Abstract
ABSTRACT Deliberative systems theory suggests that a democratic society works well when citizens’ experiences and views, as expressed in various forms and sites of communication, are connected and taken up by other citizens as well as policy-makers. Pluralism, which is not always easily reconciled with high-quality deliberation in every instance, is seen as instrumental to the realization of democratic values and sound decision-making. This perspective raises new methodological challenges, such as (1) identifying sites of communication that serve important functions in a deliberative system, (2) connecting different sites and (3) assessing their impact. Recent scholarship has found that these challenges can be fruitfully met by applying interpretive methodology, which, like deliberative systems theory, aims to understand social interactions on their own terms, and not by measuring their correspondence to theoretical ideal-types. However, for theory development, as well as to help improve actual deliberative systems, researchers also need to make generalizable inferences. This paper develops a relational approach that combines interpretive methods with structural theory, which allows researchers to assess and explain the deficiencies, as well as the opportunities, that citizens experience. The principles of relational analysis are illustrated by research on citizen deliberation about urban riots.
Highlights
Deliberative systems theory suggests that a democratic society works well when citizens’ experiences and views, as expressed in various forms and sites of communication, are connected and taken up by other citizens as well as policy-makers
As I will argue, several important contributions to research on deliberative systems have successfully bridged the theoretical divide between structural analysis and interpretive analysis, but this has not been reflected in methodological discussions
I argue that distancing oneself from ‘objective knowledge’ and from explanations of social action that focus on interests and incentives rather than meanings and experience, makes it more difficult to address some questions of inclusion and uptake in deliberative systems, such as, how specific uptake problems are related to more general weaknesses in a deliberative system
Summary
Deliberative systems theory suggests that a democratic society works well when citizens’ experiences and views, as expressed in various forms and sites of communication, are connected and taken up by other citizens as well as policy-makers. This understanding of meaning as related to institutional conditions helps answering some important questions about a system’s capacity for uptake and inclusion.
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