Deliberative Democracy and a Vibrant Public Sphere

In the last few years, deliberative democracy has developed rapidly from a "theoretical statement" into a "working theory" . Scholars and practitioners have launched numerous initiatives designed to put deliberative democracy into practice, ranging from deliberative polling to citizen summits (see Fung 2003;. At the same time, deliberation has made inroads in empirical (or positive) political science as well. A small but growing body of literature has tried to tackle this question of the connection between the normative standards of deliberation, how well they are met, and the empirical consequences of meeting them. Empirical research has peered into a variety of real-world settings, such as international negotiations Risse 2000; Ulbert and Risse 2005; Panke 2006), national legislatures (Steiner et al. 2004; Mucciaroni and Quirk 2006), mediation processes (Holzinger 2001), ordinary citizens before elections and referenda (Kriesi 2005), social movements (Della Porta 2005), everyday talk (Searing et al. 2007), and formal settings such as deliberative opinion polls (Luskin et al. 2004). Efforts in this field have been accompanied by increasing methodological sophistication, not least involving several attempts to quantify the quality of deliberation (e.g., Holzinger 2001; Steenbergen et al. 2004).

2010

Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 2014

This essay locates deliberation and deliberative theory as an important strand in a larger interdisciplinary and political movement, civic agency. The civic agency movement, and its related politics, a politics of civic empowerment, include a set of developing practices and concepts which enhance the capacities of diverse groups of people to work across differences to solve problems, create things of common value, and negotiate a shared democratic way of life. Stirrings of civic agency can be seen in many settings, including efforts to recover the civic purposes and revitalize the civic cultures of institutions such as schools and colleges.

Srpska politička misao

With all its flaws, a deliberative democracy presents a very important democratic concept – a concept that needs to be improved, but also a concept that needs to be understood. This article aims to present basic concepts of both deliberative democracy and its critiques, providing an updated basic for further discussion, development, and evolution of the concept. Reviewing all relevant concepts, streams, and critics is a demanding and time-consuming task, but hopefully, this article will be able to help researchers as a starting point for the research of this impressive concept – a concept that certainly is not flawless but its importance is beyond doubt.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2019

Defined expansively as the exchange of politically relevant justifications, political deliberation occurs at many sites in the democratic system. It is also performed by several different types of actors. Here, we review political deliberation based on who is deliberating and what role these deliberations play in making binding decisions. First, ordinary citizens frequently deliberate in informal settings. While these discussions often fail to live up to the standards outlined by deliberative theorists, they typically correlate with other democratic goods, such as increased political participation. Second, there have been several attempts in recent years to construct the conditions necessary for quality deliberation among citizens by organizing small-group discussions in semi-formal settings. Proponents of such discussions argue that they promote a variety of democratic goods, such as political knowledge and better-justified political decisions, and as such should be incorporated in...

Journal of Public Affairs, 2009

In the mass democratic polities of today, the role of citizens remains confined largely to that of voting for members of elected legislatures. Beyond that, there is scant opportunity for ‘the public’ to participate in any meaningful sense in most of the tasks that make up the policy-making process. Indeed, influencing that process is typically viewed as the sole prerogative of technocratic experts, organized interests, and elected officials. This presumption is buttressed (and rationalized) by a too-ready acceptance of the platitude that citizens are generally uninformed, unskilled, and uninterested in the work of democratic self-government.We begin with a definition of ‘deliberative democracy’.We then briefly consider its connection to the concept of democracy more generally and argue that the moral authority of the former follows from that of the latter.From both the developing and the developed worlds, we draw several examples of institutionalized deliberative participation. In some, institutionalization has been sustained; in others, it has not been sustained.Reflecting on these examples, we consider the ‘lessons learned’ from these and other cases. We identify costs, difficulties and limitations associated with institutionalizing participatory public deliberation as well as the benefits and advantages thereof.Finally, we briefly outline a proposal for an Australian experiment that might serve as a learning model for subsequent efforts there and elsewhere to ‘institutionalize’ participatory citizen deliberation.Institutionalizing deliberative participation would not replace representative government, but rather would supplement it, enabling democratic governments to reflect and respond better to the values, priorities and aspirations of the people they ostensibly serve.We offer this practice-orientated paper as a discussion paper intended to introduce readers to the idea of institutionalizing participatory public deliberation and to generate constructive debate concerning it. We do not presume to provide a rigorous analysis of the concept or of any of the many issues surrounding it. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.In the mass democratic polities of today, the role of citizens remains confined largely to that of voting for members of elected legislatures. Beyond that, there is scant opportunity for ‘the public’ to participate in any meaningful sense in most of the tasks that make up the policy-making process. Indeed, influencing that process is typically viewed as the sole prerogative of technocratic experts, organized interests, and elected officials. This presumption is buttressed (and rationalized) by a too-ready acceptance of the platitude that citizens are generally uninformed, unskilled, and uninterested in the work of democratic self-government.We begin with a definition of ‘deliberative democracy’.We then briefly consider its connection to the concept of democracy more generally and argue that the moral authority of the former follows from that of the latter.From both the developing and the developed worlds, we draw several examples of institutionalized deliberative participation. In some, institutionalization has been sustained; in others, it has not been sustained.Reflecting on these examples, we consider the ‘lessons learned’ from these and other cases. We identify costs, difficulties and limitations associated with institutionalizing participatory public deliberation as well as the benefits and advantages thereof.Finally, we briefly outline a proposal for an Australian experiment that might serve as a learning model for subsequent efforts there and elsewhere to ‘institutionalize’ participatory citizen deliberation.We begin with a definition of ‘deliberative democracy’.We then briefly consider its connection to the concept of democracy more generally and argue that the moral authority of the former follows from that of the latter.From both the developing and the developed worlds, we draw several examples of institutionalized deliberative participation. In some, institutionalization has been sustained; in others, it has not been sustained.Reflecting on these examples, we consider the ‘lessons learned’ from these and other cases. We identify costs, difficulties and limitations associated with institutionalizing participatory public deliberation as well as the benefits and advantages thereof.Finally, we briefly outline a proposal for an Australian experiment that might serve as a learning model for subsequent efforts there and elsewhere to ‘institutionalize’ participatory citizen deliberation.Institutionalizing deliberative participation would not replace representative government, but rather would supplement it, enabling democratic governments to reflect and respond better to the values, priorities and aspirations of the people they ostensibly serve.We offer this practice-orientated paper as a discussion paper intended to introduce readers to the idea of institutionalizing participatory public deliberation and to generate constructive debate concerning it. We do not presume to provide a rigorous analysis of the concept or of any of the many issues surrounding it.

2010

In a growing number of communities across the globe, individuals are turning to more deliberative and collaborative processes—such as community dialogues, issue forums, stakeholder negotiation processes, and other inclusive public participation efforts 1—in order to address their most important problems. Deliberative democracy is an approach to politics in which citizens, not just experts or politicians, are deeply involved in public decision making and problem-solving.

Acta Politica, 2005

Deliberative democracy has emerged as a leading concern of political theory and its principles have guided over a 1,000 experiments in citizen participation in local governance. Despite its importance, very little systematic empirical research has been conducted. Here an attempt is made to enumerate the key questions that should guide empirical research on the deliberative capacities of ordinary citizens, the qualities of the deliberative processes in which they participate and the effects of deliberation on collective outcomes and on individual participants. The paper closes with a discussion of the likely results of this research and their implications for a possible reconstruction of the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.

ASPA International Seminar on Innovative Governance, 2012

When the wave of democratization swept through Indonesia, it was altered and impacted nearly every aspect of social life. It noticed a change from a centralized to a decentralized system, with opportunities and difficulties emerging. The shift toward decentralization poses a significant challenge for government, particularly in terms of public policy, because the democratic era offers the public access to information through a variety of media as well as widespread freedom of expression. As a result, it indirectly calls for public participation in formulating policy. With this circumstance, the government ought to be able to innovate and adapt to manage various challenges and turn them into opportunities for good governance. Contrarily, several government initiatives to increase citizen involvement in public policy still need to demonstrate effective citizen involvement, necessitating the urgent need for innovations that can genuinely engage citizens and take into account their aspirations. Deliberative public policy is one of the feasible innovations to meet the demands of citizen participation in the democratic era. Government and citizenry are the two main pillars on which this innovation is based, and both need to develop cooperation and bolster equal positions in the public policy-making process. Additionally, these innovations will enable the government to strengthen democratic governance while minimizing conflict between the two parties that often arise during the public policy process. This essay will discuss the concept of public deliberation. Keywords: deliberative public policy, public involvement, public sphere, democracy

It is never frivolous to consider an aspect of democracy such as deliberative democracy. Discursive democracy as it is also known centres on decision-making, a feature that is one of the many features of democracy, it is important to bring to the purview the different inherent characteristics of deliberative democracy to better appraise it relevance and redundancy in the scope of democracy. This essay is preoccupied with an exposition of the central theme; discursive democracy and in order to comprehensively accomplish this, this essay shall adopt the critical tool of philosophical inquiry to query the tenets of deliberative democracy it disadvantageousness to the requirement of inclusivity as championed by general notion of democracy. The element of democracy has been argued to come to bear, pre-eminently within the structural apparatus of deliberative democracy. The question of how deliberation (deliberative democracy) affects decision-making has been answered by a wide variety of scholars from different disciplines, across several countries, at different sites within the deliberative system. It has been a rich source of discussion between theorists and empirical social scientists and has occasionally crossed over the bounds of research into the realm of an applied science. The modern scope of democracy has been preoccupied with providing prompt solutions to embattling issues of governance in democracy due to the delay or slow in decision making, how can deliberative democracy that seeks to reach political decisions through a product of mere discussion?

Deliberative Democracy: Theory, criticism and implementation with modern technology

Journal of deliberative democracy, 2006

This article addresses the challenges of scaling up deliberative democracy beyond the level of individual communities. It begins with a general discussion of the problems that scope poses for deliberative democratic practice. It then proceeds to look critically at a range of initiatives that have, in recent years, attempted to overcome these problems in the American context. The concluding sections suggest guidelines and concepts aimed at helping practitioners approach large-scale public engagement more strategically, as well as areas that research and theory should explore.

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.