Public Deliberation Consortium
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Introduction: The New England Town Meeting: A Founding Myth of American Democracy
No full textNotwithstanding notable exceptions, historical investigation is far from central in deliberative scholarship and even recent work on participatory research stresses the need for more historical work. The aim of our introduction to this collective volume is to assess and to draw attention to the contribution of historical analysis in the current scholarly debate on democracy, in particular regarding the ways in which participation and deliberation emerge and develop in New England’s famous town meetings. Town meetings have traditionally been cited as one of the fullest and earliest realizations of the idea of democratic government and of deliberation at work. Nowadays the great debate on deliberative and participatory democracy has contributed to restoring the town meetings as a symbol of democratic deliberation. The critical study of how one of the oldest and most inspiring forms of democratic participation has evolved is not only a fascinating endeavor in itself, it is also a unique opportunity to better understand how and to what extent these institutional practices, inspired by ideals of deliberation and participation, can support – or impede – the democratization of today’s societies
Review of Habermas and the Media by Hartmut Wessler (Medford, MA: Polity, 2018)
No full textReview of Habermas and the Media by Hartmut Wessler (Medford, MA: Polity, 2018
Deliberation for Development: Ghana’s First Deliberative Poll
No full textThis article poses the problem of public consultation in developing countries and applies a solution in Ghana as a test case. It describes the theoretical rationale for deliberative consultation with random samples, describes specific criteria for success, and then assesses an application under the challenging conditions of a developing country. It builds on notions of “deliberative democracy,” and shows how they can be practically realized in an African context through “Deliberative Polling” (DP). The challenge is that the context is one of the poorest parts of one of the poorest countries in Africa. Rather than consulting just stakeholders, or self-selected populations, or using conventional surveys, DP’s have the advantage of consulting random samples with deliberation in depth in confidential surveys so that the opinion changes can be evaluated at the individual level, free of social pressures for consensus. Is this practical in this context? A DP was conducted in Tamale, Ghana on issues of water, sanitation, hygiene and food security. Criteria for success for DPs that have been applied in highly developed countries are discussed and then applied in Ghana under challenging conditions
Building a Better Referendum: Linking Mini-Publics and Mass Publics in Popular Votes
No full textPopular votes and mini-publics are both increasingly implemented as elected officials seek to build legitimacy for decisions, although these democratic innovations suffer from their own democratic deficits. Popular votes often do not live up to deliberative ideals while mini-publics may be limited in their capacities for inclusion and decision-making. Pairing these two devices can improve deliberation in referendum campaigns, while tying mini-publics to a clear and inclusive process for decision-making. Empirical studies of this strategy have found both successes and shortcomings. Little attention has been given to the possibility that the success of mini-publics in influencing public opinion is determined, in part, by the underlying design of the popular vote process. I outline how multi-stage popular votes could institutionalize an iterated dialogue between the micro-level mini-public and the mass, voting public to produce distinct democratic benefits. This serves as a model of how a systems approach to democratic theory can guide institutional design to address democratic functions of empowered inclusion, collective agenda and will formation, and collective decision-making
The Town Meeting Ideal and Race in America
No full textThis essay explores the development of the New England town meeting ideal in connection with matters of race and considers the place of that ideal in post-slavery America. In particular, the essay focuses on how the black abolitionists David Walker and Maria Stewart used the jeremiad to expand the deliberative rhetoric associated with the town meeting, and it considers Albion Tourgée’s efforts to implement the town meeting system in the post-bellum South. The essay further considers the place of the lyceum system and the Chautauqua phenomenon, and it addresses how John Dewey’s efforts to reinvent the town meeting for a much larger and more diverse nation bore fruit in media forums described as town meetings. Eventually, the town meeting was reinvented yet again as a national political venue that could be used to address persistent racial tensions. The essay closes with a discussion of how the American university could help close the gap between the town meeting-style forum as a place for discussion and the historical town meeting’s value as a site of consequential decision-making
The Difference in Design: Participatory Budgeting in Brazil and the United States
No full textParticipatory Budgeting (PB) is conceptually powerful because it ties the normative values of non-elite participation and deliberation to specific policymaking processes. It is a democratic policymaking process that enables citizens to allocate public monies. PB has spread globally, coming to the United States in 2009. Our analysis shows that the types of institutional designs used in the United States are quite different from the original Brazilian programs. What explains the variation in PB institutional design between Brazil and the United States? Most PB cases in the US are district-level whereas in Brazil, PB cases are mainly municipal. We account for this variation by analyzing the electoral system; configuration of civil society; political moment of adoption; and available resources. We use case study analysis to account for this variation in institutional design. We then assess how the different rule design is likely to create a different set of institutional outcomes
Negotiated Rulemaking for U.S. Higher Education Regulatory Policy: A Process of Deliberative Democracy?
No full textThe rulemaking process through which higher education regulatory policy is created in the U.S. Department of Education has received critical attention in recent years. One concern is that this important policymaking process takes place in an agency of unelected officials, sometimes with the help of select interest groups. How, then, does this process maintain its democratic legitimacy? An important aspect of the process – known as negotiated rulemaking – may help to promote democratic legitimacy through open deliberations and broad stakeholder participation. Through the lens of deliberative democratic theory, this article draws on dozens of interviews and documentary data regarding a number of higher education regulations to analyze the ways in which negotiated rulemaking for U.S. higher education regulatory policy reflects (and does not reflect) aspects of deliberative democracy
Democratic Self-Determination and the Intentional Building of Consensus
No full textThis paper defends two fundamental but under-theorized insights coming from the theory of deliberative democracy. The first is that consensus is valuable as a precondition of democratic collective self-determination, since it ensures that democratic decisions display an adequate degree of integrity and consistency and therefore that the polity can act as a unified agent. The second is that consensus in this integrity-building role is essential if citizens need to act as decision-makers; it ensures that the decisions that issue from the exercise of their political rights are meaningful, and that they are so as the intended result of their joint agency.
Aggregative approaches, which do not acknowledge this role of consensus, offer an atomistic account of voting and other political rights, and model the outcomes of democratic decision-making as unintended aggregative consequences of individual votes. In these models, democratic political agency and the decision-making power of citizens are curtailed, because citizens do not exert any intentional control on the final outcome of the decision-making process in which they participate.
Although the insight on these shortcomings comes from the deliberative camp, I show that the most prominent accounts of how deliberation is supposed to further consensus in its integrity-building role can be subject to the same criticisms. In fact, in these models consensus is achieved as a by-product of people\u27s engaging in deliberation. Although interactive, these approaches are still atomistic and unintentional. As an alternative, I propose a model of democratic decision-making that acknowledges the role played by the citizens\u27 intentional consensus-building through the strategic use of their political rights
How to Arrive at Peace in Deeply Divided Societies? Using Deliberation to Refine Consociational Theory
No full textIn the 1960s, consociational theory was developed to explain how deeply divided societies can arrive at peace. The theory had, on the one hand, an institutional component with an emphasis on power-sharing institutions and, on the other, a cultural component stressing the importance of a spirit of accommodation. Initially, the theory was based on case studies of countries like Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, which allowed dealing with both institutional and cultural aspects. Later on, when the theory was tested with a large sample of countries, the cultural aspect was increasingly neglected, because it was difficult to empirically operationalize. The key argument of the article is that the concept of deliberation helps emphasize the cultural aspect of consociational theory, in the hopes of refining, not replacing, consociational theory
Looking Back, Thinking Ahead: Reflections on our Five Years as Editors of the Journal of Public Deliberation
No full textFor the last five years, we have had the honor of serving as editors of the Journal of Public Deliberation. This issue marks the end of our editorial tenure, and we take this opportunity to both look back and think ahead. In this brief essay, we reflect on what we’ve seen during our time as editors. We begin by describing three important special issues that reflect the state of our field, then provide some details about how we have facilitated JPD’s growth over the past five years, including publication statistics and article download rates. We conclude by discussing where the journal is now and what we anticipate for its future