract the resistance
of the medical community and raise questions about undermining the
imperative of keeping the health of citizens. Cutting money from education
would attract resistance from parents and school administrators. Cutting
money from public transportation would attract resistance from workers,
and so on.
Ideological partisanship could take the conflict of interest to a higher
level. Right-leaning politicians may favour funding for law and order
(which includes funding to increase security), whist left-leaning politicians
may prefer funding for welfare (which includes job-creation). So if
funding is limited, the rightists may resist job-creation proposals in order
to pave way for the security-increasing proposals. What is otherwise a
simple Type 1 issue at a departmental level in a university is stampeded by
intense Type 2 value and interest differences at a national level in a pluralist
democratic politics. This is in spite of the fact that the two solutions are, at
the logical level, compatible.
The intractable gun debate in the USA shows the features of deep con-
flicting normative entanglements. Many Americans who grew up in gun
liberal communities or descended from gun liberal genealogies are less sym-
pathetic to gun laws. Growing up in a gun society is part of a childhood
fantasy, and as such, has a corresponding aesthetic and moral hold.
Unless such a normative foundation is replaced by another or uprooted
by a powerful personal experience, such a person is likely to keep offering
counter arguments to the (by now obvious) argument that gun liberalism
is a dangerous idea.
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 23
The climate change issue has also been highly polarizing in the USA,
with Republicans generally opposed to combating climate change. To
justify their position (and perhaps retain their businesses), some Republi-
cans resist even the idea that humans are causing climate change
(because the evidence is not directly perceptual and obvious). But let us
assume that Republicans and everyone else are agreed on the empirical
aspect (that humans in fact cause climate change) and therefore agreed
that climate-threatening human activity needs to be moderated. We still
need to agree on how to moderate the climate-threatening human activities.
This is because the moderating is interest-laden and has consequences for
whole industries, regions, and ways of life. So even if under ideal conditions
everyone were agreed on the nature of the circumstances, ideal conditions
would still not guarantee that everyone would be agreed on the solution,
which affects people’s interests in different ways. Even the best solutions
would produce winners and losers, and whole ways of life may need to be
abandoned, including livelihoods that have existed for generations. The
climate change case is, therefore, a typically political case because of the
daunting distributional and normative conflicts that no conceivable solution
could possibly avoid. All other political problems have the same problem of
interest and value pluralism to some degree.
This is not to suggest that all deliberations in university departments
(and at other lower levels of human organization) are value free. For a
departmental deliberation that was so value-laden that it was intractable to
resolve, see Ani (2014: 314–316). The central point is that although interests
are possible at all levels, they are more intense in politics because they
involve more people, and have bigger financial and material consequences.
We could see that the examples of Type 1 issues I gave possess higher
epistemological clarity and are more consensus-capable because of the
lower level (or absence) of pluralism and its accompanying differences in
interests and values. As pluralism, values and interests increase, the epis-
temological clarity and consensus-capability of issues decrease. This means
that bargaining has a bigger fundamental role to play in democratic politics.
Parliaments, for instance, rarely deliberate on purely Type 1 issues: such
24 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
issues are meant for committees or for simple domestic, clerical and admin-
istrative handling. So if (nearly) all political issues necessitate bargaining, we
need to re-examine the assumption that bargaining is not deliberation
proper. It may be the case that very small municipal questions can be exclu-
sively Type 1 issues—for example, a local council’s decision to add either a
second rubbish bin or a bench to a small public park. But tiny problems like
this are not what the field of deliberative democracy was established to
address. The overarching concern in deliberative democracy research has
been how we could use deliberation to both ease and improve the business
of (pluralist) democratic politics.
Given the above features of democratic politics, we should not only see
bargaining as inevitable, but also as indispensable, necessary and right for
addressing any situation of political conflict at all. The presence of a lot of
arguments in politics disguises the clarity of this fact. But like I have men-
tioned, arguments lay out the stakes, and bargaining adjusts them. We prob-
ably experience deliberative difficulties in politics because we expect
arguments to play both roles. And if bargaining is essential for reaching pro-
visional agreements under conditions of political conflict, then it is an inher-
ently normative activity.
Current models of deliberation cannot effectively address Type 2 dis-
agreements, but bargaining can. If political issues are by definition distribu-
tional and value-laden, it suggests that bargaining is what brings about
legitimate political agreements. Bargaining should cease to be regarded as
deliberation’s regrettably-sometimes-necessary, less legitimate cousin. It is
in fact the way in which political agreements are reached (not discounting
that arguments lay the stakes). From this perspective, it is not only deeply
imprudent but also normatively illegitimate to avoid or devalue bargain-
ing—as most deliberative theorists have done to this point.
6. Revisiting Selected Literature on Arguing and Bargaining
Two reasons why bargaining is underappreciated are, first, the accusation
that it is driven by selfish interest, and second, that it involves ‘lying’,
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 25
which undermines the Habermasian concept of deliberation as a truthful
exercise, in which actors are supposed to yield to ‘the unforced force of
the better argument’ (Steiner 2008: 187). In my view, the first objection con-
fuses selfish interest with self-interest. Self-interest does not necessarily mean
selfish interest, and we have seen that self-interest is actually central in dis-
cussing all Type 2 issues. It is unrealistic to expect my colleague and I to
agree instantly to a morning meeting that causes some harm to our respect-
ive schedules (and hence, logistic values) if some adjustment is possible to
reduce or eliminate the harms.
Regarding telling the truth, we have seen that this applies only to purely
Type 1 issues, where we can talk of correct answers, or at least more accep-
table alternatives in a comparison. There appears to be no bargaining pos-
ition that is the ‘truth’. And if ‘truth’ were accessible when we debate
normative values, such debates would not be the intractable issues they cur-
rently are. Another concern for scholars is that ‘claims must be extensively
justified with logical reasons and supporting evidence’ (Steiner 2008: 188).
But again by the analysis of this research, this applies only to Type 1 issues
and does not go beyond. Scholars are also concerned that we deliberately
withhold information during bargaining (Steiner 2008: 188). But this is in
fact occasionally advisable when debating and evaluating the normative
values of others, given the sensitivity of discussing other people’s normative
beliefs.
Steiner (2008: 189) uses the phrase ‘high level of deliberation’, in refer-
ring to deliberation in which quantitatively more reasons or justifications are
given for one’s position or claim. But this is a feature of deliberating over
purely Type 1 issues, and I do not suppose that scholars, in the light of
this research, would continue to regard deliberating over such issues as
the highest level of deliberation. By ‘highest level’ one would conceive of
deliberation capable of solving problems with the biggest stakes in society
and the biggest or gravest consequences, which per this research privileges
bargaining.
Some scholars (Muldoon 2016: 4, 68; Wendt 2016: 202–212) have
noticed the inadequacy of an objective ‘public reason’ in dealing with
26 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
growing diversity, and have equally noticed that bargaining and compromise
may be good things going into the future. But these scholars still treat bar-
gaining as distinct from deliberation (see Muldoon 2016: 68). What these
scholars (and the public reason community they oppose) do not suspect
is that bargaining accounts for much of our deliberation and is in fact the
preeminent mode of closing political deliberation. It is not just that we
should exhort ourselves to bargaining in a presumably argumentative politi-
cal deliberation (as these scholars do), but that we should recognize that
bargaining is actually how political deliberation can be meaningfully done,
and research paradigms need to explore that reality more.
Laar and Krabbe (2018) have argued that offers made in bargains
contain implicit arguments about the value of the offer being made, and,
therefore, bargain offers can be re-read as arguments. But I think it is too
strong to call them ‘implicit arguments’: I would call them implications of
offers being made. I think that what Laar and Krabbe are trying to do is
to reconcile bargaining with the argumentative model of deliberation accord-
ing to the terms of the argumentative model (which this research now renders
unnecessary).
The most influential scholars of the global deliberative community have
co-authored a schema of deliberation in which they map out a spectrum that
begins with ‘pure deliberation’ at one end to ‘pure bargaining’ at the other
end. In the centre of the spectrum is ‘deliberative negotiation’ which I
assume is a combination of arguments and bargaining (Warren et al.
2015). In the section ‘pure deliberation’ these scholars describe a situation
of ‘common interests in which all gain, with identical or overlapping
benefits, for example, in greater understanding’ (Warren et al. 2015:
154). The authors argue that the outcome of pure deliberation is, expect-
edly, ‘informed consensus or clarified structured conflict’ (ibid). This
section seems to me to be deliberation over purely Type 1 issues. This is
because, as we have seen from the difference between departmental and
parliamentary deliberation over a Type 1 issue, Type 1 issues can only be
purely Type 1 if there are no conflicts of interests, beliefs or values to
dilute the purity.
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 27
Next, the authors describe the middle section titled ‘deliberative nego-
tiation’ as characterized by ‘partial mutual advantage, in which each gains
but with trades to add value’ (ibid). They estimate that the outcome of
this range of discourse is ‘Partially integrative agreement, in which parties
have traded lower for higher values; at least one bears some loss’ (ibid).
In my view, this range of discourse is deliberation over logistic values.
Here, arguments lay out the stakes, and bargaining adjusts them. Finally,
the authors describe the section titled ‘pure bargaining’ as a situation
where there is ‘No mutual creation of value, with strategic demands, in
which each aims at maximum’ (ibid). The authors estimate that the
outcome of this range of discourse is ‘Power based compromise, in which
each loses something of value or capitulation, in which one side appropriates
all the surplus’ (ibid).
There is no such thing as pure bargaining in political deliberation (in
terms of just exchanging offers without at least preliminary arguments),
or, for that matter, any deliberation involving logistic or even normative
values.11 As we saw, arguments naturally begin deliberation over fixing the
time for a meeting, and even about the existence of God (albeit unsuccess-
fully). Arguments lay the stakes but cannot bring closure to such
deliberations.
There is also no such thing as pure bargaining in deliberating on any
subject of significant worth (except in bargaining for something that is so
insignificant that we do not see a reason to make any accompanying argu-
ments). Parties are likely to make arguments when pricing a car (or anything
we value substantially). These would be likely expediency arguments by the
seller about the quality of the car or other reasons why the car is pricey, and
contrasting ones by the buyer about why she is unable to rise to the price.
Parties may only choose to forego arguments completely when pricing an
item as inconsequential as a toothbrush, and there is no time to argue
about its value (durability, strength, reliability, and so on). So when
11 Although I do not necessarily accuse these scholars of saying there is.
28 Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani
businesswomen and politicians bargain on any issue but simply pricing an
inconsequential item, arguments must have been involved.
There are intermediate sections, one between the ‘pure deliberation’
and ‘deliberative negotiation’ sections, and another between the ‘delibera-
tive negotiation’ and ‘pure bargaining’ sections. But they are not as impor-
tant for my analysis here. From my foregoing research, I would suggest that
the entire spectrum (from pure deliberation to pure bargaining) should be
retitled simply ‘Deliberation Spectrum’. This is in line with my analysis that
bargaining technically is deliberation. We have also seen from my analysis
that ‘pure deliberation’ (by which theorists currently mean pure argument)
is only possible on purely Type 1 issues. Consequently, the section titled
‘pure deliberation’ should be retitled ‘deliberation over purely Type 1 (or
purely argument-centric) issues’. The middle section titled ‘deliberative
negotiation’ should be retitled ‘deliberation over logistic values’ since logis-
tic values occasion a mixture of argumentation and bargaining. I think the
section titled ‘pure bargaining’ should be re-titled ‘bargaining over inconse-
quential items’. The authors would then describe this section as one in
which pure bargaining is possible in the sense that arguments may not
occur at all. They should also add that pure bargaining is quite rare, since
explicit arguments may occur even when we price material goods.
It appears to me that most political issues, with their daunting distributive
and interest-laden features, fall into the middle section. A majority of them
may be purely Type 1 issues in a purely theoretical discussion, but become
value-laden due to their vast and real consequences at the political level.
Therefore, they involve a mixture of argumentation and bargaining, and
the higher the degree of politics, the bigger the role of bargaining. Lastly,
what Cooke (2008: 948) defines as an ‘exchange of arguments’ is purely aca-
demic or theoretical debate involving only Type 1 issues (which is not the
focus of deliberative democratic theory). Deliberation should be defined
as an exchange of arguments and offers.
University of Ghana
mabrowest@yahoo.com; eiani@ug.edu.gh
Is Bargaining a Form of Deliberating? 29
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