Abstract
Methodological evaluations of deliberative mini-publics usually focus on the internal and external validity of experimental designs. Even though such a focus on causal inference and generalization is important, it is incomplete. We argue that the epistemic validity of experimental designs should also be taken into account in order to ensure measuring truly a deliberative exercise rather than just a regular discussion. By ensuring the inclusion and publicity of all arguments, the process of arguing back-and-forth between multiple positions is theoretically claimed to generate better outcomes and should therefore be validated along epistemic lines. Here, we suggest some methodological techniques for enabling the epistemic validity assumption of deliberative experimental designs. These techniques relate to the sampling of the groups and the treatments they receive.
Highlights
The steady rise of deliberative democracy on the political firmament initiated numerous attempts to put the deliberative ideal into operational terms
Deliberative experiments differ from mainstream experiments in that they have an additional requirement: they should be validated along epistemic lines
Suppose e.g. that only a group of highly educated participants shows willingness to partake in a deliberative experiment, the cognitive diversity – and the epistemic validity – of the experiment will be rather low, but these sampling biases can be mitigated by a number of techniques
Summary
The techniques that fall under the category of sampling methods to ensure epistemic validity, all relate to some element of the process of composing groups. Heterogeneity sampling does not ensure that pairs of similar cases are present in each group, but merely ensures that a diversity of perspectives is included in each group as a whole Even though it allows for less experimental control over confounding variables, experimenters meet the essential demand for epistemic validity, namely to have a multitude of political perspectives represented. One example of this procedure is used in Citizens’ Juries, which involve drawing a so-called stratified random sample from the population Valuing cognitive diversity in this way is somewhat artificial but inherent to the small group design, and meets the requirements for epistemic validity
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