A Discussion of Deliberative Democracy and its implementation

Politics, 1996

This paper inspects recent theoretical work in deliberative democracy. It identifies three distinct ways in which such theories attempt to justify their claims for an increase in deliberation. Each has its strengths; each has its implications for practice. If the new deliberative theories are to move beyond a critique of liberal democracy in order to articulate a legitimate and practical politics, the respective gains of these three types must be brought together.

Critical Policy Studies, 2016

This editorial introduction presents an overview of the themes explored in the symposium on 'Deliberative Systems in Theory and Practice'. The concept of 'deliberative system' has gained renewed attention among deliberative democrats. A systemic approach to deliberative democracy opens up a new way of thinking about public deliberation. However, as the key protagonists responsible for the systemic resurgence acknowledge, the framework requires greater theoretical critical scrutiny and empirical investigation. The symposium will contribute to this endeavor by bringing together cutting edge research on the theory and practice of deliberative systems. This introduction offers a brief outline and review of the existing systemic approaches to deliberation, articulating the overlaps and differences and reflecting on the prospects and problems of each. In doing so, we take a generational approach that delineates the development of deliberative democracy into three generations, and argue that the focus on deliberative systems has implications that are so significant for the examination of theory and practice that it heralds a fourth generation for deliberative democracy. We conclude this introduction by providing a brief synopsis of each paper and highlighting the significance of the debates for critical policy studies.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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...

P roposed as a reformist and sometimes even as a radical political ideal, deliberative democracy begins with the critique of the standard practices of liberal democracy. Although the idea can be traced to Dewey and Arendt and then further back to Rousseau and even Aristotle, in its recent incarnation the term stems from Joseph Bessette, who explicitly coined it to oppose the elitist or`a ristocratic'' interpretation of the American Constitution. 1 These legitimate heirs to the tradition of``radical'' democracy have always tempered their vision of popular and inclusive participation with an emphasis on public discussion, reasoning and judgment. It is now also tempered by concerns for feasibility. In developments over the last decade, proponents of deliberative democracy have moved further away from participatory conceptions of citizenship and the common good and towards the very institutions they originally rejected as impossible locations for public reasoning. This new, practical emphasis on feasibility is perhaps the most striking feature of the recent boom in theories of deliberative democracy that I will survey here. Far from being merely à`r ealistic'' accommodation to existing arrangements, I show that this concern with feasibility leads to a richer normative theory and to a fuller conception of the problems and prospects for deliberation and democracy in the contemporary world.

Democratic Innovation: Deliberation, Representation and Association, edited by M. Saward, 2000

A critique of the theory of deliberative democracy.

The potential advantages and disadvantages of a deliberative democratic body have been the subject of a number of works of political theory. Its likely rationalising influence has been referenced as the possible solution to deep social disputes, while the inclusion of regular citizens in the deliberative process could potentially help re-enfranchise those disillusioned with purely representative politics. Nevertheless, a number of possible obstacles to such a body have been identified, from impracticalities of scale, to the distorting effect of the media, the commitment required by citizens, and the possible domination of deliberation by rhetoric.

2002

This article investigates 16 organizations that attempt to foster better public deliberation in local and national communities. It develops a typology of these organizations and discusses them in the context of the scholarly literature on deliberative democracy. It particularly focuses upon the contributions these organizations may make to debates within the literature between advocates of relational and rational modes of deliberation.

Annual Review of Political Science, 2005

▪ The growing literature on deliberative democratic practice finds that deliberation is a difficult and relatively rare form of communication. Each moment of a deliberative encounter raises significant obstacles in the path to stimulating greater intentional reflection on public issues. I explore these obstacles in the context of other empirical work in political and social psychology, small group communication, and public opinion. Taken together, these literatures explain why deliberation is difficult to achieve and sustain over time. They also suggest several rules that might assist practitioners in making deliberative democracy work better. Many of the obstacles to deliberative democracy raise questions about key theoretical constructs closely associated with deliberative democratic theory, including equality, legitimacy, autonomy, and reason. I conclude by suggesting that deliberative practitioners, empirical scholars, and theorists might gain from greater interaction.

Democratic theory, 2015

Stephen Elstub articulates that deliberative democracy, as a theory, can be seen as having gone through various distinct generations. The first generation was a period where the normative values and the justifications for deliberative democracy were set out. This prompted criticism from difference democrats who saw the exclusion of other forms of communication by the reification of reason in deliberation as a serious shortcoming of the theory. This in part prompted the growth of the second generation of deliberative democracy, which began to focus more on the theory's operability. These theorizations, from the mostly 1990s and early 2000s, have led to the third generation of the theory-one embodied by the empirical turn. Elstub uses this genealogy as a foundation from which to argue that the current focus of deliberative democracy is on implementing deliberative systems rather than only deliberative institutions and this could potentially represent a fourth generation of deliberative democracy.

Democracy is not the rule of the elite over the rest. If a society truly believes in Lincoln's ideal of democracy as a government 'of the people, by the people and for the people', the participants of the society cannot solely rely on their elected representatives. If democracy has to thrive in a society, citizens need to engage themselves actively in the law making process. This paper analyses deliberative democracy as a model form of government, wherein law-making is not just a voice of the majority. It focuses on the importance of consensus, rather than on the majority vote. At the same time it focuses on providing reasons for political decisions. However, informed decisions cannot be made without access to information. The role of media reporting of legislative proceedings becomes sine qua non in a deliberative democracy set-up in order to ensure that citizens are informed and involved in the law making process. The paper focuses on the importance of the reporting of the legislative process by the media in order to ensure deliberativeness.