Deliberative systems theory suggests that a democratic society works well when citizens' experien... more 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.
Researchers are increasingly recognizing that social movements are crucial for realizing delibera... more Researchers are increasingly recognizing that social movements are crucial for realizing deliberative democratic values. However, this raises two important questions: (1) what actions should count as deliberation and (2) whether we should demand more from activists than merely provoking or encouraging deliberation in a society. Building on current research on activists’ actual engagement with deliberation, we argue that the standard of taking a “deliberative stance” (being respectful, sincere, and public-minded) is a good starting point for addressing both questions. By taking a deliberative stance, movements benefit from deliberation themselves and contribute to deliberative systems. However, we should also acknowledge that forms of deliberation change, and discovering new forms is a crucial part of what movements do for democracy. We propose to adopt a principle we call “reflective inclusion,” which allows us to engage abductively with new actions that might expand and deepen our ...
How does critical reflection happen? And what circumstances influence the forms critical reflecti... more How does critical reflection happen? And what circumstances influence the forms critical reflection takes and the issues it comes to address? Recent contributions suggest that we should pay greater attention to the ways social conditions and other factors affect what people reflect upon and how. Examining John Dewey’s perspective on the relationship between practical engagement, objects of knowledge, and democracy, this article develops a relational perspective. Dewey significantly affected how Jack Mezirow theorized transformative learning. But Mezirow’s theory is less attentive to the roles played by particular contextual features, such as structural circumstances, ideas and theories, and individuals’understanding and responses to diverse ways of viewing things and thinking. Rereading Dewey, this article suggests that these subtle features, or subtle “frames of reference,” help construct reflection. Consequently, to deepen critical reflection, these subtle features need to become ...
Razones, poder y reconocimiento en la deliberacion democratica. El caso del Presupuesto Participa... more Razones, poder y reconocimiento en la deliberacion democratica. El caso del Presupuesto Participativo en Rosario, Argentina
Cross-disciplinary initiatives are raising demand for participatory design methods that can be ap... more Cross-disciplinary initiatives are raising demand for participatory design methods that can be applied at different scales, from urban settlement planning to individual buildings. However, there is a gap in the literature in terms of participatory tools and processes for international design teams operating at the local level in geographically remote regions. This paper presents the findings from a series of design workshops carried out by an international and interdisciplinary team working with small communities of Andean farmers in north-west Argentina. The team used a blend of participatory tools including walkabouts, collective model-making and a bespoke method for collective drawing. The team also gathered contextual data via individual and community surveys. The study shows the importance of context (i.e social, economic, political and policy) in the decision making process of participants, and reflects on communication problems when working in geographically dispersed locations.
The theory of deliberative democracy suggests that public discourse should be guided by reasonabl... more The theory of deliberative democracy suggests that public discourse should be guided by reasonable arguments. In real life, power relations not only obstruct free exchanges of reasons but also shap ...
Local political leaders as well as international organizations have embraced participatory budget... more Local political leaders as well as international organizations have embraced participatory budgeting in response to problems of political exclusion and citizens’ dissatisfaction with representative democracy. This article provides a framework to highlight important aspects of the politics of participation. The framework allows scholars to explore how factors external to spaces of participation interact with aspects of participation within them. The framework conceptualizes participatory budgeting as political spaces, whose boundaries are shaped by ideologies, interests, and patterns of social exclusion. In dynamic spaces, such boundaries are constantly renegotiated and contestation helps maintain their openness. In static spaces, by contrast, predefined boundaries are imposed on participants who may accept or reject them. Empirical examples of participatory budgeting illustrate the usefulness of this framework. The article ends by discussing key avenues for further research.
Policies on preventing radicalization and recruitment to violent Islamist organizations have been... more Policies on preventing radicalization and recruitment to violent Islamist organizations have been widely criticized for reinforcing negative stereotypes of Muslims as a group. Sweden has stood out by international comparison by announcing an approach built on inclusion and participation, especially with regard to Muslim civil society. But what does it mean to make a policy process inclusive and participatory? How can values of inclusion and participation be combined with efficient implementation and realization of policy goals, especially in a policy area where discourse and practice have tended to reinforce patterns of exclusion and discrimination? This article develops a framework that puts the roles of participants at the center: what expectations, boundaries and capacities come with an invitation to participate? Based on interviews with actors involved in the Swedish policy process, including Muslim civil society leaders, the study suggests that participation, in this case, mean...
That citizens can trust leaders in politics and the public sphere to be sincere and truthful help... more That citizens can trust leaders in politics and the public sphere to be sincere and truthful helps to make democracy work. However, the idea of authentic communication raises both sociological and ethical questions. Scholars focusing on institutional conditions emphasize that audiences only have reasons to trust speakers that appear to have incentives to be truthful, unless they know them personally. However, theorists of ethics argue that authentic communication requires genuine commitment, which is conceptually at odds with self-interested reasoning. This article finds that both incentives and genuine commitment are necessary conditions for trustworthiness in speech, but neither is sufficient on its own. The problem is thus how to combine them. Examining the work of Habermas and Bourdieu, this article develops a relational perspective on authentic communication. It suggests that latent institutions can induce trust by making trustworthiness preferable, and still allow speakers to ...
Both advocates and critics of deliberative theory have regarded power relations as problems for p... more 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.
Abstract Rural perspectives in political debates are often dismissed as sentimental, narrowly sel... more Abstract Rural perspectives in political debates are often dismissed as sentimental, narrowly self-interested, and irrational. This paper reports findings that challenge this view. Applying a deliberative systems approach, it examines how rural perspectives are articulated in Swedish public discourse. It identifies four coherent discourses that promote distinct political values: economic growth, rural conservatism, democracy and solidarity. The results of the study indicate a need for further examination of rural political deliberation. Beyond the pluralism of rural perspectives, they demonstrate that these are coherent political positions that share an overlapping interest in challenging an urban norm in political debate while being otherwise in tension with one another. The competition between them is, moreover, further indicated by the finding that political leaders’ engage mostly with the discourse of economic growth, and to lesser extent rural conservatism and solidarity, while no party representative framed neglect of rural interests as a democratic concern.
What is the appropriate way to respond to actions that break basic norms of respectfulness, since... more What is the appropriate way to respond to actions that break basic norms of respectfulness, sincerity, and public-mindedness? At the same time as this question has become a central concern for democratic societies, a ‘systemic’ turn has unsettled established solutions for democratic theorists. From the systemic perspective, it is more important how actions contribute to public discourse than whether they meet standards of deliberation individually. This article challenges theorists to consider three additional propositions: (1) to be inclusive and deliberative, the system and its parts must be mutually supportive; (2) well-performing systems have sufficient reflective capacity to examine their own deficiencies when violations of basic norms occur; and (3) the performance of a deliberative system needs to take into account both the frequency of violations and the reflective qualities of the system’s response. For a well-performing system, violations of basic norms are opportunities t...
What should count as legitimate forms of reasoning in public deliberation is a contested issue. D... more What should count as legitimate forms of reasoning in public deliberation is a contested issue. Democratic theorists have argued that storytelling may offer a more accessible form of deliberation for marginalised citizens than ‘rational argumentation’. We investigate the empirical support for this claim by examining Swedish citizens’ use of storytelling in written communication with the political establishment. We test whether stories are used frequently, as well as by whom, and how they are used. We find that storytelling is (1) rare, (2) not more frequent among people with nonmainstream views, and (3) used together with rational argumentation. In line with some previous research, we show that stories still play other important roles: authorising the author, undermining political opponents and, most often, further supporting arguments made in ‘rational’ form. The results suggest that people rely more on rational argumentation than storytelling when expecting interlocutors to be hos...
Previous research has suggested that reflective “meta-deliberation,” or discussions about how dis... more Previous research has suggested that reflective “meta-deliberation,” or discussions about how discussions proceed, can help to address patterns of marginalization. This article suggests, however, that moving to a meta level is not in itself a solution, since it may easily bring along such patterns. Inequalities persist through specific mechanisms that may be present in both ordinary deliberation and meta-deliberation. We explore such mechanisms empirically, by focusing on experiences of people that were excluded from discussions to which they were uniquely qualified to contribute. Our case is the 2013 Stockholm riots, and our interviewees are people who live, work, and engage in local civil society groups in the affected neighborhoods. These interviews helped us identify five mechanisms that affect a society’s capacity for reflective uptake in both ordinary deliberation and meta-deliberation: (1) imposition of preexisting narratives, (2) inclusion of locally dominant actors, (3) dis...
Cooperation between movements and political elites are frequently associated with the risk of coo... more Cooperation between movements and political elites are frequently associated with the risk of cooptation. Because it undercuts contentious actors, cooptation may seem rational for elites that seek to protect their interests. However, recent scholarship questions whether this view is empirically valid. Adding to these debates, this article demonstrates that even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that elites always act to maintain power, cooptation may often not be the rational choice of strategy. This article presents a typology of elite responses that focuses on three phases of elite–movement interaction: preparatory, term-setting, and confrontation phases. In each phase, elites’ choice between cooptation and conditional cooperation depends on whether legitimacy appears instrumental to achieve their goals. Cooperation, as opposed to cooptation, generates legitimacy and can, therefore, be used strategically by movements.
Social movements seek to influence views on environmental issues and put pressure on policy-maker... more Social movements seek to influence views on environmental issues and put pressure on policy-makers in a range of related areas. But alongside their specific goals, they also often strive to create space for genuine deliberation about the need for societal transformation. This 'dual orientation' places them theoretically between social movement studies' focus on strategic considerations and the 'sincere' (truthful) communication envisioned by democratic theorists to be a condition for 'authentic' deliberation, in which actors genuinely seek to understand each other's views. Engaging with both fields of theory, a framework is developed for separating actions that are strategic, sincere and employ sincerity as strategy. Actors choose sincerity as a strategy when they practice truthful reasoning as a means to advance their interests in the public sphere. As illustrated by green movements, the concept captures how activists may handle three risks in public discourse: commercialization, politicization and idealization.
The term ‘meta-deliberation’ refers to processes of addressing problems with the way that convers... more The term ‘meta-deliberation’ refers to processes of addressing problems with the way that conversations about shared concerns – our ordinary deliberations – proceed. This article discusses the distinction between meta-deliberation and ordinary deliberation and examines three questions raised by previous arguments about meta-deliberation: (1) what kinds of communication should count as meta-deliberation, (2) does meta-deliberation always lead to reflective understanding and improvements in practices of deliberation, and (3) why would deliberative systems need meta-deliberation? Consistent with the systemic perspective on deliberation, this article suggests an inclusive view of which acts and sites may contribute to processes of meta-deliberation: it argues that meta-deliberation faces the same potential problems as ordinary deliberation, such as unequal power relations and narrow perspectives, and therefore requires careful examination; but when meta-deliberation works, it provides s...
Deliberative systems theory suggests that a democratic society works well when citizens' experien... more 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.
Researchers are increasingly recognizing that social movements are crucial for realizing delibera... more Researchers are increasingly recognizing that social movements are crucial for realizing deliberative democratic values. However, this raises two important questions: (1) what actions should count as deliberation and (2) whether we should demand more from activists than merely provoking or encouraging deliberation in a society. Building on current research on activists’ actual engagement with deliberation, we argue that the standard of taking a “deliberative stance” (being respectful, sincere, and public-minded) is a good starting point for addressing both questions. By taking a deliberative stance, movements benefit from deliberation themselves and contribute to deliberative systems. However, we should also acknowledge that forms of deliberation change, and discovering new forms is a crucial part of what movements do for democracy. We propose to adopt a principle we call “reflective inclusion,” which allows us to engage abductively with new actions that might expand and deepen our ...
How does critical reflection happen? And what circumstances influence the forms critical reflecti... more How does critical reflection happen? And what circumstances influence the forms critical reflection takes and the issues it comes to address? Recent contributions suggest that we should pay greater attention to the ways social conditions and other factors affect what people reflect upon and how. Examining John Dewey’s perspective on the relationship between practical engagement, objects of knowledge, and democracy, this article develops a relational perspective. Dewey significantly affected how Jack Mezirow theorized transformative learning. But Mezirow’s theory is less attentive to the roles played by particular contextual features, such as structural circumstances, ideas and theories, and individuals’understanding and responses to diverse ways of viewing things and thinking. Rereading Dewey, this article suggests that these subtle features, or subtle “frames of reference,” help construct reflection. Consequently, to deepen critical reflection, these subtle features need to become ...
Razones, poder y reconocimiento en la deliberacion democratica. El caso del Presupuesto Participa... more Razones, poder y reconocimiento en la deliberacion democratica. El caso del Presupuesto Participativo en Rosario, Argentina
Cross-disciplinary initiatives are raising demand for participatory design methods that can be ap... more Cross-disciplinary initiatives are raising demand for participatory design methods that can be applied at different scales, from urban settlement planning to individual buildings. However, there is a gap in the literature in terms of participatory tools and processes for international design teams operating at the local level in geographically remote regions. This paper presents the findings from a series of design workshops carried out by an international and interdisciplinary team working with small communities of Andean farmers in north-west Argentina. The team used a blend of participatory tools including walkabouts, collective model-making and a bespoke method for collective drawing. The team also gathered contextual data via individual and community surveys. The study shows the importance of context (i.e social, economic, political and policy) in the decision making process of participants, and reflects on communication problems when working in geographically dispersed locations.
The theory of deliberative democracy suggests that public discourse should be guided by reasonabl... more The theory of deliberative democracy suggests that public discourse should be guided by reasonable arguments. In real life, power relations not only obstruct free exchanges of reasons but also shap ...
Local political leaders as well as international organizations have embraced participatory budget... more Local political leaders as well as international organizations have embraced participatory budgeting in response to problems of political exclusion and citizens’ dissatisfaction with representative democracy. This article provides a framework to highlight important aspects of the politics of participation. The framework allows scholars to explore how factors external to spaces of participation interact with aspects of participation within them. The framework conceptualizes participatory budgeting as political spaces, whose boundaries are shaped by ideologies, interests, and patterns of social exclusion. In dynamic spaces, such boundaries are constantly renegotiated and contestation helps maintain their openness. In static spaces, by contrast, predefined boundaries are imposed on participants who may accept or reject them. Empirical examples of participatory budgeting illustrate the usefulness of this framework. The article ends by discussing key avenues for further research.
Policies on preventing radicalization and recruitment to violent Islamist organizations have been... more Policies on preventing radicalization and recruitment to violent Islamist organizations have been widely criticized for reinforcing negative stereotypes of Muslims as a group. Sweden has stood out by international comparison by announcing an approach built on inclusion and participation, especially with regard to Muslim civil society. But what does it mean to make a policy process inclusive and participatory? How can values of inclusion and participation be combined with efficient implementation and realization of policy goals, especially in a policy area where discourse and practice have tended to reinforce patterns of exclusion and discrimination? This article develops a framework that puts the roles of participants at the center: what expectations, boundaries and capacities come with an invitation to participate? Based on interviews with actors involved in the Swedish policy process, including Muslim civil society leaders, the study suggests that participation, in this case, mean...
That citizens can trust leaders in politics and the public sphere to be sincere and truthful help... more That citizens can trust leaders in politics and the public sphere to be sincere and truthful helps to make democracy work. However, the idea of authentic communication raises both sociological and ethical questions. Scholars focusing on institutional conditions emphasize that audiences only have reasons to trust speakers that appear to have incentives to be truthful, unless they know them personally. However, theorists of ethics argue that authentic communication requires genuine commitment, which is conceptually at odds with self-interested reasoning. This article finds that both incentives and genuine commitment are necessary conditions for trustworthiness in speech, but neither is sufficient on its own. The problem is thus how to combine them. Examining the work of Habermas and Bourdieu, this article develops a relational perspective on authentic communication. It suggests that latent institutions can induce trust by making trustworthiness preferable, and still allow speakers to ...
Both advocates and critics of deliberative theory have regarded power relations as problems for p... more 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.
Abstract Rural perspectives in political debates are often dismissed as sentimental, narrowly sel... more Abstract Rural perspectives in political debates are often dismissed as sentimental, narrowly self-interested, and irrational. This paper reports findings that challenge this view. Applying a deliberative systems approach, it examines how rural perspectives are articulated in Swedish public discourse. It identifies four coherent discourses that promote distinct political values: economic growth, rural conservatism, democracy and solidarity. The results of the study indicate a need for further examination of rural political deliberation. Beyond the pluralism of rural perspectives, they demonstrate that these are coherent political positions that share an overlapping interest in challenging an urban norm in political debate while being otherwise in tension with one another. The competition between them is, moreover, further indicated by the finding that political leaders’ engage mostly with the discourse of economic growth, and to lesser extent rural conservatism and solidarity, while no party representative framed neglect of rural interests as a democratic concern.
What is the appropriate way to respond to actions that break basic norms of respectfulness, since... more What is the appropriate way to respond to actions that break basic norms of respectfulness, sincerity, and public-mindedness? At the same time as this question has become a central concern for democratic societies, a ‘systemic’ turn has unsettled established solutions for democratic theorists. From the systemic perspective, it is more important how actions contribute to public discourse than whether they meet standards of deliberation individually. This article challenges theorists to consider three additional propositions: (1) to be inclusive and deliberative, the system and its parts must be mutually supportive; (2) well-performing systems have sufficient reflective capacity to examine their own deficiencies when violations of basic norms occur; and (3) the performance of a deliberative system needs to take into account both the frequency of violations and the reflective qualities of the system’s response. For a well-performing system, violations of basic norms are opportunities t...
What should count as legitimate forms of reasoning in public deliberation is a contested issue. D... more What should count as legitimate forms of reasoning in public deliberation is a contested issue. Democratic theorists have argued that storytelling may offer a more accessible form of deliberation for marginalised citizens than ‘rational argumentation’. We investigate the empirical support for this claim by examining Swedish citizens’ use of storytelling in written communication with the political establishment. We test whether stories are used frequently, as well as by whom, and how they are used. We find that storytelling is (1) rare, (2) not more frequent among people with nonmainstream views, and (3) used together with rational argumentation. In line with some previous research, we show that stories still play other important roles: authorising the author, undermining political opponents and, most often, further supporting arguments made in ‘rational’ form. The results suggest that people rely more on rational argumentation than storytelling when expecting interlocutors to be hos...
Previous research has suggested that reflective “meta-deliberation,” or discussions about how dis... more Previous research has suggested that reflective “meta-deliberation,” or discussions about how discussions proceed, can help to address patterns of marginalization. This article suggests, however, that moving to a meta level is not in itself a solution, since it may easily bring along such patterns. Inequalities persist through specific mechanisms that may be present in both ordinary deliberation and meta-deliberation. We explore such mechanisms empirically, by focusing on experiences of people that were excluded from discussions to which they were uniquely qualified to contribute. Our case is the 2013 Stockholm riots, and our interviewees are people who live, work, and engage in local civil society groups in the affected neighborhoods. These interviews helped us identify five mechanisms that affect a society’s capacity for reflective uptake in both ordinary deliberation and meta-deliberation: (1) imposition of preexisting narratives, (2) inclusion of locally dominant actors, (3) dis...
Cooperation between movements and political elites are frequently associated with the risk of coo... more Cooperation between movements and political elites are frequently associated with the risk of cooptation. Because it undercuts contentious actors, cooptation may seem rational for elites that seek to protect their interests. However, recent scholarship questions whether this view is empirically valid. Adding to these debates, this article demonstrates that even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that elites always act to maintain power, cooptation may often not be the rational choice of strategy. This article presents a typology of elite responses that focuses on three phases of elite–movement interaction: preparatory, term-setting, and confrontation phases. In each phase, elites’ choice between cooptation and conditional cooperation depends on whether legitimacy appears instrumental to achieve their goals. Cooperation, as opposed to cooptation, generates legitimacy and can, therefore, be used strategically by movements.
Social movements seek to influence views on environmental issues and put pressure on policy-maker... more Social movements seek to influence views on environmental issues and put pressure on policy-makers in a range of related areas. But alongside their specific goals, they also often strive to create space for genuine deliberation about the need for societal transformation. This 'dual orientation' places them theoretically between social movement studies' focus on strategic considerations and the 'sincere' (truthful) communication envisioned by democratic theorists to be a condition for 'authentic' deliberation, in which actors genuinely seek to understand each other's views. Engaging with both fields of theory, a framework is developed for separating actions that are strategic, sincere and employ sincerity as strategy. Actors choose sincerity as a strategy when they practice truthful reasoning as a means to advance their interests in the public sphere. As illustrated by green movements, the concept captures how activists may handle three risks in public discourse: commercialization, politicization and idealization.
The term ‘meta-deliberation’ refers to processes of addressing problems with the way that convers... more The term ‘meta-deliberation’ refers to processes of addressing problems with the way that conversations about shared concerns – our ordinary deliberations – proceed. This article discusses the distinction between meta-deliberation and ordinary deliberation and examines three questions raised by previous arguments about meta-deliberation: (1) what kinds of communication should count as meta-deliberation, (2) does meta-deliberation always lead to reflective understanding and improvements in practices of deliberation, and (3) why would deliberative systems need meta-deliberation? Consistent with the systemic perspective on deliberation, this article suggests an inclusive view of which acts and sites may contribute to processes of meta-deliberation: it argues that meta-deliberation faces the same potential problems as ordinary deliberation, such as unequal power relations and narrow perspectives, and therefore requires careful examination; but when meta-deliberation works, it provides s...
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Papers by Markus Holdo