Public Deliberation Consortium
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Public Health Genomics (PHG) and Public Participation: Points to Consider
No full textLarge-scale population biobanks, which aim to collect biological tissues, personal health information, and genomic data, are being introduced worldwide with the promise of increasing knowledge on chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Experts recognize the need for public participation to address the many social, legal and ethical complexities raised by the introduction of biobanks for public health research. However many researchers and decision makers struggle with how to promote public participation. This paper presents six issues that public participation must address. These issues are then applied to three large scale genetic biobank projects: CARTaGENE, Generation Scotland, and the United Kingdom Biobank. Finally, the efforts of these biobanks will be compared to the British Columbia Biobank deliberation project, which implemented a deliberative public participation experiment on biobanking
Democratizing Public Consultation Processes: Some Critical Insights
No full textCritical analysis of the Ontario government’s Lands for Life public consultation process uncovers the myriad ways in which the government put forward an economistic construct of Crown land, privileging industrial interests over all others. By reflecting on how this process went awry, future consultation processes might be further democratized, such that they would stand up to ethical scrutiny. This paper details several prescriptive suggestions and reflections as constructive input towards democratizing future land use planning processes. Specifically, it addresses a number of considerations that might be taken into account when posing the following questions: Who should consult the public? Who should be consulted? What should they be asked? And how should they be asked? Moving along the continuum towards greater inclusivity of marginalized social actors, representing a broader range interests, and mitigating power differentials ensures at the very least a more robust and deliberative democracy. This analysis challenges the entrenched government-industry collusion that has now become so prevalent, and explores how practices of ecological citizenship can be either promoted or constrained by the state
Stories of North Omaha: Conveying Identities, Values, and Actions through Storytelling in a Public Meeting
No full textThis study uses discourse analysis from a Language and Social Interaction (LSI) perspective to analyze the personal stories that were told during the North Omaha Development Project (NODP) public meeting. Personal stories may not intuitively seem to be important in public meetings because they center on individual, personal experience, rather than discussing issues in public terms. However, stories help people to create and negotiate their identities, demonstrate their values, and indicate what actions ought to be taken to enact those values in meaningful ways. In the NODP public meeting, presenters and audience members told stories that demonstrated the important distinction between community members and outsiders, and offered competing notions of the community values and appropriate actions that should be taken to address neighborhood poverty. This analysis offers insights into how public participation scholars can view stories told in public meetings as well as practical implications for officials convening public meetings
On Dewey, Habermas and Deliberative Democracy
No full textAlison Kadlec brings Deweyan Pragmatist principles to bear on the challenge of overcoming power asymmetries in public deliberation. This enables the design of settings and processes in which citizens of every social class, educational level, and cultural background can participate effectively. These ideas, on the design of democratic deliberative forums, appear as the concluding chapter of a larger work devoted to elaborating a “critical pragmatism.” Kadlec addresses the frequent criticism that Dewey is insufficiently critical – that he lacks a theory of social structures of power, and of the distortions of communication that result from the exercise of that power. She does a great service in bringing out the politically critical dimension in Dewey’s thought, and systematically refuting the mistaken reading of Dewey as insensitive to power relations. This exploration of Dewey\u27s critical pragmatism generates a lively comparison and contrast with Habermasian critical theory
Crackpot or Genius? Canada Steps onto the World Stage as a Democratic Innovator
No full textConcluding remarks by J.H. Snider, a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government and President of iSolon.org, delivered to Harvard University Canada Program’s Conference on Comparing the Democratic Deficit in Canada and the United States: Defining, Measuring, and Fixing, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 10, 2008. The remarks divide the substance of the conference into three categories: Democratic Deficits, Reforms to Fix the Democratic Deficits, and Reforms to Reform the Process of Fixing the Democratic Deficits. Canada\u27s great democratic innovation, the creation of citizens assemblies on electoral reform, fits in this third category, Reforms to Reform the Process of Fixing the Democratic Deficits
The Idea of Democracy and Its Distortions: From Socrates to Cornel West
No full textDemocracy is a highly-cherished idea nowadays as it casts an aura of legitimacy and prestige on political systems, theories, and ideologies. This is why regimes, political organizations, theories, and ideologies of all types lay claim to being democratic or aiming to serve its interests. To justify their claims and aims, they all define democracy in ways that suit their interests and fit their purposes. Some examples: ideologues of capitalism define democracy in ways that serve the interests of the free-market system and endorse the rule of capital, hence liberal democracy; economists formulate it so that it fits within the conceptual framework of their discipline; and Cornel West defines it as a tragicomic concept that suits his Christian vision. These attempts at making democracy fit one\u27s interests, purposes, and views have distorted the true practice and meaning of the idea, and have subverted its normative substance. Putting its focus mainly on examining Cornel West\u27s Democracy Matters (Penguin Press, 2004) as one of the latest misrepresentations and distortions of the idea of democracy, this essay argues that we need to revisit the original meaning of the concept (the rule by the people ), and revive the contention that democracy entails the citizens\u27 direct, deliberative, and ongoing participation and power in politics. To counter the economists’ and liberal democracy’s gutting of the normative substance of democracy, and also to counter West\u27s distorted vision of it, the essay attempts to retrieve the authentic content of democracy, and puts forth a positive vision for its future
Identifying Deliberation in Social Movement Assemblies: Challenges of Comparative Participant Observation
No full textContemporary social movements can serve as a critical case for the empirical study of deliberation. In countless face-to-face meetings activists often discuss long hours before a decision is reached. In this context, we try to analyse the conditions under which deliberation is successfully employed as a method of discursive conflict resolution. As we develop participant observation in a comparative approach we encounter three methodological challenges which this paper addresses. First, we look at some characteristics of the global justice movements, briefly addressing the different settings in which controversial discussions occur. Second, we give a rationale for applying a semi-standardised multi-level participant observation in order to allow the collection of comparable data by various researchers in several countries. Focusing on participant observation on the level of controversial discussions we thirdly conceptualise competitiveness, power, and asymmetry as three theoretical dimensions to identify eight different practices of discourse, one of them being deliberation. We are currently implementing this model for regular observations of group meetings on a local, national and European level. First results should be available in the near future
The Civic Benefits of Imperfect Deliberation
No full textNormative theories of deliberative democracy stake claims that deliberation, if done correctly, can enhance citizens’ trust in authorities, foster a greater understanding of political issues and the element of compromise in politics, and increase the legitimacy of the political system overall. Skeptics point out that public deliberations seldom fully satisfy the communicative criteria stipulated in normative theory, raising the question: to what extent may we expect imperfect deliberations to generate the promised civic goods? This article proposes a framework for answering this question and also offers a few preliminary answers. The empirical analyses build on an opinion survey conducted in the wake of a series of public meetings that varied in the extent to which they lived up to normative standards of deliberative democracy. The meetings centered around whether to continue construction on a railway tunnel near the town of Båstad in southwestern Sweden. The findings suggest that even imperfect deliberation may have the potential to generate civic goods, though the analyses also raise doubts regarding the durability of the positive effects as well as the extent to which they will develop uniformly among participants
From Culture War to Difficult Dialogue: Exploring Distinct Frames for Citizen Exchange about Social Problems
No full textWhile the precise nature of socio-cultural conflict in the United States remains contested, there is growing scholarly agreement that elite (media/governmental) framings may be significantly aggravating public animosities. In order to better understand how actual citizens frame meaningful issues in such an atmosphere, we collaborated as socially liberal and conservative-leaning researchers in a joint study of twenty citizens across the political spectrum, from a conservative pastor and a traditional family advocate to a socialist activist and a leader of a feminist organization. This paper reports our analysis of citizen comments on fundamental problems facing society and their proposed solutions. Themes are organized within three general categories: 1) Talking about citizen exchange: What is the essence of good public discourse? 2) Defining social problems: What is the nature of fundamental challenges facing society? and 3) Delimiting solutions: What is the scope of needed social change? Within each category, patterns across citizen comments are identified and explored in light of prevailing stereotypes about liberals and conservatives. Based on this examination, possible shifts in the framing of liberal-conservative exchange are proposed as a potential contribution to a more nuanced and productive public deliberation across the partisan divide
The Use of Deliberative Discussion to Enhance the Critical Thinking Abilities of Nursing Students
No full textDeliberative discussion is a teaching method that invites nursing students to engage in a shared inquiry regarding public issues. The purpose of this pretest-posttest control group experimental study was to investigate the effects of using the deliberative discussion method to enhance the critical thinking abilities of first year nursing students. Forty four students were randomly assigned to attend three deliberative discussion sessions over a 13 week period or to the control group. Using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test, no statistically significant differences were found in critical thinking scores between the two groups. The level and depth of students’ critical thinking abilities during the discussions did not increase from session one to session three. The authors of this study suggest that participation in deliberative discussions may not produce an immediate effect on critical thinking and possible long term benefits are not known. Further considerations include having more exposures to the deliberative method and having opportunities to critically reflect after the discussions