Public Deliberation Consortium
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Civic Virtue in the Deliberative System
No full textThe normative stability of a deliberative and democratic political order and the creativity and quality of the decisions its produces depend on citizens developing civic orientations and capacities through participation in deliberative events aiming at the cooperative solution of political problems. That, at least, is the claim made by critics of the systems approach to deliberative democracy, who argue that its proponents have lost sight of the educative function that respectful public reasoning plays for citizens. In this article I offer a response to this line of argument. There is no good philosophical reason to suppose that only unitary deliberation can perform an educative function for citizens. The kinds of informal and uncooperative public speech that occur in distributed deliberative processes can also develop participants’ civic capacities and civic virtue – and not merely through their systemic effects. This is an insight that should encourage us to rethink the design and facilitation of deliberative forums and pay more attention to citizens’ everyday deliberation
21st Century Town Hall Meetings in the 1990s and 2000s: Deliberative Demonstrations and the Commodification of Political Authenticity in an Era of Austerity
No full textThe public participation field grew dramatically in the United States during the 1990s and 2000s, in part due to the flagship dialogue and deliberation organization AmericaSpeaks and its trademarked 21st Century Town Hall Meeting method for large group decision-making. Drawing on participant observation of three such meetings and a multi-method ethnography of the larger field, I place these meetings in context as experimental deliberative demonstrations during a time of ferment regarding declining citizen capacity in the United States. AmericaSpeaks’ town meetings were branded as politically authentic alternatives to ordinary politics, but as participatory methods and empowerment discourses became popular with a wide variety of public and private actors, the organization failed to find a sustainable business model. I conclude by discussing the challenges for contemporary town hall meetings in an era when political authenticity is a valuable commodity
Power and Citizen Deliberation: The Contingent Impacts of Interests, Ideology, and Status Differences
No full textBoth advocates and critics of deliberative theory have regarded power relations as problems for public deliberation. Three aspects—interests, ideology and status differences—have been thought to distort deliberative processes. This article discusses a growing body of case studies that indicate that these “problems” may actually, under certain conditions, help facilitate inclusion and equality in deliberation. The crucial task is to specify the mechanisms that explain such unexpected outcomes and the conditions under which they may appear in other cases. This article specifies three such mechanisms that help explain positive outcomes in a number of case studies. The argument for focusing on mechanisms and conditions serves as a correction both to critics who find the theory of deliberation naïve and to advocates who have taken the critique against deliberative theory too lightly
Beyond the Myth of the Town Meeting: Discursive Engagement as Governance
No full textThis essay offers a response to the special issue essays. It emphasizes that town meetings are a site for governance and have implications for contemporary deliberative practices
A ‘Peaceable and Orderly Manner’: Town Meetings and other Popular Assemblies in the American Founding
No full textThe New England town meeting has often been seen as the archetypical deliberative citizen forum (see, e.g., Mansbridge 1980). More recently, political theorists have begun to appreciate the way in which any particular public forum might be better understood as part of the larger deliberative system (Parkinson, Mansbridge, 2012). Much of this work draws on modern-day examples (Parkinson 2006). But a return to the American founding era reveals that while town meetings are often praised and have many democratic virtues, they also embody a limitation on popular action generally and especially on democratic dissent
Recognition and Deliberation: A Deliberative Corrective to Liberal Multicultural Policies
No full textThis article establishes theoretical and practical distinctions between the theory of recognition and liberal multiculturalism. Five potential issues with multicultural policies are identified. The article argues that an increase in deliberative practices could solve many pitfalls of liberal multicultural policies and highlights how a “deliberative turn” could reconcile identity-related policies with the philosophical roots of the theory of recognition. The paper also highlights some challenges arising from a deliberative approach to recognition
Distributing Money to Commemoration: Collective Memories, Sense of Place, and Participatory Budgeting
No full textThis article brings the aspect of collective memories (and thus identity) back “in” to facilitate our understanding of the intriguing relationship among memories, places, and deliberative projects. While we observe that the memories of a place assign meanings to it and thereby not only imbue a “sense of place” to local members but also influence the process of deliberation, we claim that the process of deliberation can serve as a place-(re)making opportunity in a bottom-up way. Taking an experimental participatory budgeting (PB) program in Taiwan as an example, we find that collective memories play a role to influence what projects are proposed, what projects win the voting, and how people react to winning projects. In the case of South-Peak, on one hand, the winning projects echo aspects of prevailing commemorative narratives; on the other, the voting results further confirm, connect, and align the local collective memories. That is, a self-reinforcing process occurs. Additionally, we discuss how prevailing memories may change due to significant events so the meanings assigned to a specific place may thus change accordingly. Nevertheless, this is not to say that PB can only be conducted in places of strong memories and thus where a sense of place exists; since the deliberation process itself acts as a place-(re)making chance, we can expect PB to encourage the emergence and/or refreshment of collectivity during its own process
What We Can Learn from Town Meetings
No full textThis essay offers a response to the special issue essays. It highlights key ideas from the articles and reflects on lessons that town meetings have for our contemporary public engagement
Everyday Epistemologies: What People Say About Knowledge and What It Means for Public Deliberation
No full textPublic knowledge presents a persistent problem for democratic deliberation. While especially salient for public participation in technical decision-making, scholars agree that all deliberations are best informed by quality, shared information. But what kind of knowledge is required in deliberation? Can deliberative practices foster requisite learning? Through rhetorical analysis of 20 small-group, public conversations about water policy in Kansas, USA, I sought to describe cultural understandings of public knowledge to inform future research and deliberative practice. Discussants voiced three epistemologies, which I label cognitivist, sociocultural, and behaviorist, each with distinct implications for democracy. I argue that researchers and practitioners should further consider how and when to foreground epistemological assumptions in deliberation. I also question whether facts are the most critical information for community self-determination, and instead argue that deliberators be pushed to openly discuss their values
Deliberative Mini-publics as a Partial Antidote to Authoritarian Information Strategies
No full textAuthoritarian or illiberal regimes control a growing number of states throughout the world. Among the information strategies that these regimes use to gain and maintain support are the dissemination of false or misleading policy information and the use of manipulative policy frames. Deliberative mini-publics can partially counter those strategies by distributing accurate policy information and employing non-exploitative policy frames that affirm the dignity of members of the polity as free and equal citizens