Abstract
Building on prior thinking about political representation in democratic deliberation, we argue for four ideals of inclusion, each of which is most appropriate to a different situation. These principles of inclusion depend not only on the goals of a deliberation, but also on its level of empowerment in the political system, and its openness to all who want to participate. Holistic and open deliberations can most legitimately incorporate and decide for the people as a whole if they are open to all who want to participate and affirmatively recruit perspectives that would be underrepresented otherwise. Chicago Community Policing beat meetings offer an example. Holistic and restricted forums (such as the latter stages of some participatory budgeting processes) should recruit stratified random samples of the demos, but must also ensure that problems of tokenism are overcome by including a critical mass of the least powerful perspectives, so that their views can be aired and heard more fully and effectively. Forums that aim to improve relations between social sectors and peoples should provide open access for all who are affected by the issues (relational and open), if possible, or recruit a stratified random sample of all affected, when necessary (relational and restricted). In either case, proportional representation of the least advantaged perspectives is necessary. However, when deliberation focuses on relations between a disempowered group and the rest of society, or between unequal peoples, it is often most legitimate to over-sample the least powerful and even to create opportunities for the disempowered to deliberate among themselves so that their perspectives can be adequately represented in small and large group discussions. We illustrate this discussion with examples of atypical Deliberative Polls on Australia’s reconciliation with its indigenous community and the Roma ethnic minority in Europe.
Highlights
Tensions between equality and equity occur at every stage of public deliberation in civic forums, but perhaps nowhere more than with respect to the question of inclusion
African-Americans can be said to share a perspective on public life that stems from their common experience of being perceived as black in America
The process was committed to ensuring that choices about the provision of public goods and other infrastructure projects reflected the needs and priorities of the strata. Though it did not make use of random sampling, the institutional design ensured that elected citizens represented geographic constituencies proportionally and included a critical mass of groups that had been historically under-represented in city government, such as less-educated people, women, and blacks
Summary
Christopher F. and Raphael, Chad (2016) "Ideals of Inclusion in Deliberation," Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol 12 : Iss. 2 , Article 3. This Definitions and Goals is brought to you for free and open access by Public Deliberation.
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