Argument Quality in Public Deliberations

ARGUMENT QUALITY IN PUBLIC DELIBERATIONS Theorists and activists increasingly frame their preferred forms of politics as "deliberative democracy" (Dryzek, 1990, 2000; Gastil & Keith, 2005). Understanding citizen deliberation as political action is neither a novel idea nor exclusive to western political systems. For instance, excavations suggest that the earliest human civilizations had a language to describe people gathering together to make collective decisions. (1) Moreover, ample evidence from ancient Greek city-states support these earlier data (Ober, 1991) and, thereby, reinforce a tradition of politics via citizen deliberations. A precedent for community-based deliberation exists in the United States--during the 1930s, a government funded "American Forum" movement organized community discussions on a national scale (Keith, 2007). These histories, evident in language and organizational structures across cultures and over time, demonstrate a long-standing attraction to deliberative politics. "Deliberative democracy," a term coined in the 1980s (Dryzek, 2000, p. 2), is the linguistic hook that binds scholarship addressing the normative conditions and efficacy of discursive politics. What deliberation ought to be and what it should yield are questions that have generated a wide range of defining characteristics and outcomes. Barabas (2004) summarizes deliberative ideals as seeking consensus on a contested issue while simultaneously enlightening participants. Consensus and enlightenment align with a Habermasian notion of discourse ethics wherein the ideal speech situation consists of open participation, justification of assertions, consideration of the common good, respect for other participants and a rationally motivated consensus (Habermas, 1985; Steenbergen, Bachtiger, Sporndli, & Steiner, 2003). Contesting and amending such normative ideals has become something of a cottage industry in scholarship relating to argumentation. Sanders (1997), (2) a staunch skeptic of deliberative democracy, concedes that an outright rejection of deliberative politics seems to be counterintuitive. "A commitment to deliberation is, after all, a commitment to finding a way to address concerns, resolve disagreements, and overcome conflicts by offering arguments supported by reasons to our fellow citizens" (p. 347). Despite the appeal of deliberation, Sanders remains dissatisfied with the current state of deliberative theory-building, primarily because scholars have failed to justify their theories with "substantive or empirical" arguments from ordinary people--the people on whose behalf theorists have argued. These voices are largely absent in creating and testing theoretical claims. Without evidence to the contrary, Sanders holds that when people deliberate they often create counterproductive effects--most specifically, a further privileging of dominant voices. For Sanders, deliberative theorists should refocus their lofty goals and emphasize testimony-laden discussions with an intermediate goal of inclusive participation and mutual respect by the parties to deliberations. Although deliberative theorists have yet to embrace Sanders's (1997) vision of what ought to replace Habermas's ideal, increasingly they are committed to studying what happens when people attempt to make collective decisions. Steiner et al. (2004) frame contemporary research on deliberative democracy in this manner: "[T]he controversies surrounding the deliberative model cannot be resolved at the level of theoretical speculations and that research needs to go beyond illustrative anecdotes" (p. 42). Steiner et al. acknowledge that empirical research "cannot determine whether deliberation is a good thing in itself" (p. 42), yet it can serve as a "helping hand" in controversies involving democratic theory. Habermas (2006) seemingly concurs, in noting that whether deliberation contributes to "political will-formation and decision-making is, of course, an empirical question" (p. …