Citizens discourses and the logic of policy deliberation
Creators: name: Choudhary, Mona
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2009

description: This study is an empirical examination of the Logic of Policy Deliberation which is a multimethodological framework for policy evaluation advanced by Frank Fischer and is a widely acknowledged contribution to the postpositivist approach. Built around four interrelated discourses that constitute an evaluative deliberation, the Logic extends from concrete empirical questions to abstract normative issues concerning the way of life. According to Fischer, the Logic of Policy Deliberation is based upon ‘ordinary language philosophy’ of Toulmin and Taylor, which is based on a reconstruction of how people actually think when they evaluate an action or event. The framework is therefore not a prescription for how we ought to deliberate about issues, it is an empirical approach to how people actually do think about things. That is, to the degree that the Logic of Policy Deliberation is accurately formulated, the framework is more than simply Fischer’s conception of how we should talk about issues; rather it seeks to represent the way people in fact make arguments and is subject to empirical confirmation. This study seeks to verify the claim that the model represents the way ordinary citizens argue. Although the logic of policy deliberation has been applied to several policy cases, there has been no empirical test of how ordinary citizens relate to it; more specifically how citizens respond to the different phases of the Logic of Policy Deliberation in general as well as in specific cases.The Logic of Policy Deliberation is tested through a discursive analysis of the Sardar Sarovar dam conflict in India. The study tests the Logic in a two step process. First, the study undertakes a theoretical application of the Logic of Policy Deliberation to organize and analyze the arguments in the Narmada debate that are carried out in textual material produced by the anti dam movement, the government, academicians, media, etc. This is done to explore how well the range of arguments in the Narmada debate can be distributed across the different levels of the Logic. This theoretical application of the Logic shows that the range of arguments in the Narmada debate are widely and extensively distributed across the four levels of the Logic of Policy Deliberation. Having established that, the study undertakes an empirical examination of the Logic through citizens discourses about the Narmada conflict. Specifically, the study examines the extent to which citizens identify, relate and respond to the various levels of the Logic in ‘everyday type’ conversations regarding the Sardar Sarovar dam. This empirical examination finds that citizens may start out making arguments for or against the dam at a particular level of the Logic, typically the levels of either Situational Validation or Technical Verification but as the conversation proceeds and they are faced with counter arguments and scenarios, they will inevitably expand their arguments to the other levels of the Logic to defend their original position on the dam. Overall, the study confirms that to a greater or lesser extent, citizens are attuned to all the various phases of the Logic of Policy Deliberation.