High-quality Deliberation Research Articles

Trends in Theorizing Sortition

In recent years, political scientists have devoted increasing attention to sortition – the random selection of ordinary citizens for political decision-making. This has been accompanied by a number of real-world experiments in which randomly-selected bodies provide input into the political process. The result has been a large and growing literature on the topic. Recent contributions to that literature have detailed proposals for expanded use of sortition, most of which combine election and sortition in innovative and ambitious ways. The use of sortition in these proposals is justified in various ways, many of which involve the way random selection can generate bodies capable of high-quality deliberation. There is more controversy regarding the connection between sortition and democracy. Some regard sortition as a uniquely democratic selection mechanism, while others regard election and sortition as advancing competing democratic values, generating the need for a tradeoff between them. Future research on sortition will no doubt further explore both the value of sortition and its democratic credentials.

Interpretative Interactions: An Argument for Descriptive Representation in Deliberative Mini-publics

ABSTRACT Mini-publics are institutions that invite a small group of citizens to deliberate on a specific political issue. Deliberation scholars find them attractive because they use random sampling techniques to generate representativeness. However, analysts have different interpretations of what exactly mini-publics should represent, and why. In this paper I distinguish between three conceptualizations of descriptive representation in the mini-publics literature. I argue that these conceptualizations do not fully support the interpretative and exploratory aspects of forming considered opinions in the course of deliberations. Instead, they tend to primarily address concerns about the democratic legitimacy of a political institution involving unelected participants. However, I show that mini-publics can be considered legitimate if the notion of legitimacy is detached from elections. I then propose an argument for descriptive representation that better serves the mini-publics' aim of achieving high-quality deliberation.

Institutional innovations in public participation for improved local governance and urban sustainability in India

BackgroundImproving urban governance is an imperative for India, with its accelerated rate of urbanization, distrust of government, and inadequate public involvement in policy development and decision-making. Deliberative democracy initiatives in other parts of the world, and similar experiences in rural India have demonstrated their effectiveness at resolving complex issues with decisions that are acceptable to constituents, and are seen to be in the public good.ResultsLearnings are drawn from two cases of action research in Pune, India about achieving inclusion and deliberation in public engagement efforts, and their influence on public decision-making. The stratified and complex socio-economic and political context in India, power imbalances, inadequacy of decentralized governance structures, and information for civic decision-making makes public engagement challenging. From this experience, we inductively developed a potential framework for good governance, of deliberative democracy initiatives (induced participation), inclusive civil society (organic and invented) participation, overseen by an independent third party. It is contended that such a framework can enable city governments, in India and elsewhere, to resolve complex urban sustainability challenges with more implementable decisions.ConclusionsBased on what was learnt from the Pune case studies, this article suggests that a combination of leaders willing to pioneer good governance, capable third-party facilitators, and strong organic participation groups working together through the structured approaches of deliberative democracy can effectively integrate the public into civic decision-making. However, to implement deliberative democracy in urban areas in India, the framework proposed will require advocacy at multiple levels. It will be critical to find ‘champions’ within political, administrative and civil society willing to pioneer deliberative democracy initiatives, to build professional capacity to conduct high quality deliberation, and to ensure the outcomes of such processes are influential. Good governance will rely on an ecosystem supporting such democratic renewal.

Deliberation, demobilization, and limited empowerment: a survey study on participatory pricing in China

AbstractAuthoritarian deliberation has been used widely to describe the specific form of deliberation developed in China. However, whether its practice will strengthen authoritarianism or lead to democratization remains unknown. In this study, we examine this question from the perspective of participants in public deliberation. Surveying the participants in participatory pricings held in Shanghai over the past 5 years, we find that participants’ perception of deliberative quality has a statistically significant negative impact on their level of political activism, while their level of empowerment has a moderating effect on this negative relationship. In this light, Chinese deliberative practices characterized by high-quality deliberation and low-level empowerment are likely to have a demobilization effect; thus, they reinforce the authoritarian rules.

A relational perspective on deliberative systems: combining interpretive and structural analysis

ABSTRACT Deliberative systems theory suggests that a democratic society works well when citizens’ experiences and views, as expressed in various forms and sites of communication, are connected and taken up by other citizens as well as policy-makers. Pluralism, which is not always easily reconciled with high-quality deliberation in every instance, is seen as instrumental to the realization of democratic values and sound decision-making. This perspective raises new methodological challenges, such as (1) identifying sites of communication that serve important functions in a deliberative system, (2) connecting different sites and (3) assessing their impact. Recent scholarship has found that these challenges can be fruitfully met by applying interpretive methodology, which, like deliberative systems theory, aims to understand social interactions on their own terms, and not by measuring their correspondence to theoretical ideal-types. However, for theory development, as well as to help improve actual deliberative systems, researchers also need to make generalizable inferences. This paper develops a relational approach that combines interpretive methods with structural theory, which allows researchers to assess and explain the deficiencies, as well as the opportunities, that citizens experience. The principles of relational analysis are illustrated by research on citizen deliberation about urban riots.

Deliberative Citizens, (Non)Deliberative Politicians: A Rejoinder

Are citizens or politicians (more) capable of deliberation, and when should they be willing to do so? In this essay, we first show that both politicians and citizens have the capacity to deliberate when institutions are appropriate. Yet high-quality deliberation sometimes collides with democratic principles and ideals. Therefore, we employ a “need-oriented” perspective, asking when and where citizens and the political workings of democracy need high-quality deliberation and when and where this is less the case. On this account, we propose a number of institutional interventions and reforms that may help boost deliberation in ways that both exploit its unique epistemic and ethical potential while simultaneously making it compatible with democratic principles and ideals.

Deliberative engagement: the forum in the system

Recent decades have seen an explosion of innovative forms of public engagement on many kinds of issues in many countries (even a few transnational experiments), and nowhere is this more true than on questions concerning the environment and the risks of new technologies. Here, I will examine this pattern of innovation through a deliberative lens in order to take stock of both successes and failures. At first glance, it might seem that success comes mainly in the form of high-quality deliberation in particular forums; failure comes mostly in the frequent failure of those forums to have much impact in larger processes (though such failure is not universal; see Goodin and Dryzek 2006 for a compendium of success stories). Here though, I will take a somewhat different approach grounded in a system view of deliberative democracy, in which the core questions concern the deliberative qualities of larger-scale systems of governance, to which particular forums might contribute. I will develop some ideas about the place of forums within larger systems. The core claim of deliberative democracy is that a collective decision is legitimate to the extent those affected by it have the right, capacity, and opportunity to participate in consequential deliberation about the content of that decision. Deliberation for its part is a particular kind of communication that emphasizes mutual understanding rather than the pursuit of strategic advantage, the justification of positions taken in terms that are something more than material self-interest, attempts to reach those who do not share the frame of reference of the speaker, and careful listening. Where to look for deliberative engagement?

Key Challenges Facing the Field of Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative Democracy has proved its value as an alternative to governance dominated by special interests, but its use in governing remains inconsistent. Overcoming this challenge will require the field to focus its energy on 1) building a cadre of elected leaders and public officials who understand deliberative democracy’s value and how to do it, 2) engaging with the media so that it becomes an effective partner for the field and a more productive part of our democratic system, and 3) continuing to embrace opportunities – like Creating Community Solutions - to work in unique partnerships, build national infrastructure to support high-quality deliberation, and innovate across methodologies and models.

Participating Despite Questions: Toward a More Confident Participatory Technology Assessment

While the important challenges of public deliberations on emerging technologies are crucial to keep in mind, this paper argues that scholars and practitioners have reason to be more confident in their performance of participatory technology assessments (pTA). Drawing on evidence from the 2008 National Citizens' Technology Forum (NCTF) conducted by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, this paper describes how pTA offers a combination of intensive and extensive qualities that are unique among modes of engagement. In the NCTF, this combination led to significant learning and opinion changes, based on what can be characterized as a high-quality deliberation. The quality of the anticipatory knowledge required to address emerging technologies is always contested, but pTAs can be designed with outcomes in mind-especially when learning is understood as an outcome.

The Deliberative Dimensions of Legislatures

Our research project addressed two questions: (1) are there favorable contexts for deliberation in legislatures? and (2) does deliberation also matter for outcomes? We found that consensus institutions, presidentialism, second chambers, non-publicity, and low-issue polarization further deliberation, particularly by enhancing respectful exchanges among participants. We also found that unanimous or nearly unanimous decisions were typically associated with high-quality deliberation in the preceding debates, while deliberation was almost without any effect on the substantive outcome dimension (conceptualized as more and less egalitarian decisions).