Norms of Deliberation: An Inductive Study

Journal of Public Deliberation, 2016

“Deliberative democracy” is a compound term. In both theory and practice, it connects deliberative influence through reason giving, reciprocity, and publicity to a family of political systems that broadly enable popular control of the state and government through empowerments such as voting, petitioning, and contesting, as well as the electoral and judicial systems that enable them. These empowerments are democratic when they are distributed to, and usable by, those affected by collective decisions in ways that are both equal and equitable. While deliberative influence is best protected and incentivized by democratic political systems, not all deliberation is democratic, and not all approaches to democracy are deliberative. We should distinguish and relate these terms: we need to differentiate the practice of deliberation from the contexts of democratic enablements and empowerments in which it occurs. We can then focus on the pre- deliberative conditions that will enable or limit the extent to which deliberation is democratic. Two pre- deliberative democratic features stand out as particularly important in this context: popular participation—how individuals come to have standing and voice as participants, and agenda- setting—how concerns come to be defined as issues. We further argue that since deliberation typically occurs downstream from agenda-setting, and since popular participation both shapes and is shaped by this practice, theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy should pay close attention to each well before deliberation begins. To make this case, we first theorize the democratic dimensions of deliberative democracy through the concepts of equity and equality. Second, we focus on agenda setting and popular participation as important, though not exclusive, pre-deliberative determinants of equality and equity during deliberation. Finally, we offer suggestions about how theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy might think about responding to the challenges generated by the tension between equality and equity prior to democratic deliberation.

Journal of Political Philosophy, 2010

Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2002

This essay explicates the promise that deliberative democracy, because deliberation generates more inclusive, just, and reasoned public policies, is a sufficient and superior account of democratic legitimacy. This essay also reviews the critiques engendered by social, cultural, and discursive plurality, critiques threatening to render deliberative democracy's promise(s) infelicitous, and suggests some avenues for reconfiguring public delieration in light of these challenges.

Deliberative democracy is embedded in different theories and approaches and represents a focal point for most current democratic theory. This article seeks to contribute to an understanding of the theory of deliberative democracy from various theoretical roots, each focusing on a different level or sphere of deliberation. I will consider how each theoretical perspective understands the role of the state, civil society and the individual. Based on a review of the literature , I theorise that the often overlooked combination of micro, mezzo and macro levels of deliberation must all be included for any deliberation to be successful in terms of political equality and democratic decision-making. In my view, critical theory has the greatest potential to include all three spheres of deliberation.

2011

Political theory has taken a deliberative shift in recent years placing deliberation in a privileged position. Dryzek (2000), one of its most important promoters, even states that many of the innovations that take place in the theory of politics nowadays feed from it. Dryzek’s statement gives an idea of the scope and importance that deliberative theory has attained, however this does not mean that there is total agreement regarding its limits and fallibility. The reasons that have favoured this upsurge are certainly not related to the simplicity and clarity of the theory. Neither can we resort to its ability to explain the political phenomena as the cause of its expansion. Literature gathered about deliberation is anything but conclusive (Thompson, 2008; delli Carpini, 2004). This has not hindered, however, an outbreak of normative discussions and empirical studies aimed at contrasting, making more precise or studying in depth all elements related to deliberation.

Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy , 2022

Research on deliberative democracy has been flourishing over the past decades. We now know more about the conditions that enable or hinder inclusive and consequential deliberation, and how different actors, such as politicians, activists, and citizens, perceive and experience deliberative practices. Yet there are still many unknowns that drive research in deliberative democracy, especially as the field continues to develop in new directions and seeks to offer remedies for the problems democracies face today. This chapter unpacks what deliberative democracy research is, what it involves, and how we might go about conducting it. It discusses how the normative theory interacts with empirical research and how the deliberative ideals shape the practice and purpose of research. The chapter makes a case for methodological and epistemological diversity and outlines thirty-one different methods for theorizing, measuring, exploring, or applying deliberative democracy.

Daedalus, 2017

This essay reflects on the development of the field of deliberative democracy by discussing twelve key findings that capture a number of resolved issues in normative theory, conceptual clarification, and associated empirical results. We argue that these findings deserve to be more widely recognized and viewed as a foundation for future practice and research. We draw on our own research and that of others in the field.

Critical Policy Studies, 2016

2010

THE OPERATIONALIZATION OF THE DELIBERATIVE THEORY, both on-and offline, demands awareness that the deliberative theory is composed of two levels of normative requirements, which often lead to a confusion about what deliberation is about and how it can be measured. There are, on the one hand, the deliberative norms that define the discursive rules that a political debate should follow, and on the other hand, there are the deliberative norms that define how these discursive norms should be applied at the different levels of the decision-making process. While there tends to be relatively widespread agreement among the deliberative theorists about what constitutes a deliberative form of political debate, there tends to be no agreement on how these ideal discursive criteria should be concretely applied at the different levels of the opinion-and decision-making process. As indicated by Thompson in a recent article, deliberative theory and, more particularly its empirical analysis, faces a structural problem, "which calls for moving beyond the study of isolated or one-time deliberative experiences and examining the relationship between deliberative and non-deliberative practices in the political system as a whole and over time" (2008, 500).

2016

According to some prominent theorists, the conditions of deliberative democracy call for reasoned decisions from mutually justifi able premises. Th e deliberative ideal places demands on the epistemic quality of the deliberating process and on the epistemic habits and beliefs of the relevant agents. In this essay, I discuss this ideal in light of empirical literature. I examine some empirical literature on human reasoning that paints a bleak picture of human rationality: we fall victim to heuristics and biases, persevere in our beliefs in the face of contrary evidence, and justify our current moral judgments by post hoc-reasoning. In addition, the deliberating groups have specifi c problems. Th e groups may, for example, amplify errors or fall victim to information cascades. I argue that, given that we are interested in securing that deliberative process is epistemically valuable, the literature gives further support to the idea that education must foster not only skills but also di...