Public Deliberation Consortium
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Participatory mechanisms and inequality reduction: searching for plausible relations
No full textBrazil is known for being one of the most unequal countries in the world. Since the 1990s many scholars, both in Brazil and those analyzing the country¹s trajectories from abroad, have been describing a decrease in country¹s inequalities. In this article we discuss the possible role of expanding citizen participation in policy making processes and overseeing their implementation in inequality reduction. To do so we explore the connections between the participatory mechanisms and the implementation of policies that are expected to reduce inequalities in two different participatory experiments that have taken place in Brazil: São Paulo municipal health councils and the country¹s participation in the Open Government Partnership (OGP). We argue that, despite their thematic and historical differences, there are good reasons to believe that these two participatory experiences sustained the expectations concerning their role in contributing to reduced inequalities. However, these cases suggest that their contributions were less determined by the quality of the participatory process, as defined by the deliberative democracy literature, than by the nature of political alliances and mobilization processes that supported these spaces
The Economic Argument for Engagement: New Directions for Research
No full textWhat is the economic argument for public engagement? Around the world, public officials and other leaders have devised new ways to engage citizens in decision-making and problem-solving – but typically they have focused on planning, budgeting, and schools rather than poverty, inequality, or other economic issues. Meanwhile, emerging evidence from Brazil and other parts of the Global South suggests that sustained patterns of engagement builds social capital, which in turn has an impact on a range of indicators, including economic inequality and the distribution of wealth. This article summarizes several disparate areas of research on the connections between engagement and inequality, and suggest new questions and directions for innovation
Review of Scientists, Experts, and Civic Engagement: Walking a Fine Line edited by Amy E. Lesen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015)
No full textBook Review: Scientists, Experts, and Civic Engagement: Walking a Fine Line edited by Amy E. Lesen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015
Facilitating Inclusion: Austrian Wisdom Councils as Democratic Innovation between Consensus and Diversity
No full textDemocratic innovations face the challenge of realizing deliberative democratic ideals in the context of structural inequality. Consensus decision making and expertise have been said to have exclusive effects on marginalized groups like women and ethnic and sexual minorities, which obstructs diversity. Wisdom Councils as practiced in Austria attempt to counter inequalities by including marginalized groups through the moderation technique dynamic facilitation. Exploratory participatory observations and interviews with a moderator and the participants of two Wisdom Councils in Austria provide a deeper understanding of the inclusive processes at work in Wisdom Councils facilitating a productive combination of consensus and diversity
Review of Do-It-Yourself Democracy by Caroline Lee (Oxford University Press, 2015)
No full textReview of Do-It-Yourself Democracy by Caroline Lee (Oxford University Press, 2015
Equity through Learning to Listen: The Case of Public Discussion on Body-Worn Cameras in Madison, Wisconsin
No full textThis article analyzes practitioners’ attempt to achieve equity in a public input process on a local racial justice issue: whether or not the police department should implement body-worn video cameras. The insights of the two practitioners who led the public input process reveal 4 main lessons. First, equity in public deliberation is achieved sometimes by intentionally excluding some voices. Second, members of marginalized groups are motivated at times by the potential to be heard. Third, the case suggests that for some people public talk is not about achieving democracy; it is instead about life and survival. Finally, the case suggests that in order for deliberation to contribute to greater equity in democracy, people in power need to learn to listen to previously marginalized voices
Deliberation, Difference and Democratic Practice in Malawi
No full textSince the introduction of multiparty politics in Malawi in 1994, grassroots communities have been engaged in dialogue on issues affecting democratic and national development processes in the country. This paper employs Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutics and James Paul Gee’s discourse analysis to examine community views regarding public deliberation as a form of political participation in Malawi. Heideggerian hermeneutics provides a foundation for Hans-Gorg Gadamer’s principles of philosophical hermeneutics that are limited to historicism, non-authorial intention, and the fusion of horizons. This study adopted Heideggarian phenomenology of Dasein (“being there”) as an interpretive framework to analyze interview text. This paper argues that the main issue for the grassroots communities in Malawi goes beyond democratic participation. Central to the interpretation of the communal dialogue is an understanding of the socio-cultural, economic and political atmosphere within which the Malawian grassroots social actors perform. As a way of understanding how citizens at the grassroots frame democratic participation in a volatile atmosphere, a study was conducted involving 30 citizens ranging from local villagers to government officials in select local councils in Malawi. This paper documents the analysis of citizen sentiments regarding some democratization problems facing local councils and their solutions. The study was guided by three main research questions: 1) What does civic participation mean for the citizens? 2) How do the citizens define social problems? 3) What needed to be done to facilitate effective participation by citizens
Review of Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy by Tina Nabatchi and Matt Leighninger (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2015)
No full textReview of Public Participation for 21st Century Democracy by Tina Nabatchi and Matt Leighninger (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2015
Taking the Goals of Deliberation Seriously: A Differentiated View on Equality and Equity in Deliberative Designs and Processes
No full textDeliberation must be immunized against coercive power by a baseline of equality. But what does the requirement of equality mean, in practice, for organizers designing deliberative events and forums? This question is complicated by the fact that equality is fundamentally about two—at times contradictory—values. On the one hand, the value of universal moral equality, which requires abstracting from social circumstances. On the other hand, the value of equity, which requires attending to social circumstances. Deliberative institutions vary in their capacity to promote one value over the other, or in their capacity to compromise between the two. We argue that negotiating between these twin values should be done with reference to the different goals of the deliberative process (generating legitimate decisions, producing more informed opinions, promoting mutual respect, enabling accommodation, and so on), and with an eye to the trade-offs that achieving particular goals might require. Focusing on civic forums, we review existing research related to three important aspects of design—participant recruitment, the nature of the interaction, and decision-making—and discuss how different designs impact deliberation’s different normative goals. We argue against a totalizing view of deliberation, where unitary institutions try to achieve all of deliberation’s goals at once, and instead discuss how the trade-offs between deliberation’s different functions can be resolved at the system level. We conclude by arguing that practitioners should not try to realize all deliberative goals—including equality and equity—at once, but rather should prioritize the goals they want to achieve, and select institutional rules and practices that optimally achieve these goals
Budgeting for Equity: How Can Participatory Budgeting Advance Equity in the United States?
No full textParticipatory budgeting (PB) has expanded dramatically in the United States (US) from a pilot process in Chicago’s 49th ward in 2009 to over 50 processes in a dozen cities in 2015. Over this period, scholars, practitioners, and advocates have made two distinct but related claims about its impacts: that it can revitalize democracy and advance equity. In practice, however, achieving the latter has often proven challenging. Based on interviews with PB practitioners from across the US, we argue that an equity-driven model of PB is not simply about improving the quality of deliberation or reducing barriers to participation. While both of these factors are critically important, we identify three additional challenges: 1) Unclear Goals: how to clearly define and operationalize equity, 2) Participant Motivations: how to overcome the agendas of individual budget delegates, and 3) Limiting Structures: how to reconfigure the overarching budgetary and bureaucratic constraints that limit PB’s contribution to broader change. We suggest practical interventions for each of these challenges, including stronger political leadership, extending idea collection beyond the initial brainstorming phase, increasing opportunities for interaction between PB participants and their non-participating neighbors, expanding the scope of PB processes, and building stronger linkages between PB and other forms of political action