Public Deliberation Consortium
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With Habermas against Habermas. Deliberation without Consensus
No full textHabermas’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
No full textThis 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
Deliberative Democracy in the Context of Town Meetings in Seventeenth-Century New England
No full textFrom Alexis de Tocqueville onward, the seventeenth-century New England town has been associated with political and social practices that nurtured the making of a “democratic” society. Myth or reality? And where does the religion of the English people who founded the New England colonies figure in this story? A close examination of town and church records—which Tocqueville was unable to accomplish—reveals a powerful commitment to the core values of transparency, equity (fairness and justice), and broad participation. The “Congregational” system of church government transferred authority from any centralized hierarchy to the laymen of each local congregation. Similarly, the central governments in the colonies gave generous allocations of land to groups of immigrants, empowering them to set up self-governing towns. A crucial question for these towns was deciding how to distribute this land; another, was who could share in the decision-making. No formal or explicit “democratic” ideology accompanied the making of this civic culture, but in the context of the seventeenth century, the outcome was something unusually akin to a democratic societ
A New Leaf for Public Deliberation
No full textThe Journal of Public Deliberation is turning over a new leaf. This short introduction maps new directions for the journal and invites readers to continue engaging the vibrant field of deliberative democracy
Participatory and Deliberative Practitioners in Australia: How Work Context Creates Different Types of Practitioners
No full textPublic 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
Stories Communities Tell: How Deliberative Practitioners Can Work with Community Narratives
No full textHow do past experiences of public engagement shape the way communities view the role of public input today? In this article, we examine the case of a community in a mid-Atlantic college town whose civic history is shaped by stories of skepticism and hope regarding past experiences of public decision-making. We use methods of interpretive analysis to surface their stories—the tensions, the plot, the actors, and complicating events—to understand how communities make sense of their roles in civic life, the norms they share, and the values they wish their communities can practice. We argue that being attuned to the storied nature of civic culture provides an invaluable resource for practitioners of dialogue and deliberation to adapt the design of public engagement in a way that speaks to past experiences and brings forth the communities’ shared aspirations
Review of The Origins of Collective Decision Making by Andy Blunden (Boston: Brill, 2016).
No full textReview of The Origins of Collective Decision Making by Andy Blunden (Boston: Brill, 2016)
Embedded Public Reasoning: A Response to Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind
No full textJonathan Haidt is a moral psychologist whose influential book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, explains the origins of our political disagreements. The aim of the book is to encourage understanding and civility in our public life. Deliberative democrats also have a significant stake in understanding the sources of our disagreements and see rational deliberation as the key to civility and democratic legitimacy. However, Haidt’s empirical studies give reasons to suggest that the “faith” of deliberative democrats in reasoning may be misplaced, particularly as that faith tends be inflected in terms of a “Kantian” moral psychology.
This article analyzes four different explanatory “stories” that Haidt weaves together: (1) a “causal” evolutionary account of the development of morality; (2) a “causal” story about the psychological mechanisms explaining human action; (3) a “causal” story about the historical and cultural determinants of our political attitudes; and (4) a “normative” story about the grounds and justification of human action. The article then examines these stories to discern how deliberative democrats might rearticulate their conception of public reasoning, and their normative hopes for it, in light of Haidt’s findings by introducing the “embedded” conception of public reasoning
Mirage of Democracy: The Town Meeting in America
No full textIn 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
Review of After Gun Violence: Deliberation and Memory in the Age of Political Gridlock by Craig Rood (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019)
No full textReview of After Gun Violence: Deliberation and Memory in the Age of Political Gridlock by Craig Rood (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019