Public Deliberation Consortium
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Review of We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America by Peter Levine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
No full textBook Review: We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America by Peter Levine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013
Public Deliberation in Health Policy and Bioethics: Mapping an emerging, interdisciplinary field
No full textFor over two decades, the deliberative turn has rooted itself in the fields of health policy and bioethics, producing a growing body of deliberation in action and associated academic scholarship. With this growing use and study of citizen deliberation processes in the health sector, we set out to map this dynamic field to highlight its diversity, interdisciplinarity, stated and implicit goals and early contributions. More specifically, we explored how public deliberation (PD) is being experimented with in real-world health settings, with a view to assessing how well it is meeting current definitions and common features of PD. Our review provides an informative and up-to-date set of reflections on the relatively short but rich history of public deliberation in the health sector. This emerging, interdisciplinary field is characterized by an active community of scholars and practitioners working diligently to address a range of bioethics and health policy challenges, guided by a common but loosely interpreted set of core features. Current definitions and conceptualizations of public deliberation’s core features would benefit from expansion and refinement to both guide and respond to practice developments. Opportunities for more frequent cross-disciplinary and theory-practice exchange would also strengthen this field
Rousiley C.M. Maia, Deliberation, the Media, and Political Talk, New York: Hampton Press, 2012.
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Who Moderates the Moderators? The Effect of Non-neutral Moderators in Deliberative Decision Making
No full textIdeal deliberative democracy seeks to employ unbiased moderators. Yet, a large literature in the field of mediation suggests the elusiveness of perfect neutrality. Our study thus addresses the following question: when moderators of deliberations express their own views – even in a limited manner – can they change the preferences of participants? Using a novel experimental design in a real deliberative decision-making process, we find that moderators can significantly influence the attitudes and behaviors of participants by expressing views in a constrained manner. The results of our study have implications for refining epistemic conceptions of deliberative democracy and for designing more precise empirical investigations of the effects of deliberative processes on attitudes and behavior. The results also warn of a simple mechanism by which interest groups might hijack the deliberative decision-making processes used in community driven development projects all over the world
Cultural Rights and Deliberative Policy. Beyond Habermas\u27 Between Facts and Norms
No full textABSTRACT: A framework derived from Jürgen Habermas\u27 Between Facts and Norms is utilized to address the question of how claims for minority rights that emerge from ethical-political discourses may receive public recognition. The major difficulty in this regard turns upon discrepancies between the interpretations of minority cultural needs by the members of a given community and interpretations of the same needs on the part of those outside of the community in question. The discussion includes a critical analysis of proposed resolutions of this problem put forward in Between Facts and Norms, in other works of Habermas, and in the various publications of James Bohman, Jorge Valadez, Michael Rabinder James, and Monique Deveaux. I argue that the best way to assess the cogency of discourses across cultural barriers does not involve minimizing requirements for their deliberativeness, as the latter four of these authors tend to accept, but rather strictly differentiating between the procedure and substance of the deliberation
The Role of Information in Public Participation
No full textA large body of scientific literature on public participation research evaluates specific methods, describes outcomes and impacts of a process or deals with participants’ and officials’ expectations. Yet, there is surprisingly little work on a key part of most participatory processes that deal with complex issues: the information passed to participants. Topics like Global Warming cannot be grasped easily. Even if global warming is happening very quickly on a geological time scale, for human beings it is not easily perceivable. Such a discrepancy between everyday experiences and scientific knowledge can influence one’s opinion tremendously. Therefore, providing sound information and respecting the power of information is essential for meaningful outcomes of participatory processes. In this paper we examine different communication and information pathways within participatory processes. As the main object of interest, we analyzed ‘World Wide Views on Global Warming’. In this distinct process of information and deliberation, citizens formulated recommendations for the decision makers of the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen and voted on different aspects of how to deal with global warming. Results from this process connected to insights from a literature review, contribute to a refined picture of the role information plays within participatory processes and social learning
Democracy Through Multi-Body Sortition: Athenian Lessons for the Modern Day
No full textMature Classical Athenian democracy is presented as a representative system, rather than the commonly described form of “direct democracy.” When viewed in this way, the commonly assumed problem of scale in applying Athenian democracy to modern nation states is solved, and principles and practices of the Athenian model of democracy continue to have relevance today. The key role of sortition (selection by lot) to form multiple deliberative bodies is explained. Five dilemmas faced by modern proposals for the use of sortition are examined. Finally, a new model of lawmaking using multiple allotted bodies is presented, which resolves these dilemmas and which can be implemented in many ways, from a small addition to an existing system to a more fundamental reform such as replacing one or both elected chambers of a legislature
Public Deliberation about Gay Rights in Religious Contexts: Commitment to Deliberative Norms and Practice in ELCA Congregations
No full textMany political theorists extol the virtues of deliberation in efforts to reconcile differences in opinion and prevent group fracture. On August 21, 2009, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) voted narrowly to reverse standing policy by allowing gay and lesbian people in committed relationships to serve openly as clergy. In the aftermath of this decision, numerous congregations began thinking about leaving the denomination. We surveyed a sample of ELCA clergy in the fall of 2009 and spring 2010 to assess their commitment to deliberative norms and practice, their implementation of such practices in congregational meetings designed to discuss the ELCA’s vote, and the outcomes of those more or less deliberative forums. We found considerable commitment both to deliberative practice itself and belief in the efficacy of such practice. Despite the assumption that religious doctrine and public deliberation are incompatible, religious organizations often find deliberative processes essential to their survival
Boundary Objects and Public Deliberation: Analyzing the Management of Boundary Tensions in the Consensus Conference
No full textConsistent with studies on inclusive management, this paper adopts the concept of “boundary object” and therefore an emergent approach to explain the collaboration of heterogeneous social actors in public deliberation. My long-term participant observation of the consensus conferences in Taiwan from 2002 through 2005 in general and the transcript of a national consensus conference on prenatal examination in 2005 in particular form the data sources. The identification of a series of boundary objects in the consensus conferences led me to conclude that, on the one hand, the consensus conference is a boundary infrastructure that fosters the establishment of a community of participation and thereby facilitates diverse parties’ deliberation on sensitive issues. On the other hand, whereas a newly formed collective identity is emerging in public deliberation, boundary tensions and the differences between diverse social actors are managed and halted temporarily instead of eliminated permanently by boundary objects. That is, collaboration in public deliberation is always an achievement “in the making” by all parties
Deliberative Pedagogy in the Community: Connecting Deliberative Dialogue, Community Engagement, and Democratic Education
No full textThis essay offer insights into civic education programs and practices which attempt to bridge pedagogical divides by offering an approach to deliberative dialogue that goes beyond the classroom and into the community. This more collaborative model draws upon historical and contemporary examples of what I have termed deliberative education in the community, and offers the promise of a different kind of politics, model of engagement, and style of education in higher education. The essay concludes with a call for a more collaborative approach to engaged teaching and learning