bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Equity and Inclusion in Online Community Forums: An Interview with Steven Clift
Authors: Abdullah Carolyne , Karpowitz Christopher F. , Raphael Chad
Published: May 2020

Online forums pose unique challenges and opportunities for creating equitable public discussions. In this interview, Steven Clift, Executive Director and Founder of E-Democracy.org, shares lessons learned about how to attract new immigrants and refugees to place-based online communities, seeding and facilitating discussions among ethnically diverse residents, and fostering civil discourse. He emphasizes that building a thriving and diverse neighborhood forum online depends on providing spaces where people can discuss community life, exchange free goods, and talk about civic issues in ways that arise organically from people’s everyday concerns, rather than recruiting people to a primarily political forum, which tends to attract privileged residents whose voices often dominate in offline politics. Clift also reflects on the implications for equity of the changing technological landscape for online deliberations, from the rise of Yahoo! Groups to Facebook Groups to commercial neighborhood sites, such as Nextdoor.com. As the Internet becomes integrated into all aspects of everyday life, Clift’s insights can help us to envision how inclusive online forums can be incorporated into many kinds of public engagement.
Equity in School Forums: An Interview with John Landesman
Authors: Abdullah Carolyne , Karpowitz Christopher F. , Raphael Chad
Published: May 2020

American school boards, parent teacher associations, and other school forums are crucial sites for participatory and deliberative democracy, yet they often involve debilitating inequities of power among school officials and parents, adults and students, and parents from more and less privileged backgrounds. In this interview, John Landesman, a Senior Associate at Everyday Democracy, discusses how he addresses power differences in dialogues aimed at improving parental participation and student learning in a diverse school district outside Washington, DC. Landesman argues that developing a robust equity strategy from the start is the only way to meet the aims of dialogue that strives to include a variety of perspectives. Landesman also shares insights into how to practice equity at each stage of organizing a dialogue, from inclusive recruitment and retention of participants, to forum design and facilitation, to evaluating and implementing the group’s plans. Like many contributors to this issue, he argues that specific equity strategies should flow from the goals of a particular dialogue. He also discusses how Everyday Democracy has employed affinity group discussions, which create safe places for members of non-dominant groups to speak with each other as one stage of a community-wide dialogue.
The Economic Argument for Engagement: New Directions for Research
Authors: Leighninger Matt
Published: May 2020

What is the economic argument for public engagement? Around the world, public officials and other leaders have devised new ways to engage citizens in decision-making and problem-solving – but typically they have focused on planning, budgeting, and schools rather than poverty, inequality, or other economic issues. Meanwhile, emerging evidence from Brazil and other parts of the Global South suggests that sustained patterns of engagement builds social capital, which in turn has an impact on a range of indicators, including economic inequality and the distribution of wealth. This article summarizes several disparate areas of research on the connections between engagement and inequality, and suggest new questions and directions for innovation.
Discourse Quality in Deliberative Citizen Forums – A Comparison of Four Deliberative Mini-publics
Authors: Himmelroos Staffan
Published: May 2020

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in studies reporting findings from a variety of deliberative citizen forums. Such studies help to develop our understanding of deliberative democracy by exploring changes in opinion and knowledge as well as - more recently - the quality of the deliberative process itself. However, most deliberative forums are organized on an ad hoc basis, making it hard to judge how generalizable the findings from such forums actually are. This article attempts to address this problem by comparing the findings on the quality of deliberation from four different citizen forums. Based on the findings citizen deliberation is generally very respectful, while argumentation is less refined than among elected representatives. The cases included in this study also suggest that women and those with lower education have less influence in the deliberative process.
From Code to Discourse: Social Media and Linkage Mechanisms in Deliberative Systems
Authors: Lyons Benjamin A.
Published: May 2020

Scholars have increasingly examined less formal conceptions of public deliberation, coinciding with a shift to the deliberative systems approach. However, few have grappled with how, or how well, discussions in distributed spaces connect to one another. Those who have theorized about such “linkage” have done so in an unsatisfactorily broad manner (Parkisnon, 2016). This article addresses this gap in the context of social media by reviewing the literature on platforms’ technical features and emergent discursive forms, and considering the capacity for these to link flows of deliberation as they evolve online and approach empowered spaces. Avenues for future research are discussed.
A Randomly Selected Chamber: Promises and Challenges
Authors: Vandamme Pierre-Etienne , Verret-Hamelin Antoine
Published: May 2020

This paper explores the idea of a randomly selected chamber of representatives (RSC) through an appreciation of the promises it offers and the challenges it would face. We identify two main promises: a RSC could offset the aristocratic character of elections, thereby increasing the legitimacy of the political system; and it could increase democracy’s epistemic potential, thanks to gains in terms of diversity, deliberations, humility, and long-term perspective. We then discuss four key challenges. First, participation: how can the chamber have diversity without mandatory participation or heavy sanctions? Second, how can we conceive or build legitimacy for this non-elected and somehow unaccountable chamber’s views? Third, independence: how to safeguard randomly selected people from corruption? Finally, there may be a linguistic challenge: if the RSC has a deliberative role, how should it cope with the possible linguistic diversity of its members? We conclude that these challenges are not insurmountable, but reveal some trade-offs that cannot be entirely dissolved.
Reason, Deliberation, and Democracy in Divided Societies: Perspectives from the Jafari School of Thought
Authors: Pirsoul Nicolas
Published: May 2020

In this article I argue that because of its emphasis on the use of reason, the Jafari Islamic school of thought is not only compatible with, but even promotes certain forms of deliberative democracy. I particularly focus on how this characteristic offers a valuable conceptual tool to promote peace and justice in deeply divided societies. My argument is grounded in traditional Shia theology and history but develops a political framework embedded within contemporary political theory. I distinguish this democratic political framework from the theocratic model of Wilayat-ul-Faqih, the political system currently being applied in Iran, and argue that an emphasis on rational argumentation opens a path towards reconciliation between Islamic principles and democracy. I analyse the potential benefits of deliberative democracy for Shias in both Middle Eastern societies and the West.
Deliberative Technology: A Holistic Lens for Interpreting Resources and Dynamics in Deliberation
Authors: Sandfort Jodi , Quick Kathryn
Published: May 2020

We introduce the concept of deliberative technology as an integrative framework to encapsulate how facilitators and participants bring different resources into use in deliberative processes. It serves as a holistic lens to observe, explain, and intervene constructively in the unpredictable, emergent dynamics of deliberative processes. We developed the concept of deliberative technology inductively through ethnographic analysis of three deliberative processes. In the three cases, the deliberative processes and their results were quite different, despite common resources, policy contexts, and purposes. We articulate a typology of general types of potential resources for deliberation – methodological techniques, material objects, and conceptual frameworks – and show how they interact with the policy context and the dynamics of the facilitators and participants to produce the deliberative technologies of the three cases.
The prism of the public sphere: The COP15 coverage by the Brazilian media system
Authors: Lycarião Diogenes , Wozniak Antal
Published: May 2020

Current studies of political communication offer valuable contributions to assessing and measuring mediated deliberation. But in our understanding of the news media's role in a deliberative system a number of questions remain unanswered, especially concerning problems posed by social complexity. This paper aims to contribute to closing this gap by conducting an empirical analysis on how distinct contributions to public deliberation – namely the provision of publicity and intelligibility – are articulated via outputs offered by different types of media outlets, specifically in the case of the Brazilian coverage of the 15th UN’s Climate Change Conference (COP15). Our results suggest that this coverage seems to have fostered citizens to search for more information about this Conference and augmented the visibility of UN’s climate negotiations. This gives support to the idea that news media system works like a prism of the public sphere, promoting accountability of complex governance processes by offering information and public scrutiny adequate for a heterogeneous citizenry.
Review of Deliberation across Deeply Divided Societies: Transformative Moments by Jürg Steiner, Maria Clara Jaramillo, Rousiley C. M. Maia, Simona Mameli (Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Authors: Vamvakas Nancy A.
Published: May 2020

Review of Deliberation across Deeply Divided Societies: Transformative Moments. by Jürg Steiner, Maria Clara Jaramillo, Rousiley C. M. Maia, Simona Mameli (Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Prompting Deliberation about Nanotechnology: Information, Instruction, and Discussion Effects on Individual Engagement and Knowledge
Authors: PytlikZillig Lisa M. , Hutchens Myiah J. , Muhlberger Peter , Tomkins Alan J.
Published: May 2020

Deliberative (and educational) theories typically predict knowledge gains will be enhanced by information structure and discussion. In two studies, we experimentally manipulated key features of deliberative public engagement (information, instructions, and discussion) and measured impacts on cognitive-affective engagement and knowledge about nanotechnology. We also examined the direct and moderating impacts of individual differences in need for cognition and gender. Findings indicated little impact of information (organized by topic or by pro-con relevance). Instructions (prompts to think critically) decreased engagement in Study 1, and increased it in Study 2, but did not impact post-knowledge. Group discussion had strong positive benefits for self-reported cognitive-affective engagement across studies. Also, for some types of engagement, effects were more positive for women than men. When predicting knowledge, there also was some evidence that discussion was more positive for women than men. Finally, need for cognition positively predicted engagement and knowledge gains, but rarely moderated the experimental effects. Given these mixed results, future research should continue to test theoretical assumptions about the effects of specific deliberative design features.
Explaining Political Efficacy in Deliberative Procedures - A Novel Methodological Approach
Authors: Geissel Brigitte , Hess Pamela
Published: May 2020

So far, not much research has been done explaining the change of political efficacy in deliberative procedures, and case studies or experiments prevail in the field. Quantitative, systematic studies of real-life cases are missing. This article contributes to filling this gap. It identifies factors which lead to increased group-related political efficacy in deliberative procedures applying an almost novel method, i.e. a quantitative meta-synthesis combining and aggregating data from case studies. The study focuses exemplarily on Germany. The findings indicate that an improvement of political efficacy is more likely when deliberative procedures take place in a municipality, which has institutionalized citizens’ involvement in a local ‘participatory plan’ (‘local constitution’) and provides respective staff.
The Influence of Communication- and Organization-Related Factors on Interest in Participation in Campus Dialogic Deliberation
Authors: Paul Gregory D.
Published: May 2020

Grounded in participatory democracy principles, deliberation is designed to foster collaborative and thoughtful decision-making communication. On college campuses, deliberation can lead to a number of individual and organizational consequences, particularly for students, who may not believe that they have a significant voice in decision-making. Although deliberation ostensibly enables students to make their voices heard, the factors that shape students’ interest in participation in such deliberation remain unclear. This study explored how communication and campus factors influence students’ interest in and perceived helpfulness of dialogic deliberation participation. This manuscript concludes with recommendations for the development of campus-based and community-oriented deliberation programs.
Focus Group Discussions as Sites for Public Deliberation and Sensemaking Following Shared Political Documentary Viewing
Authors: Pitts Margaret Jane , Kenski Kate , Smith Stephanie A. , Pavlich Corey A.
Published: May 2020

This study examines the potential that shared political documentary viewing coupled with public deliberation via focus group discussion has for political sensemaking and civic engagement. Specifically, we examine college students’ perceptions of sensemaking, future civic engagement, and benefits of participating in group discussion following the shared viewing of D’Souza’s political documentary 2016: Obama’s America. Focus group participants reported that engaging in discussion served to clarify, affirm, and reinforce some initial impressions while opening their eyes to new insights and information. Focus group participation triggered a desire to seek out and hear additional diverse points of view and offered participants the opportunity to diffuse negative emotions and reflect upon media content. Participants reported that they enjoyed participating in this form of guided discussion, reported increased confidence in their abilities to engage in public political deliberation, and reported feeling a call to future civic action. Our findings show that political documentary viewing coupled with focus group discussions can be a productive site for public deliberation that can lead to enhanced sensemaking and positive future civic behaviors including intentions to extend discussions to personal networks and to research issues raised in the discussion or documentary. We address implications for deliberative pedagogy and focus groups as public deliberation.
Authority and Deliberative Moments: Assessing Equality and Inequality in Deeply Divided Groups
Authors: Maia Rousiley C. M. , Cal Danila , Bargas Janine K. R. , Oliveira Vanessa V. , Rossini Patrícia G. C. , Sampaio Rafael C.
Published: May 2020

The notion of equality is central to public deliberation, but few researches have examined how participants construct interactions in face-to-face group discussion involving unequal conditions of authority. This study analyses discussion between slum residents and police officers in Brazil, focusing on both reciprocal and hierarchical relationships in the flow of deliberation. It contributes to explain that the expression of authority is far from straightforward. Looking at a range of authority sources (expertise, functional position, tradition, life experience) that serve to situate and re-situate participants in relation to each other in discussion dynamics helps clarifying what goes on in deliberative moments. Findings reveal that personal experiences prevail in deliberative moments whereas functional credentials predominate in non-deliberative ones. Yet, the case demonstrates that functional authority is not necessarily dominative but can be combined with certain behaviors (such as empathetic imagination, search for commonalities and self-criticism) that lead to reciprocal interactions. This study provides important insights for organizing deliberation more effectively in contexts of fear, mistrust and resentment.
“Nothing about politics”: The political scope in rural participatory governance, a case-study in the Basque Country, Spain
Authors: García-Espín Patricia
Published: May 2020

Participatory mechanisms are understood as settings for citizens’ political engagement. However, participants frequently depict these institutions as nonpolitical. In this paper, the political scope of participatory institutions is examined through a case-study of town meetings (concejos abiertos) in the Basque Country (Spain). Through ethnographic observation and interviews with 53 participants, we analyze how participants deal with public issues, and how they limit or expand the political scope of their participation. In concejos, participants talk about “small deliberation” issues such as sewers or water installations. They reject partisan issues in their everyday engagement. However, they cultivate a culture of self-management, and embark on political campaigns on selective issues. The political scope of this institution is opened and closed by participants according to cultural and organizational conditions. In the end, small deliberation on community issues can be a basis for further engagement on broader political concerns. Small deliberation –if sustained over time- is not as small as it seemed initially.
Reading Between the Lines of Participation: Tenant Participation and Participatory Budgeting in Toronto Community Housing
Authors: Foroughi Behrang
Published: May 2020

Participatory Budgeting (PB) is currently practiced in more than a dozen of American cities. It is indicated by the White House as best practice in civic engagement and by scholars as a new wave of democratic innovation. With the enthusiastic spread of PB in the US, it is imperative to continuously integrate reflective learning to sustain and enhance its impact. In this paper, I share learning drawn form the practice of PB at the Toronto Community Housing (TCH), highlighting a host of communicative and procedural challenges, hindering the growth of collaborative partnerships among the management, staff and the tenants. I demonstrate that the stakeholders have developed differing perspectives and multiple experiences with regard to tenant participation, and in consequence, participation has been molded into a rather confusing format. The weakest link, I argue, has been a lack of deliberation on a participatory vision: what it is that PB and tenant participation must achieve.
For more Transparency in Deliberative Research. Implications for Deliberative Praxis
Authors: Mameli Simona , Steiner Jürg
Published: May 2020

Coding decisions in deliberative research are almost never justified. We show with our own research how transparency in the coding decisions helps deliberate practitioners better to relate to deliberate research and in this way to acquire deliberative skills.
Dramatizing Deliberation: A Method for Encouraging Young People to Think About Their Rights
Authors: Coleman Stephen , Weston Sarah
Published: May 2020

Nine ‘youth juries’ were established across three major British cities – London, Leeds and Nottingham -, each comprising twelve 12-to-17 year-olds who were invited to act as ‘jurors’ with a view to ‘putting the Internet on trial’. This article outlines the method that was designed for conducting these juries, focusing upon two innovative features: the organisation of deliberative juries, based upon a four-step process for arriving at policy recommendations; and the use of dramatic scenarios, intended to make relatable to personal experience what might otherwise have been regarded as abstract policy principles.
Democracy Transformed: Perceived Legitimacy of the Institutional Shift from Election to Random Selection of Representatives
Authors: Pek Simon , Kennedy Jeffrey , Cronkright Adam
Published: May 2020

While democracy remains a firmly-held ideal, the present state of electoral democracy is plagued by growing disaffection. As a result, both scholars and practitioners have shown considerable interest in the potential of random selection as a means of selecting political representatives. Despite its potential, deployment of this alternative is limited by concerns about its perceived legitimacy. Drawing on an inductive analysis of the replacement of elections with random selection in two student governments in Bolivia, we explore stakeholders’ perceptions of the legitimacy of random selection by investigating both their overall support for randomly selecting representatives as well as the views that inform this support. Overall, we find that random selection is indeed accepted as a legitimate means of selecting representatives, with stakeholders broadly preferring random selection and recommending its use in other schools—views which are informed by a critical assessment of random selection’s relative merits. Moreover, we find that perceptions may be affected by contextual factors that extend beyond individuals’ own values. Our findings thus contribute to work on random selection, its contextual embeddedness, and on the values underpinning democratic structures.
The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Ikhwanweb: Deliberative Ethic/Voice in a Counterpublic’s Rhetoric?
Authors: Bardhan Soumia
Published: May 2020

Using counterpublic theory as framework and situating the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as a counterpublic, counterpublics being alternative, non-dominant publics who voice their oppositional needs and values through diverse discursive practices, the goal of this study is to: (a) Examine, in the context of the years preceding the 2011 Egyptian uprising, whether the Egyptian MB, as a counterpublic, portrays a deliberative ethic/voice in its cyber rhetoric; (b) Explore whether traditional/Western ideas of deliberation are upheld or challenged in the cyber rhetoric of the Egyptian MB; and (c) Comment on the role of Ikhwanweb, as a counterpublic sphere, in providing the Egyptian MB a space to demonstrate its deliberative potential. By looking for traits and evidences of deliberative ethic in the Egyptian MB’s cyber rhetoric—in a ‘text’ produced by an Islamist organization functioning within a secular/authoritarian socio-political ‘context’—the overarching purpose of this analysis is to make sense of : (a) an Islamist organization’s role as a counterpublic and its deliberative potential in a non-democratic setting; (b) the implications of this for thinking about deliberation between diverse groups of social agents in non-democratic cultures; and (c) the role of the Internet in facilitating counterpublics’ deliberative potential in authoritarian contexts. Thus, from a heuristic standpoint, this study is an endeavor towards contributing to a key question that animates public deliberation: how can we engage/engage with voices that hold (or are assumed to hold) anti-deliberative attitudes and/or those that operate within non-democratic socio-political contexts?
Outsourcing Participatory Democracy: Critical Reflections on the Participatory Budgeting Experiences in Taiwan
Authors: Wan Poe Yu-ze
Published: May 2020

This article attempts to critically examine the experiences of participatory budgeting (PB) that have proliferated across Taiwan’s cities over the past three years. It is argued that PB in Taiwan remains an isolated initiative instead of an integral part of a comprehensive administrative reform. What makes Taiwan’s PB experiences theoretically interesting is that, in most cases outside the Taipei City, the tasks of promoting PB, designing the procedure of participation, and organizing and mobilizing lay citizens have been contracted out to NGOs or teams led by scholars.In light of the analytical framework of state power - political society - civil society, this article argues that (1) PB in Taiwan takes place in the absence of active support from civil society and confronts a political society that is hostile to or skeptical of PB; (2) the “outsourced” model of PB generates incentives for the commissioner to evade administrative and political responsibilities, and imposes structural constraints on the performance of the contractor regarding mobilization, organizing and deliberative quality; and (3) the future of PB in Taiwan depends on whether the current modus operandi of PB will give way to a more comprehensive institutional reform and whether a growing number of active citizens and civil society organizations can fill the new political space created by PB that may otherwise be occupied by vested interests and political elites.
Me on the Map: A Case Study of Interactive Theatre and Public Participation
Authors: Williams Stephen , Derbyshire Jan , Wong Adrienne
Published: May 2020

Me on the Map (MOTM) is a unique participatory show for classroom-sized groups of young people aged 6-15. Initially developed and produced by Neworld Theatre in Vancouver, through a commission from the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, MOTM challenges participants to collectively solve the problem of how to best develop an actual lot of land that sits empty in their city. The MOTM experience guides participants through co-design activities that start in the classroom. The choice students make provide data that forms the foundation for the decisions made during the performance. This paper details the theoretical background of the show including participatory theatre, inclusive design, urban happiness studies and ethical decision making. We present lessons learned and make recommendations for public deliberation practitioners on using this technique in future projects.
The Role of the Local Community in Promoting Discursive Participation: A Reflection on Elderly People’s Meetings in a Small Rural Community in Finland
Authors: Kuokkanen Ronja
Published: May 2020

This paper explores how elderly residents’ discursive participation is promoted through the local community in one Finnish municipality. It introduces the case of the Elderly People’s Forum as an interesting example of a self-initiated, informal participatory forum that has established a role in local governance and continuously inspires the wide discursive participation of elderly residents in public discussions. Drawing on the concept of discursive participation, which includes talk in informal settings about matters of common interest as a measure of civic engagement, I argue that by acknowledging the deliberative potential of self-initiated civil society forums, local governance can enhance residents’ ongoing participation and possibilities to exert influence.
Review of Deliberative Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning for Democratic Engagement. Edited by Timothy J. Shaffer, Nicholas V. Longo, Idit Manosevitch, and Maxine S. Thomas. (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017)
Authors: Sprague Trevor , Keith William
Published: May 2020

Review of Deliberative Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning for Democratic Engagement. Edited by Timothy J. Shaffer, Nicholas V. Longo, Idit Manosevitch, and Maxine S. Thomas. (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017)
Deliberation in Democracy’s Dark Times
Authors: Curato Nicole , Parry Lucy J.
Published: May 2020

This piece reflects on the on the legacies of democratic deliberation, particularly mini-publics in responding to issues of disinformation, bigotry and nativism that has entered the political mainstream today. It aims to provoke conversations about the limitations of mini-publics in promoting democratic renewal and reconsider the functions of these forums in democracy’s ‘dark times.’
Habermas with a Whiff of Tear Gas: Nonviolent Campaigns and Deliberation in an Era of Authoritarianism
Authors: Levine Peter
Published: May 2020

Authoritarianism is gaining around the world. Statistics show that deliberation shrinks when authoritarianism grows. In the face of authoritarian repression, directly promoting and organizing deliberation is likely to fail. However, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan (2011) find that nonviolent campaigns have a strong record of success against authoritarian states. Although nonviolent campaigns are not themselves deliberative or aimed at building deliberative democracy, I argue that some of the reasons that make them successful also stand to benefit public deliberation. Thus the most promising strategy for expanding deliberation in an increasingly authoritarian world is to support nonviolent campaigns and to reinforce strategies of nonviolent confrontation that also yield deliberation. Jürgen Habermas anticipated this argument in his defense of social movements. Revisiting that aspect of Habermas’ thought challenges interpretations that treat him as a theorist of calm, rational discourse.
Dialogue and Deliberation as Agonistic Resistance: Designing Interactional Processes to Reconstitute Collective Identities
Authors: Wolfe Anna Wiederhold
Published: May 2020

This essay develops a theory of public dialogue and deliberation as agonistic resistance to authoritarian governance.Where authoritarian regimes value strict obedience to authority at the expense of freedom, deliberative democracy is predicated on the decentralization of power and the exercise of personal and political freedoms. As such, practices of dialogue and deliberation stand in direct contradiction to the values of authoritarian governance and hold the potential to constitute collective identities in ways that undermine the very conditions needed for authoritarianism to gain traction. Specifically, this essay argues that authoritarianism flourishes when particular in-group/out-group boundaries can be reified, thereby constituting a clear “us” defined against a threatening “them.” However, through the intimate achievement of dialogic and deliberative moments, various social identity roles can be made salient, which can soften group boundaries and help people to feel a sense of immediacy, respect, and connection with those who previously seemed Other.
Facilitating Vulnerability and Power in New Hampshire Listen’s “Blue and You”
Authors: Heath Renee G.
Published: May 2020

This study examines the on-going work of New Hampshire Listens, a convener of deliberative conversations, specific to their work with police-community relationships. Attending particularly to the facilitators and planners of New Hampshire “Blue and You” in a small city, the study found systemic practices of early stakeholder involvement in the planning, holding space for disparate views, promoting storytelling, and creating intimate physical spaces addressed the vulnerability felt by participants. These practices distributed power among stakeholders, aided in preparing participants for the conversation, and fostered neutrality in the forum. They provide several ideas for how deliberation practitioners and scholars might respond to the present polarizing political context.
Stealth Democracy: Authoritarianism and Democratic Deliberation
Authors: Muhlberger Peter
Published: May 2020

In Stealth Democracy, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse seek to show that much of the American public desires “stealth democracy”--a democracy run like a business with little deliberation or public input. The authors maintain that stealth democracy beliefs are largely reasonable preferences, and the public does not want and would react negatively to a more deliberative democracy. This paper introduces an opposing “authoritarian stealth democrats thesis” that suggests that stealth democracy beliefs may be driven by authoritarianism and a variety of related orientations including poor political perspective taking and low cognitive engagement. These orientations may be ameliorated through democratic deliberation. Hypotheses are tested with survey and experimental data from deliberations with a RDD sample of 568 Pittsburgh residents and of 99 Canadian young adults. Using confirmatory factor analysis and OLS regression with cluster-robust standard errors, the paper finds that authoritarianism and related orientations strongly explain stealth democracy beliefs among deliberation participants and that deliberation significantly reduces stealth democracy beliefs and factors behind these beliefs.
Civic Virtue in the Deliberative System
Authors: Hutton Ferris Daniel
Published: May 2020

The normative stability of a deliberative and democratic political order and the creativity and quality of the decisions its produces depend on citizens developing civic orientations and capacities through participation in deliberative events aiming at the cooperative solution of political problems. That, at least, is the claim made by critics of the systems approach to deliberative democracy, who argue that its proponents have lost sight of the educative function that respectful public reasoning plays for citizens. In this article I offer a response to this line of argument. There is no good philosophical reason to suppose that only unitary deliberation can perform an educative function for citizens. The kinds of informal and uncooperative public speech that occur in distributed deliberative processes can also develop participants’ civic capacities and civic virtue – and not merely through their systemic effects. This is an insight that should encourage us to rethink the design and facilitation of deliberative forums and pay more attention to citizens’ everyday deliberation.
Building a Better Referendum: Linking Mini-Publics and Mass Publics in Popular Votes
Authors: McKay Spencer
Published: May 2020

Popular votes and mini-publics are both increasingly implemented as elected officials seek to build legitimacy for decisions, although these democratic innovations suffer from their own democratic deficits. Popular votes often do not live up to deliberative ideals while mini-publics may be limited in their capacities for inclusion and decision-making. Pairing these two devices can improve deliberation in referendum campaigns, while tying mini-publics to a clear and inclusive process for decision-making. Empirical studies of this strategy have found both successes and shortcomings. Little attention has been given to the possibility that the success of mini-publics in influencing public opinion is determined, in part, by the underlying design of the popular vote process. I outline how multi-stage popular votes could institutionalize an iterated dialogue between the micro-level mini-public and the mass, voting public to produce distinct democratic benefits. This serves as a model of how a systems approach to democratic theory can guide institutional design to address democratic functions of empowered inclusion, collective agenda and will formation, and collective decision-making.
Negotiated Rulemaking for U.S. Higher Education Regulatory Policy: A Process of Deliberative Democracy?
Authors: Natow Rebecca
Published: May 2020

The rulemaking process through which higher education regulatory policy is created in the U.S. Department of Education has received critical attention in recent years. One concern is that this important policymaking process takes place in an agency of unelected officials, sometimes with the help of select interest groups. How, then, does this process maintain its democratic legitimacy? An important aspect of the process – known as negotiated rulemaking – may help to promote democratic legitimacy through open deliberations and broad stakeholder participation. Through the lens of deliberative democratic theory, this article draws on dozens of interviews and documentary data regarding a number of higher education regulations to analyze the ways in which negotiated rulemaking for U.S. higher education regulatory policy reflects (and does not reflect) aspects of deliberative democracy.
Recognition and Deliberation: A Deliberative Corrective to Liberal Multicultural Policies
Authors: Pirsoul Nicolas
Published: May 2020

This article establishes theoretical and practical distinctions between the theory of recognition and liberal multiculturalism. Five potential issues with multicultural policies are identified. The article argues that an increase in deliberative practices could solve many pitfalls of liberal multicultural policies and highlights how a “deliberative turn” could reconcile identity-related policies with the philosophical roots of the theory of recognition. The paper also highlights some challenges arising from a deliberative approach to recognition.
Review of The Origins of Collective Decision Making by Andy Blunden (Boston: Brill, 2016)
Authors: Shaffer Timothy J.
Published: May 2020

Review of The Origins of Collective Decision Making by Andy Blunden (Boston: Brill, 2016).
Deliberation after Consensus: Introduction to the Symposium
Authors: Friberg-Fernros Henrik , Schaffer Johan Karlsson , Holst Cathrine
Published: May 2020

This editorial introduction presents an overview of the themes explored in the symposium on Deliberation after Consensus. For all the talk of its obsolescence and irrelevance, the concept of consensus still remains centrally contested through generations of deliberative democracy scholarship. In face of criticism for being neither empirically feasible nor normatively desirable, some deliberative theorists have moved away from consensus-oriented teleology and argued in favor of other legitimate outcomes of deliberations. Other theorists have resisted this move, claiming that the aim of deliberation implies that consensus should remain as a regulative ideal for deliberative outcomes. Engaging with these debates about the role of consensus in theories of deliberative democracy, this symposium brings together a selection of innovative, original research articles that raise novel questions about the role consensus could and should play in democratic deliberation and in a deliberative democracy. This introduction offers an overview of the debate over consensus drawing on the notion of successive generations of deliberative democracy research. Our aim is to demonstrate that the view of consensus has changed during generations of deliberative scholarships, but also that some scholars still defend the normative importance of the meaning of consensus once developed by the first generation. Consequently, there are tendencies of both change and continuity in the debate over consensus in deliberative theory. We conclude this introduction by providing a brief synopsis of each paper.
With Habermas against Habermas. Deliberation without Consensus
Authors: Jezierska Katarzyna
Published: May 2020

Habermas’s conception of deliberative democracy combines two concepts—deliberation and consensus—which, I argue, draw his theory in two opposite directions. While deliberation and the focus on communication can be read as a predominantly open element of his theory, consensus stands for closure. The process of deliberation contrasts Habermas’s normative aim of deliberation, i.e., consensus. In other words, a realized consensus (in the strong, monologic formulation that Habermas favors) would put an end to the idea of continuous public justification of validity claims, i.e., deliberation. The article argues that in order to fully use the potential of deliberation in politics, we should leave behind the notion of consensus through deliberation. Instead, understanding should be the telos of deliberation, and voting after deliberation is put forth as the optimal institutional design for decision-making settings.
Completely Theorized Agreements. A Different Reading of the Consensus Paradox Hypotheses
Authors: Wojciechowska Marta
Published: May 2020

This article contributes to the debate on the consensus and deliberation. While the relevant literature claims that consensus undermines further deliberation, this article argues that it depends on the aim of the process. In particular, I argue that if the aim of deliberation is understood as reaching a certain epistemic level, reaching consensus does not need to decrease the rationality of the group. In short, such deliberation is a process of debate, reason-giving and listening which aims at establishing a result of certain epistemic value. In order to shed new light on the debates on the consequences of consensus for further deliberation, I introduce a detailed conceptualization of a full agreement. I call it Completely Theorized Agreements. In this article, I argue that reaching consensus in an epistemic setting does not need to have negative consequences. Further, I argue, that the truth-tracking quality of deliberation need not be worse in a group that reached a full consensus as opposed to a partial one.
Mirage of Democracy: The Town Meeting in America
Authors: Zuckerman Michael
Published: May 2020

In American mythology, the town meetings of colonial New England are the storied source of the nation’s democracy. But early New Englanders allowed the great majority of their adult males to vote only because they had no other way to secure social order. Without king, court, country lords, archbishop, or any other traditional authority, their rude frontier communities could only be ruled by public opinion. Town meetings were occasions to consolidate a popular will that could coerce the recalcitrant. They governed by common consent, but they were not democratic in any modem sense. They disallowed legitimate difference and dissent, disdained majority rule, and dreaded conflict. They were predicated on a homogeneity and a conformity that we today would find suffocating.
A ‘Peaceable and Orderly Manner’: Town Meetings and other Popular Assemblies in the American Founding
Authors: Martin Robert W. T.
Published: May 2020

The New England town meeting has often been seen as the archetypical deliberative citizen forum (see, e.g., Mansbridge 1980). More recently, political theorists have begun to appreciate the way in which any particular public forum might be better understood as part of the larger deliberative system (Parkinson, Mansbridge, 2012). Much of this work draws on modern-day examples (Parkinson 2006). But a return to the American founding era reveals that while town meetings are often praised and have many democratic virtues, they also embody a limitation on popular action generally and especially on democratic dissent.
Collective Interview on the History of Town Meetings
Authors: Bryan Frank , Keith William , Kloppenberg James , Mansbridge Jane , Morrell Michael , Smith Graham
Published: May 2020

As illustrated in the introduction, the special issue ends with a ‘collective interview’ to some distinguished scholars that have given an important contribution to the study of New England Town Meetings. The collective interview has been realized by submitting three questions to our interviewees, who responded individually in written. The text of the answers has not been edited, if not minimally. However, the editors have broken up longer individual answers in shorter parts. These have been subsequently rearranged in an effort to provide, as much as possible, a fluid structure and a degree of interaction among the different perspectives provided by our interviewees on similar issues. The final version of this interview has been edited and approved by all interviewees.
What We Can Learn from Town Meetings
Authors: Leighninger Matt
Published: May 2020

This essay offers a response to the special issue essays. It highlights key ideas from the articles and reflects on lessons that town meetings have for our contemporary public engagement.
Beyond the Myth of the Town Meeting: Discursive Engagement as Governance
Authors: Shaffer Timothy J.
Published: May 2020

This essay offers a response to the special issue essays. It emphasizes that town meetings are a site for governance and have implications for contemporary deliberative practices.
Power and Citizen Deliberation: The Contingent Impacts of Interests, Ideology, and Status Differences
Authors: Holdo Markus
Published: May 2020

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.
Venue Coupling and Actor Circulation in Deliberative Systems: Health Care Governance in Ontario
Authors: Doberstein Carey
Published: May 2020

The “systemic turn” has been one of the most important developments in deliberative democracy in the past decade. Through a deliberative systems approach, scholars and practitioners are challenged to think about ways in which various venues and institutions interact together to produce a healthy democratic subsystem. One major challenge to this approach, however, is its methodological weakness. How exactly are various venues and institutions connected? How do they interact with each other? What conceptual tools are available in making sense of the deliberative system?This article proposes the use of “venue coupling” and “actor circulation” to operationalize some of the key concepts of the deliberative system. Through the case of the Local Health Integration Networks in Ontario, Canada, this article maps the governance system, its institutional and interpersonal components, and their interconnections (or lack thereof). By drawing together key concepts in deliberative democracy and network governance, this article sketches out a framework that can be used to analyze governance contexts in which deliberative practices are fused with traditional political institutions like legislative bodies and bureaucracies.
Participatory and Deliberative Practitioners in Australia: How Work Context Creates Different Types of Practitioners
Authors: Christensen Helen E.
Published: May 2020

Public institutions in Australia are subject to increasing statutory requirements to engage their communities, and consequently the number of practitioners has increased. These participatory and deliberative practitioners design, deliver, and evaluate democratic processes on behalf of public institutions. This article argues that the practitioner body has broadened, where different types of practitioners can now be identified in Australia. This broadening is the result of three main variables: (1) whether practitioners are employed by or contracted to public institutions; (2) whether they are engaged to work on projects with limited or considerable scope; and (3) whether they are focused on limited time frame processes or entire programs. Drawing on the results of a mixed method study, including survey and semi-structured interviews, this article explores the work contexts that shape the contemporary Australian practitioner, drawing lessons that can inform their practice in other contexts.