The deliberative potential of civil society organizations: framing hydraulic fracturing in New York

Abstract

Civil society organizations play myriad roles in democracies. Scholars are beginning to pay more attention to their deliberative potential, rethinking whether or not and how they may broaden and enrich public deliberation. Drawing on a discursive approach to deliberative democracy that focuses on interpretive practices, this article analyzes the deliberative potential of a range of civil society organizations in the controversy over hydraulic fracturing in New York State in the USA. It finds that civil society organizations compete to frame hydraulic fracturing as environmental risk, landowner rights, economic opportunity and/or clean energy. The lack of a shared frame has resulted in political gridlock. On the surface the gridlock appears dysfunctional, but may have enhanced deliberative democracy by highlighting ‘frontiers of disagreement’ in the case. In addition, two distinct rhetorical spaces have begun to emerge with potential to resolve these conflicts but with different effects: one focusing on negotiating regulations and the other on developing a local vision of economic and energy development. The influence of these spaces – and thus civil society actors – has been uneven affecting who becomes part of the official conversation. This analysis contributes to deliberative democracy scholarship by clarifying what I call a discursive function of deliberative democracy, and how it reveals the relationships between conflict and reflexivity in public deliberation.