I was motivated to pursue graduate study in political theory because of a serious concern with citizen participation, or lack thereof, in governing. In particular, I found deliberative democracy especially attractive. Not only did I think it could work, but I also thought it would be “good” for us; I thought it might solve a lot of problems. Moving through graduate school with the opportunity to study these things seriously, I still hold all of those beliefs. I hold them with more caveats, provisos, and hesitations than before, but I hold them nonetheless.The Summer Institute of Civic Studies, in forcing me to think more seriously about citizenship, has helped me understand the relationship between civics and deliberation. It also helped me find another home for my own research interests. This essay has three aims: First, I offer a short overview of what is meant by deliberative democracy and give a couple of examples of the type of work that is done in the area. Second, I summarize and explain a key relationship between deliberation and some other areas of civic studies. Third, I recap a particularly illuminating day at the Institute that, I think, offers helpful insights into deliberation.Following the diversity in the backgrounds of the students of the Institute, I expect the potential audience of this symposium to be equally diverse. For that reason, I will spend just a few moments with a general summary of what is meant by “deliberation” or “deliberative democracy” and give two examples of concerns that remain in deliberative theory that were discussed during the Institute.1At perhaps the broadest possible level, deliberative democracy is a form of legislating public policy whereby ordinary citizens converse with one another to make public decisions. The talking with one another is a crucial political theory point as Aristotle and Rousseau, for example, have used the term deliberation, but meant only an internal debate.2 Proposals for deliberative-style reform of our current political institutions range from the large, like Ethan Leib's proposal for a fourth, deliberative branch of government, 3 to the smaller, grassroots proposals that might include simply transitioning local decision-making to deliberative, town hall style meetings. Additionally, debates rage about what counts as “good” deliberation (arguing? testifying? debating? story telling? speeches?), who should be allowed to deliberate (anyone with a stake in the decision? all citizens? just experts?), what topics deliberative bodies should consider (local issues? national issues? foreign policy? constitutional matters?), and what should be done with the results of deliberating (advise Congress? make law?), to name just a few.Josh Cohen and Archon Fung suggest that deliberative democracy is the present-day example of radical democracy. They argue that radical democrats take, broadly speaking, one of two forms: Rousseauians or Habermasians, “… radical-democratic ideas join two strands of democratic thought. First, with Rousseau, radical democrats are committed to broader participation in public decision-making … Second, [with Habermas] radical democrats emphasize deliberation. Instead of a politics of power and interest, radical democrats favor a more deliberative democracy in which public problems are addressed by reasoning together about how best to solve them …”4 Real deliberative proposals typically incorporate both of these elements. That is to say, deliberative bodies give more people the chance to participate, and in a more qualitative way. In addition, deliberation often insists on a certain way of participating which tries to minimize the effects of power by emphasizing the use of reason.The forms of deliberative democracy, the institutional proposals, the epistemic principles at work, the arguments in their favor, are as varied as you might expect. The criticisms, though equally varied, can usually be put under the heading: “Is that really possible to put into practice?” To provide just one example of the work currently being done on deliberation, in “The Place of Self-Interest and the Role of Power in Deliberative Democracy”, Jane Mansbridge heads a “who's who?” list of authors in the deliberative field, articulating the current state of deliberative theory and taking on at least two of the serious issues facing deliberative democracy. Mansbridge et al. argue correctly that the future of deliberative theory is in the interaction between democratic theory, institutional design,5 the empirical research done on people's preferences and capabilities,6 and the lessons learned from those on the “ground floor” leading actual deliberative bodies.7 Mansbridge suggests that one of the tasks theory can take up right now involves seriously looking at some of the things that deliberation is not able to incorporate. For example, deliberation does not have a clearly defined role for self-interest. Deliberative democrats have often painted a too rosy picture of hypothetical “disagree-ers” having a cool, rational debate and deciding that one side was correct, or coming to some even better, mutually beneficial compromise—perhaps even coming to something like Rousseau's “general will.” Is that really possible? One way to at least increase the possibility of its success, according to Mansbridge, is to carve out a place for our intrinsic self-interest, albeit in a constrained fashion, “… citizens are entitled to make claims on their institutions to advance their interests (provided these interests fall within the range permitted by the broad constraints of human rights and morality and the deliberative constraints that run from mutual respect through mutual justification).”8 In carving out this space, Mansbridge is making an abstract ideal more realistic.A second problem that Mansbridge calls attention to is the possible monopolization of decision-making by deliberation, in addition to the power problems that are likely to result from deliberating. That is to say, if deliberating is the only way that deliberative democrats want to make decisions, will anything ever get done? What will decisions look like? And if things do get done, will it happen as a result of an illegitimate use of power in an effort to simply “settle” an issue? As a solution, Mansbridge suggests a continued role for voting. She is right when she says simply, “Deliberative democrats have often downplayed the virtues and even anathematized the aims and mechanisms of voting….”9 Indeed, voting has the ability to include a large number of people very efficiently. Moreover, voting is more egalitarian—no matter how much of a better deliberator A is than B, their votes will count the same.Perhaps most importantly, it is difficult to even imagine how deliberation would result in action without some final decision procedure. Peter Levine shares this concern, I think, when he writes, “Deliberation without work is empty, but work without deliberation is blind.”10 The point is that deliberation has to result in something to be meaningful and effective. Levine's quote is also useful as it highlights that deliberation is a necessary part of the process. It is important to keep these goals balanced. We certainly do not want to sacrifice productivity by deliberating, but nor should we sacrifice the goods that come from deliberation for simply getting something done.The goal for this section was to provide a cursory look at the scholarly world of deliberative democracy. Much was left out, but I think it suffices for what remains of this essay. On my view, what was most meaningful about these readings, especially when considered with the overall tone of the Institute, was the need to start thinking seriously about designing and reforming institutions around deliberative principles. This means considering what we want these institutions to accomplish, how quickly we want them to accomplish it, where they'll be set up—both geographically and spatially—who will be involved, what they will talk about, how they will talk about it, and on and on. Deliberative theory and practice must continue to work together if we hope to continue to make progress toward a more deliberative government.Our Civic Studies syllabus began in a place that on the one hand is rather odd, but on the other is entirely appropriate. Aristotle's Politics stands out on the syllabus because it is the only Ancient text, and in fact the only text older than about 100 years. In a room filled with philosophers, political scientists, community organizers, city managers, and even engineers, why read such a text? The reason, I think, is that Aristotle had it exactly right a few thousand years ago and that's worth paying attention to. Aristotle, in both the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics, identified the chief concern of citizenship then and now: a lack of other-regardingness. Aristotle writes, “… one citizen differs from another, but the salvation of the community is the common business of them all.”11 Compare this to the concerns of just a few of the more contemporary writers read during the seminar. Nina Eliasoph interviews local volunteers and worries “… citizens' circles of concern shrank when they spoke in public contexts…. broad political concerns surfaced and then mysteriously vanished behind very personal-sounding concerns: ‘my house’, ‘my children’, ‘close to home.’ People implicitly know that some face-to-face contexts invite public-spirited debate and conversation, and others do not; in contemporary US society, most do not.”12 Robert Putnam famously concludes that Americans are becoming withdrawn, lack social capital, and this results in a poorer, less efficient society, “… dense networks of civic engagement may encourage altruism or at least mutual respect and concern among members of the networks. For all these reasons, communities of high social capital are often simply nicer places to live.”13 And finally, with concern for the broadest range of people and the most ardent demand for a concern for all others, Peter Singer claims, “… it makes no moral difference whether the person I help is a neighbor's child ten yards from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away.”14The problem and the connections are clear. To live in the best kind of society, according to these authors, we need to possess an other-regardingness that either does not come naturally to us, or that we are slowly losing. The problem, then, is also an old one and if anything, has only been exacerbated by a modern, technological society. This by itself is not reason to lose hope. In fact, the academy is bursting with ideas and strategies about institutions, constitutions, educational pedagogies, and academic community building, all aimed at solving this problem. The Civic Studies syllabus nicely reflects the diversity of solutions: reform in teaching pedagogies in school, aiming social science work in the academy towards serving the public and solving collective action problems, community organizing (how to's and critical analyses), normative arguments for reconceptualizing citizenship in a number of ways, and, of course, deliberation.The focus here, obviously, will be on the role deliberation plays within some of the other areas of civic studies. Most commonly, deliberative democracy is defended as a theory of legitimacy; citizens must be authors of their own public policy. As John Dryzek puts it, “Deliberative democracy began as a theory of democratic legitimacy, and remains so to a considerable degree.”15 In what follows I offer another indirect defense of deliberation by suggesting that it plays a critical role in civic life. I should note here that I do not say this or what follows, with any serious criticisms of the other aspects of civic life. In fact, I do not believe any of them to be mutually exclusive, and I do believe several of them will have to be employed simultaneously to achieve most of our civic goals.The Institute's syllabus lists deliberation as simply one possible venue of civic practice.16 I respectfully disagree. Deliberative institutions, reforms, and a general “deliberative attitude” deserve an elevated status in civic studies for at least two important reasons. First, they are typically either crucial elements of the other solutions, or second, they embody many of the same goals as the other solutions. In the remainder of this section, I will try to show this to be the case in three of the other areas of civic studies: the Ostroms' work on the commons, the pedagogies of civic education, and the way an American civic republic might look.The Ostroms and the entire Indiana workshop have created a research program that takes citizens to be self-governing creators and problem solvers. Vincent Ostrom frames the issue in the following way, by juxtaposing the political theories of Woodrow Wilson and Tocqueville: “Rather than sovereign nation-states and associations of nation-states as created in the League of Nations and the United Nations, we need to give serious attention to Tocqueville's concept of the principle of the sovereignty of the people reinforced by the assessments of Hamilton and Madison about the essential place of individual responsibility in the exercise of the prerogatives of persons and citizens.”17 The research left for political scientists, then, is monitoring how citizens navigate solving their problems, and of course, devising strategies to make solving them even easier. As it happens, the solution to these sorts of problems usually involves some combination of communication and information aggregation.Considered in another way, the collective action problems focused on by the Bloomington School are often modeled formally to reflect some standard game. These games are problems to begin with because players lack information—they can't know for certain what the other player will do, so they make the best guesses they can and act accordingly. The point here is that regular deliberative institutions and a general deliberative attitude can help resolve these games as players can know what the others are thinking, how they will act, and even preemptively form compromises. Some of deliberation's core goals can be utilized to help solve these kinds of problems. Moreover, deliberative democracy is inherently interpersonal. It requires interacting with other citizens in a way other elements of civics might not.The second area where the deliberative spirit is also critical is civic education. Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne18 identify at least three different sorts of citizens that a good democracy might want to educate: a personally responsible citizen (PRC), a participatory citizen (PC), and a justice oriented citizen (JOC). The names of each sort of citizen do some of the work in explaining their differences, but not all. Briefly, each sort of citizen becomes more aware of the complexities of a given social issue as they move from a PRC to a JOC. The example that the authors offer is helpful: a PRC is a responsible community actor, contributes food to a food drive, a PC helps to organize a food drive because she understands how government agencies work and knows strategies for accomplishing collective tasks, while a JOC explores why people are hungry and acts to solve root causes. The larger point of the article is to ask which sort of citizen we need, or how many of each we need, to support a democratic polity, with the understanding that moving up the ladder would be to ask more of our educators.In my view, if we teach and practice deliberative skills in schools then we increase the likelihood of creating JOCs. Consider Westheimer's and Kahne's more detailed description of a JOC: “Justice oriented citizens critically assess social, political, and economic structures and consider collective strategies for change that challenge injustice and, when possible address the root causes of problems.” They continue, “… these programs emphasize preparing students to improve society by critically analyzing and addressing social issues and injustices.”19 Deliberative settings force people to practice and improve upon many of those same skills: critically evaluating arguments, listening to opposing viewpoints, articulating one's own position in a way accessible to most others, and so on. The best way to understand the complexities of a given social issue is to hear about the other side from the other side. Then, of course, be able to analyze that side, and agree or disagree with good reasons. It is also important to note that while teaching deliberative norms and practicing deliberation is essential to a JOC, it is certainly only part of the picture. On this view, JOCs critically assess, but they also know how to act, which requires another set of pedagogical practices altogether.The third and final area of civic studies to be considered is, broadly speaking, a civic republicanism. In “Thinking Constitutionally: The Problem of Deliberative Democracy,” Stephen Elkin, actually a critic of deliberative democracy insofar as it shifts legislative power to the masses argues, “The source of such weaknesses in deliberative theory… is a lack of deep engagement by theorists with the question of how a political order that revolves around deliberation (although it is generally agreed that none does so at the present) will actually work.”20 Elkin also shares Levine's concern, stated earlier, that too often the emphasis is simply on deliberating, rather than actually thinking about how the deliberation will matter. The solution, according to Elkin, is something most of us will be familiar with: the constitutional design of Madison. He goes on to argue that a deliberative law-making body has been at the core of American institutions and institutional planning since the very beginning. The key should be on revitalizing and fully employing Madisonian strategies for getting good deliberation in our existing institutions, rather than focusing on cultivating the public at large for a “deliberative lifestyle.” The argument, though well-taken, that fitting deliberative institutions into current institutional structures is underdeveloped, may miss one of the broader goals of deliberation which is to get more citizens involved in a qualitative way. That is to say, the deliberative turn in democratic theory is, at least in part, a response to the flaws inherent to representative government. So, to say the problem with deliberative theory is that it doesn't think enough like Madison is not entirely fair.Elkin further highlights another important connection. Even from a point of view that is more republican, or at least, less explicitly committed to increasing the role of the ordinary citizen, we see how deliberation is still important. Even in an objection to deliberative democracy, we get an endorsement of the merits of good deliberation. Moreover, we see another kind of relationship between deliberation and civic studies: “If there is to be deliberative lawmaking, then there must be processes at work that foster a citizenry with the ability to judge which legislators will be up to republican lawmaking.” He continues, “The citizens of a republican regime must have the experience of deliberating and struggle over the content of the public interest themselves… ” 21 On this view, citizens need not deliberate to author public policy themselves, but they need to know what it's like so they can vote for the people who will. In other words, they need to be educated via deliberation. Elkin also correctly relates this experience of deliberating to other-regardingness. His term is public spiritedness, “The [citizens] must have a significant measure of public-spiritedness…. Public spiritedness is a disposition to give significant weight to the public interest. It consists of the not very demanding belief that there is a public interest and that political life should at least partly revolve around an effort to give it concrete meaning.”22The point of this section was to highlight the relationships between and emphasize the importance of deliberation and a few of the other areas under the umbrella of civic studies.23 Of course, much was left out entirely and much that could have been said, wasn't, but I hope the point was still made clear: deliberation, a deliberative democracy, and even a general deliberative attitude are central to civic studies. To put it succinctly, if the problem of civics is lack of other-regardingness, or public spiritedness, or a shrinking sphere of concern, then deliberation is of critical importance in solving this problem.As this symposium is meant as a discussion of the experiences at the Institute, I thought I should share one of my own. My most enlightening day at the Institute by far was a visit from Harvard Education Professor Meira Levinson. 24 Meira offered a story about a civics project she presented to an 8th grade class where they were required to pick some issue that inspired them, and act on it. An orthodox Jewish student decided that he, based on his religious beliefs, would make a presentation to the class against a current proposal for a law legalizing gay marriage. Before telling the class what she actually did, she opened it up for discussion.As should be clear by now, my commitments are to teaching practical, deliberative skills as part of civic education. I argued against letting him give the presentation. Deliberation, in my view, ought to be a conversation. My fear in this scenario was that the student's presentation would either halt conversation entirely or result in bad deliberation. One could imagine a course of events where the first question asked after the presentation is something like, “Why do you believe in these tenets of your faith?” And this is a question to which there does not seem to be an answer that I could argue with.25 The argument, I thought, was simply a tight circle: I believe in this public policy because my religion tells me to, and I believe in my religion because I do. Consider an alternative, logically structured argument, where premises follow the typical if-then format and are based on some evidence. We can then argue about my interpretation of a given piece of evidence, or I can be presented with counter evidence, or we argue about whether or not B really does follow from A, and the like. This is what I thought good argument and good deliberation ought to look like. So, the student should not be allowed to present on the grounds that his presentation will not produce good deliberation, and, in fact, might reinforce bad deliberation.Additionally, I thought that forcing a class full of students, who presumably were not of the same belief system, to accept this presentation as equivalent to a logically constructed argument was coercive. John Dryzek has argued that, “… any communication that cannot connect the particular to the general should be excluded.”26 In other words, in deliberative settings arguments must be of a nature that everyone can understand. My particular story or my particular reasons are off limits if they cannot be understood (not necessarily accepted) more generally. The student's particular case could not be connected to anything general, so should not be allowed in a deliberative setting.I was surprised to find after stating my case that not only was I in the minority, but also that there were several different reasons why others disagreed. One position was that this scenario was actually good practice for real deliberation. People come to the public sphere with all sorts of reasons for taking their respective positions. The class should have the practice of hearing it and the student should have practice of articulating it. What was particularly interesting about this position was that we both imagined the same course of events, where the not-so-great argument is given and the class responds negatively. For me, this was a reason to not allow the presentation in the first place; for my interlocutor this was precisely the reason to allow the presentation. Additionally, this classmate also held that the only thing that gave him pause was actually a fear that the student giving the presentation would be adversely affected, and even discouraged from his religious beliefs. He was also worried about the effect on a potentially gay student in the class. I began to wonder if my own political dispositions were impacting my argument. Why was I worried about the class, while others were worried about the student giving the presentation?The second position in opposition to my own was that it is wrong to ask people to misrepresent themselves in the public sphere. That is to say, if religion is actually the reason why the student believes what he believes, then it is unfair and even coercive for me to demand he come to the public sphere and argue in some other way. On this issue I pushed back a bit. I argued that it wasn't coercive to ask people to be logical or to put things in terms that I can understand. This is the advantage to the logical construction of arguments after all: that they are, at least in principle, accessible to everyone. However, the thought of asking people to misrepresent themselves rang true too and I had no real reply. There were other valid points too, including that this was a public school, with certain rights to free speech and censorship was inappropriate.27It has been a little over a year since these events and I am still unresolved about many of the issues. I still think that truth-preserving, logically constructed arguments are most appealing and ought to be privileged. I still think that teaching logic and critical argument and their importance in civics is crucial. But I also still don't know what to say about asking people to misrepresent themselves, particularly in instances of religious belief. There seems something terribly undemocratic and illiberal about it, yet perhaps due to a personal bias, I still find myself trying to do it anyway. Without a doubt, this is certainly one of those instances where I hold my beliefs with a few more “if's” and “but's” than before, but it has also led me to a much more nuanced understanding of the issues at stake.In any case, this story and our arguments about it highlight some of the best things about the Institute and deliberation. First, in this meta-deliberation (arguing about the rules of deliberation) the Institute participants exhibited many of the “good deliberation” activities that were touched on above: we were all engaged in a dialogue—we listened, thought critically, and responded to one another. Second, we disagreed! We didn't have to reach a consensus or a plurality or anything like it, to have collectively engaged in a useful discussion. Third, it brought up yet another ripe field of debate in deliberative theory that wasn't necessarily on the syllabus: the issue of religious arguments in deliberative scenarios—or perhaps even more broadly, religion in the public sphere. Fourth, it also brought to light some of the differences to keep in mind between teaching deliberation and actually deliberating. In the course of our argument, there came a point in time where I forgot I was talking about an 8th grader with a civics project. This is an entirely new set of issues and likely changes my decision—I would not keep an adult from making the same sort of argument in a public deliberative forum. But is that right? Should it change my opinion? When are there different standards for teaching civic practices and practicing civics?This was a day at the Institute that was particularly memorable for me because of my own interests and commitments, but it was a fairly typical day for the Institute on the whole. Discussions were lively and productive. Participants had varying backgrounds and routinely brought new concerns to my attention that I hadn't seen before. Guest speakers shared interesting research, relevant projects and businesses, and always engaged us after making controversial claims. And though little, if anything, was solved or resolved, we all gained a better understanding of the issues at work and remained friends, even in deep disagreement.This essay was designed as a summary of what deliberation means in the context of civics and how those connections revealed themselves during my time at the Institute. I will take a moment now though, to reflect on the larger project of the Institute. The Summer Institute of Civic Studies did much to reinforce and strengthen many beliefs that I already had. Theoretical and empirical work should be done with an eye toward making people's lives better. Academic theory can trickle down slowly to the general consciousness, or people can have a foot in two camps: writing normative theory on one day, then leading civic participation projects in high schools the next. The project of the institute, its creators, the associated conferences and panels, and this journal, to bring together a community of scholars who aim at a civic society, is a worthwhile one. Karol Soltan puts his finger on the goal of civic studies in the following way, “When novices will arrive at the gates of civic studies, what will we tell them? We will tell them, I suggest, to look at the world, and at its history, in a new way. See a world full of projects—some quite ancient, others recent—and full of potential projects. See them not in a way a spectator might, but as someone eager to take part in the great task of shared creation.”28