Deliberative Theory Research Articles

Deliberation in an Age of (Un)Civil Resistance

There is currently a global wave of protest movements whose militant tactics cannot be subsumed under the category of nonviolent civil disobedience. There has, concurrently, been a surge of interest among political philosophers in the idea of ‘uncivil disobedience’, with a range of theorists converging on the view that there is often no compelling rationale for limiting dissent to the nonviolent repertoire associated with civil disobedience. This discussion piece reconsiders deliberative democratic approaches to activism and protest in light of these political and philosophical developments. It argues that the tendency to frame protest through the catch-all category of ‘non-deliberative’ behaviour elides the distinction between civil and uncivil disobedience, treating as analogous forms of conduct that are quite different in terms of their potential consequences and their ethical complexion. The paper focuses in particular on the difficult case of violence, exploring the normative scope for deliberative theorists to treat it as a potentially legitimate mode of uncivil resistance.

The Body Speaks Before It Even Talks: Deliberation, Populism and Bodily Representation

Deliberation is a complex interpersonal process that involves different forms of communication. While earlier versions of deliberative theory had overly rationalistic and proceduralist views of linguistic exchange, it is now understood that deliberation involves a full range of speech cultures, which include humour, storytelling, metaphors, testimonies and others, as well as the full range of emotions including fear, anger, compassion and sympathy. This article extends these developments in deliberative scholarship by placing the role of the body as central to the practice of public deliberation. The agents of real-world deliberations are not pure consciousness but embodied beings whose corporeality carries the palimpsest of marks of their class, age, ethnicity and sexual orientation, amongst others. Bodily self-presentation informs how affect, identification and political representation are established even before words are spoken. The goal of this article is to reflect on the effect of bodily identification and representation on the process of deliberation. Drawing on populism literature, particularly the socio-cultural approach, I explore four types of bodily representation: popular, technocratic, authoritarian and populist, and the affects they might provoke in other participants in deliberations, both negative and positive. Through this article, I hope to demonstrate how the vocabulary of populism research can equip deliberative democrats to identify, confront and negotiate the politics of bodily representation.

Do cross-cutting discussions enhance pro-environmental attitudes? Testing green deliberative theory in practice

ABSTRACT A central notion among green political theorists is that deliberative engagement enhances environmental values. Despite the centrality of this claim within green political theory, there is a lack of empirical research evaluating its promise outside formal deliberative forums. Here, an empirical large-N study is provided that tests whether everyday political discussion between individuals of different political orientations is positively associated with stronger pro-environmental attitudes in the US. The main finding is that individuals who engaged in this type of cross-cutting discussion reported significantly stronger pro-environmental attitudes compared to individuals who did not engage in this type of discussion. Moreover, the association remained positive for different clusters of individuals regardless of political engagement, party affiliation, or socio-demographics.

Deliberation, Democracy, and the Digital Landscape

Deliberative scholarship is particularly well positioned to offer insight on our new digital reality. The papers in this Special Issue showcase both the methodological pluralism that flourishes in deliberative democracy studies and the productive collaborations across methodologies. This Special Issue shows how deliberative theory can place digital media in a wider theoretical context, sharpen our understanding of the Internet’s worst features, and show the way forward to a better design for digital public engagement. Whether online or offline, democracy will always remain a work in progress, and these essays should help us navigate a course toward a more deliberative democracy in the digital age.

Impassioned Democracy: The Roles of Emotion in Deliberative Theory

In ordinary language, people often treat emotion as the opposite of reason. Deliberative democrats, however, typically use “reason” in a rather different way. They regard arbitrary power, not emotion, as the opposite of reason. Emotion, then, is not at all contrary to reason. Critics who rely on ordinary language to claim that deliberative democrats denigrate emotion are likely to misconstrue how both reason and emotion are deployed. In fact, most deliberative democrats have always assigned emotion an indispensable role in their theories. That said, emotion’s role in deliberation needs more, and more systematic, elaboration. I identify twelve distinct roles for emotion in deliberative theory and practice, clearing the way for a more fruitful research agenda on the role of emotion in democratic deliberation.

Religious Interactions in Deliberative Democratic Systems Theory

The following essay begins by outlining the pragmatist link between truth claims and democratic deliberations. To this end, special attention will be paid to Jeffrey Stout’s pragmatist enfranchisement of religious citizens. Stout defends a deliberative notion of democracy that fulfills stringent criteria of inclusion and security against domination. While mitigating secular exclusivity, Stout nonetheless acknowledges the new visibility of religion in populist attempts to dominate political life through mass rule and charismatic authorities. In response, I evaluate recent innovations in deliberative democratic systems theory (DDST). By adding a pragmatist inflection to DDST, I aim to apprehend the complex religious interactions between partisan interest groups as well as the trust-building capacities of minipublics.

How can critical deliberative theory help to solve the methodological challenges of evaluating from a gender + perspective?

This article explains why and how it is possible to give greater democratic meaning to an evaluative process by bringing into dialogue the Gender + perspective and a critical approach to deliberative theory within its design. Furthermore, it identifies the methodological challenges of using this intersectional approach to create more inclusive evaluative procedures. Taking into account the experience of the evaluation of Law 4/2005 for Equality between Women and Men in the Basque Country (Spain, 2015–2016), the text explains that the enclave deliberation praxis proposed by critical deliberative theory helps to resolve the challenges that emerge from the implementation of the Gender + perspective in the evaluation of public policies. These challenges include the incorporation of the empowerment perspective into the evaluation, and guaranteeing dialogue between expert knowledge on gender and other more ‘intuitive’ types of knowledge.

Czy pielęgniarkom wolno strajkować „o kasę”? Wyzwania dla uwzględniania interesów własnych pielęgniarek w świetle teorii systemów deliberatywnych na przykładzie strajku w Centrum Zdrowia Dziecka z 2016 r.

Strajk pielęgniarek w Centrum Zdrowia Dziecka w Warszawie z 2016 r. i dyskusja publiczna wokół niego stanowi przykład wielu wyzwań dla uwzględniania interesu własnego pielęgniarek w kształtowaniu polityk zdrowotnych. Artykuł ten poświęcony jest analizie tych wyzwań z perspektywy najnowszych trendów w teorii demokracji deliberatywnej, a konkretnie teorii systemów deliberatywnych. Opiera się na analizie wybranych działań i wypowiedzi głównych interesariuszy sporu. Punktem wyjścia dla analizy jest – dokonana w ramach teorii systemów deliberatywnych – kompleksowa rehabilitacja obrony interesów własnych w deliberacji i docenienie pozytywnej systemowej roli strajków. Artykuł zawiera podsumowanie i teoretyczną syntezę wyzwań dla deliberatywnego uwzględniania interesów własnych w politykach publicznych. Wyróżnione zostają 3 główne wyzwania będące typowymi niedeliberatywnymi strategiami w stosunku do interesów własnych: 1. kompartmentacja – redukcja problemu do wąskiego targu tych interesów; 2. instrumentalizacja innych czynników (takich jak emocje) w celu tłumienia interesów własnych oraz 3. zbyt rygorystyczny standard publicznej deliberacji, który prowadzi do ich wykluczenia jako sprzecznych z dobrem wspólnym. W artykule omówiono kryteria oceny tych strategii z perspektywy funkcjonalności systemu deliberatywnego. Wykorzystanie teorii demokracji deliberatywnej w analizie dyskursu wokół strajku pielęgniarek wskazuje na użyteczność zastosowania tej perspektywy badawczej w obszarze zdrowia publicznego.

Deliberative disagreement and compromise

ABSTRACT Deliberative democracy entails a commitment to deciding political questions on their merits. To that end, people engage in an exchange of reasons in a shared endeavour to arrive at the right answer or the best judgement they can make in the circumstances. Of course, in practice a shared judgement may be impossible to reach. Yet while compromise may seem a natural way of dealing with the disagreement that deliberation leaves unresolved – for example, some deliberative theorists argue that a willingness to compromise manifests respect for the considered views of others, even as we continue to disagree with them – the relationship between deliberation and compromise is not as straightforward as one might think. To explain why, this paper contrasts conflicts of judgement with conflicts of preference, interest and value to show why greater attention needs to be paid to the character of the decision to be made.

Deliberation about the 2014 Umbrella Movement in a Hong Kong elite newspaper: A quantitative study of the Hong Kong Economic Journal

Deliberative democratic theorists have argued that effective deliberation is central to democracy. Does Hong Kong possess a viable public sphere for deliberating important public issues, as the city has been striving for a full democracy since the 1980s? This article addresses this significant question by examining the quality of deliberation on the 2014 Umbrella Movement by the editorials and commentaries in an elite print Chinese newspaper – the Hong Kong Economic Journal – based on the “Discourse Quality Index” and other criteria used by major works on mediated deliberation. This article argues that the Journal has served as a viable public sphere for deliberating important public concerns in Hong Kong. The Journal’s editorials and commentaries performed well in terms of offering reasoned arguments and engaging in dialogue with opposing viewpoints. Regarding respect for the actors which were involved in the Umbrella Movement, the Journal as a whole had maintained a civilized tone. However, there was an indication that commentary authors had less tolerance toward actors from the opposite camps.

Participation, Inclusion, and the Democratic Content of Constitutions

Theories of participatory and deliberative democracy contend that participatory and inclusive constitution-making processes are more likely to generate democratic outcomes than the traditional, elite-led approaches. The empirical evidence, however, has remained inconclusive and the propositions mostly normative. Using an original data from 195 constitutions promulgated in 118 countries since 1974, this study examines the impact of participatory and inclusive processes on the democratic content of constitutions. Building on the recently developed conjectures in the literature, this study introduces two original measures for individual-level public participation and aggregate-level group inclusion in constitution-making processes. The statistical analysis provides compelling empirical evidence that increased public participation is associated with an increased number of democratic provisions in constitutions, indicating that broad participatory processes can improve the democratic content of constitutions. Group inclusion, however, is not a significant predictor of the content of constitutions. The findings offer empirical support for participatory and deliberative theories of democracy and their prediction on democratic outcomes of participatory processes.

Reframing civil disobedience as a communicative action

PurposeCivil disobedience is often defined as a public, conscientious, nonviolent act of breaking the law in an attempt to change an unjust policy or law. When applied to real-life situations, this widely accepted definition overlooks key features of civil disobedience and ignores civil acts that fundamentally challenge undemocratic institutions or the state and make socio-political changes possible. The purpose of this paper is to criticize and revise the conceptual, ethical and socio-political understandings of civil disobedience by integrating deliberative theory with some radical perspectives on civil disobedience.Design/methodology/approachThis paper integrates and critically revises previous approaches to the justification and role of civil disobedience in democratic systems. Specifically, the ethical concerns about civil disobedience are discussed and the deliberative concept of civil disobedience is expanded as a form of political contestation by incorporating the socio-political aspects of civil disobedience. Although it is a conceptual discussion, the paper opted for an exploratory approach using empirically related examples to illustrate the theoretical discussion.FindingsThe paper provides a new perspective to the literature on civil disobedience. The critical review shows that the limited general understanding of civil disobedience conceptually is not useful to analyze various forms of civil disobedience.Research limitations/implicationsThe reviewed literature is limited due to a limited space.Practical implicationsThe paper includes practical implications for policymakers and authorities when evaluating and responding to civil actions more effectively and for members of civil movements and organizations when creating new forms of civil protest and effective responses to authorities.Originality/valueThis paper may be a modest first attempt to reframe the concept of civil disobedience by integrating deliberative democracy theory and some radical perspectives.

Different Arenas, Different Deliberative Quality? Using a Systemic Framework to Evaluate Online Deliberation on Immigration Policy in Germany

One major strand of contemporary research on political participation addresses online deliberation. Over time, online deliberation has become increasingly pluralistic. Our study applies a framework derived from systemic deliberative theory to evaluate different online deliberation processes on German immigration policy. A crucial premise of the systemic deliberative theory is that the quality of deliberation varies systematically between different arenas within a political system. We differentiate between highly formal, semi‐formal, and informal deliberative arenas (arenas 1–3) and develop seven theory‐driven hypotheses concerning the quality of deliberative procedures in arenas 1–3 that we test through quantitative content analysis. Our study confirms the overarching expectation: processes’ deliberative quality varies systematically between arenas. The highest level of (aggregated) deliberative quality is displayed in arena 1—deliberations, that is, on the government‐run consultation platform. The more fine‐grained analysis of different dimensions of deliberative quality reveals that the patterns observed with regards to certain dimensions of deliberative quality (e.g., constructiveness and reciprocity) do not conform with our theory‐driven hypotheses. We discuss the theoretical and empirical implications of these findings. Future collaborations of theoretical and empirical scholars of deliberative democracy must address the specifics of online communication and the function of emotional communication in different deliberative arenas.

Ideological Diversity, Intelligibility and Electoral Design: A Deliberative Perspective

ABSTRACT The article explores some trade-offs between two democratic goods: intelligibility and ideological diversity that different types of electoral systems – proportional representation and single member plurality – often involve through the way in which they affect the number of significant political parties in a polity. The article reviews practices that can alleviate those trade-offs and provides a sketch of what we can and should want to achieve within the limits of each system from the normative vantage point of deliberative democratic theory.

Power and Citizen Deliberation: The Contingent Impacts of Interests, Ideology, and Status Differences

Both advocates and critics of deliberative theory have regarded power relations as problems for public deliberation. Three aspects—interests, ideology and status differences—have been thought to distort deliberative processes. This article discusses a growing body of case studies that indicate that these “problems” may actually, under certain conditions, help facilitate inclusion and equality in deliberation. The crucial task is to specify the mechanisms that explain such unexpected outcomes and the conditions under which they may appear in other cases. This article specifies three such mechanisms that help explain positive outcomes in a number of case studies. The argument for focusing on mechanisms and conditions serves as a correction both to critics who find the theory of deliberation naïve and to advocates who have taken the critique against deliberative theory too lightly.

“All they want is money!” The deliberative theory approach to the inclusion of nurses’ self-interests in the 2016 strike in the Children’s Memorial Health Institute in Warsaw

The Polish healthcare system suffers from a growing deficit of nurses, whose population is ageing at an alarming rate. This deficit is correlated with the relatively low social, economic and political position of this female-associated profession. A looming crisis requires comprehensive, sustainable and long-term solutions, which could be achieved with deliberative governance, an approach that re-evaluates the dominant models of health policy-making and the way they process legitimate self-interests. This paper examines some of the challenges to the inclusion of nurses’ self-interests into public deliberation and policy-making. It is based on an analysis of the 2016 nurses’ strike at the Children’s Memorial Health Institute in Warsaw. The example will lead me to some political theory considerations that support the recent rehabilitation of self-interests within deliberative democratic theory as well as a systemic appreciation of the role of strikes. Using the original framework of three inputs of governance (emotions, self-interests and expertise), I present a theoretical synthesis of the three identified non-deliberative strategies for the treatment of self-interests: compartmentalisation, instrumentalisation and officious exclusion. In the end I argue that the difficulty in solving many health problems in Poland might come primarily from faulty policy-making practices that enforce suboptimal solutions.

Deliberating about Climate Change: The Case for ‘Thinking and Nudging’

AbstractProponents of deliberative democracy believe deliberation provides the best chance of finding effective and legitimate climate policies. However, in many societies there is substantial evidence of biased cognition and polarisation about climate change. Further, many appear unable to distinguish reliable scientific information from false claims or misinformation. While deliberation significantly reduces polarisation about climate change, and can even increase the provision of reliable beliefs, these benefits are difficult to scale up, and are slow to affect whole societies. In response, I propose a combined strategy of ‘thinking and nudging’. While deliberative theorists tend to view nudging askance, combining deliberation with nudges promises to be a timelier and more effective response to climate change than deliberation alone. I outline several proposals to improve societal deliberative capacity while reducing climate risks, including media reform, strategic communication and framing of debates, incentivising pro-climate behaviour change, and better education about science.

A critically modern ecological economics for the Anthropocene

Ecological economics recognizes economic activity as a biophysical process mediated by social systems and ultimately subject to the constraints of a finite earth system. The Anthropocene discourse appears as validation of the central concerns of ecological economics yet throws into relief its limits as a normative transdiscipline oriented toward social transformation. We review ecological economics in light of two overarching challenges: first, negotiating between biophysical reality and plural constructed social realities, so as to create legitimate grounds for a sustainability transition; second, accounting for multi-level, multi-scale social and political action, which demands a means for arbitrating among competing normative propositions. We argue that attempts to address these challenges within ecological economics have been inconsistent and relatively scarce, reflecting an unresolved tension regarding modern and postmodern social theory. We demonstrate that a critically modern ecological economics could draw on aligned social movements and build on deliberative theory as a foundation for social and political change fit for navigating the Anthropocene.

La participación política a través de dos perspectivas teóricas: el realismo-liberal y la democracia deliberativa

El presente trabajo reconstruye algunas de las tesis centrales de la familia realista-liberal de la democracia en relación con los liderazgos políticos y la participación política de la ciudadanía en sus dos fases de pensamiento: desde el elitismo hacia la poliarquía. Posteriormente se formulan algunas de las críticas que los teóricos deliberativos le realizan a este modelo en relación con el carácter minimalista de la participación y sus dificultades para combatir posibles poderes exógenos a la política. En este sentido, se presentan tres pilares del modelo deliberativo para superar esta aparente debilidad del modelo realista-liberal y generar autonomía política o, al menos, combatir su heteronomía a través de: 1) la transformación de preferencias, 2) el ejercicio de una razón comunicativa, y 3) una fundamentación epistémica de las creencias morales.

Deliberative citizenship: a critical reappraisal

ABSTRACTThe study of citizenship as a political or moral ideal involves identifying core commitments and capabilities, the cultivation and exercise of which is often presented as a condition of being a ‘good’ citizen. Deliberative democracy was, at least until recently, associated with a conception of citizenship that endorses those qualities that equip us for a certain kind of respectful and reflective dialogue. This article reappraises this conception in light of the so-called ‘systemic turn’ within deliberative theory. It shows how systems thinking has displaced the traditional conception of deliberative citizenship, but that theorists have so far not elaborated a satisfactory replacement. A pluralist model is thus proposed, which casts light on the diverse qualities that a range of actors in a deliberative system might require. The resulting argument is not merely of interest to deliberative theorists, but to all who are concerned with the ethics of citizenship. The main reason is that it displaces the entrenched notion of a ‘good citizen’, in favour of the more heterogenous ideal of a ‘good citizenry’.