Public Deliberation Consortium
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Review of Deliberation, Democracy, and Civic Forums: Improving Equality and Publicity by Christopher F. Karpowitz and Chad Raphael (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
No full textReview of Deliberation, Democracy, and Civic Forums: Improving Equality and Publicity by Christopher F. Karpowitz and Chad Raphael (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014)
Review of The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions by Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
No full textReview of The Silent Sex: Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions by Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014)
Opportunity Structures for Citizens’ Participation in Italian Regions: A Case Study
No full textThe Italian process of decentralization is opening new opportunities for action in the matter of political participation for Italian regions. Starting from the analysis of a regional case study (Emilia-Romagna), the paper tries to explain how a single region could elaborate a set of policy-oriented instruments to direct citizens’ political participation and mobilize them on specific issues beyond the classic electoral channel. After the presentation of the selected case, the paper will analyze the concept of opportunity structures for citizens’ participation and the way in which it can be applied in the study of Italian regions. The analysis of the Emilia-Romagna regional policy in the matter of participation shows that the regional choices are more and more following a path-dependent scheme strictly related to the cultural and institutional variables of the regional framework and its classic interventionist policy style
Diverse Discourse: Analyzing the Potential of Public Affairs Magazine Online Forums to Reflect Qualities of the Public Sphere
No full textPublic affairs magazines have expanded beyond their print editions to offer online editions with forums for readers to discuss important public issues. For magazines that cater to ideologically specific audiences, online forums could serve as forms of alternative publics for presenting diverse viewpoints and values. The conversations that emerge also hold potential for portraying characteristics of the public sphere. This study used textual analysis to examine online comments associated with 21 articles from six different U.S. public affairs magazines representing various positions on the ideological spectrum. Using Dahlberg’s (2001) six-part assessment of quality public discourse, the analysis showed that moderate magazines serving a broad readership induced a lower-quality discussion. In contrast, liberal and conservative publications, when encouraging diverse and ideologically heterogeneous perspectives, produced quality discourse. These forums showed higher levels of quality characteristics such as exchange and critique of normative positions, reflexivity, sincerity, and constructive dialogue
Public Deliberation as a Tool for Managing the Commons: A Case Study of the Bloomington Community Orchard
No full textThis essay focuses on how public deliberation is used as a tool for managing the commons. Through the lens of Elinor Ostrom\u27s research of managing the commons, the Bloomington Community Orchard is analyzed as a case study to better understand the value of the process of public deliberation as a tool for managing the commons and the importance of timing for implementation
Reflecting on the State of our Field: Challenging our Purpose, Impact, and Potential
No full textThis Afterword essay was written several months after the Frontiers of Democracy 2014 conference. It offers the Journal of Public Deliberation\u27s editors\u27 reflections on the conference and connections to the articles published in this special issue
Does Culture Matter for Deliberation? Linguistic Speech Cultures and Parliamentary Deliberation in Switzerland
No full textEven though culture is seen as an important aspect of deliberation, empirical research on culture’s effects on deliberation is almost completely absent. This paper offers one of the first systematic empirical studies of cultural underpinnings on deliberation. It explores two conceptions of culture, namely ‘holistic’ vs. ‘contextual’. In the ‘holistic’ approach, culture is assumed to be a constant, while the ‘contextual’ approach assumes adaptive rationality of actors to different contexts. As an extension of the ‘contextual’ approach, this paper also explores the effects of different compositions of cultural groups on the quality of deliberation. The effects of the two approaches are evaluated by linking linguistic groups in the committee and plenary debates of the Swiss parliament to a broad variety of deliberative standards. The findings reveal that linguistic groups do not differ much in their deliberative behaviour, which defies ‘holistic’ approaches to culture. Rather, the results underline that speech culture is highly context-driven, which is indicative of a ‘contextual’ approach to culture. However, culture still plays a role, but mainly in the context of group composition: the proportion of minority-language speakers affects several deliberative indicators such as respect, common good orientation and clarifying questions
Review of Facebook Democracy: The Architecture of Disclosure and the Threat of Public Life by José Marichal (Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012)
No full textReview of Facebook Democracy: The Architecture of Disclosure and the Threat of Public Life by José Marichal (Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012
Communication and Citizenship: Reflections on Classroom Practice
No full textThis essay reflects on a semester-length classroom activity designed to give students an opportunity to practice their citizenship skills. We approach the problem of lack of citizen participation as a communication challenge and present our adaptation of Deliberative Polling to provide students with opportunities to: 1) research alternatives on an issue related to citizenship, 2) hone their research and critical thinking skills, and 3) participate in communication on issues related to citizenship with focused reflection on the communication processes involved. Because the topic is citizenship, students discuss issues related to political participation (e.g. voting) and are asked to reflect on their own practice of citizenship throughout the process. The activity allowed students to experience an alternative to the “either/or debate” perception of politics and gave them tools to participate in politics differently, and in more satisfying ways
Deliberation for Reconciliation in Divided Societies
No full textEngaging with the literature on deliberative democracy, this article contends that in the context of ethnic group hostilities, deliberative processes where participants have a genuine opportunity to communicate and ‘hear the other side’ can be a way for inter-group dialogue and reconciliation. Separating the deliberative process into three distinct moments, it offers a framework for understanding how unequal and conflicting parties may be brought together to deliberate, how to grasp the micro-politics of deliberation, and to understand the diffusion mechanisms that bring society back in. The approach we propose aims to bridge the normative-macro and the experimental-micro accounts of deliberation in order to focus on non-ideal real-life contexts and to offer ‘deliberative lenses’ to study the (rare) cases of deliberative inter-ethnic reconciliation. The approach and the three moments are illustrated by the deliberative turn taken to resolve a conflict between the Innu communities, the Quebec government and the local non-Innu in Saguenay-Lac-Saint Jean