Cultures of Argument and the Democratic Imaginary: Notes from Bulgaria

Just beneath the roar of traffic and the sound of euro-dance and local chalga music escaping from sidewalk cafes, there is a steady buzz across Bulgarian cities and towns. It is the sound of conversations, animated discussions, and endless commentary. This culture of argument long preceded the label "transitional democracy" which Bulgaria received with the fall of the communist regime in 1989. Under that label, a society in which talking politics, complaining about the fallacies of government, and carping at the behavior of public figures have long been national pastimes, does not amount to a civil society capable of maintaining the structures of democracy, at least as we understand these concepts here in the West. At the heart of this definitional divergence lies an intellectual problem that argumentation scholars are well aware of; it is the problem of determining what "range of human communicative interactions will be covered by the term 'argument'" (Gilbert, 1997, p. 28). The semantic figurations of the word argument, however, are not the primary point of interest emanating from the Bulgarian example. Rather, Bulgaria presents an appealing case for inquiring into the political character of the idea of argument itself: the politics of its recognition, circulation, and globalization. Attention to the status of argument, as Asen (2005) suggests, is not "a question of occurrence but rather an inquiry into functions of argument" (p. 119). In the case of Bulgaria, I would argue that the deployment of the idea of argument has created the conditions for a perpetual transition to democracy. To Bulgarians, argument is foreign in the most literal sense. It is not to say that Bulgarians don't argue or haven't done so historically, but it means that the notion of argument as a public display of reason, along with the idea of argumentation and deliberation as tools of democratic governance, have been imported only recently and so the idea of argument has created a communicative space that is inherently dynamic and political. There are efforts under way to introduce instruction in argumentation in the public schools' Bulgarian language arts curriculum in order to align Bulgarian public pedagogy with EU educational standards for communicative competence (Padeshka, 2004). Also, attention to argumentation and public deliberation, often hailed as key techniques of democratic governance, is currently actively promoted in Bulgaria by organizations such as the Center for Liberal Strategies, the Open Society Institute, the Ben Franklin Transatlantic Fellows Initiative, and the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford. The impact of these organizations and their programs can be measured in part by the attention they have gained from prime-time politicians and key government officials. For instance, in 2007 the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford conducted a Deliberative Poll on the issue of the integration of the Roma minority population into Bulgarian society. In his remarks at the closing of the event, then Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev praised the practice of public deliberation for its value as a tool of democracy by noting that "the National Deliberative Poll is something brand new for Bulgarian society and in Bulgarian politics. It is very important ... to implement this method to get public support for other crucial or divisive issues in Bulgarian society ... This method allows for a deeper knowledge of the essence of the issues, for possible ways to resolve these issues, and for the policies and actions which institutions should undertake with the support of the society" (as cited in Center for Deliberative Democracy, 2007). Such statements by public officials certainly generate a discourse about argument as a tool of democratic governance; however, it might be too rash to suggest that the performance of public arguments in fact creates a democratic culture of argument. As it often happens, travel brings about a change of character, and the notion of argument too has been vulnerable to hybridization. …