Abstract
The declining legitimacy of public institutions imperils modern democratic systems, yet deliberative remedies to this problem have not undergone systematic testing. The emergence of robust civic tech provides an opportunity to trace deliberation’s effects on legitimacy. Online civic platforms connecting large publics with democratic governments enable researchers to test the strength of each link that leads from public engagement to institutional legitimacy by way of deliberation. I present such a theoretical model of these linkages and specify sets of working hypotheses regarding public participation, deliberative quality, decision quality, government responsiveness, institutional legitimacy, and opportunities for empowered public engagement.
Highlights
From the outset, deliberative theory has sought to understand and address legitimation problems in democracy (Barber 1984; Cohen 1989; Habermas 1975), and some recent reformulations of deliberative theory have aimed to make this legitimating function more explicit (Curato & Böker 2016; Richards & Gastil 2015; Schwartzberg 2015)
Since this special issue examines the relationship between deliberation and digital technology, it is important to theorize how digital platforms might address the legitimacy problem that still plagues modern democracies
This model includes a plausible chain of interconnected variables, it does not include every evaluative variable associated with public deliberation
Summary
The declining legitimacy of public institutions imperils modern democratic systems, yet deliberative remedies to this problem have not undergone systematic testing. The emergence of robust civic technology provides an opportunity to trace the effects of deliberation on legitimacy. Online civic platforms connecting large publics with democratic governments enable researchers to test the strength of each link that leads from public engagement to institutional legitimacy by the way of deliberation. I present such a theoretical model of these linkages and specify sets of working hypotheses regarding public participation, deliberative quality, decision quality, government responsiveness, institutional legitimacy and opportunities for empowered public engagement
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