The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy (Oxford Handbooks) [Illustrated] 9780198747369, 0198747365

Table of contents :
Cover
The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures and Tables
List of Contributors
1. Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction
Part I Roots of the Deliberative Approach
2. The Origins of the Deliberative Turn
3. The Philosophic Origins of Deliberative Ideals
4. The Forms of Deliberative Communication
5. Deliberative Ideals Across Diverse Cultures
6. Indigenous Spheres of Deliberation
Part II Theory of Deliberative Democracy
7. The Epistemic Value of Democratic Deliberation
8. Deliberation and Justice
9. Deliberation and Equality
10. Deliberative Democracy and Multiculturalism
11. Deliberation and Representation
12. Deliberative and Participatory Democracy
13. Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation
14. Deliberation and Voting Entwined
15. Listening and Deliberation
16. Deliberation and Long-​Term Decisions: Representing Future Generations
Part III Deliberation in Forums, Publics, and Systems
17. Institutional Deliberation
18. Mini-​Publics and Deliberative Democracy
19. Deliberative Polling
20. Scaling Up Deliberative Effects—​Applying Lessons of Mini-​Publics
21. Deliberative Media
22. Online Deliberation
23. Taking Everyday Political Talk Seriously
24. Deliberation in Protests and Social Movements
25. Governance Networks
26. Deliberation and Citizen Interests
27. Deliberative Systems
28. Politics in Translation: Communication Between Sites of the Deliberative System
Part IV Deliberative Approaches within Disciplines and Fields
29. Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice: A Review
30. Deliberative Democracy and Comparative Democratization Studies
31. Deliberation in Communication Studies
32. Arguing and Deliberation in International Relations
33. The Political Psychology of Deliberation
34. Deliberation and Framing
35. Deliberation in Sociology
36. Deliberative Policy Analysis
37. Deliberative Planning Practices—Without Smothering Invention: A Practical Aesthetic View
38. Deliberative Law
39. Deliberative Constitutionalism
40. Deliberative Democracy and Science
Methods
41. A Preface to Studying Deliberation Empirically
42. Deliberation and Experimental Design
43. Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation
Part V Practical Applications
44. Deliberative Democracy as a Reform Movement
45. Deliberative Democracy and Public Dispute Resolution
46. Deliberative Negotiation
47. Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies
48. Deliberative Democracy and the Environment
49. Deliberation and Catastrophic Risks
Part VI Deliberative Democracy Around the World
50. Deliberative Democracy in East Asia: Japan and China
51. Deliberative Democracy in India
52. Africa and Deliberative Politics
53. Deliberative Democracy in Latin America
54. Deliberation Constrained: An Increasingly Segmented European Union
55. Transnational and Global Deliberation
Part VII Reflections
56. Interview with Jürgen Habermas
57. If Deliberation Is Everything, Maybe It’s Nothing
58. Reflections on Deliberative Democracy: When Theory Meets Practice
Index

Citation preview

T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

DE L I B E R AT I V E DE M O C R AC Y

The Oxford Handbook of

DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY Edited by

ANDRÉ BÄCHTIGER JOHN S. DRYZEK JANE MANSBRIDGE and

MARK E. WARREN

1

3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2018 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018931182 ISBN 978–​0–​19–​874736–​9 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Preface

The Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy began with a conversation between John Dryzek and André Bächtiger in Canberra in February 2014, when John declared that it is about time for a Handbook on this crucial topic. While John and André agreed that there is clear demand for a comprehensive treatment of deliberative democracy, both felt that given the breadth and complexity of deliberative democracy today, the editorial team needed reinforcement. They asked Mark Warren and Jenny Mansbridge to join them, and both Jenny and Mark immediately and enthusiastically agreed. The editorial team then had a number of skype discussions about the topics to be covered in such a Handbook, leading to a proposal to Oxford University Press in Northern summer 2014. After signing the contract, we were overwhelmed with the positive reactions to our call for contributing to the Handbook: almost all authors we contacted responded positively and enthusiastically. What followed was a process of intensive engagement with the more than one hundred authors of this volume, involving deliberations between the editors and the authors, but also within the editorial team itself. It also involved, as any good process of deliberation, a lot of mutual learning. For example, none of us was aware of the full dimensions of the plural origins of the deliberative approach. When reading and engaging with the chapters as they arrived, we realized that there is far less unity in the origins of deliberative democracy than commonly thought. We have been impressed with the multiple “discoveries” of deliberative politics across disciplines that were not initially in discourse with one another—​disciplines as diverse as urban planning, law, dispute resolution, economics, communications, legislative studies, public policy analysis, sociology, and environmental governance. Not all of them initially used the terms “deliberation” and “deliberative democracy,” though commonalities eventually became evident. And even though we speak—​for structuring and clarifying purposes—​of first-​and second-​generation models of deliberation in the introduction to this volume, we recognize that some first-​generation pioneers (including Jürgen Habermas) had already adopted second-​generation concepts in the 1990s. In a way, theoretical unity was more what students of deliberation imagined in the 2000s rather than what the theoretical pioneers had in mind when developing the concept in the 1980s and 1990s. We hope (and believe) that the Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy provides a landmark statement of a field which has grown enormously over the past few decades in size and importance. The publication of this volume does not, of course, mean that controversies surrounding the concept of deliberation and deliberative democracy are settled; quite the contrary. A good example are the persisting

vi   Preface differences (some might even say disagreements) in defining deliberation. To give some examples from the Handbook:  in their chapter on catastrophic risks, Ryan Gunderson and Thomas Dietz refer to “analytical deliberation,” which draws directly from Habermas’s notion of rational discourse and emphasizes well-​justified argumentation and the “forceless force of the better argument.” Similarly, in their chapter on legislatures, governments, and courts, Paul Quirk and co-​authors speak of “institutional deliberation” which puts a premium on the careful evaluation of alternatives and the epistemic quality of the resulting policy decisions. By contrast, describing deliberative processes among citizens and in everyday talk, Francesca Polletta and Beth Gharrity Gardner as well as Pamela Conover and Patrick Miller make a strong case for including stories, personal experiences, and emotions in the conceptual apparatus of good deliberation in order “to make it possible for people to overcome some of the barriers to deliberation in everyday life” (Polletta and Gardner, this volume, Chapter 4). Focusing on conflict resolution, Lawrence Susskind and co-​authors define deliberation as a “potentially cooperative enterprise rather than simply a battle over fixed goods or opposing values,” geared towards determining the public interest. Put differently, good deliberation here is a social process of shared and creative problem-​ solving. This view of deliberation contrasts with Quirk et al., who claim that while social elements of deliberation (such as mutual respect) may be potentially relevant for learning and finding agreement, they are less relevant in “institutional deliberation” where epistemic quality frequently trumps deliberation´s social dimensions. We think that the exact form of deliberative engagement depends on the goals and contexts of deliberation. It makes a difference whether the primary goals of deliberative interactions are achieving agreement or maximizing the chances of a correct decision (see Estlund and Landemore, this volume, Chapter 7); whether experts or citizens deliberate with one another; or whether deliberation happens around a kitchen table or within a legislature. Nonetheless, there is still considerable overlap among the various definitions of deliberation in the Handbook: all authors agree that good deliberation is about giving reasons (albeit that can happen in very different forms) and listening to each other’s claims, arguments, and experiences. We hope that our minimalist definition of deliberation (see our Introduction), which we conceptualize as mutual communication that involves weighing and reflecting on preferences, values and interests regarding matters of common concern, allows encapsulating the variety of deliberative forms in different contexts and for different purposes, without abandoning the idea that deliberative interactions have normatively valuable qualities that should be protected, supported, and institutionalized. Finally, we are greatly indebted to all contributors to this volume, for their passion and diligence in writing the chapters but also for their patience in interacting with us (and reacting to our criticisms and manifold suggestions). We are particularly grateful to Jürgen Habermas, Bob Goodin, and Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, who accepted our invitation to reflect critically on the state of the art in deliberative democracy

Preface   vii (including their own work). Moreover, we are immensely grateful to Seraphine Arnold, who carefully edited all fifty-​eight chapters of the Handbook and helped us in putting the whole volume together. Last but not least, we are also indebted to Dominic Byatt, Sarah Parker, and Olivia Wells from Oxford University Press who accompanied the production of this huge volume from beginning to end. AB, Stuttgart JSD, Canberra JM, Cambridge (MA) MEW, Vancouver

Contents

List of Figures and Tables  List of Contributors  1. Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction  André Bächtiger, John S. Dryzek, Jane Mansbridge, and Mark E. Warren

xv xvii 1

PA RT I   RO OT S OF T H E DE L I B E R AT I V E A P P ROAC H 2. The Origins of the Deliberative Turn  Antonio Floridia

35

3. The Philosophic Origins of Deliberative Ideals  Simone Chambers

55

4. The Forms of Deliberative Communication  Francesca Polletta and Beth Gharrity Gardner

70

5. Deliberative Ideals Across Diverse Cultures  Jensen Sass

86

6. Indigenous Spheres of Deliberation  Martin Hébert

100

PA RT I I   T H E ORY OF DE L I B E R AT I V E DE M O C R AC Y  7. The Epistemic Value of Democratic Deliberation  David Estlund and Hélène Landemore

113

8. Deliberation and Justice  Stefan Rummens

132

x   Contents

9. Deliberation and Equality  Edana Beauvais

144

10. Deliberative Democracy and Multiculturalism  Monique Deveaux

156

11. Deliberation and Representation  Mark B. Brown

171

12. Deliberative and Participatory Democracy  Stephen elstub

187

13. Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation  Andrew F. March and Alicia Steinmetz

203

14. Deliberation and Voting Entwined  Gerry Mackie

218

15. Listening and Deliberation  Michael E. Morrell

237

16. Deliberation and Long-​Term Decisions: Representing Future Generations  Michael K. MacKenzie

251

PA RT I I I   DE L I B E R AT ION I N F ORUM S , P U B L IC S , A N D SYS T E M S  17. Institutional Deliberation  Paul J. Quirk, William Bendix, and André Bächtiger

273

18. Mini-​Publics and Deliberative Democracy  Maija Setälä and Graham Smith

300

19. Deliberative Polling  James Fishkin

315

20. Scaling Up Deliberative Effects—​Applying Lessons of Mini-​Publics  329 Simon Niemeyer and Julia Jennstål 21. Deliberative Media  Rousiley C. M. Maia

348

Contents   xi

22. Online Deliberation  Kim Strandberg and Kimmo Grönlund

365

23. Taking Everyday Political Talk Seriously  Pamela Johnston Conover and Patrick R. Miller

378

24. Deliberation in Protests and Social Movements  Donatella Della Porta and Nicole Doerr

392

25. Governance Networks  Carolyn M. Hendriks and John Boswell

407

26. Deliberation and Citizen Interests  John Ferejohn

420

27. Deliberative Systems  John Parkinson

432

28. Politics in Translation: Communication Between Sites of the Deliberative System  Michael A. Neblo and Avery White

447

PA RT I V   DE L I B E R AT I V E A P P ROAC H E S W I T H I N DI S C I P L I N E S A N D F I E L D S 29. Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice: A Review  Christian List

463

30. Deliberative Democracy and Comparative Democratization Studies  490 Nicole Curato and Jürg Steiner 31. Deliberation in Communication Studies  John Gastil and Laura W. Black

502

32. Arguing and Deliberation in International Relations  Thomas Risse

518

33. The Political Psychology of Deliberation  Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg

535

34. Deliberation and Framing  Thomas J. Leeper and Rune Slothuus

556

xii   Contents

35. Deliberation in Sociology  Erik Schneiderhan and Shamus Khan

573

36. Deliberative Policy Analysis  Frank Fischer and Piyapong Boossabong

584

37. Deliberative Planning Practices—Without Smothering Invention: A Practical Aesthetic View  John Forester

595

38. Deliberative Law  David L. Ponet and Ethan J. Leib

612

39. Deliberative Constitutionalism  Hoi L. Kong and Ron Levy

625

40. Deliberative Democracy and Science  Alfred Moore

640

M E T HOD S 41. A Preface to Studying Deliberation Empirically  André Bächtiger

657

42. Deliberation and Experimental Design  Kevin M. Esterling

663

43. Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation  Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman

678

PA RT V   P R AC T IC A L A P P L IC AT ION S  44. Deliberative Democracy as a Reform Movement  Lyn Carson, Janette Hartz-​Karp, and Michael Briand

697

45. Deliberative Democracy and Public Dispute Resolution  Lawrence Susskind, Jessica Gordon, and Yasmin Zaerpoor

710

46. Deliberative Negotiation  Daniel Naurin and Christine Reh

728

47. Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies  Ian O’Flynn and Didier Caluwaerts

742

Contents   xiii

48. Deliberative Democracy and the Environment  Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett

755

49. Deliberation and Catastrophic Risks  Ryan Gunderson and Thomas Dietz

768

PA RT V I   DE L I B E R AT I V E DE M O C R AC Y A RO U N D T H E WOR L D  50. Deliberative Democracy in East Asia: Japan and China  Beibei Tang, Tetsuki Tamura, and Baogang He

791

51. Deliberative Democracy in India  Ramya Parthasarathy and Vijayendra Rao

805

52. Africa and Deliberative Politics  Emmanuel ifeanyi Ani

819

53. Deliberative Democracy in Latin America  Thamy Pogrebinschi

829

54. Deliberation Constrained: An Increasingly Segmented European Union  Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum 55. Transnational and Global Deliberation  William Smith

842 856

PA RT V I I   R E F L E C T ION S 56. Interview with Jürgen Habermas  September 2016, translated by Ciaran Cronin

871

57. If Deliberation Is Everything, Maybe It’s Nothing  Robert E. Goodin

883

58. Reflections on Deliberative Democracy: When Theory Meets Practice  Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson Index

900 913

List of Figures and Tables

Figures 29.1 The aggregative model 

464

29.2 The pure deliberative model 

469

29.3 The mixed model 

469

29.4

Single-​peaked preferences 

472

29.5

Non-​single-​peaked preferences 

472

29.6 Deliberation as preference transformation 

476

Tables 1.1 Standards for good deliberation 

4

12.1 Conceptions of Democracy 

191

18.1 Types and characteristics of mini-​publics 

301

29.1 A profile of individual judgments in the court example 

483

29.2 A profile of individual judgments in the expert-​committee example 

483

45.1 Spectrum of processes for collaboration and consensus-​building in public decisions 

721

List of Contributors

Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani  Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Ghana Walter F. Baber  Professor in the Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration, California State University, Long Beach André Bächtiger  Professor of Political Theory, University of Stuttgart Robert V. Bartlett  Gund Professor of the Liberal Arts, Department of Political Science, University of Vermont Edana Beauvais Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, Department of Political Science, McGill University William Bendix  Associate Professor of Political Science, Keene State College Mark Bevir  Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley Laura W. Black Associate Professor, School of Communication Studies, Ohio University Piyapong Boossabong  Assistant Professor of Policy Analysis and Planning, School of Public Policy, Chiang Mai University John Boswell  Associate Professor in Politics, University of Southampton Quinlan Bowman  Postdoctoral Fellow, Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Michael Briand  Director, Ethics and Deliberation Project, CivicEvolution Mark B. Brown,  Professor of Political Science, California State University, Sacramento Didier Caluwaerts  Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Vrije Universiteit, Brussels Lyn Carson Former Professor of Applied Politics, University of Sydney Business School, and Research Director, The newDemocracy Foundation Simone Chambers  Professor of Political Science, University of California, Irvine Pamela Johnston Conover  Distinguished Professor of Political Science, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

xviii   List of Contributors Ciaran Cronin  Wright translation and editing, Berlin, Germany Nicole Curato  ARC Discovery Early Career Research Fellow, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra Monique Deveaux  Professor of Philosophy, University of Guelph Thomas Dietz  University  Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy, Michigan State University Nicole Doerr  Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen John S. Dryzek  Centenary Professor, ARC Laureate Fellow, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra Stephen Elstub  Lecturer in British Politics, Newcastle University Erik O. Eriksen  Director ARENA and Professor of Political Science, University of Oslo Kevin M. Esterling  Professor, Department of Political Science and Professor, School of Public Policy, University of California—​Riverside David Estlund  Lombardo Professor of the Humanities, Brown University John Ferejohn  Professor of Law and Politics, New York University Frank Fischer Distinguished Professor of Politics and Global Affairs, Humboldt (Berlin, Germany) and Rutgers (USA) Universities James Fishkin  Janet M. Peck Professor of International Communication and Director, Center for Deliberative Democracy, Stanford University Antonio Floridia  Director of the “Policies for Citizen Participation” Sector of Tuscany Region and President of the Italian Society of Electoral Studies John Forester Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University John ​Erik Fossum  ARENA, Professor of Political Science, University of Oslo John Gastil  Professor of Political Science, Pennsylvania State University Beth Gharrity Gardner  Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences Centre for Citizenship, Social Pluralism and Religious Diversity, University of Potsdam Robert E. Goodin Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University Jessica Gordon  PhD candidate in Environmental Policy and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kimmo Grönlund  Professor of Political Science, Åbo Akademi University

List of Contributors    xix Ryan Gunderson Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Gerontology, Miami University Amy Gutmann President and Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Professor of Communication, University of Pennsylvania Jürgen Habermas  Professor Emeritus, University of Frankfurt Janette Hartz-​Karp  Professor, Curtin University, Sustainability Policy Institute Baogang He  Alfred Deakin Professor and Chair in International Relations, Deakin University Martin Hébert  Professor, Department of Anthropology, Université Laval Carolyn M. Hendriks  Associate Professor of Public Policy and Governance, Australian National University Julia Jennstål Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Government, Uppsala University Christopher F. Karpowitz  Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University Shamus Khan  Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbia University Hoi L. Kong  Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University Hélène Landemore  Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University Thomas J. Leeper Associate Professor in Political Behaviour, London School of Economics Ethan J. Leib  Professor of Law, Fordham University Ron Levy  Associate Professor of Lecturer in Law, Australian National University Christian List Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, London School of Economics Michael K. MacKenzie  Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh Gerry Mackie Associate Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego Rousiley C.  M. Maia Professor of Political Communication, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil Jane Mansbridge  Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, Harvard University Andrew F. March  Berggruen Fellow, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics; Law and Social Change Fellow, Islamic Legal Studies Program, Harvard University

xx   List of Contributors Tali Mendelberg   John Work Garrett Professor of Politics, Princeton University Patrick R. Miller  Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Kansas Alfred Moore  Lecturer in Political Theory, Department of Politics, University of York Michael E. Morrell  Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut Daniel Naurin  Professor of Political Science, University of Oslo Michael A. Neblo  Associate Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Ohio State University Simon Niemeyer  Associate Professor, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra Ian O’Flynn  Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, Newcastle University John Parkinson  Professor of Politics, University of Canberra Ramya Parthasarathy  PhD candidate, Stanford University Thamy Pogrebinschi  Senior Researcher, WZB Berlin Social Science Center Francesca Polletta  Professor of Sociology, University of California David L. Ponet  Parliamentary Specialist, UNICEF Donatella della Porta  Professor of Sociology, European University Institute Paul J. Quirk  Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia Vijayendra Rao  Lead Economist, Development Research, World Bank Christine Reh  Reader in European Politics, Department of Political Science, University College London Thomas Risse  Professor of International Relations, Freie Universität Berlin Stefan Rummens  Professor of Political Philosophy, KU Leuven Jensen Sass  Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra Erik Schneiderhan Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto Maija Setälä  Professor in Political Science, University of Turku Rune Slothuus  Professor of Political Science, Aarhus University Graham Smith  Professor of Politics, University of Westminster William Smith Associate Professor, Department of Government and Public Administration, Chinese University of Hong Kong

List of Contributors    xxi Jürg Steiner  Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of North Carolina and University of Bern Alicia Steinmetz  PhD candidate, Yale University Kim Strandberg Academy research fellow,  Academy of Finland, Åbo Akademi University Lawrence Susskind  Professor of Environmental and Urban Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Tetsuki Tamura Professor of Political Science, Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University Beibei Tang  Associate Professor and Deputy Head of Department of China Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong-​Liverpool University Dennis Thompson Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy, Emeritus, Harvard University Mark E. Warren  Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia Avery White  PhD candidate, Ohio State University Yasmin Zaerpoor  PhD candidate, Environmental Policy and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chapter 1

De l iberative De mo c rac y An Introduction André Bächtiger, John S. Dryzek, Jane Mansbridge, and Mark E. Warren

The Aim of this Handbook Deliberative democracy is now a flourishing field. Deliberative democratic thinking characterizes ever more areas of theory and empirical study. Practical democratic innovations explicitly grounded in deliberative principles are proliferating, there is now a large academic and practical literature on deliberation, political figures increasingly appeal to deliberative democratic principles, and criticism has been robust and productive. But all is not rosy on other fronts. As we bring this Handbook to fruition, the world at large appears to be moving in some disconcerting anti-​deliberative and anti-​democratic directions. Post-​truth politics is the antithesis of deliberative democracy. Resurgent authoritarian and populist leaders in many countries have little interest in deliberation—​ except to suppress it. Even where deliberation is not repressed, we too often see levels of political polarization that signal inabilities to listen to the other side and reflect upon what they may have to say. We hope that these sorts of trends can and will be reversed, and that the ideas and practices of deliberative democracy can play a key role in their reversal. In the meantime, however, these trends feed the cynicism of those who believe that deliberative democracy is a pipe dream. A long tradition in political science deploys empirical evidence and analysis to show that ordinary people are not up to the task of competent participation in democracy. Recently Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, in Democracy for Realists, argue that identities and partisan attachments rather than issue opinions or interests drive voting behavior. Achen and Bartels dismiss deliberative democracy in a footnote as irrelevant when it comes to “understanding democratic politics on a national scale” (Achen and Bartels 2016, 2 n. 2). In contrast, we believe that deliberative

2    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren democracy provides the best hope for countering the democratic deficiencies described by Achen and Bartels, and also constitutes an essential response to authoritarian populism and post-​truth politics. Normative thinking about deliberative democracy and deliberative experiments is aimed not at duplicating democratic politics today but instead at providing ideals toward which to work and showing empirically how political systems can work better. Deliberative democracy puts meaningful communication at the heart of democracy, not as a naive hope, but in full recognition of the real capacities and limitations of citizens, politicians, and political processes. We hope this Handbook will demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of deliberative democracy, the opportunities for and the obstructions to politically constructive and democratic deliberation, the accomplishments of both the theory and the practice, and the challenges that remain.

Concepts Deliberative democracy is grounded in an ideal in which people come together, on the basis of equal status and mutual respect, to discuss the political issues they face and, on the basis of those discussions, decide on the policies that will then affect their lives. In this volume, we define deliberation itself minimally to mean mutual communication that involves weighing and reflecting on preferences, values, and interests regarding matters of common concern. Defining it this way minimizes the positive valence that attaches to the word “deliberation” itself, so that we can then speak of “good” and “bad” deliberation without “bad deliberation” being a contradiction in terms. We define deliberative democracy as any practice of democracy that gives deliberation a central place. We conceptually contrast deliberative democracy to aggregative democracy, which is normally based on the counting of votes. That deliberative and aggregative democracy contrast conceptually does not make them antithetical in practice. At least in established liberal democratic states, both deliberation (talking) and aggregation (voting) are usually important for democratic decision-​making at different stages. Citizens and representatives discuss the issues before them, then sometimes come to agreement or, when conflict remains after discussion, make the decision by a vote. The role of the deliberation before the vote is to help the citizens to understand better the issues, their own interests, and the interests and perceptions of others; forge agreement where possible; and, in the instances in which agreement is not possible, both structure and clarify the questions behind the conflict and the eventual vote. Like many human ideals and almost all democratic ideals, the ideals that animate deliberative democracy are aspirational—​ideals that cannot be achieved fully in practice but that provide standards toward which to aim, all other things equal.1 Many common criticisms of deliberative democracy fail to recognize the aspirational quality of deliberative ideals. That deliberative democracy in its ideal form cannot be achieved perfectly in the world of practice does not undermine its use as a standard toward which to strive. The central ideal in aggregative democracy, equal power, is also impossible to

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    3 achieve perfectly in practice. Even referenda, in which each citizen may have an equally weighted and aggregated vote, are worded and placed before the citizenry by individuals whose power over that wording and placement is greater than that of the typical citizen. It is impossible to achieve either deliberative or aggregative ideals in all their fullness. Despite the impossibility of fully achieving these ideals, however, in some circumstances we may want to try hard and incur significant costs to come closer to an ideal. In other circumstances, trying too hard to achieve one ideal may create impediments to achieving other ideals and values—​for example, when the time and resources required for extensive deliberation undermine decisive action on a matter of urgent public concern. When the costs in other values of promoting the deliberative ideal seem on reflection too high, we appropriately settle for institutions and practices that come less close to the deliberative ideal. This contingent approach, attending to the greater or lesser importance and the greater and lesser costs of different ideals in different contexts, applies to all aspirational democratic ideals, including deliberative ones. Over the past half-​century, thinking about the content of deliberative ideals has evolved. In what we call the “first generation” of thinkers on the subject,2 philosophers in several different and sometimes competing traditions introduced a series of related concepts to contemporary democratic theory: Jürgen Habermas developed one tradition, John Rawls and Joshua Cohen another, and writers in the civic republican tradition a third. Thinkers in other traditions and fields, including those rearticulating the ideals of participatory democracy, analyzing successful policy processes, and studying the internal workings of legislatures and courts, all contributed ideas to the field (see Floridia, this volume, Chapter 2). At the same time, scholars and practitioners interested in improving the practice of democracy on the ground introduced different kinds of deliberative experiments whose outcomes have also influenced the evolving and contested theory. These first-​generation thinkers all viewed deliberation fairly generically, as the offering and receiving of reasons for positions or policies. They often also combined this generic idea with the ideals of high-​quality argumentation or rational-​critical debate, a focus on the common good, mutual respect, and the concept of a rationally motivated consensus to which all could agree (see Chambers, this volume, Chapter 3). Almost as soon as thinkers from these different strands of theory and practice introduced their conceptions of deliberation into contemporary democratic theory, those conceptions met opposition. To that opposition others responded in defense, and as the debate continued, the ideals began to evolve. What we call “second-​generation” ideals do not reflect a consensus of either theorists or practitioners, but are nevertheless, we believe, more sensitive to the nuances of the pluralist aspirations and dimensions of modern democracies. The first-​generation ideal that arguments ought to give and respond to “reasons,” for example, has evolved into the criterion that arguments ought to give and respond to appropriate “considerations” and contexts—​for example, more emotionally rooted expressions and differing styles of communication such as narrative and rhetoric. These second-​generation ideals are not more “realistic” in the sense of being practical accommodations to the reality of not being able to reach the first-​generation ideals fully. Rather, they embody expansions of first-​generation ideals, often driven by ideals

4    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren of democratic inclusion and plurality. The theorists who have advanced the second-​ generation views of deliberation have advanced them as better ideals—​more inclusive and better thought through—​than the ideals of the first generation. The choice between first-​and second-​generation ideals is contested, as is the meaning of each of the ideals in either generation. What any democratic ideal ought to imply in practice is always contested. An important job of political theory is to make clear the strands in any such contest so that both practitioners and theorists may understand better what they want in the realm of democratic ideals. Table 1.1 presents our summary of the first-​and second-​generation ideals. These ideals are not only contested but also evolving, so that what we present here is a snapshot that will undoubtedly change further as deliberative theorists continue to place the ideals under scrutiny, examining their implications and suggesting alternatives.3 The ideal of mutual respect is central to all theories of deliberation (Gutmann and Thompson 1996). Although theorists have explored what respect might mean in any interaction, no one has suggested revising the underlying ideal significantly. For Larmore, for example, “to respect another person as an end is to require that coercive or political principles be as justifiable to that person as they presumably are to us” (Larmore 1999, 608; see also Forst 2012). That justifiability may be tested in deliberation. In practice, respect in deliberation includes listening actively and trying to understand the meaning of a speaker’s statements to that speaker, rather than viewing the statements as objects to be dismissed, demeaned, manipulated, or destroyed. It means, without

Table 1.1 Standards for good deliberation First generation

Second generation

Respect

Unchallenged, unrevised

Absence of power

Unchallenged, unrevised

Equality

Inclusion, mutual respect, equal communicative freedom, equal opportunity for influence

Reasons

Relevant considerations

Aim at consensus

Aim at both consensus and clarifying conflict

Common good orientation

Orientation to both common good and self-​interest constrained by fairness

Publicity

Publicity in many conditions, but not all (e.g. in negotiations when representatives can be trusted)

Accountability

Accountability to constituents when elected, to other participants and citizens when not elected

Sincerity

Sincerity in matters of importance; allowable insincerity in greetings, compliments, and other communications intended to increase sociality

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    5 sacrificing realism, trying to see the motives of the speaker as the speaker experiences them. It means, as Bernard Williams put it, that each speaker “is owed an effort at identification; that he [or she] should not be regarded as the surface to which a certain label can be applied, but one should try to see the world (including the label) from his [or her] point of view” (Williams 1962, 41). In response to early formulations of the ideal of mutual respect as requiring an “effort at identification,” subsequent thinkers, particularly Black feminist theorists, have pointed out that this effort should include a consciousness that one cannot ever fully understand or identify with the experiences of another, particularly if one’s interlocutor comes from a background very different from one’s own (Collins 1990). Thus, one should give highly respectful attention to, and ask questions designed to elicit, each person’s own understanding of their experiences and their own interpretations of their words (for an early formulation, see Barber 1984, 173–​4). Even when difficult, members of dominant groups interacting with members of historically subordinate groups should work to understand the expressions, narratives, problems, and positions of subordinate groups. In practice, regardless of the background of any of the individuals involved, mutual respect in deliberation enhances the frank and free flow of ideas. Respect in interaction is, in short, an unchallenged standard of good deliberation. The ideal of absence of coercive power in deliberation has also remained unchallenged since Habermas first targeted its importance in his 1962 Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere ([1962] 1989, 202) and later portrayed it as possibly the central presupposition of argumentation based on the quest for understanding (Habermas [1981] 1984, 25 and 1982, 235, 255). Reconceived from a pragmatic presupposition to an ideal, the aim is that in deliberation, coercive power, defined as the threat of sanction or the use of force (moving others against their will), should not play a role. It requires no subtlety to realize that such conditions never exist in reality. Since Foucault (e.g. [1975] 1977), however, our understanding of the subtlety of the effects of power has expanded greatly. We now see how even the words we have available to us to speak, including the language we must speak (van Parijs 2011), carry with them a host of forced choices emanating from the context of social, political, and economic power—​for example giving us, before the recent feminist movement, “mankind” as the most accessible word in English to describe humanity (see e.g. Lupia and Norton 2017). Despite the impossibility of removing coercive power from any deliberative situation, however, that aspiration remains central to the deliberative enterprise. We rightly judge particular deliberative institutions by how closely they approach this ideal. Although mutual respect and the absence of power stand unchallenged as deliberative ideals throughout the evolution of deliberative thought, other earlier ideals embedded in the concept of good deliberation have undergone some evolution, ranging from minor to significant. The ideal of equality, for example, has undergone a slight modification from certain earlier formulations. It still encompasses the component ideals of mutual respect (as discussed above), inclusion (the ideal that those with interests at stake in collective concern should have a voice in deliberations), and equality of communicative freedom (the ideal that each should be equally free to give his or her opinion; see e.g. Habermas

6    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren [2005] 2008; Cohen 1989). But early formulations of the ideal using phrases such as “equal voice” or “equal influence,” which seemed to require that each participant have an equal effect on the deliberative outcome, have come under critical scrutiny and revision. Knight and Johnson argue, for example, that democratic deliberation requires not equal influence (i.e. equal persuasive effects), but “equal opportunity of access to political influence” or simply “equal opportunity of political influence” (1997, 280, 292). An ideal of equal influence would give equal weight to both good and bad arguments, but in good deliberation one should change one’s mind under the influence of a good argument, not a bad one. Knight and Johnson point out that in practice, a fully achieved ideal of equal opportunity to influence would require “equality of resources,” including “material wealth and educational treatment,” in order to “ensure that an individual’s assent to arguments advanced by others is indeed uncoerced.” The full goal of the “equal capacity to advance persuasive claims,” would require remedying “the asymmetrical distribution in any political constituency of relevant deficiencies and faculties” (1997, 281). In a significant critique of Habermas, Fraser (1990) had earlier made a similar point, writing that “societal equality is . . . a necessary condition for political democracy”—​although this point cannot, of course, mean waiting for social and economic equality before pursuing democracy, since democracy is often the means through which these kinds of equality are advanced (Young 2000, c­ hapter 1). Because both the equal capacity to advance persuasive claims and social/economic equality are aspirational ideals, it should be clear that the shift from equal influence to the equal opportunity to influence as an ideal is not a concession to “reality” but an attempt to specify the ideal more carefully. The ideal of reason giving a central part of the early deliberative theories of Jürgen Habermas and the Rawlsian theorist Joshua Cohen, has also come under criticism, sometimes unfairly, for being too focused on the kind of rational argumentation one might find in an academic seminar. It is true that Habermas’s early archetypical “public sphere” was characterized by the “people’s public use of their reason” ([1962] 1989, 26) in “rational-​critical debate,” which in turn rested only on “the standards of ‘reason’ ” (28) and “the authority of the better argument” (36; see also 54 and passim). In later work, however, Habermas argued forcefully that “[f]‌eelings have a similar function for the moral justification of action as sense perceptions have for the theoretical justification of facts” (1990, 50; see Neblo 2003). Joshua Cohen in early work (1989) portrayed the relevant ideal as requiring that deliberative outcomes should be settled only by reference to the “reasons” participants offer, but he meant to include in that concept a set of fuller considerations. Cohen’s early formulation followed John Rawls’s emphasis on “public reasons” (as eventually expressed in Rawls 1993) as well as the emphasis on reason of Joseph Bessette, who coined the term “deliberative democracy” (1979, 1982, 1994). Amelie Rorty (1985), Martha Nussbaum (2001), and many others have pointed out the flaws in dichotomizing “reason” and “emotion.” The emotions always include some form of appraisal and evaluation, and reason itself requires an underlying emotional commitment to the process of reasoning. Nussbaum’s positive account of the role of emotions in deliberation particularly singles out the emotion of compassion as an essential element of good reasoning in matters of public concern. Neblo (2015), Krause

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    7 (2008), and Morrell (2010) have argued that empathy is both a precursor to good deliberation and plays important roles within deliberation. Others have focused on the importance to deliberation of many important kinds of human communication other than reason-​giving, including “testimony” (stating one’s own perspective and experience in one’s own words) (Sanders 1991; 1997, 351, 371), “greetings” (explicit mutual recognition and conciliatory caring)  (Barber 1984, 187), “rhetoric” (persuasive speaking that can involve humor or arresting figures of speech), and “storytelling” (which can back prescriptions or communicate understandings based on personal experience rather than abstract argument) (Young 1996, 129; 2000, c­ hapter 2). These additions to the ideal are particularly important when the less purely “reason”-​oriented forms of communication are more cognitively and emotionally available to members of relatively marginalized groups, such as women, people with less formal education, and members of non-​dominant ethnicities. Contemporary deliberative theorists have, by and large, accepted these criticisms by expanding the deliberative ideal of eliciting and presenting “reasons” to an ideal of eliciting and presenting “relevant considerations,” which may have a more emotional than purely rational base (Mansbridge 1999, 2015). The ideal of consensus has undergone greater revision. Jürgen Habermas was the preeminent first-​generation theorist to stress consensus as the goal of deliberation. In his early Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, he described that aim as “the consensus developed in rational-​critical public debate” and the “final unanimity wrought by a time-​consuming process of mutual enlightenment, for the ‘general interest’ on the basis of which alone a rational agreement between publicly competing opinions could freely be reached” ([1962] 1989, 179, 195). In Elster’s later stylized rendition of Habermas’s thought, the goal of political action “should be rational agreement rather than compromise, and the decisive political act is that of engaging in public debate with a view to the emergence of a consensus” (1986, 103). In his Theory of Communicative Action (1984, [1981] 1987 ), however, Habermas presented consensus not as a political ideal but as part of a speech-​act theory of deliberative influence: when speakers aim at mutual understanding by making “validity claims,” they are, in effect, seeking consensus with other speakers (Floridia 2017). Still later, Habermas pointed out that a deliberative democracy should underwrite and protect deliberative influence in the sense of aiming at mutual understanding, but will also have processes that enable fair compromises and bargains when interests or values genuinely conflict, as they will in pluralistic societies (Habermas [1992] 1996, esp. 164–​9). Within the Rawlsian tradition, Joshua Cohen early on wrote that “ideal deliberation aims to arrive at a rationally motivated consensus—​to find reasons that are persuasive to all who are committed to acting on the results of a free and reasoned assessment of alternatives by equals.” He immediately pointed out, however, that even “under ideal conditions there is no promise that consensual reasons will be forthcoming. If they are not, then deliberation concludes with voting, subject to some form of majority rule” (1989, 23). Later theorists were to investigate further the conditions in which consensual reasons were not forthcoming, arguing that a goal of deliberative communication more attentive to pluralist contexts and ideals would be consensus in matters of compatible values and common interests, but conflict clarification

8    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren and fair compromise when those conditions did not hold (Habermas 1996; Mansbridge et al. 2010). Relatedly, early deliberative theorists stressed the centrality to good deliberation of an orientation to the common good. Habermas made such an orientation central to his early concept of a “rational-​critical” public sphere ([1962] 1989; see Elster 1986, 103). Sunstein (1988) and Cohen (1989) also made the common good central to their discussions of deliberation. More recently, however, some theorists have suggested that in some circumstances self-​interest is an appropriate motivation in deliberation, as long as that motivation is constrained by considerations of fairness and others’ rights (Fraser 1990; Mansbridge et al. 2010). In addition to these centrally constitutive elements of ideal deliberation, other characteristics of the traditional ideal, such as publicity, accountability, and sincerity, have also come under critical scrutiny and suggestions for revision. One recent group of theorists, for example, has suggested that the ideal of “publicity,” which many theorists, including Kant, thought required by the deliberative ideal (see overview in Habermas [1962] 1989, 100, 116, 165ff), is not appropriate for all deliberations, particularly those that occur within highly strategic contexts like legislatures. These theorists have enumerated some of the conditions under which privacy rather than publicity is likely to promote better deliberation (Chambers 2004; Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2016, 174–​ 85). Such conditions include guards against corruption and requirements for public justification following a closed forum. The ideal of accountability appears in Gutmann and Thompson’s (2004) analysis as a requirement for good deliberation in the context of elected representation. Deliberation in other forums would require other forms of accountability that still remain to some degree untheorized. Finally, traditional views of good deliberation may have emphasized the importance of authenticity and sincerity among the speakers, but more recent theorists have pointed out that some insincerity is allowable and even preferable in the non-​substantive matters of greeting, compliments, and other communications aimed at generating the mutual respect necessary for deliberation (Warren 2006). On the non-​ideal but pragmatic and prudential front, a major goal of deliberation has always been the epistemic goal of improving knowledge (Estlund and Landemore, this volume, Chapter 7; see also Estlund 1993; 2009; Landemore 2013; Martí 2006; Nino 1996), but the tensions within that goal and how it is to be achieved are constantly contested (Bohman 1998). In short, there is no Platonic ideal of good deliberation. The ideals of which good deliberation is composed are rightly constantly subjected to critical scrutiny, examined for unintended implications, opened to revision, revised, and subjected again to contest and further scrutiny. The ideals evolve as those who have placed them under scrutiny suggest revisions and others accept those revisions. Deliberative democracy is an excellent example of what Gallie (1956) called an “essentially contested concept,” in that contestation and reflection are integral to the concept itself (Gutmann and Thompson 2004, ­chapter 4).

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    9

The Sites of Deliberative Democracy Where can and should the ideal of deliberative democracy be pursued? The short answer is almost everywhere  and that different locations can be joined in productive combinations. We may begin with the formal institutions of government, notably legislatures, courts, and executives (see Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger, this volume, Chapter  17). Legislatures in practice often do not adhere closely to deliberative standards. Elected representatives often use public speech strategically, as their motivations are usually shaped in the first instance by the imperatives of winning elections within adversarial contexts. Parliamentary debates can be ritualized performances, conceived in the service of strategizing for electoral victory and aimed primarily at scoring points in the public eye. Reflection and being amenable to changing one’s mind, central deliberative ideals, are often in short supply in public legislative debate, especially in the adversarial systems of Anglo-​American countries. Westminster-​style parliamentary systems in particular have the virtue of sharpening the accountability of governments, but do so at some cost to deliberative learning within political institutions. Yet not all legislatures are as deliberatively problematic as the Anglo-​American adversarial versions. Using measures derived from Habermas’s work on deliberation, Steiner et al. (2004) show that deliberative quality is higher in more consensual systems with no strict party discipline (such as Switzerland), where the divide between “government” and “opposition” is less clear. They have also shown that deliberative quality is higher in committees that are not open to the public, where legislators are more likely to show respect for the others’ perspectives. Even in the American system, informal meetings among legislators can produce significant deliberation, while legislative staff may deliberate privately with other legislative staff (Mansbridge 1988; Bessette 1994). Because a mutually trusting environment in which participants can speak freely is often crucial to good deliberation, the quality of deliberation may be inversely proportional to the degree of attention that deliberation will get from the public. Thus transparency may not always be a deliberative good and may do deliberative harm. (For evidence on the anti-​deliberative effects of transparency and an accompanying normative argument, see Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2016.) The future is open to work comparing the quality of deliberation in state and provincial legislatures in federated systems, as well as in direct face-​to-​face democracies of different sizes and compositions, as in New England town meetings or participatory budgeting assemblies. For Rawls (1993, 231) the exemplary deliberative institution is not a legislature but rather the US Supreme Court, which is populated by specialists in a certain kind of public reason. Such enthusiasm for the deliberative centrality of constitutional courts is hard to find outside the United States. Moreover, although constitutional courts may be deliberative they are not very democratic, given that their members are only appointed by democratically elected representatives and often appointed for life. In the United

10    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren States today, the Supreme Court today increasingly fails to approach deliberative standards because its members divide along predictable partisan lines and are thus at times tempted not to take seriously the arguments of members with contrary partisan leanings. This said, judges and justices must still justify their decisions with reasoning, and they are constrained by institutional rules, norms of impartiality, and the particulars of cases to respond to the positions they oppose, especially when overturning precedents (Rosanvallon 2011, part 3). Constitutional court systems are thus an important, if limited, site of deliberation. Juries also provide important sites of citizen deliberation within the judicial system. Although in many countries the actual deliberations of juries cannot be observed, mock juries and retrospective accounts give a largely positive account of the quality and effects of deliberation, with the egalitarian qualification that class, race, and gender (to a declining extent) tend significantly to affect deliberative participation (see York and Cornwell 2006 and Gastil, Burkhalter, and Black 2007, summarizing an extensive literature). In the executive branch of government, the appointed members of government agencies often deliberate extensively over which policies are to the public good (see Sunstein 2017 on the US Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs; also Weaver and Jones 1989 on “deliberative process privilege,” a form of executive privilege in the US). This deliberation may be especially inclusive when there are coalition governments and the consent of coalition partners is needed in order to pass and implement legislation (see Steiner et al. 2004). Political requirements for consent can lead to “deliberative negotiations” (Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2016), not only in legislatures but also in administrative agencies, where high levels of justification rationality and mutual respect may be necessary to cope successfully with factual disagreements and issues of fairness and just­ ice, as well as to spark a constructive spirit during policy negotiations. Administrations in many countries have adopted practices of ‘governance-​driven democratization’ (Warren 2009), in which they consult stakeholders or broader publics in order to craft better policies. This kind of consultation can involve only simple “notice and comment” procedures in which regulators are required by law to post possible regulations publicly, so that members of relevant publics can register their disagreements and suggestions for change. But such consultations can also be far more thorough, including iterative processes that incorporate elements of negotiation as well as deliberation (for the EU, see e.g. Sabel and Zeitlin 2008). As societies become politically more complex, administrators have turned to formal and informal networks of mutual consultation and decision in the service of effective governance. In many polities, particularly in the “consensual” democracies of Northern Europe, these networks are increasingly outweighing, and some think displacing, the formal institutions of government in the production of collective decisions (Rhodes 1997). Although such networks sometimes include important civil society actors such as NGOs, they are often democratically and deliberatively problematic because they fail to approach sufficiently the standards of inclusion and equality required for democratic deliberation. The NGOs involved in the consultations and negotiations are often

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    11 self-​selected or selected on a non-​democratic basis, and the networks can be dominated by powerful actors such as corporations, with little or no citizen involvement (Hendriks 2008; see also Hendriks and Boswell, this volume, Chapter 25). Although such networks have the potential to multiply dramatically the sites of deliberation, they should always be scrutinized and evaluated in the light of deliberative and democratic standards. As a general democratic rule, the closer any NGO or voluntary association comes to being a constitutive part of the consultation and negotiation that results in formal state coercion, the more internally democratic and open to citizen choice and input that association should be—​although when such consultation and negotiation are not significant, there are good reasons to allow each association to govern itself adaptively in response to its own purposes and constituencies (Smith and Teasdale 2012). Moving further outside the institutions of government, civil society and the public sphere have loomed large in deliberative democratic thinking, especially in strands inspired by Jürgen Habermas. Following the connotations of the word “public,” the public sphere could be considered the totality of deliberation in public life in a society, including the institutions of government. Deliberative democratic theorists who follow Habermas, however, conceive the public sphere as public life, outside the formal institutions of government, which forms the public opinion to which the institutions should respond. Following Fraser’s elaborations of the concept (1990), we will speak of such public spheres as plural, differentiated, and overlapping, encompassing political activists, social movements, old and new media. They may also encompass informal political conversations, or conversations on issues the public ought to discuss, among friends, acquaintances, and online interlocutors. Public spheres flourish when political speech and association are protected and people have robust capacities to associate for shared purposes. The deliberative qualities of actual public spheres should not, of course, be idealized; much that goes on in the speaking public is vicious, manipulative, exclusive, and deceptive. But deliberative thinking can evaluate what is going on in these spheres and generate ideas for improvement. Public spheres are a site for resistance, for the generation of influence over formal institutions of government, and for deliberative social learning across ideological, ethnic, or religious differences. They are a source of change that can be consequential even in the absence of governmental decisions. Public spheres enable issues to be identified, formulated, and advocated in innovative ways. Barriers to entry tend to be lower and topics more diverse than within the institutions of government. In Habermas’s terms, public spheres function as deliberative “sensors” of new issues and problems, which may eventually find deliberative uptake within more formally institutionalized contexts ([1992] 1996, c­ hapter 8). The rise of feminism, environmentalism, and LGBT rights all provide examples. As this focus on public spheres suggests, the theory of deliberative democracy is not, unlike some of its more established competitors, tied to state-based organizations of politics. The “town hall” meetings that legislators sometimes hold on particular issues and the public hearings held by legislators and administrators are intermediary between state and public. Many of these are attended primarily by activists and come up wanting on many deliberative criteria. Elections also play an intermediate role between state and

12    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren public, offering opportunities for citizen deliberation. In a deliberative innovation in Benin, experimental town hall meetings in the electoral context provided information, candidates’ proposed solutions, and open policy-​based public debate. These forums increased participants’ information and subsequent discussion with others when compared to standard clientelist in which candidates make localized promises and distribute cash in exchange for votes (Fujiwara and Wantchekon 2013). A “Deliberation Day” in the week before a presidential election has been suggested in the US (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004). Political forums with deliberative elements are being instituted across the globe (e.g. Heller and Rao 2015, and in this volume, inter alia, Fischer and Boosabong (Chapter  36), Hendriks and Boswell (Chapter  25), Forester (Chapter  37), Parkinson (Chapter 27), and Chapters 44 through 49 in the section on “Practical Applications”). Deliberative theories and practices may also be applied to the internal mechanisms and external influences of private entities such as firms and private universities (Felicetti 2016, Smith and Teasdale 2012). With its focus on deliberative influence that works through publics, deliberative democracy travels relatively well into the international system. As Risse (this volume, Chapter 32) points out, international politics and negotiations feature a great deal of persuasion, which often has deliberative characteristics. Indeed, deliberative influence is often more important in the international domain because state-​like institutions are weak or absent. Transnational public spheres and global civil society can function as components of a global deliberative democracy—​and even serve as sites of inclusion where the state-​like features of democracy do not exist (Bohman 2007; Dryzek 2012). Such public spheres meet deliberative ideals best when they involve the representation of categories of people or ideas that would otherwise not emerge or be heard within existing political structures and institutions. Existing formal institutions and informal practices can, then, be analyzed and evaluated according to deliberative standards, and ideas can be generated for improvement based on those standards. Alongside existing institutions, we are now seeing a proliferation of institutions designed to reflect the ideals and purposes of deliberative democracy. Some intentionally designed forums address existing policy or partisan divides, bringing together people with a history of conflict on a policy issue. In such cases, deliberative principles work synergistically with long-​established dispute resolution principles and practices (see Susskind, Gordon, and Zaerpoor, this volume, Chapter 45). In forums like these, partisans are taken out of their normal strategic interactions (whether in judicial or legislative politics or in the larger public sphere) and join a process involving more or less deliberative principles, under the auspices of a facilitator or mediator. The practices often include mediation, stakeholder dialogues, and consensus-​building. They may involve the pursuit of substantive consensus on particular policies, but often the participants expect to reach mutual understanding of the kind that enables a negotiated settlement that all parties view as fair and mutually advantageous. Deliberation thus does not need to result in consensus to be successful; it is often sufficient that it clarifies conflicts or generates warranted legitimacy for negotiated settlements. Restorative justice

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    13 processes and truth commissions draw on some similar dynamics, but involve criminal justice cases rather than public policy disputes, and are usually focused on establishing the voice and public standing of victims of violence (Gutmann and Thompson 2004, ­chapter 6). In all of these cases the goal is to get participants to craft positions and solutions that respond to the key interests and values of conflicting parties through deliberative reciprocal understanding. These kinds of partisan and conflict-​focused forums date back to the early 1970s. Recently deliberative democrats have paid particular attention to non-​partisan forums, usually composed of lay citizens with no history of activism or even necessarily interest in the issue at hand—​termed “mini-​publics” (Smith and Setälä, this volume, Chapter  18). Indeed, for some observers “deliberative democracy” means only such intentionally designed citizen forums. We consider such a restricted use of the term misleading. Sometimes a mini-​public is open to all who wish to attend (see Fung 2003 on AmericaSpeaks). This format has the advantage of advancing the participation of many citizens but the disadvantage of self-​selection, which tends to over-​represent some kinds of citizens, usually those of higher socio-​economic status. More frequently, some kind of stratified random selection is used to create deliberative mini-​publics that better represent an affected public (hence the term “mini-​public”). Among these near-​randomly selected mini-​publics, “citizens’ juries” and “consensus conferences” normally involve fifteen to twenty participants who deliberate face-​to-​face and are charged with coming up with a recommendation and a report on a policy issue. Such forums have been deployed in thousands of cases worldwide, addressing, for example, the risks and promises of new technologies (such as biotechnology or nanotechnology) and environmental issues (such as climate change). Sometimes they are used in conjunction with other decision-​making processes. In the state of Oregon, the Citizens’ Initiative Review involves mini-​publics of twenty to twenty-four randomly-​selected citizens deliberating and issuing recommendations to voters about ballot initiatives (issues placed on the ballot though a process of petition) that an independent commission determines to be especially important owing to their constitutional status, fiscal implications, or other kinds of impacts. The mini-​public’s report on the arguments for and against a particular proposal is then distributed to all the voters in the state (Knobloch et al. 2013). Although small mini-​publics are attractive because they are relatively inexpensive and easy to organize, their size often compromises their representativeness and heterogeneity. “Citizens’ assemblies” and “Deliberative Polls” are larger, generally involving 150 or more participants, and so have a better claim to involve a descriptively representative sample of the relevant public. Citizens’ assemblies generally conclude with a recommendation and report, while Deliberative Polls focus on the shift in informed opinions, with questionnaires that reveal change or lack of change over the deliberative period (Fishkin 2009). The British Columbia Citizen Assembly, a large mini-​public charged with producing a referendum question as to whether British Columbia should change its electoral system, is to date the most thorough, well-​designed, and well-​studied of the

14    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren citizens’ assemblies (Warren and Pearse 2008). Deliberative Polls, with a well-refined and now well-studied standard format, have been organized in more than twenty countries, including with less literate populations (Fishkin et al. 2017). One can think of mini-​publics as generating a particular kind of reflective public opinion, as opposed to the unreflective opinions revealed by standard public opinion surveys. Internally, many deliberative mini-​publics work as intended by their designers. They feature supportive institutional features, ​such as balanced information materials, experts on both sides available for questioning, facilitation, and sessions with different functions, as well as deliberative norms. Minipublics that are well-designed and wellsupported are proving conducive to surprisingly high levels of deliberative quality as well as to opinion change driven by argument rather than by undesirable group dynamics (see e.g. Gerber et al. 2016; Siu 2009; 2017; Warren and Pearse 2008). Almost all deliberative mini-​publics are advisory to other decision-​makers, whether the citizens themselves in a referendum or ballot initiative, elected representatives, or appointed administrators, although (see later discussion) in some cases administrators commit themselves in advance to following the mini-​public’s recommendations. Some theorists (e.g. Dahl 1985; Leib 2004) advocate a second (or third) assembly in legislatures, in which randomly selected citizens would deliberate together on key matters of policy, thus avoiding partisan dynamics such as incentives to block the other party’s attempts at solving public problems, while providing venues in which citizens themselves can master some of the more complex features of issues such as climate change and even military strategy and nuclear weapons. Mini-​publics of all kinds can also function as “trusted information proxies” (Mackenzie and Warren 2012) for other citizens. (For the relation of deliberation to “sortition,” or representation by lot, see Delgado et al. 2017 and Gastil and Wright forthcoming.) Deliberation, then, can be sought, analyzed, and evaluated in many locations, each with its particular institutional locations and designs, issues, and constraints. Rather than look for the essence of deliberative democracy in any one of them, it is now common to think in terms of deliberative systems that join many locations.

Thinking About Deliberative Democracy Systemically The idea of a deliberative system, introduced by Mansbridge (1999), is now widely deployed (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012). The basic idea is that we should attend to the deliberative qualities of the system as a whole as well as to its particular components. One of the most important and difficult challenges for deliberative democrats is to understand how the many sites and kinds of deliberation are enabled and constrained by their environments, how they interact with established institutions, how deliberation

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    15 translates from face-​to-​face to large-​scale deliberation, and how, more generally, deliberation contributes to democratic political systems. From a systemic perspective, deliberative ideals can be realized in distributed ways, with some venues (and persons) providing high quality reasons, other venues (or persons) having greater capacities for active listening and finding common ground, and still others functioning to include the marginalized or catalyzing new ideas. Inclusion might be sought in the public sphere, the components of good justification in legislative argumentation, and reflection on the merits of those arguments in mini-​ publics (Dryzek 2017). Systemic distribution can promote equality, as when the public sphere or a deliberatively designed feature of a civic forum provides spaces in which otherwise deliberatively disadvantaged groups consult together in “enclave deliberation” (Karpowitz and Raphael 2014; for cautions on enclave deliberation see Sunstein 2002). Another division of deliberative labor emerges when we trust a jury in a court case to reflect on arguments made by the lawyers for the two sides. A systems perspective also alerts us to the possibility that non-​deliberative political activities may have positive deliberative consequences for the system as a whole, as when disruptive social movement activism gets an issue on the public agenda, where it can be deliberated. Recent theorizing about deliberative systems is helping us to rethink deliberative capacities in democracies beyond particular deliberative institutions and outside individual deliberative abilities (Parkinson, this volume, Chapter 27; Neblo and White, this volume, Chapter 28). As Habermas (this volume, Chapter 56) notes, and as he has suggested throughout his work, the deliberative character of democratic opinion-​and will-​formation can be realized only through the democratic system as a whole. Hence, a systemic view does not have to lament the fact that deliberative virtues such as reason-​ giving and listening are not simultaneously and continuously on display in all democratic institutions. Even deliberative deficiencies can be justified on deliberative grounds if the particular deficiency in one venue helps advance the deliberative quality of the system as a whole. A systemic approach can help to uncover deliberative deficits as well as identify those sites in which more or better deliberation would strengthen democracy and political system performance. Owen and Smith (2015) have challenged the deliberative systems approach, pointing out that a systemic or macro perspective makes it seem less urgent to create as close to optimal deliberative conditions as possible in any one forum or to encourage better citizen deliberation in general. If deliberative ideals can be understood as distributed and emergent properties realized through the interplay of various sites in a democratic system, then encouraging or even searching for high deliberative quality in a specific forum may seem less important both normatively and analytically. Yet the systemic (macro) and site-specific (micro) perspectives can be reconciled by arguing that from a deliberative perspective every democratic forum that affects the public should be as deliberative as possible unless there are good systemic reasons why it should or could deviate from deliberative norms. A departure might be justified if it contributed to overall deliberation within a deliberative system. A departure might also

16    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren be justified through reference to other values, such as freedom of speech. But the burden of justification should lie with those arguing for departures from deliberative ideals. From almost any systemic perspective, institutions with a high levels of decision-making power such as legislatures play key roles in deliberative systems. In general, the more empowered the venue, the greater the need to justify departures from deliberative standards. Future students of deliberative democracy should investigate, and practitioners should (all else being equal) try to improve, the deliberative quality of discourse in highly empowered venues such as the meetings of presidents and their advisors, legislative committees, and the boards of central banks, all of which make binding decisions that affect entire polities and often beyond. In judging the quality of deliberation in these spaces, we might be interested in whether the pool of competing perspectives was large or restricted (particularly in regard to perspectives from marginalized groups or classes of people), whether the positions advanced were well-​justified and attentively listened to or based on shallow reasons and low engagement, and whether good arguments had some effect on the decisions or instead power and interests dominated in the decision-​making process. (These variables are no less important for being hard to measure.) Indeed, such questions about highly empowered spaces, especially legislatures, prompted some of the earliest work on deliberative democracy (Bessette 1994; Gutmann and Thompson 1996). As the perceived legitimacy of many elected legislatures has declined, and as new representative entities such as the European Union have tried to build their legitimacy, considerable attention has focused on inserting deliberative mini-​publics into political systems (Curato and Böker 2016). Lafont (2015; 2017; see also Chambers 2009) has criticized such efforts on the grounds that when only a handful of (randomly selected) citizens has the opportunity to deliberate and make decisions that non-​deliberating citizens are not likely to fully appreciate, there may be a fundamental challenge for both normative and perceived democratic legitimacy. From the perspective of normative legitimacy, the randomly selected “representatives” are neither selected by the other citizens nor accountable to them, either in the sense of having to explain the reasons for their decisions to the other citizens or in the sense of being sactionable by those citizens for their actions. From the perspective of perceived legitimacy (an issue not covered by Lafont), citizens currently have so little experience with representation by near-​ random selection that they have little basis on which to decide whether this kind of selection method provides better or worse representation than elections. Both normatively and perceptually, however, a great deal will rest on whether a mini-​public makes binding decisions for the polity. Few, if any, have done so. In a significant number of cases duly elected or appointed authorities have announced in advance that they would follow the decisions of the randomly selected mini-​public (Fishkin 2009; Fishkin et al. 2017; He and Warren 2011, 277; Johnson 2015; Sintomer 2011; Warren and Pearse 2008). In all of these cases, however, authorities held from the beginning, and retained throughout, the legitimate power to make the decision, never legally relinquishing that authority. Far more frequently, deliberative mini-​publics fit into the deliberative system in an advisory role, either to elected or appointed bodies or to the citizenry as a whole.

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    17 Although such groups have no formal power, administrators and elected officials may trust the process more and be more persuaded by the results and the reasoning than, for example, by the testimony and process in public hearings, which may be dominated by activists (Karpowitz and Raphael 2014). So too non-​deliberating citizens may place more trust in the careful deliberations of fellow citizens than in the strategic rhetorics of interest groups or elected politicians (Warren and Gastil 2015). Alternatively, one can think of mini-​publics more as advancing and propagating arguments that influence deliberation in the larger deliberative system than as making specific decisions—​in which case their recommendations are less relevant than their reasons (Niemeyer 2014). Finally, mini-​ publics can have an individually educative function both for participating and non-​participating citizens. Many researchers have found increases in information and civic engagement among the participants in randomly selected groups (e.g. Neblo et al. 2017; Fishkin 2009). Because the participants in these forums tend to speak with others later about their experiences (Lazer et al. 2015), the effects on information and engagement may spread beyond—​and potentially far beyond—​the participants themselves. In the US context, Jacobs, Cook, and Delli Carpini (2009) and other researchers find, correlationally and perhaps causally, that those who regularly participate in structured discussions in open forums more frequently connect with elites, engage in civic voluntary activities, and participate in electoral politics. In short, deliberative experiences in citizen forums can advance essential democratic capacities that are valuable for an entire democratic system.

Critics If a measure of the success of a political theory is the number of critics it attracts, deliberative democracy is doing very well indeed. In this section, we identify and respond to several of the more prominent and persistent critiques. Deliberative democracy is too idealistic and ignores power and politics. Speaking for what sounds like mainstream political science, Ian Shapiro (1999) holds: “Enough of deliberation: Politics is about interests and power.” According to Shapiro, a deliberative account of politics is not sensitive enough to conflicting interests and powerful players who have no willingness to enter a deliberative process, but will strategize and if necessary use coercive means to realize their interests. In a more economistic vein and focusing on the link between politicians and citizens, Pincione and Teson (2006, see also Achen and Bartels 2016) diagnose what they call a “discourse failure” in politics. In their account, citizens face high costs in obtaining reliable knowledge about political issues. Politicians can then take advantage of the “rational ignorance” of the public. For political gain, they will posture and use vivid rhetoric rather than engage in rational discussion, because such posturing and rhetoric are more accessible to citizens and have greater emotional appeal. The philosopher Michael Walzer (1999, 71) further claims that most political debates generally do not produce anything like a deliberative exchange: “a

18    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren debate is very often a contest between verbal athletes with the object to win the debate. The means are the exercise of rhetorical skill, the mustering of favorable evidence (and the suppression of unfavorable evidence), and the discrediting of the other debaters.” These “realist” criticisms correctly highlight the many strategic features of political speech. But they tend to deny that actors can and often do influence one another with reasons and arguments, and fail to identify the ideals embedded in these moments of speech. Indeed, by flattening speech to its purely expressive and strategic elements, these criticisms overlook not only instances in which politics is conducted through deliberation (and there are many, once we look for them), but also strip democratic politics of deliberative ideals altogether, leaving us with an impoverished landscape of political possibility. Nor, as we observed above, are aspirational deliberative ideals undermined by the empirical fact that political actors do not instantiate them fully in practice (Neblo 2015). Some of these criticisms are contextually limited, focused on Anglo-​American politics. Different institutions in other systems may reveal greater potential for deliberative action. As noted earlier, comparative research on legislatures reveals that certain institutional contexts—​such as consensus systems with less party discipline in combination with non-​public committees—​can spur better deliberation in legislatures. Likewise, many of these criticisms are directed toward first-​generation ideals of deliberative democracy. The first-​generation perspective, stressing the ideals of common-​ good and consensus-​ oriented argumentation, a coercion-​ free environment, and complete openness to the better argument, could be criticized for devaluing political conflict (see e.g. Honig 1993), although Habermas’s later work is not subject to this criticism. The second-​generation perspective, however, stresses plurality as an ideal. It thus embraces conflict. It also both broadens the range of deliberative acts and takes into account the deliberative functions of a wider range of communicative acts that are not themselves predominantly deliberative. These evolutions of deliberative ideals make it more likely that we can identify and assess the deliberative content of political interactions. For instance, the concept of deliberative negotiations (Naurin and Reh, this volume, Chapter 46) helps in analyzing mixed communications that qualify as neither pure deliberation nor pure bargaining. Risse (this volume, Chapter 32) finds such mixed communications common in international negotiations. Deliberative negotiations allow self-​interest to be a necessary and productive component of political decision-​making, yet simultaneously highlight the desirability of mutual justification, mutual respect, and equality among the participants. In mixed communications, to the extent that negotiation partners aspire even implicitly to the deliberative ideal, they should abstain from using force, threats, and strategic manipulation, relying instead on the influence of arguments. Depending on the context, some forms of domination (such as the all too common requirement to speak a hegemonic language) and threat (“If you don’t vote for my policy this time, I won’t vote for yours next time”), may be compensated for or balanced so that they do not greatly threaten the deliberative process and therefore, from a deliberative perspective, may play a permissible part in mixed communication. But any manipulation that involves deception

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    19 deeply undermines deliberation, present and future. It directly contradicts, inter alia, the core values of reciprocity, respect, and equality on which good deliberation is based (Gutmann and Thompson 2004, ­chapters 3–​4). Modified in the light of pluralist ideals, deliberative ideals become more applicable to situations of underlying conflict and also capable of further evolution. When we take pluralism seriously (as, for example, when underlying conflicting interests make negotiation more appropriate than substantive consensus), then it becomes clear that deliberative quality cannot be assessed solely on the basis of the full list of first-​generation standards. Rather this quality should be assessed in ways relevant to specific contexts without losing its core in reason-​giving and listening (Bächtiger and Parkinson 2018). Deliberative democracy mistakenly aims at consensus. Empirical political scientists, difference democrats, pluralists, and agonists have criticized deliberative democrats for putting a misplaced stress on (rational) consensus as an ideal. From the viewpoint of difference democrats and agonists, rational consensus is not just undesirable but also conceptually misguided. To Mouffe (1999), its pursuit means that deliberative democrats seek to repress plurality and the articulation of different perspectives through the conflict that defines politics. To Shapiro (2017), stressing consensus means that deliberative democrats seek to repress the structured antagonism that makes clear choices and accountability possible. This criticism misrepresents the role of consensus even among first-​generation deliberative democrats. It is particularly misplaced for the second generation of theorists, who grapple with problems of inclusion with particular sensitivity to differences (e.g. Young 2000). Habermas, often the target of such criticisms, came to view substantive consensus in politics as less important than consensus with respect to the rules, rights, and procedures that protect differences and enable them to be deliberated, bargained, or subject to votes when sufficiently clarified (1996). In addition, recent years have seen a number of reformulations of the consensus concept that are compatible with political struggle and conflict. Dryzek and Niemeyer (2006), for instance, develop the concept of meta-​consensus. Rather than requiring unanimous agreement on substance, meta-​consensus requires only agreement on acceptable domains of preferences and ranges of competing options, the credibility of disputed beliefs, and the legitimacy of competing values. Meta-​ consensus so defined ought to be acceptable to pluralists and difference democrats, as well as conducive to tractable political outcomes. Miller (1992, see also List, this volume, Chapter 29) argued that deliberation can play a significant role in structuring conflict to avoid indeterminate voting cycles. Gutmann and Thompson note that respect for differences is part and parcel of mutual respect and reciprocity in deliberation (1996; 2004). They advocate a working rule of “economizing on disagreements,” particularly with respect to fundamental world views and principles in those many cases that do not require agreement “all the way down.” Others suggest thinking of consensus as a “working agreement” (Eriksen 2009) that entails “some movements of positions and normative learning” yet  also ultimately rests not on the “same reasons” as in Habermas ([1992] 1996), but on “different, but reasonable and mutually acceptable grounds” (Eriksen 2009, 51; Gutmann and Thompson 2004, ­chapters 2, 4; see also Sunstein 1995).

20    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren These reworkings of the concept of  consensus recognize and value diversity in modern pluralistic societies. But, as noted above, these reworked concepts should not be viewed as the only defensible principles for good deliberative process. For instance, participants might initially think that their preferences are reconcilable (or not too distant), but find out in discussion that the opposite is true (Bachrach 1974). Knight and Johnson (2011: 145) point out that “even if as a result of the increased information that political argument makes available, individuals come to hold their preferences more reflectively, it in no way follows that this will lead to greater substantive agreement at the aggregate level.” Like many of today’s deliberative democrats, they consider opinion clarification and “structured disagreement” more important than consensus. Most recent research shows that in well-​formed deliberative venues those whose opinions move away from the opinions of the opposing group after deliberation learn and clarify their opinions at rates equal to those whose opinions move toward the opinions of the opposing group (Lindell et al. 2017). In short, a good deliberative process can have a variety of outcomes, of which consensus is only one—​and perhaps not even the most important one. Deliberative democracy misunderstands human motivations and the limits to the cognitive capacities of ordinary citizens. One such criticism is that deliberative democrats overestimate the demand for deliberative democracy. Hibbing and Theiss-​Morse (2002) argue in Stealth Democracy that in the US citizens dislike politics, and are thus happy to let elites govern, provided the elites are honest and can be trusted; when citizens participate, it is because they think they need to monitor and sanction untrustworthy political elites. Yet the conclusions of Hibbing and Theiss-​Morse derive from what citizens think about opportunities to participate in a currently deficient system. Empirical studies of more authentically deliberative opportunities tell a different story. On the basis of an experiment with deliberative sessions of citizens with members of the US Congress, Neblo et al. (2010) conclude that Hibbing and Theiss-​Morse are wrong. Their seminal study shows that in the US the willingness to deliberate is much higher than usually presumed and, importantly, is highest of all among the disaffected, those “turned off by standard partisan and interest group politics” (p. 582). A related and frequently mentioned criticism is that ordinary citizens lack the cognitive capacities for deliberative democracy (e.g. Achen and Bartels 2016, 301; see also Brennan 2016). On the basis of a study of some US citizen groups, Rosenberg (2014) reports that “most ‘participants’ who attend a deliberation do not, in fact, engage in the give and take of the discussion.” Instead they “offer simple, short, unelaborated statements of their views of an event.” Biases in human reasoning compound the problem (Kahneman 2011). Notably, “motivated reasoning” makes people who initially feel strongly about an issue evaluate supportive arguments as more compelling than opposing arguments, even when they try to be objective (Taber and Lodge 2006). The individual capability for weighing arguments in an unbiased way would thus seem quite limited. Finally, studies on the social psychology of group polarization reveal that discussion often induces groups to move to extremes as individuals hear new arguments in support of the positions they already hold, leading them on average to hold those positions more strongly (Sunstein 2002). In summary, as Mutz (2008, 533) has put it: “As an

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    21 empirical theory, deliberative theory has been widely criticized for making assumptions that seem to fly in the face of what scholars already know about human behavior.” Many of these skeptical findings, however, are based on experiments and empirical studies that were not designed with deliberation in mind. Empirical studies more closely attuned to good deliberative conditions produce different conclusions. Close analysis of the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform suggests that members gained levels of knowledge about electoral systems at the level of most experts (Blais, Carty, and Fournier 2008). In a prominent study of citizen deliberation in an online forum, Stromer-​Galley finds “[t]‌he participants generally produced a fairly high volume of reasoned opinion” (2007, 18–​19). In addition, several empirical studies indicate that opinion change in well-​structured deliberative events can be substantially attributed to systematic engagement with arguments, rather than to group polarization or motivated reasoning (Gerber et al. 2016; Esterling, Fung, and Lee 2018; Warren and Gastil 2015). Institutional designs can play a crucial role in countering otherwise expected biases. Strandberg et al. (2017) varied discussion rules in an experiment on attitudes toward immigrants in Finland. Among groups deliberately selected to be composed only of individuals whose attitudes ranged from mildly hostile to very hostile to immigrants, discussion with facilitation guided by deliberative norms reversed the usual tendencies toward polarization as the group on average became less hostile, whereas discussion without facilitation produced the polarization described by Sunstein and some social psychologists. The Deliberative Polls organized by James Fishkin show no evidence of polarization, probably because they recruit diverse individuals and put them into diverse discussion groups with facilitators (Fishkin and Luskin 2005; Fishkin, this volume, Chapter 19). Institutional design informed by deliberative principles can negate anti-​deliberative tendencies in human behavior. Even outside the “safe havens” of deliberative mini-​publics, citizens have a deliberative potential far beyond that postulated by a Schumpeterian or “realist” account of democracy. New research on opinion formation in direct democratic votes in Switzerland shows that substantial numbers of citizens form their opinions on the basis of substantive and well-​justified arguments and not on the basis of partisan cues, contrary to much public opinion research (Colombo 2016). Again, the results are highly context-​specific, in that argument-​based pathways of opinion formation are more prevalent in direct democratic settings with relatively low elite polarization, as in Switzerland. In short, the ideals of deliberative democratic theory do not fly in the face of what we already know about human motivations and cognitive limitations. We need an empirical psychology that takes into account the context-​specific realizations of deliberative ideals, including institutional designs that compensate for well-​known cognitive and emotional biases. Deliberation is too rational, excluding the informal social and speaking styles typical of many marginalized groups. Drawing from existing psychological experiments and jury studies as well as well as real-​world observation, early critics claimed that “deliberative” capacities are strongly stratified in a way that reinforces socio-​economic and cultural inequality. According to Sanders (1997), not only may disadvantaged people have less

22    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren access to the necessary prerequisites for deliberation, but the focus of deliberative theorists on rational, calm, and dispassionate discussions also excludes or marginalizes positions that are voiced in impassioned or emotional ways. If this were to be true, the ideal of democratic inclusion would be violated. Hooghe has boldly claimed that participants with greater verbal and rhetorical skills always have an “undue advantage” in deliberative venues: “Even in perfect circumstances, a university professor will always have better chances of convincing others than a manual worker has” (1999, 292). Empirical research shows that in most deliberatively well-​designed situations these criticisms do not withstand scrutiny. It is true that the early studies of deliberation in juries showed gender, occupation, and income influencing both participation and choice of “foreman” for the jury (see Hickerson and Gastil 2006; Siu 2017). Yet in his pioneering study on deliberative quality in a citizen forum, Dutwin (2003) found no evidence in this forum that socio-​economic status affected the quality of deliberation: the overall amount of speaking and the number of topics discussed were roughly equal across gender, race, and perceived political minority status. The major factor behind differences in deliberative quality was experience with political conversation in everyday life. This surprising absence of socio-​economic biases is corroborated in several other studies (e.g. Siu 2009; 2017). An in-​depth evaluation of a European-​wide Deliberative Poll (“Europolis”) showed that the less privileged people in the discussion groups—​ lower-​class participants, particularly from the European periphery—​were also the least skilled deliberators (Gerber et al. 2016). Yet the same study also found that the deliberatively skilled and otherwise advantaged participants did not have greater success than other participants in changing the minds of others in the deliberation (a result corroborated by a meta-​study of Deliberative Polls; see Luskin et al. 2015). Those who were good at providing sophisticated justifications in the Europolis discussions also listened respectfully and seemed as open-​minded as participants with lower deliberative skills. Second-​generation approaches to deliberative democracy have also helped to broaden the idea of what counts as communicative rationality to be more fully inclusive of diverse people and their histories, identities, biases, and imperfections. Once we include stories and narratives in the conceptual apparatus of good deliberation, it is more difficult to claim that effective deliberation in a heterogeneous group of citizens is biased against democratic inclusions. Empirical studies show that almost all participants can tell stories and share experiences to make their points; these studies also suggest that stories can help to include disadvantaged perspectives (Polletta and Gardner, this volume, Chapter 4). Even from a purely epistemic, or knowledge-​centered, perspective, deliberative virtues can be seen as distributed goods. Although some people may be less skilled or confident in presenting logical arguments for their positions, they can represent their perspectives by other means. Even those who participate at minimum levels can be represented by other participants who have the relevant abilities (see Chambers 2013). Although many longstanding critiques can be rebutted by systematic empirical research, deliberative democracy is far from being a finished project. Future research should continue to contest and re-​evaluate deliberative ideals, connect deliberative with democratic ideals (such as inclusion and decisiveness; see Bächtiger and Parkinson

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    23 2018), and investigate both the democratic contributions that deliberation can make to our political systems and the possible trade-​offs in other valued outcomes when we promote greater deliberation.

Outline of the Volume We have organized this volume with several purposes in view. We survey the diverse origins of deliberative democracy as a set of theories, as a research paradigm, and as a family of practices. We provide a representative selection from the field that portrays its fertility, multidimensionality, and rapid evolution. We cover the many spaces and styles of deliberative democracy within political institutions and a variety of contexts beyond those institutions. We document the emergence and development of deliberative democracy as an approach within many disciplines and across a large number of contexts around the world. Part I surveys the origins of deliberative approaches to democracy and politics. As we suggested earlier, the basic idea of deliberative democracy is straightforward: all other things being equal, it is better to deal with conflict and solve collective action problems through deliberation—​the give and take of reasons and justification—​among those affected, rather than through other means, such as coercion or conformity to tradition. Deliberative approaches connect individual knowledge, needs, interests, values, and preferences to collective decisions and generate collective actions that will tend to be more legitimate, more intelligent, and more socially stable than the alternatives. This broad idea was not invented by contemporary deliberative democrats: it can be found in Aristotle reflecting on the practices of Athenian democracy, among early modern republicans, and in the American founding; it found its way into more explicit democratic theory in the work of J. S. Mill, John Dewey, and others. Nor are the origins of deliberative ideas solely Western. Many cultures, both ancient and contemporary, including Confucian and many indigenous cultures, have valued deliberative politics. Twentieth-​ century philosophers of language identified the ways in which some “truths” are performative, dependent upon both speaker and audience for not only their validity but also their availability as motives. Other philosophers, such as Arendt and Rawls, noted the rightful dependence of political truths—​those truths we hold in common and use to guide collective actions—​upon inclusive processes of opinion-​formation. As we discussed above, Habermas, Cohen, Gutmann and Thompson, and others built similar ideas into full-​fledged democratic theories. The chapters in Part I trace these multiple origins of democratic deliberative ideas. Part II focuses on contemporary deliberative democratic theory, representing the many ways in which it has evolved in relation to a range of problems that define contemporary political theory. Contemporary deliberative democracy derived, in effect, from a fusion of democratic ideals of inclusion with deliberative ideals focused on talk-​based approaches to common issues and collective decisions. Many recent developments

24    Bächtiger, Dryzek, Mansbridge, and Warren involve incorporating ideals traditionally associated with democratic theory—​ideals such as inclusive participation, equality, mutual respect, reciprocity, reflection, and empathy—​into deliberative democratic theory. Several chapters in this section focus on the relationship between democratic ideals and deliberative ideals. But the problems animating contemporary political theory are more wide-​ranging than those that derive from traditional democratic theory, and several chapters in this section relate deliberative democratic theory to these other issues and problems. These include the relationships between deliberative democracy and epistemically good decisions, justice, multiculturalism, political representation, religion, voting, and recognition of future generations. Part III looks at deliberative politics from the standpoint of political institutions and systems. Deliberative democracy as a focus of research has spread well beyond political theory, informing empirical research as well as practical experiments and innovations. This part is oriented by a deliberative systems framework, one that views deliberative politics both as differing by the kind of institution or location, and as a holistic property of political systems. The first chapters introduce the deliberative systems approach. Subsequent chapters examine deliberative politics within institutions of government such as legislatures as well as within governance networks, in popular forums, in the media, and in social movements and protests. The other chapters in this part examine new venues explicitly designed for deliberative purposes, such as deliberative mini-​ publics, online deliberation, and deliberative media. One remarkable feature of deliberative democracy research is that the many uses of deliberative politics, interaction, and governance have been “discovered” almost simultaneously within numerous disciplines—​although each discipline has its distinctive interests and focus. Part IV approaches deliberative democracy from the standpoint of disciplinary problems and conversations in social and rational choice, democratization studies, communication studies, international relations, psychology, sociology, public policy, planning, law, and studies of science and technology.  The final three chapters in this part examine the problem of measuring deliberation. How do we know when it exists, and how can we measure its normatively desirable qualities? The deliberative approach to democracy and politics is not just an academic enterprise. Part V looks at current deliberative practices, with a focus on challenging contexts. Chapters in this section identify and discuss deliberative democracy as a reform movement, as an approach to conflict resolution, and within deeply divided societies. Further chapters in this section ask what deliberation can contribute to problems characterized by extreme difficulty—​“wicked” problems such as climate change or problems driven by the potential for catastrophic outcomes. Part VI surveys deliberative politics around the world. Deliberative approaches to conflict can be found in many cultures and contexts—​not just in the “West” and “Global North,” from which much current theory has emanated. Although it is difficult to be globally comprehensive, chapters in this section identify and discuss deliberative politics in East Asia, India, Latin America, Africa, the European Union, and within global and transnational public spheres and institutions.

Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    25 Part VII concludes with reflections on deliberative democracy by several political theorists—​Jürgen Habermas, Amy Gutmann, Dennis Thompson, and Robert Goodin—​ who have played key roles developing deliberative democratic theory and the research programs and paradigms associated with the theory. Although we have no doubt failed to include and discuss every development within deliberative democracy, given that theory, research, and practice grow apace daily, we hope that this volume serves both as an introduction to the breadth, depth, and diversity of this expansive and multidimensional enterprise as it exists today, and as a resource for those who want to contribute to the future development of the field. We cannot know what the future holds for this field, but we hope that it will be exemplary in its engagement with critics and in its integration of micro forums and macro systems, normative and empirical inquiry, theory and practice.

Notes 1. Immanuel Kant called these kinds of ideals “regulative” ideals ( [1781] 1998, 552, A569/​B597; also A570/​B598 on a “regulative principle” as a standard “with which we can compare ourselves, judging ourselves and thereby improving ourselves, even though we can never reach the standard”). An ideal may be unachievable in its fullness for practical reasons, because it conflicts with other ideals, or because, in conditions of “the second best,” it may be right to act contrary to the ideal (see Elster 1986, 116, 119; Lipsey and Lancaster 1956, and Mansbridge et al. 2010, n. 3). 2. For some reasons why it may be hard to speak meaningfully of generations of deliberative democratic theory, see Dryzek 2016, 209. 3. We use the words “standards” and “ideals” interchangeably to describe normative aims to which we ought to aspire.

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Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction    31 Strandberg, K., Himmelroos, S., and Grönlund, K. (2017). Do Discussions in Like-​Minded Groups Necessarily Lead to More Extreme Opinions? Deliberative Democracy and Group Polarization. International Political Science Review, https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​ 0192512117692136. Stromer-​Galley, J. (2007). Measuring Deliberation’s Content:  A Coding Scheme. Journal of Public Deliberation, 3: 1–​35. Sunstein, C. R. (1988). Beyond the Republican Revival. Yale Law Journal, 97: 1539–​90. Sunstein, C. R. (1995). Incompletely Theorized Agreements. Harvard Law Review, 108: 1733–​72. Sunstein, C. R. (2002). The Law of Group Polarization. Journal of Political Philosophy, 10: 175–​95. Sunstein, C. R. (2017). Deliberative Democracy in the Trenches. Daedelus, 146: 129–​39. Taber, C. S. and Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50: 755–​69. van Parijs, P. (2011). Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Walzer, M. (1999). Deliberation, and What Else? In Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement, ed. S. Macedo (New York: Oxford University Press), 58–​69. Warren, M. E. (2006). What Should and Should Not Be Said: Deliberating Sensitive Issues. Journal of Social Philosophy, 37: 163–​81. Warren, M. E. (2009). Governance-​Driven Democratization. Critical Policy Studies, 3: 3–​13. Warren, M. E. and Gastil, J. (2015). Can Deliberative Minipublics Address the Cognitive Challenges of Democratic Citizenship? Journal of Politics, 77: 562–​74. Warren, M. E. and Mansbridge, J. with Bächtiger, A., Cameron, M. A., Chambers, S., Ferejohn, J., Jacobs, A., Knight, J., Naurin, D., Schwartzberg, M., Tamir, Y., Thompson, D., and Williams, M. (2016). Deliberative Negotiation. In Political Negotiation: A Handbook, ed. J. Mansbridge and C. J. Martin (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press), 141–​96. Warren, M. E. and Pearse, H. (eds) (2008). Designing Deliberative Democracy:  The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Weaver, R. L. and Jones, J. T. R. (1989). The Deliberative Process Privilege. Missouri Law Review, 54: 279–​321. Williams, B. (1962). The Idea of Equality. In Philosophy, Politics and Society, ed. P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford: Blackwell), 35–​53. York, E. and Cornwell, B. (2006). Status on Trial: Social Characteristics and Influence in the Jury Room. Social Forces, 85: 455–​78. Young, I. M. (1996). Communication and the Other:  Beyond Deliberative Democracy. In Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 120–​35. Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Pa rt  I

RO OT S OF T H E DE L I B E R AT I V E A P P ROAC H

Chapter 2

T he Origins of t h e Deliberati v e  T u rn Antonio Floridia

The history of deliberative democracy is far from linear:  it cannot be seen as the building-​process of a doctrinal corpus that some thinkers put together. Rather, it came out of a complex process in which different conceptual elements were gradually elaborated, changed and reworked. The theoretical field of deliberative democracy was built through several independent approaches that only later began to dialogue with each other: these views were philosophical (Cohen, Manin), legal-​constitutionalist (Bessette, Sunstein, Michelman, Ackerman), and related to social theory (Elster), political theory and political science (Fishkin, Dryzek)—​keeping in mind that, of course, many authors took a somewhat “borderline” position between these approaches. This chapter deals only with the origins and the early phase of the “deliberative turn,” that is, a very specific period: the years between 1980 and 1993. Afterwards, and continuingly today, deliberative democracy has become an increasingly wide and varied theoretical field, encompassing different views and strategies within a framework that, nonetheless, draws on common elements and shared principles. There are certainly some classical premises (notably, the notion of “deliberation” itself, which can be traced back to Aristotle) and some important antecedents (in democratic thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and John Dewey). However—​if one limits the analysis to the contemporary age—​we can see how the deliberative field came about in five different stages. More precisely: (a) a phase of transition and theoretical innovation compared to the models of participatory democracy that characterized the sixties and seventies: this was best expressed by Jane Mansbridge’s work (1980); (b) the first formulations and insights, in the early eighties, mainly marked by some scholars of the US institutions and the US Constitution:  Bessette, Sunstein, Michelman, Ackerman;

36   Antonio Floridia (c) the constituent phase proper in the late eighties, with the publication of the foundational texts of the new theoretical model:  Elster (1986), Manin (1987) and Cohen (1989). Now the theoretical field of deliberative democracy started also to define its borders by identifying a series of “opponents,” that is, some concurrent and alternative paradigms against which it was taking shape; (d) the phase of articulation of a “deliberative” field and its overlapping with other intellectual traditions: this period started in the early nineties, with the contribution—​in particular—​of political theory and political science, thanks to James Fishkin (1991) and John Dryzek (1990). In this phase the new theoretical model also started acting as a paradigm within other disciplines (especially the theories of planning and policy analysis), partly engaging with the legacy of participatory democracy. (e) the consolidation of the philosophical foundations of deliberative democracy, mainly thanks to Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, with their great works of the early nineties: Faktizität und Geltung (1992; Eng. trans. 1996) and Political Liberalism (1993). Since then, deliberative democracy has been a fully “working theory” (Chambers 2003), acting as a political ideal, a theoretical model, and an epistemological-​evaluative paradigm. Political ideal, theoretical model, paradigm: these are the different ways in which deliberative democracy has been understood—​with various, albeit not necessarily alternative, emphases. The history of deliberative democracy, however, is not only intellectual: it also inspired social and institutional practices, giving them a theoretical means for their self-​ understanding. Scholars often claim that one can distinguish between an initial, strictly theoretical phase and a later “empirical turn,” when operational proposals and devices are conceived to put the theoretical assumptions in practice. This is an acceptable analytical distinction, but it can be also misleading: from the very beginning, many theoretical elaborations of deliberative democracy have contained a conscious “practical” projection. There wasn’t a well-​defined and complete theoretical model which then was “applied.” Moreover, pre-​existing participatory models—​the citizens’ juries—​were also recognized and understood in a “deliberative” key. Deliberative democracy, therefore, is not just a chapter in the history of ideas about democracy: its history is that of the formation and consolidation of an articulated theoretical field in constant evolution, feeding on the interaction between theoretical thinking and practical experimentation.

From Participatory Democracy to Deliberative Democracy In the eighties, the theoretical model of “participatory democracy,” which arose and was developed in the sixties and seventies, went through an indisputable decline, due to the

Origins of the Deliberative Turn    37 crisis of the social and political movements that had fostered it (despite some thinkers’ attempts to revive it). And it is not easy to pinpoint the relationship between the legacy of “participatory democracy” and the constituting process of the new theoretical field of “deliberative democracy”: is the relationship one of continuity, contiguity, complementarity, or break (Bohman-​Rehg 1997; Floridia 2017; Elstub, this volume, Chapter 12)? The early eighties, however, were certainly a “transitional” phase: some works tried to develop the legacy of participatory democracy in a new direction (in particular, Barber 1984, especially sections on the importance of listening in “strong democratic talk”); but it was mainly Jane Mansbridge’s work (1980–​3) that marked the opening of a new phase. Mansbridge did not yet speak of “deliberative democracy,” but envisioned some decisive premises upon which the new theoretical model could arise. Mansbridge suggested a critical interpretation of the decline of participatory democracy, through the empirical survey of two concrete cases, “two small participatory democracies,” so as to grasp their functioning and internal tensions. Mansbridge’s analysis was based on a new pair of theoretical categories (unitary vs adversary democracy) that went beyond the traditional conceptual oppositions (mainly that between direct democracy and representative democracy). The author avoided a fruitless juxtaposition of opposing models of democracy: “unitary” and “adversary” denote different, but still democratic, decision-​making procedures. Neither is “superior” to the other. The difference between them is the nature of the interests at stake and their conflicting and/​or communal structure: on the one hand there are conflicts requiring the equal respect of all interests and values along with fair procedures of mediation or aggregation; on the other hand there are dialogic procedures, face-​to-​face relations that may lead to a consensual solution based on common interests. Above all, Mansbridge’s work was beginning to shape some issues that would be crucial to future discussions. First, it brought out the problematic nature of the role of “interests”: should they be “transcended” in the name of the “common good” or should they be “addressed” in deliberative and discursive terms? Mansbridge fully embraced the pluralism of interests (broadly understood also as both other-​regarding and ideal-​regarding) as a fact, not as a distortion to be overcome or “isolated.” Many crucial elements and problems of the deliberative paradigm were already present in Mansbridge’s work: the scale of deliberation; the costs and benefits of participation; symmetries or asymmetries in the participants’ cognitive resources; the exclusion of the poorest and most marginal social groups; the quality of dialogical interactions; and polarized dynamics within a setting based on a face-​to-​face relations. Mansbridge highlighted centrally the distinction between the “aggregative” and “transformative” dimensions of a democratic decision-​making procedure, between “counting” preferences to find majority and “discussing” them to achieve consensus. These first elements of the future theoretical model emerged from a critical reflection on “participatory democracy”; nevertheless, deliberative democracy was never a direct response to the crisis of participatory democracy, and there was no direct succession between them. These terms are related to different times and contexts leading to paths of research that will overlap only later (and only partly). In other words, the eighties mark the beginning of a whole new story: that of deliberative democracy.

38   Antonio Floridia

Early Formulations It is now established that the first contemporary occurrence of the term “deliberative democracy” in a work dedicated to the subject appears in Joseph M. Bessette, a scholar of the American institutions (1980). However, other American philosophers of the law and constitutionalists were even more influential:  Cass Sunstein, Frank I.  Michelman and Bruce Ackerman. The idea of “deliberative democracy” was essentially born within a very heated debate on the interpretations of the American Constitution, the view of democracy it embodies and American institutional mechanisms. Importantly, in this debate the tradition of “civic republicanism” was taken up along with its relation to the thought of the Founding Fathers, as opposed to the Lockean liberal tradition. Among these thinkers, the idea of deliberative democracy arose within a rereading of Madison’s original view and was set against two different interpretations:  on the one hand, the re-​emergence of a vision inspired by the Jeffersonian and Anti-​ Federalist tradition, which tended to read the US Constitution as a project to contain the original radical democratic aspirations of the revolutionary phase; on the other, a reading that related Madison’s view to the theoretical framework of contemporary pluralism: this reading was best expressed by Robert Dahl (1956). The crux of the matter was the classic problem of factions in the light of the transformations of contemporary democracy: what is and ought to be the role of interests and interest-​ groups? How to conceive the political process? How to prevent these private interests from overshadowing the “general interest”? Is there a “general interest”? Is there a “common good”? How should the common good be defined: as a mere aggregation of private, exogenous preferences rooted in the citizens’ natural pre-​political rights or, reviving the republican tradition, as arising from the political practice of the citizens’ self-​determination? These questions involved different possible interpretations of the Founding Fathers’ original design. However, they also became fully part of the contemporary theoretical debate on the models and conceptions of democracy (a “self-​protective” vision of democracy versus a vision that aimed for civic self-​determination) and on the transformations of American democracy (e.g. the supremacy of big interest-​groups and the depletion of a classic liberal model: Lowi 1969). Bessette took cue from Federalist n. 10. Here, Madison famously wrote, a representative government is best able to refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.

Origins of the Deliberative Turn    39 “This quote,” wrote Bessette, “contains the germ of the notion of ‘deliberative democracy’ ” (1980, 105). Bessette’s text sought to reread and reinterpret the arrangements of the American Constitution and its system of government in the light of a new paradigm: that of deliberation, classically understood as a reflective and pondered judgment based on the reasons for a given choice, as opposed to the immediacy of passions and selfish interests. Bessette proposed a deliberative interpretation of political representation and opposed it both to a direct vision of democracy (a “Jeffersonian” view that was very present in the “participatory democracy” models of the sixties and seventies) and to a narrowly elitist vision. Representation consists not only in the selection of a “chosen body” of virtuous and wise people, but also in the choice of politicians able to draw on a public and collective deliberation that expresses the “sentiments” of the majority. In Bessette’s view, this process was possible thanks to the balance that the Constitution outlined between the various powers. The Framers understood that “too much accountability” could be “dangerous to sound deliberation”: all mechanisms introduced by the Constitution aim to render the entire institutional order “more truly deliberative without sacrificing the popular connection,” and to prevent that “legislative deliberations would turn almost exclusively on short-​range considerations, forcing from view the long-​term consequences” (1980, 105). Bessette’s view also expressed a counterfactual conceptual model that would later be very popular in the deliberative field:  that is, the idea that good deliberation requires particular conditions to develop adequately. “If the citizens possessed,” Bessette wondered, the same knowledge and experience as their representatives and if they devoted the same amount of time reasoning about the relevant information and arguments presented in the legislative body, would they reach fundamentally similar conclusions on public policy issues as their representatives? If the answer is yes, then we must conclude that the result is basically democratic, even though the outcome may differ substantially from the citizens’ original inclinations or desires.” (1980. 105–​6)

Those who are familiar with later theoretical literature on deliberative democracy will easily perceive here, in a nutshell, some arguments and assumptions that would have widespread appeal in the years to come. Above all, we find here the idea that a process of rational, argumentative, and informed public deliberation can take place only within an appropriate setting, in which public reasoning involves the consideration of all relevant information and arguments. The later motivation for empirical experimentation to identify the conditions under which the counterfactual hypothesis of potentially good citizen deliberation will be shown to stand on solid ground derives precisely from this theoretical core; all the ad hoc deliberative settings proposed by deliberative theorists over the following decade would proceed from this assumption.1 On the whole, one can therefore say that, in the reading of American democracy proposed by Bessette, some elements would later be reassembled and included in the

40   Antonio Floridia evolution of deliberative democracy, but the new set of theories would both include, and go significantly beyond, the classic spaces of legislative representation. In some of his essays (1984; 1985; 1988) Sunstein focuses on interest groups and the role that “naked” and private preferences play, or can play, in democratic politics. In the debate of those years, these texts most bring out the revival of the republican thought and its use against modern pluralist theories. According to Sunstein, The central commitments of the republican conception are far from anachronistic, and in its belief in a deliberative conception of democracy, it provides a basis for evaluating administrative and legislative action that has both powerful historical roots and considerable contemporary appeal. (1985, 31)

Also for Sunstein (citing Elster 1983), the central point is how preferences are formed. It is only through “the debate and deliberation process” that “biased or questionable preferences may be revealed as such”: “in short, there is something that can be defined as a ‘public good’ or ‘public interest’, which may be distinct from the aggregation of private preferences or utilities” (1985, 82). The function of politics is therefore defined as “transformative or deliberative” (1985, 83). Despite being well aware of the real opposite trends, this view does not give up its ideal and normative dimension, rooted in the potential of the Constitutional “project” designed by Madison and the Founding Fathers. Sunstein denied that the lawmaking process characterizing the ordinary forms of the American government could be seen exclusively as the realm of bargaining. Instead, according to Sunstein, there is an empirical continuum: on one hand, there are cases where interest-​group pressures are predominant and the outcomes of decision-​making processes are covenants or agreements among competing interests; on the other, there are cases “where legislators engage in deliberation in which interest-​group pressures, conventionally defined, pay little or no democratic role.” Democratic politics acts precisely between these two poles: “at various points along this continuum a great range of legislative decisions exist where the outcomes are dependent on an amalgam of pressure, deliberation, and other factors” (1985, 48–​9). As mentioned, in this phase there were also other—​more indirect, but equally important—​contributions: those by Frank I. Michelman (starting from his 1986 essay) and that by Bruce Ackerman (1984): in different forms, these texts attributed a central role to the self-​determination of citizens as the deliberative and public foundation of constitutional legitimacy. Beginning with a 1986 essay, Michelman has discussed the coexistence, in the American constitutional tradition, of the republican and the liberal paradigms, finally outlining a vision of “deliberative politics” from which Habermas drew many elements of his own elaboration as he proposed it in Between Facts and Norms2. In this view, the self-​determination of citizens appears as a discursive practice producing and transforming the normative paradigms of a political community that then translate into institutional decisions: in this sense, it is “jusgenerative,” that is, it produces legitimacy, and is the more democratic the more it is inclusive, able to keep alive and nurture a shared ethos.

Origins of the Deliberative Turn    41 In Discovering the Constitution (1984), Bruce Ackerman laid the foundations of his “dualistic” conception of democratic politics (the moments of “constitutional politics” and those of “normal politics”), which he later would fully express in his major work We, the People (1991 and 1998), a comprehensive evaluation of the American constitutional history marked by three great moments of “break” with the “legal” continuity (the revolution and the founding of the United States, the Civil War, and the New Deal). These were “foundational” and “re-​foundational” moments of constitutional legitimacy, characterized by a lively participation and widespread deliberative practices. Ackerman’s “dualistic” conception was recalled (and, for the most part, shared) by John Rawls, in some pages of Political Liberalism; it also influenced the research of James Fishkin (1991). Indeed, Ackerman and Fishkin later collaborated (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004). On the whole, the theoretical alternatives that would later be crucial in defining deliberative democracy were already outlined in different forms and authors. On the one hand, there was an idea of democracy based on the aggregation of given exogenous preferences, “privately” defined on the basis of individual interests; on the other hand, there was an idea of democracy based on the transformation of these preferences, defined and formed through public debate, in a civic practice of self-​ determination. The new deliberative theorists considered such a process the most important prerequisite to guaranteeing a fundamental principle of democracy in line with the tradition of republicanism: the citizens’ autonomy as the foundation of their freedom.

The Constituent Phase of the Deliberative Theoretical Field and the Definition of its Critical Borders Three essays (Manin 1987; Elster 1986; Cohen 1989) can be considered the founding texts of deliberative democracy, setting out the “critical frontiers” of new theoretical model. Manin’s essay came out first in France in 1985 and then was translated into English (1987), receiving great attention from American academics, as the author himself recalled a few years later.3 Manin’s essay proposed a well-​defined thesis: the foundation of democratic legitimacy is not the general will, but the deliberation of all. The source of democratic legitimacy is not unanimous agreement, but a deliberative process in which everyone has the right to participate. “It is, therefore, necessary,” Manin concluded (1987, 352), “to alter radically the perspective common to both liberal theories and democratic thought: the source of legitimacy is not the predetermined will of individuals, but rather the process of its formation, that is, deliberation itself.”

42   Antonio Floridia Manin’s conception of deliberation was openly inspired by Aristotle: a considered judgment of what seems right or wrong to do (not true or false), an exchange of arguments about the reasons for a practical choice, a rational process of acquisition of information, and the clarification of one’s preferences. Manin came to formulate this thesis through a critical reading of classic themes and authors—​especially Rousseau—​ but also placed this issue at the heart of the contemporary debate, with particular attention to the positions expressed by Rawls in Theory of Justice. Manin noted that Rawls’s work lacked a properly deliberative dimension, derived from Rawls’s adherence in that work to rational choice theory. Rawls himself, in the path that would lead him to Political Liberalism, would then express an informed and thorough self-​criticism on this point (Rawls, 1999, 401 n. 20; 2005, 53 n. 7). Elster’s essay is in line with the larger research trajectory that the scholar was pursuing in those years: a critical review of the canonical models of rational choice theory. In this critical path, a crucial point was Elster’s criticism of the notion of expressed or revealed preferences and his investigation of new models of formation, transformation, or adaptation of the preferences. Elster initially studied the phenomenon of voluntary constraints that an individual can self-​impose (Ulysses and the Sirens, 1979) and then that of “adaptive” and “counter-​adaptive” preferences (Sour Grapes, 1983). The work on preference formation would be the source of many pages of Elster’s The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory (1986),4 an essay that presents some theoretical and conceptual cores destined to be very influential in the subsequent evolution of the deliberative model: (a) the contrast between the logic of the forum and that of the market: that is, the contrast between the logic of economic action (aimed at the well-​being and benefit of the agents) and that of communicative action (aimed at achieving a consensus on a rational basis); between “politics as the aggregation of given preferences and politics as the transformation of preferences through rational discussion” (1986, 104); (b) the presentation of Habermas’s “ideal speech situation” in terms of a regulative ideal, or an ideal political model. Elster thus helped to give that concept a considerable significance in subsequent references to the theoretical foundations of deliberative democracy, but also contributed to a widespread misunderstanding of its original meaning. What Elster presented as an ideal had been developed by Habermas in the early seventies and subsequently clarified, as an inevitable “pragmatic presupposition” of communicative action.5 Elster presented it rather as an ideal to strive for, thereby admitting the risk of it appearing “utopian” (1986, 114); (c) the idea that a public deliberative setting conditions the way preferences are presented, preventing their expression in selfish terms and creating constraints of consistency with the public good that is (perhaps hypocritically) aimed for; and finally,

Origins of the Deliberative Turn    43 (d) an argument that marks a radical departure from previous versions of participatory democracy (but also some distance from subsequent versions of deliberative democracy that tended to give it a prevailing “educational” purpose): the benefits of participation as “essentially by-​products” of political activity. “Any attempts,” wrote Elster, “to turn them into the main purpose of such activity would make them evaporate” (1986, 121). So, Manin openly distanced himself from Rawls, and Elster mainly drew some suggestions from Habermas. In contrast, Joshua Cohen took Rawls as his essential reference point: Cohen’s theoretical project starts from a reflection on the implications of Rawls’s political philosophy on democratic theory. Cohen uses Rawlsian premises and some of Rawls’s theoretical strategies to develop an ideal model of deliberative democracy. If a just society, for Rawls, is one in which there is a fair system of cooperation between free and equal citizens, a society thus conceived, for Cohen, is one in which, among other things, the very decision-​making procedures (instituting that “fair system”) are deliberative and democratic. Such procedures are deliberative insofar as they are founded by mutual reason-​giving, that is, by the public exchange of reasons between free and equal citizens treating each other with respect and committed to justifying their judgments to others. They are democratic insofar as they are fully inclusive and egalitarian, that is, they allow all free and equal individuals to participate with equal dignity, and on the basis of mutual recognition, in the making of decisions. Procedures that are deliberative and democratic in this way produce legitimate decisions. Cohen, in particular, referring to Rawls’s four-​stage sequence (1971, § 31), intervened in the deductive structure of Rawls’s model with a sort of interposition: Rawls (in Theory of Justice) constantly evoked the choices and rational decisions that the parties make in the transition from one stage to another (leading from the original position to juridical applications), but left undetermined the procedures of these choices and decisions. Cohen asserted that these decisions can or should only take place through a properly deliberative procedure. The theoretical foundation of “deliberative democracy” laid by Cohen would encourage a strong idealizing trend in the subsequent elaborations of a part of the theoretical field of deliberative democracy. While Manin proposed his own theory of political deliberation as the foundation of democratic legitimacy, and while Elster still spoke of a model of politics inspired by the ideal of deliberation, Cohen offered his own view of deliberative democracy as a democratic ideal and an ideal deliberative procedure as the normative core of this ideal model. This shift had important implications: Cohen himself, in 1989 but also (or even more) in later years, drew the appropriate conclusions, taking the “ideal deliberative procedure” as a model on which social and political institutions can be “mirrored”—​that is, as a guide to build new institutional arrangements and a model of deliberative governance (Cohen and Sabel 1997).

44   Antonio Floridia

The Deliberative Field: New Entries and Overlappings In the late eighties and early nineties the deliberative (or “discursive”) model also took root as a paradigm, in the sense that Kuhn (1962) attributed to this term (that is, a theoretical framework that reinterprets the phenomenon, allowing one to grasp hitherto hidden aspects and to discover new ones). The deliberative paradigm thus began to interact with various fields and disciplinary traditions. One of the most significant areas in which the deliberative model acted as an epistemological paradigm was that of new theories and practices of planning. In this field, John Forester was exemplary: in 1985 he edited a collection of essays (Critical Theory and Public Life) openly inspired by Habermas with a careful consideration of the “ideal speech situation” as an evaluational standard. This book was inscribed within a critical current that sought to rethink radically the models of planning practices based on a purely technical-​instrumental conception of rationality, highlighting instead the participatory, interactive, and dialogical dimension in policy-​making processes. In his works of the eighties, Forester did not yet speak of “deliberation.” He would do so, along with other writers, a few years later, contributing to what would be later called “The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning” (Fischer and Forester 1996) and defining the role of the “Deliberative Practitioner” (Forester 1999). John S. Dryzek, in his Discursive Democracy (1990) did not yet speak of “deliberative democracy,” but this work can be considered the first example of a critical-​radical approach to deliberative democracy that would be relevant in the next two decades: a vision of democracy as “discursive contestation,” presented as “a stronger and critical version of deliberative democracy” (Dryzek 2000, 30). Dryzek openly sought a connection with the previous models of participatory democracy, expressing a particular consonance with Barber’s positions (1990, 124), despite refusing the more openly “communitarian” traits of Berber’s work. Dryzek saw Habermas’s ideal speech situation as “a critical theory’s counterfactual ideal” (1990, 36), and therefore in itself insufficient to positively delineate an alternative project. Hence he generated also a political critique of the evolution of Habermas’s positions, which in his view had lost their original critical edge (1990, 19). Dryzek also tried to identify the subjects of this radical transformation of democracy. Today, he wrote, it “shows signs of renewal in a variety of political movements, be they Green, feminist, peace oriented, or communitarian, and, I shall argue, in a variety of institutional experiments” (1990, 13). These last words are new and important: this critical and radical version of democracy, while trying to identify the social or political subjects of this project, also introduced a possible expression of deliberative democracy through in terms of an institutional experimentation. Hence the idea and the proposal of “discursive designs” (to which Dryzek had devoted a

Origins of the Deliberative Turn    45 previous essay: 1987), which can emerge as “institutional manifestation of discursive democracy, offering an alternative to the more familiar liberal institutions of the open society” (1990, 22).

James Fishkin: Creating Places, Methods and Conditions for a Proper Deliberation In 1991, James S.  Fishkin published Democracy and Deliberation:  New Directions for Democratic Reforms, including the first formulation of Deliberative Polling, in which 100–​200 randomly selected citizens are brought together for a weekend with experts and balance materials to deliberate together on an issue or set of issues. This was not the first use of randomly chosen deliberating citizens to advise the public: Ned Crosby had developed such a practice in the early 1970s, as had Peter Dienel independently in Germany;6 nevertheless, Deliberative Polling was perhaps the first example (and certainly the first influential one) of the conscious operational translation and application of a theoretical model of democratic deliberation through the creation of a specific institutional setting. This proposal paved the way to another line of development of deliberative democracy, focused on the places, methods, and conditions that may favor deliberation, understood as the process of formation of informed, pondered, and reflective opinions. Fishkin’s work was based on a diagnosis of the worrying state of contemporary American democracy, which he attributed to the prevalence of forms of ‘direct-​majoritarian’ democracy. At the theoretical level, Fishkin emphasized how difficult it was to ‘hold together’ the three fundamental principles of a normative vision of democracy: political equality, non-​ tyranny, and deliberation. How to find the balance between these three dimensions was the goal of Fishkin’s Deliberative Polling proposal. Fishkin was much influenced by Robert Dahl, and especially by one of his criteria for a normative definition of democracy: the citizens’ enlightened understanding (“Each citizen ought to have adequate and equal opportunities for discovering and validating (within the time permitted by the need for a decision) the choice on the matter to be decided that would best serve the citizen’s interests”; Dahl 1989, 112). This criterion underlay Dahl’s idea of a minipopulus—​a group of randomly selected citizens could who would “deliberate, for a year perhaps, on an issue” (Dahl 1989, 304) and advise elected public officials. In this deliberative body, the common citizen could acquire the kind of “enlightened understanding” (Dahl 1989, 112) that he had stipulated as a criterion for good democracy. Dahl’s idea was the starting point for the ideas of Deliberative Polling, Deliberation Day (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004) and many of the subsequent experimentations with deliberative mini-​publics. Fishkin also drew from Ackerman and his “dualistic” view of democratic politics (Fishkin 1991, 101): Ackerman had built his model accentuating the gap between the

46   Antonio Floridia moments of transformative break in the “legal” continuity of a constitutional order and the moments when politics runs ordinarily. In the first case of transformative break, mass deliberation results from a “state of exception,” in which everything is questioned and all citizens are involved to create and redefine the terms of their political coexistence. In the second case of politics as usual, deliberation is a scarce resource. Fishkin thus envisioned the possibility of deliberative spaces and places in which to create the conditions that would allow citizens to some degree to experience moments of “high” politics.

The Five “Critical Borders” of Deliberative Democracy Overall, one can say that deliberative democracy, in the early nineties, through the work of various authors, marked the borders of its theoretical field by identifying a series of “opponents”—​that is, competing alternative paradigms, including the previous theories of “participatory democracy.” In particular, one can identify the five critical borders along which the new deliberative theory developed: (a) the first “border” revolves around the interpretation of the fundamental elements of the American Constitution (and the possible ideas of democracy it embodied). In different ways, Bessette, Sunstein and Michelman (but also Ackerman) proposed an interpretation based on a deliberative dimension already embodied in the history of democracy and the American Constitution, seeing its institutions and government as designed to facilitate a properly deliberative practice. The relevance of this “critical border” cannot be underestimated: the work of James Fishkin also started with a critical and worried diagnosis of contemporary democracy, which left increasingly less room for deliberation; (b) a critique of the pluralist paradigm of contemporary political science (seeing interest-​group pluralism as the balancing mechanism by which the risk of the tyranny of the majority was averted). Based on this critique, these writers proposed a revised conception of the republican ideal of a “common good,” to be defined and constructed in a deliberative way by a civic practice of self-​determination; (c) a critique of Schumpeter’s and Downs’s competitive-​elitist vision of democracy. From the 1960s on, critical arguments against this conception had been developed by advocates of a participatory vision of democracy. However, these criticisms were now transposed into a different context and new forms of them were being developed. It was no longer (or not only) a matter of contrasting those democratic conceptions variously definable as Schumpeterian with one based on the direct empowerment of citizens. Rather, it was a radical challenge to this “minimalist” vision of democratic procedures as the mere competitive selection

Origins of the Deliberative Turn    47 of ruling elites. These writers offered instead a different conception of democratic legitimacy: legitimacy was not only a result of correct electoral procedures but was also discursively constructed, in a public dimension, by deliberation that was the more democratic the more inclusive and egalitarian it became; (d) criticism of the utilitarian paradigm of contemporary social sciences, which developed within, and about, the theories of rational choice and social choice. Elster played a key role in developing this criticism. His proposal of a more complex and nuanced image of the individual (versus the idea of a merely self-​interested agent), and his reflection on how preferences are formed and their varied nature, became essential theoretical elements of a new conception of what makes decision-​making procedures democratic. However, John Rawls could be said to have played the most important role in this respect. As James Bohman and William Rehg recall (1997, xxviii n. 99), Rawls’s criticism of the utilitarian model and the “non-​aggregative conception of the common good” in Theory of Justice deeply influenced the general democratic culture and theory of those years. Specifically, Rawls’s work paved the way to the emergence of the deliberative conception of democracy, as Cohen’s work demonstrates. More generally, Rawls’s proposition of an updated contractualist approach to political philosophy, bringing back figures like Kant and Rousseau, had great critical potential with regard to the then-​dominant models. The idea of a just society based on the freedom, equality, and moral and political autonomy of citizens—​as well as the idea of citizens as constructors of social cooperation and not merely individual agents trying to maximize their well-​ being and protect their private freedom—​opened up very different perspectives from those that had prevailed until then; (e) A critique of the idea, rooted in Rousseau, that equated deliberation and decision and saw participation as direct expression of citizen power. This vision had been typical of the theorists of participatory democracy. Here, Manin’s contribution appears decisive: by recalling an Aristotelian notion of deliberation, he proposed a conception of the legitimacy of democratic procedures as based on citizens’ inclusion in the deliberative process, rather than as a direct and immediate expression of citizens’ will. Moreover, the criticism of Rousseau for the absence of a public and deliberative dimension in his thinking marks a clear departure from the visions of participatory democracy that had found in Rousseau one of their major sources of inspiration (Pateman 1970).7

The Role Played by Rawls . . . This history has touched in significant ways on the work of Rawls and Habermas. These two thinkers are usually considered the “inspiring fathers” of deliberative

48   Antonio Floridia democracy. However, from a historical-​genetic standpoint, things are a lot less straightforward. Rawls and Habermas—​in different ways—​did play a decisive role in the construction of the theoretical model of deliberative democracy: they offered reference terms, categories, and concepts on which other authors have worked. Nevertheless, in the early phase, they only acted in the background, so to speak (the only exception being Cohen, who was openly inspired by Rawls). Their greatest influence came through their works in the seventies and (partly) eighties, when they offered critical and constructive insights and ideas to those who were working on deliberative democracy per se. Rawls and Habermas came across the idea of deliberative democracy while working on their own theoretical and philosophical projects. Then, their great works of the early nineties, Faktizität und Geltung and Political Liberalism, directly contributed—​ each in its own way—​to completing and establishing the theoretical foundation of this idea of democracy. There is insufficient space here to explain precisely how they did this (see Floridia 2017). However, one can note some important differences in how and when the two thinkers consolidated and further developed the deliberative theoretical field. Rawls’s influence, in a sense, was more linear: he played a decisive role in relation first to Cohen’s mediation and then, more directly, to his 1993 and 1997 essays on “public reason.” Yet, even in those texts, explicit references to the idea of “deliberative democracy” were marginal: only at the end of this path did Rawls openly come to use the term “deliberative democracy” and to state that “well-​ordered constitutional democracies” can also be defined as “deliberative democracies” (2005, 414). He did not make this statement until 1997, when deliberative democracy was already much present in the theoretical arena. The “encounter” between Rawls and the new idea of deliberative democracy came mainly through Rawls’s complicated work on the idea of “public reason.” His own goal was to come up with a new view of political liberalism, but when the concept of “public reason” turned out to be essential to this objective, he realized how well it fit with the idea of “deliberative democracy.” Rawls never expanded on the few pages of The Idea of Public Reason Revisited explicitly devoted to deliberative democracy. Nevertheless, those pages paved the way to later theoretical works of great importance. One might rightly claim—​as many scholars have done—​that Rawls’s thought implicitly includes all the presuppositions that would eventually lead to the encounter between his political liberalism and deliberative democracy. His theoretical categories—​such as the distinction between “comprehensive doctrines” and “political views”; the distinction between rationality and reasonableness; the “burdens of judgment”; the notion of overlapping consensus; the idea of public ​​ reason as a deliberative paradigm—​can be considered as essential elements of a deliberative conception of democracy or, at least, categories that any ideal and/​or a theoretical model of deliberative democracy could hardly avoid dealing with.

Origins of the Deliberative Turn    49

. . . and the Role Played by Habermas Habermas’s presence and legacy was more complicated. He had always been, somewhat unwillingly, immersed in the process of creation of the deliberative field, because many theoretical categories—​or even just suggestions—​already present in his works of the seventies had been widely referred to and reworked (more or less correctly) both by authors purporting to promote some “radical democracy” and by those who later helped define and consolidate the “deliberative turn” of the early nineties. Consider how the concept of an “ideal speech situation” has been read, interpreted, and often misunderstood in different ways. The “theory of communicative action” or the idea of “discourse ethics” offered theoretical schemes that could be adopted and adapted in many disciplines. The incorporation of Habermas’s ideas into the non-​German intellectual world also largely depended on when his works were translated.8 The idea of ​“deliberative politics” (not of “deliberative democracy”) that Habermas proposed in 1992 (English translation 1996) in Between Facts and Norms was shocking to all those who shared a “critical-​radical” or “participatory” perspective. Habermas’s strategy rejected any proposal of an ideal model that would serve as guidance or inspiration for a political-​cultural movement, in the light of a traditional conception of the relationship between theory and practice. There is an obvious paradox here. On the one hand, the deliberative model, in many cases, spread through an “idealizing” reading of some of the categories advanced by the early Habermas.9 On the other hand, the development of deliberative democratic theory happened while the German scholar was developing his own theoretical and philosophical work and introducing some relevant discontinuities, precisely with regard to the relationship between discourse ethics, theory of law, and democracy. Thus in 1992 Habermas chose to write of “deliberative politics,” starting from a theoretical project of his own, within his reconstruction of the normative foundations of constitutional democracies and modern law. “Deliberative politics” is inscribed in the history of these democracies; it is a theoretical category that offers a key to understanding an immanent normative dimension; but it is never defined as an ideal. A complex work such as Between Facts and Norms, for many, seemed unrelated to the mainstream of “deliberative democracy.” In fact, this idea is misleading:  reading Between Facts and Norms, one can see how Habermas came to the idea of “deliberative politics” in conversation (critical or not) with all the authors that had worked on deliberative democracy over the previous decade: mainly Michelman, but also Sunstein, Ackerman, Manin (Habermas had mentioned Manin’s idea of democratic deliberation as a source of legitimacy already in the 1990 preface to the new edition of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere10), and Cohen (whose definition of “ideal deliberative procedure” Habermas would critically discuss, and which Cohen would defend11). Between Facts and Norms also includes a significant conversation with Robert Dahl,

50   Antonio Floridia precisely on the ideas that, through the work of Fishkin, had most directly influenced the development of the deliberative field. Rawls’s and Habermas’s legacies in the field of deliberative democracy are multifaceted and decisive, but it would be a mistake to think that the entire theoretical field was derived solely from the work of these two thinkers. Some talk of a “Rawlsian” or “Habermasian” approach to deliberative democracy, and this distinction is indeed important due to the differences between the two, shown in particular by the direct confrontation between the two that took place in the pages of the Journal of Philosophy (Habermas 1995; Rawls 1995). However, it would be misleading to consider their influence over other thinkers in the narrow terms of “schools” that passively reproduce the teachers’ lessons. Many authors worked within the theoretical framework offered by Rawls (Gutmann and Thompson 1996; 2004) and Habermas (e.g. Benhabib 1996; Chambers 1996; Steiner 2012), but developed these ideas in original ways. Moreover, by the late 1990s several works openly positioned themselves as critical of, or at least autonomous from, views drawn from Habermas and Rawls, proposing instead either a vision of deliberative democracy inspired by other traditions of philosophical thought, especially American pragmatism (Bohman 1996), or a vision of deliberative democracy as “epistemic proceduralism” (Estlund 1997; 2008). Because Rawls and Habermas each played (in different ways) decisive roles in establishing the theoretical foundations of deliberative democracy, it is tempting to understand their early works in a retrospective light on their respective theoretical approaches. In retrospect, it is possible and entirely licit to trace the basic elements of a theory of deliberative democracy back to Rawls and Habermas. But it would be a mistake to confine Rawls and Habermas within this perspective: both followed a strategy of their own, starting from certain philosophical and theoretical presuppositions and producing major works (such as Theory of Justice and Theory of Communicative Action) regardless of the evolution of the idea of “deliberative democracy.” Yet, both also ended up addressing deliberative democracy and found, each with his own tools and assumptions, the reasons to do so consistently with his previous theoretical path.

Conclusion This chapter retraces the origins and the early stages of the deliberative theoretical field up to the early nineties. It ends with the publication of two works by Rawls and Habermas that have each contributed in their own way to defining a more comprehensive theoretical foundation of deliberative democracy. Since that time, the deliberative field has much expanded, significantly influencing the democratic thought of our age. Today deliberative democracy can be fully considered a theoretical, critical, and normative model, or an ideal model; but also a paradigm within many disciplines as well as social and institutional practices (both new and old). Its present validity and future expansion are related to the explicative effectiveness of its conceptual tools, in the light of

Origins of the Deliberative Turn    51 the transformations (and involutions) of democracy in our age. At the same time, the ideas of deliberative democracy have inspired not just purely defensive responses to the dangers to which democratic principles are exposed today but also a host of positive innovative strategies of citizen participation, developing in practice the normative implications that the idea of democracy still expresses today.

Notes 1. See, for example, Fishkin 1991, 81: “A deliberative opinion poll models what the electorate would think if, hypothetically, it could be immersed in intensive deliberative processes. The point of a deliberative opinion poll is prescriptive, not predictive. It has a recommending force, telling us that this is what the entire mass public would think about some policy issues or some candidates if it could be given an opportunity for extensive reflection and access to information.” It should be noted that only Sunstein made explicit reference to Bessette’s essay. 2. As Habermas put it in his “Reply” to the conference of the Cardozo Law School (1995–​6, 1485), “it is no coincidence that Frank Michelman is one of the three or four contemporary authors I most frequently cite. From his work I learned a lot on deliberative politics, and reading his writings is what encouraged me to apply the discursive principle also to the law and legal production.” 3. See Manin 2002, 44 (co-​written with Loïc Blondiaux). The original title was “Volonté generale ou délibération? Esquisse d’une théorie de la délibération politique” (Le débat 1985, 33: 72–​94). The text was later published in English as “On legitimacy and political deliberation,” in Political Theory 1987, translated by Elly Stein and Jane Mansbridge. 4. This essay was first published in a collection edited by Elster himself and Aanund Hylland called The Foundations of Social Choice Theory (1986) and later appeared in the first important anthology on deliberative democracy (Bohman and Rehg (eds) 1997). In the 1986 text, Elster quotes directly many passages from Sour Grapes, resetting them in a different context, within a more direct treatment of the possible models of political theory. 5. Finally, in his “Reply” given to the conference on Facts and Norms that the Cardozo Law School held in September 1992 (1995–​6, 1518), Habermas wrote: “What I find more disturbing is the fact that the expression ‘ideal speech situation’, which I introduced decades ago as a shorthand for the ensemble of universal presuppositions of argumentation, suggests an end state that must be strived for in the sense of a regulative ideal.” See Habermas’s own contribution to this volume, Chapter 56. 6. Ned Crosby founded the Jefferson Center for New Democratic Processes—​the center that was most important in developing and spreading the deliberative model of citizens’ juries—​ as early as 1974. Peter Dienel, too, developed his idea of “Plannunszelle” in the early 1970s. See Crosby, Kelly, and Shafer (1986); Crosby and Nethercut (2005); Dienel (2002). 7. For Carole Pateman, in particular, Rousseau was a participatory theorist (see Pateman 2012 on her view of the differences between partipatory and deliberative democracy). Rousseau was also important to Cohen, but understood in a “Rawlsian” light, so to speak—​very differently from the way participatory theorists interpreted him. In his analysis of the institutional implications of Rousseau’s thought, Cohen rejects an interpretation of it as supporting direct democracy: see Cohen (2009, 34 n. 38) and Cohen (1986).

52   Antonio Floridia 8. In the most vivid example, the English translation of Strukturwandel der Öffentilichkeit was published only in 1989, twenty-​seven years later than the original (as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere). 9. Habermas’s most influential work was Legitimation crisis (1975), the translation of Legitimationsprobleme in Spätkapitalismus (1973) 10. This new Preface was translated, as Further Reflections On the Public Sphere, in C. Calhoun (ed.) (1992). 11. Habermas (1996, 304–​8), Cohen (1999).

References Ackerman, B. (1984). Discovering the Constitution. Yale Law Journal, 93: 1013–​72. Ackerman, B. (1991). We the People, vol. 1: Foundations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Ackerman, B. (1998). We the People, vol. 2: Transformations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Ackerman, B. and Fishkin, J. (2004). Deliberation Day (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Barber, B. R. (1984). Strong Democracy:  Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Benhabib, S. (1996). Towards a Deliberative Model of Democratic Legitimacy. In Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 67–​94. Bessette, J. M. (1980). Deliberative Democracy:  The Majority Principle in Republican Government. In How Democratic Is the Constitution?, ed. R. A Goldwin and W. A. Schambra (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research). Bohman, J. (1996). Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Bohman, J. and Rehg, W. (eds) (1997). Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Chambers, S. (1996). Reasonable Democracy: Jürgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Chambers, S. (2003). Deliberative Democratic Theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 6: 307–​26. Cohen, J. (1989). Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy. In The Good Polity:  Normative Analysis of the State, ed. A. Hamlin and P. Pettit (Oxford: Blackwell), 17–​34. See also Cohen, J. (2009). Philosophy, Politics, Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 16–37. Cohen, J. (1999). Reflections on Habermas on Democracy. Ratio Juris, 12: 385–​416. Cohen, J. and Sabel, C. (1997). Directly Deliberative Polyarchy. European Law Journal, 3: 313–​42. Crosby, N., Kelly J. M., and Shafer, P. (1986). Citizen Panels:  A New Approach to Citizen Participation. Public Administration Review, 46: 170–​8. Crosby, N. and Nethercut, D. (2005). Citizens Juries:  Creating a Trustworthy Voice of the People. In The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the 21st Century, ed. J. Gastil and P. Levine (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-​Bass), 111–​19. Dahl, R. A. (1956). A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Dienel, P. C. (2002). Die Plannungszelle: Der Bürger als Chance (Berlin: Springer). Dryzek, J. S. (1987). Discursive Designs: Critical Theory and Political Institutions. American Journal of Political Science, 31: 656–​79.

Origins of the Deliberative Turn    53 Dryzek, J. S. (1990). Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy and Political Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Dryzek, J. S. (2000). Deliberative Democracy and Beyond:  Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Elster, J. (1979). Ulysses and the Sirens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Elster, J. (1983). Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Elster, J. (1986). The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory. In Foundations of Social Choice Theory, ed. J. Elster and A. Hylland (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press), 103–​33.  See also Bohman, J.  and Rehg, W. (ed.) (1997). Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 3–34. Estlund, D. (1997). Beyond Fairness and Deliberation: The Epistemic Dimension of Democratic Authority. In Deliberative Democracy, ed. J. Bohman and W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 173–​204. Estlund, D. (2008). Democratic Authority:  A Philosophical Framework (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Fischer, F. and Forester, J. (eds) (1996). The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning (London: UCL Press). Fishkin, J. S. (1991). Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions in Democratic Reform (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Floridia, A. (2017). From Participation to Deliberation:  A Critical Genealogy of Deliberative Democracy (Colchester: ECPR Press). Forester, J. (ed.) (1985). Critical Theory and Public Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Forester, J. (1999). The Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Particpatory Planning Processes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (2004). Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Habermas, J. (1975). Legitimation Crisis, trans. and intr. T. MacCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press) [orig. German edn 1973)]. Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere:  An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) [orig. German edn 1962)]. Habermas, J. (1995). Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason:  Remarks on John Rawls’s Political Liberalism. Journal of Philosophy, 92: 109–​31. Habermas, J. (1995–​6). Reply to Symposium Participants, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Cardozo Law Review, 17: 1477–​1577. Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) [orig. German edn 1992)]. Lowi, T. J. (1969) . The End of Liberalism (New York: Norton & Company; 2nd edn 1979 as The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States). Manin, B. (1987). On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation. Political Theory, 15: 338–​68. Mansbridge, J. (1983) . Beyond Adversary Democracy, with revised Preface (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; 1st edn 1980). Michelman, F. I. (1986). Foreword: Traces of Self–​Government. Harvard Law Review, 100: 4–​77. Michelman, F. I. (1988). Law’s Republic. Yale Law Journal, 98: 1493–​537.

54   Antonio Floridia Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pateman, C. (2012). Participatory Democracy Revisited. APSA Presidential Address. Perspectives on Politics, 10: 7–​19. Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Rawls, J. (1985). Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 14: 223–​52. Rawls, J. (1995). Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas. Journal of Philosophy, 92: 132–​80. Rawls, J. (2005). Political Liberalism (3rd edn, expanded, New York: Columbia University Press; 1st edn 1993). Steiner, J. (2012). The Foundations of Deliberative Democracy: Empirical research and Normative Implications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sunstein C. R. (1984). Naked Preferences and the Constitution. Columbia Law Review, 84: 1689–​732. Sunstein C. R. (1985). Interest Groups in American Public Law. Stanford Law Review, 38: 29–​87. Sunstein C. R. (1988). Beyond the Republican revival. Symposium:  The Republican Civic Tradition. Yale Law Journal, 97: 1539–​90.

Chapter 3

The Phil osoph i c Ori g i ns of Deliberat i v e  I de a l s Simone Chambers

Deliberative democracy is a relatively recent development in democratic theory. It is often presented as a reaction or corrective to aggregative and economic models of democracy which came to dominate empirical social science in the mid twentieth century. But the theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy often reach far back for philosophical and theoretic resources to develop the core ideas. In this chapter I trace some of those sources and ideas. As deliberative democracy is itself a somewhat contested theory I will not be telling a linear story of intellectual heritage. Instead I will draw on a variety of sometimes disparate sources to identify different ideals that become stressed in different versions of deliberation and deliberative democracy. Just to set terms in the simplest way possible so we can begin, I take deliberation to refer to the weighing of reasons or considerations in relation to a practical decision and democratic deliberation to involve the equal participation in this process. Deliberative democracy envisions the equal participation in the weighing of reasons as a political process directed at collective judgment on public matters. At the core of deliberative democracy, then, is a link between certain epistemic claims connected to weighing or giving reasons and normative political claims connected to inclusion on an equal basis. I use the term epistemic in a weak sense to denote the cognitive content of deliberation—​reasons and considerations. This content may or may not be tied to epistemic criteria of truth, truthfulness, or rightness. All theories of deliberative democracy endorse reason-​giving and make it central to democratic legitimacy and problem solving. This is what sets deliberative democracy apart from other forms and theories of democracy. But there is a large variation in the assessment of the strength and nature of the epistemic claim tied to reason-​giving and how it is connected to democratic inclusion.

56   Simone Chambers

Wisdom of the Multitude In deliberative democracy literature it is not uncommon to see references to ancient Athenian democracy as furnishing an early (indeed, the earliest) ideal of deliberative democracy (Dryzek 2000, 2; Gutmann and Thompson 2004, 8; Elstub and McLaverty 2014, 3). The reference is often to an idealized picture of Athenian citizens engaged in intense debate both inside and outside the Assembly. Perhaps more interesting is a recent revival of the idea of sortation and a return to Athens to assess and borrow from the ancient practice of calling on citizens chosen by lot to shoulder political responsibilities. The use and perfection of random selection in mini-​publics, deliberative assemblies, and deliberative polls sometimes begins with a nod to the Athenian practice of sortation (Fishkin 2009, 11). But for philosophic ideas underpinning deliberative democracy we must turn to philosophers. Plato is not usually invoked as a philosophical source in deliberative democracy theory as he was deeply skeptical of democracy. Socratic dialogue has a deliberative element to it, as it is a process of reason-​giving directed at improving the epistemic claims of outcomes: however, Plato was very clear that this process could not be undertaken by citizens generally or adapted to democratic decision-​making. He argued that a healthy political community ought to be guided by wisdom and virtue, and that these qualities are not evenly distributed among the population but found only in the few. Aristotle shared this view, but suggested that in collaboration the “multitude” might be able to achieve some level of wisdom and virtue, perhaps even higher than any one wise and good individual (Aristotle 1984,100–​3, 1281a42-​bl). His famous comments about the multitude have spawned a lively debate (Wilson 2011; Cammack 2013; Lane 2013; Ober 20131). Some of that debate has to do with the proper interpretation of these passages, and some has to do with what we can learn from Aristotle about the epistemic credentials of democratic deliberation. Those defending the view that Aristotle is indeed saying that the multitude can come to epistemically sound conclusions often draw on him to champion epistemic democracy (Ober 2013). Epistemic democracy is the view that democracy is to be valued not simply for normative reasons but also (or sometimes exclusively) because it arrives at (or can arrive at) the right answers (Schwartzberg 2015). Some (but not all) theories of epistemic democracy are also theories of deliberative democracy, because they identify deliberation as the mechanism through which right outcomes are produced (Estlund 2008; Landemore 2013). It is at this point that Aristotle is often invoked as offering the first defense of a proto-​deliberative democracy. I am going to leave this debate here. The passages in question are short and suggestive rather than elaborate and theoretically rich (Aristotle 198, 100–​3[1281a42-​bl]). And while it is true that Aristotle has been cited as one of the first to articulate an ideal of deliberative democracy and indeed to have influenced deliberative democracy theory, it might be more accurate to say that the theory has generated an interest in rereading Aristotle with this new picture of democracy in mind. Although Aristotle’s discussion of the “multitude” has become part of the deliberative democracy debate, his political philosophy more

Philosophic Origins of Deliberative Ideals    57 generally has not. This relative lack of engagement sets deliberate democracy apart from strong participatory or republican theories of democracy. Ideals of civic virtue associated with deliberative democracy are more likely to draw on modern Enlightenment-​ inspired ideals of toleration and respect than the Aristotelian ideals of virtue and the intrinsic human good of participation.

General Will The philosophical sources of deliberative democracy begin to truly emerge in the Enlightenment. Jean-​Jacques Rousseau is an interesting if ambiguous figure in this story. On the one hand, John Rawls, and even more significantly Joshua Cohen, have been inspired by his work especially the idea of a general will. On the other hand, Rousseau appears to be hostile to some forms of deliberation and is read by some deliberative democratic theorists as rejecting reason-​giving (Elster 1998, 14) in favor of ethical fellow feeling (Habermas 1996, 101–​2) or pure willing (Manin 1987). As with Aristotle, I do not wish to embark on a discussion of how best to interpret Rousseau. But I do think that the early prominence of Joshua Cohen’s seminal conception of deliberative democracy was significantly influenced by his particular reading of Rousseau. It might be worth taking a moment to unpack this influence. Here is how Cohen describes the production of the general will: “public deliberation proceeding among equals visibly guided by reasons of the common good” (Cohen 2010, 127). The concept of “reasons of the common good” ties the cognitive content of reasons firmly to an ethical commitment to seek solutions and policy outcomes that are in the general interest of all. Left behind are Rousseau’s strong version of sovereignty and direct democracy, but retained is the ideal of citizens rising above their differences and disagreements when addressing public issues. It is not difficult to see how this reading of the general will has deep affinities to Rawls’s idea of public reason and the concomitant idea of a duty of civility, which I discuss below. When Rousseau suggests that deliberation might undermine the general will (1987, 156, 204) he is not, according to this reading, rejecting the core ideals of deliberative democracy; instead he is suggesting that deliberation must be insulated from factionalism and certain types of disagreements, that is, those in which citizens reason from self and group interests rather than from the common good. The strand of deliberative democracy with affinities to Rousseau, and prominent in what has been called the first generation of deliberative democracy, often stressed the very same suspicion of individual or partial interests. There is now a lively debate in deliberative democracy theory about whether an exclusive orientation towards the common good or impartiality is a requirement of deliberation (Mansbridge et al. 2010). Pluralist and contestation-​friendly models of democratic deliberation have moved away from the Rousseauian ideal of the general will (Young 1997). What has remained central to all theories of deliberative democracy, however, and what Cohen stresses in his enthusiasm for Rousseau, is that legitimate decision-​making processes require the equal

58   Simone Chambers standing of all citizens. Rousseau’s radical political equality, more than his collective voluntarism, lives on deliberative democracy. That radical equality is given an interesting and important twist by Immanuel Kant.

Public Use of Reason Kant is not often cited as a direct precursor to deliberative democracy: unlike Aristotle, who appears to endorse (in some circumstances) citizens’ collaborative rule through deliberation, and unlike Rousseau who clearly thinks that citizens should be making binding decisions in legislative (and so presumably deliberative) assemblies, Kant did not see a large role for flesh-​and-​blood citizens in political decisions. He was not a democrat; furthermore he had a low opinion of ordinary citizens’ intellectual and political competencies. Nevertheless, his philosophy contains some of the most important and central ideas animating deliberative democracy. Although not a democrat, Kant was a philosophical egalitarian arguing that all human beings are deserving of respect. This has led to two ideas central to deliberative democracy. The first is that reason-​giving is a way to treat one’s interlocutor as free, equal, and deserving of respect. The second is that hypothetical rather than actual consent should be the standard of legitimacy, making reason-​giving, justification, and argument in the public sphere more important than the ballot box in establishing legitimacy. This in turn means that the freedom to argue and reason publicly about public policy is a necessary condition of both legitimate and epistemically sound legislation. Like Rousseau, Kant is concerned with dilemmas of freedom and coercion (“man is born free but everywhere is in chains” (Rousseau, 1987, 141)) and so, also like Rousseau, he understands self-​legislation as the only way to square that circle. In giving ourselves laws we can be both free and at the same time governed; therefore only the “united will of the people” can make legitimate law (Kant 1996, 457 [6:313]). Kant may have lacked confidence in the empirical wills of his fellow eighteenth-​century citizens, but he could fully endorse the principle that legitimate law was law that all citizens could agree to, and this led him to adopt a reasons-​based legitimacy test. The test is hypothetical: “If a public law is so constituted that a whole people could not possibly give its consent to it  . . . it is unjust” (Kant 1996, 297 [8:297]). The hypothetical nature of this test means that it is passed or failed purely on the basis of argument and reasoning, not on empirical evidence of consent such as votes or collective action or (had they existed in the eighteenth century) opinion surveys. Sovereigns, although morally bound to impose only laws that citizens would impose on themselves, need not consult citizens on the matter. The sovereign, however, would do very well to listen to arguments and criticisms presented by public reasoners who argue from the point of view of the united will of the people (Kant 1996, 302 [8:304]). Kant introduces the public use of reason to identify the appropriate sort of contributions to such public debates. The private use of reason is argument and reason-​giving

Philosophic Origins of Deliberative Ideals    59 that draws on and furthers a particularist cause or subgroup perspective. Participating in public debate as a representative of the military or in defense of a certain sectarian perspective would be a private use of reason. The public use of reason rises above these particularities and seeks to argue from the point of view of truth and reason as such. To move from the private to the public use of reason is again reminiscent of Rousseau’s demand that citizens reason from the common good. But for Kant the common good is unhitched from a particular collective community and is sought in universal reason. Reason arrives at the right answer through criticism, argument, and persuasion. In a very famous passage from the Critique of Pure Reason Kant says: “Reason must subject itself to critique in all its undertakings, and cannot restrict the freedom of critique through any prohibition . . . . The very existence of reason depends upon this freedom, which has no dictatorial authority, but whose claim is never anything more than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express his reservations, indeed even veto, without holding back” (Kant 1998, 643 [A738/​B767]). Reason operates through persuasion and not force. This view is echoed in Habermas’s famous appeal to the “unforced force of the better argument” (Habermas 1996, 306). Here is the central idea that giving each other reasons is a way of respecting the autonomy of our interlocutor or fellow deliberator. On this philosophical view reason and persuasion are qualitatively different than coercion and force and hold the key to establishing the legitimacy of a legal order that ultimately must use coercion. Reason and persuasion require freedom (but especially free speech) to flourish. Good government depends on the existence of an active public that uses its reason to keep power within the limits of legitimacy—​which is to say, it demands justification of laws and coercive state action. Persuasion (and therefore reason itself) functions through public practices of criticism, argument, and communication. Kant goes so far as to say that each individual “is authorized to judge for himself ” when the sovereign has violated those rights. Freedom to use reason publicly is the “palladium of the people’s rights” (Kant 1996, 302 [8:304]). We see here an interesting shift. For both Rousseau and Kant, public reasoning should seek what all could agree to, but in Rousseau the mechanism to achieve this end involves suppressing differences that might bubble up in contentious debate, whereas in Kant it involves public criticism and argument. The idea that public debate holds the sovereign to account has had more influence on macro-​level theories—​ those that see deliberative democracy as system-​wide—​than on micro-​level theories, where deliberative democracy is seen as a decision procedure in a well-​defined venue of collective decision-​making. But the idea that reason-​giving is a form of respect runs through all deliberative democracy theory.

Government by Discussion Amy Gutmann and Denis Thompson are pioneers in the field of deliberative democracy and they are unequivocal about the influence of John Stuart Mill: “The most

60   Simone Chambers prominent nineteenth-​century advocate of ‘government by discussion’—​John Stuart Mill—​is rightly considered one of the sources of deliberative democracy” (2004, 9; see also Elster 1998, 4; Freeman 2000, 372). But like all the figures we have looked at so far, the relationship between Mill’s philosophy and deliberative democracy is somewhat ambiguous. At first sight the clearest point of connection between Mill and deliberative democracy might appear to be his famous defense of free speech and discussion in On Liberty. Here Mill argues that allowing the maximum amount of freedom to talk, criticize, and argue in the public sphere directly promotes the discovery of truth (Mill 1975, 5–​141). Therefore like Aristotle he endorses a view that sees the epistemic merits of many different voices and opinions coming together in a critical public conversation. And like Kant he believes that strong free speech protections and guarantees are necessary conditions of this epistemic conversation. But On Liberty does not dwell on the significance of free speech and debate for democratic government. For that we must turn to On Representative Government. Here Mill does indeed endorse the value of discussion and debate. Mill sees Parliament as the “nation’s Committee of Grievances, and its Congress of Opinions” (226). Parliament is “a place where every interest and shade of opinion in the country can have its cause even passionately pleaded, in the face of the government and of all other interests and opinions, can compel them to listen” (227). Talk and discussion in which the interests, concerns, and claims of the general population can be raised and addressed is at the center of his vision of representative government. But there is a feature of Mill’s political philosophy that some have thought puts him at odds with the ideals of deliberative democracy; this is his epistemic elitism. This led him to endorse an institutional arrangement whereby the discussions of Parliament were only advisory to the discussions of experts who wrote, passed, and administered legislation. And so it is possible to read some passages in On Representative Government as seeking ways to insulate government from, rather than opening it up to, democratic deliberation. And in his infamous defense of plural voting he wrote that “it is not useful, but hurtful, that the constitution of the country should declare ignorance to be entitled to as much political power as knowledge” (288). From this one might suppose that Mill would be horrified by the idea of citizen assemblies and mini-​publics, on the one hand, or the idea of the unregulated public sphere of ordinary citizens having much influence on legislative agendas, on the other hand. But Mill does think that citizens are educable and discussion and debate is the central mechanism of that education, so citizens’ assemblies and deliberative polls might not be permanently off the agenda and one might even see them as “school(s) of public spirit,” as Mill saw juries (198). Second, it is important (as was the case with Kant) to separate his ideal of government by discussion from his empirical assessment of existing competencies. Mill was a committed egalitarian democrat in the sense that he thought everybody’s interests should be equally represented (voiced) in debate and discussion; he just did not think that everyone was equally capable of doing that.

Philosophic Origins of Deliberative Ideals    61

Democracy as Inquiry One of the most frequently quoted passages in all deliberative democracy literature is from the American pragmatist John Dewey: “majority rule, just as majority rule, is as foolish as its critics charge it with. But it never is merely majority rule. As a practical politician, Samuel J. Tilden, said a long time ago: ‘the means by which a majority comes to be a majority is the more important thing’: antecedent debates, modification of views to meet the opinions of minorities . . . .The essential need, in other words, is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion” (1954, 207–​8). Here we have a clear endorsement of a deliberative concept of legitimacy over and against a pure majority rule. Arguments and justification, not votes and numbers, underpin our political system and give it legitimating credentials. This view is in turn based on a deeper philosophy that touches epistemology, and above all the appropriation of scientific method by democratic politics. In pragmatism, then, the modern normative commitment to freedom and equality meets a new type of philosophy to produce an innovative picture of the political significance of inclusive reason-​giving: democracy as inquiry. What is democracy as inquiry? Some deliberative democrats answer this question by appeal to the epistemological theory of Charles Sanders Peirce, who might be more accurately described as arguing that inquiry is essentially democratic. For Peirce, humans have an interest in true belief and therefore they have an interest in pursuing the best means of acquiring true belief. But we have no immediate intuitive access to truth and there are no external unimpeachable sources of truth. So instead we must rely on methods that can test our truth claims. Cheryl Mizak describes Peirce’s view this way: “A true belief is one that would stand up to inquiry. A true belief is one that is indefeasible—​ it would not be improved upon; it would forever meet the challenges of reasons, arguments, and evidence” (2008, 95). Inquiry involves continuous open critical debate and deliberation. It is democratic in three senses: it is a collective, communal, and public process; inclusion is an important condition of success because one wants every possible objection to be raised and answered; and it requires broad freedoms for all inquirers. Peirce himself was not interested in politics. But in the hands of theorists who are interested in politics, this view is transformed into a justification of democracy, because of all the regimes at our disposal, democracy is the one that can come closest to instantiating the condition of inquiry and thus can produce the best (truest) policies. Mizak again: “democratically produced decisions are legitimate because they are produced by a procedure with a tendency to get things right” (2008, 95). As democratic citizens we are tasked with acting like good inquirers. This means subjecting our claims, principles, and policy proposals to the crucible of argument, reason-​giving, and justification. Connected to this view is a strong insistence on fallibility and revisability. All inquiry, including and perhaps especially democratic inquiry, is always open to

62   Simone Chambers improvement and revision in the face of new evidence, new problems, and new challenges. The critical conversation never ends. Here we have an updated version of Aristotle’s idea of the wisdom of the multitude. The focus however is not on the individual capacities of the participants but the procedures and processes that can maximize the conditions of inquiry. Although all contemporary theorists of deliberative democracy endorse the view that exchange of reasons between equals improves the outcome, only a handful defend deliberation on exclusively epistemic grounds. Going back to our discussion of Rousseau and Kant, also central are moral arguments about treating each other as equals. Pragmatists often turn to John Dewey for a normatively and politically richer view of democracy as inquiry. Eric MacGilvray describes the difference between the exclusively epistemic approach to democracy favored by the followers of Pierce to the more normative view of Dewey this way: “Sometimes we want everyone’s voice to be heard because we think that will make a better decision as a result, and sometimes we want everyone’s voice to be heard simply because we think that everyone has a right to be heard” (2013, 106). But Dewey is still a pragmatist (and not a Kantian deontologist) interested primarily in the consequences of deliberation and critical debate. One of the consequences of deliberation is a type of self-​reflection that both produces a public and informs and educates a public. Dewey intervenes in a debate about the rational capacity of the public that really begins with Plato and is still hotly contested today. Like Plato, many still doubt the rational capacity of the general public to make informed and sensible judgments about public questions. Dewey argued, especially in The Public and its Problems, that the apparent ignorance of the public is the result of structural factors that inhibit the circulation of knowledge. Elites hoard knowledge the way misers hoard wealth. An investigation of the best methods of inquiry points to the fact that distributing, publicizing, and circulating knowledge creates more and better knowledge. Dewey was a champion of the public as a rational participant in democracy but understood that that public was itself constituted through the very procedures that produced sound policy. Dewey promoted public communication, discussion, deliberation, and debate not so much as a means of directly transmitting citizen preferences to state actors but rather as a process whereby a public becomes a public by collectively reflecting on the interests they share and the problems they need to solve together. When contemporaries like Walter Lippmann (1927) argued that there was no public to speak of because there were no identifiable coherent opinions to identify with a public, Dewey partially agreed (1954, 116) but argued that that was due to elites hoarding knowledge and information and blocking avenues of self-​reflective deliberation. Thus inclusive deliberation (or public inquiry) performed three functions: it produced a public that reflectively recognized shared needs and interests; it produced the best solutions to the problems involved in meeting those needs and interests; and it brought the individual into a close and fulfilling relationship with a community. This last function

Philosophic Origins of Deliberative Ideals    63 points to a strand of Dewey’s thought that, while not at odds with deliberative democracy, is not usually central. This is the idea that collective political participation in practices of deliberation has a significant moral impact on the individual. This is a strand that is often tied to participatory theories of democracy, for which Dewey is also an inspiration.

Public Justification The two towering philosophical figures of contemporary deliberative democratic theory are John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. Rawls and Habermas inaugurated a new era in liberal theory centered on public justification, which involves seeking, constructing, and offering reasons for state coercion that are acceptable to all citizens. Here we see justification and legitimacy fold into each other in contemporary liberalism to become one overarching concept. Compare this to the more traditional view, seen for example in Locke, where justification is an essentially philosophical or epistemic enterprise seeking to establish truth (sometimes referred to as justification simpliciter) while legitimacy is a political concept seeking to secure allegiance through consent. Locke justified the state through the device of a contract which was in turn supported by natural law theory. Legitimacy by contrast was established through the consent of the governed. Today we see contract and consent being replaced by an overarching idea of “justification to the other.” As Rawls says: “public justification is not simply valid reasoning, but argument addressed to others” (2005, 465). The pivotal role of public justification in contemporary ideas of legitimacy is rooted in respect for the deep pluralism that characterizes modern polities, as well as the recognition of political autonomy, which is to say the free and equal status of each citizen. It is not that all liberals have abandoned ideas of natural law or objective good (although many have, and so the post-​metaphysical nature of much of liberal theory also contributes to the move away from justification simpliciter), but that there is a general acknowledgment that getting the argument right does not confer any moral authority to impose the conclusion on people who do not agree with the argument. In a philosophy seminar it might be enough to say to those who fail to see the truth of your argument, “well you’re just wrong—​too bad for you.” But when justifying the basic structure of the social and political order to fellow citizens, “you’re just wrong” fails to treat others as coequal sovereigns deserving of respect. Joshua Cohen states that “the deliberative conception of democracy is organized around an ideal of political justification. According to this ideal to justify the exercise of collective political power is to proceed on the basis of a free public reasoning among equals” (1996, 99). Some idea of public justification and the way it models freedom and equality under conditions of pluralism articulates the conception of legitimacy that underpins almost all theories of deliberative democracy.

64   Simone Chambers

Public Reason An important strand of deliberative democracy focuses attention on public reasons—​ the sorts of reasons citizens should be giving each other if they are to treat each other as equal partners in democratic self-​determination. Rawls inaugurated the discussion of public reason, and his conception is still the touchstone from which people begin. For our purposes the important feature of Rawls’s conception, and one that links back to Rousseau, is the insistence that public reasoning should begin from a “shared public basis.” For Rawls, public reasons are political not metaphysical (2005, 223). By this he means that we should try as much as possible to refrain from appealing to parts of our personal belief system that involve controversial or simply unshared ideas of truth, the good life, ultimate values, and so on. Instead we should seek reasons that are free-​ standing in the sense that we could imagine them being endorsed by people who do not share our particular comprehensive views. Gutmann and Thompson incorporate this idea into their conception of deliberative democracy by insisting that citizens “appeal to reasons or principles that can be shared by fellow citizens . . . moral reasoning is in this way mutually acceptable” (1996, 55). On this view, then, not everything or anything that we might believe to be true or care about has a place within public justification and deliberation about political matters. The idea here is that any time any of us propose and defend a policy, law, or constitutional order we are proposing and defending a form of coercion. Coercion is made legitimate by seeking a common form of reasoning through which all citizens (or all those affected) can sign on to the proposal. Because we cannot as an empirical matter canvass every single person and also because actual responses of empirical persons can be unreasonable (the traditional problems with consent), we ought to seek to fold other people’s possible consent (or at least their interests, concerns, and perspectives) into our very reasoning: only appeal to reasons that you think your fellow citizens will understand as reasonable. Only a subset of theorists of deliberative democracy endorse Rawls’s specific articulation of public reason, especially the exclusion of comprehensive worldviews or deeply held beliefs about truth and value. But many normative theories of deliberative democracy endorse a more open-​ended idea of public reason that encourages deliberators to seek common ground and offer arguments that appeal to a common good, eschewing those that are overly sectarian, narrow, or particularist.

The Public Sphere, the Ideal Speech Situation, and the Unforced Force of the Better Argument Jürgen Habermas has had a tremendous influence on deliberative democracy. It is not possible to describe the full debt here. Instead I will identify three concepts to which

Philosophic Origins of Deliberative Ideals    65 theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy return over and over again. These are the “public sphere,” “the ideal speech situation,” and the “unforced force of the better argument.” Habermas’s first major published work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (originally published in 1962) traced the emergence, in the second half of the eighteenth century, of a new political space that stood between the private sphere of the individual and the fully public sphere of the state. This space can be understood as the political voice of civil society and was home to a new type of political participation and communication seen in the rise of political clubs, journals, salons, and newspapers. It was the sphere where private citizens came together to discuss public matters and produce public opinion for the first time. Public opinion for Habermas is not simply aggregate opinion; it is opinion about public matters that is shaped and formed through these new means of political communication. But what signals the important democratic development here is that state actors become accountable to public opinion in a way never seen before. Nothing illustrates this better than the invention of Hansard. When citizens begin to have access to debates in Parliament, legislators begin to address their parliamentary speeches to the people knowing that public opinion can now be mobilized in effective and powerful ways (1989, 66). Public opinion formation in an active and critical public sphere takes on the role of rational critic of state power demanding accountability and justification from state actors. This macro-​level picture, placing communicative accountability in the public sphere at the center of the rise of democracy and displacing or (at least augmenting) the story of the franchise, has had a powerful influence on deliberative democracy. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Habermas had yet to develop his full communicative action theory, however. The story he told in this early book was still indebted to a Marxist framework that he would come to reject. In abandoning Marxism, Habermas needed an alternative account of this new type of political accountability and he found it in a deep theory of communication and argumentation. Underpinning both his moral theory (discourse ethics) and his political theory (a discourse theory of law and democracy) today are, one the one hand, a sociological theory of communicative action and, on the other hand, a linguistic theory of argumentation. The ideal speech situation is part of the underlying linguistic theory of argumentation, articulating the ideal conditions under which justification and reason-​giving ought to proceed if we are to have confidence that all participants to the conversation have freely and autonomously endorsed the outcome or subsequent agreement. At first sight, then, the ideal speech situation looks as if it contains an ideal of deliberative democracy; but we must be careful here, and Habermas is quite insistent that this is a linguistic ideal and not a social or political one. Let me explain. The ideal speech situation articulates the formal requirements of justification. This sets it apart from a public reason type theory, for example as favored by Rawls, in three ways. First it is a claim about justification to the other per se, and not specifically justification of state action or policy; second, it does not focus on the substantive content of reasons but on procedural rules of argumentation; and finally it is a “counterfactual presupposition” and not a normative goal to aim towards. For Rawls, we treat each other as free, equal, and

66   Simone Chambers with respect when we justify our claims on the state or preferred policies with public reasons, and Rawls goes on to specify what counts as a public reason. In a well-​ordered society citizens would internalize this normative ideal and exercise good citizenship (what Rawls calls the duty of civility) by confining their political discourse to public reasons. Influenced by the pragmatist view we canvassed above, Habermas takes a more formal route and maintains that justification is “ultimately based only on reasons that withstand objections under demanding conditions of communication” (2008, 49). So he does not begin from the content of public reasons but from the rules of discourse. Those demanding conditions include (i) no one can be excluded, (ii) equal opportunity to speak, (iii) no deception or manipulation, (iv) no coercion or external pressure can be brought to bear (2008, 50). Habermas is the first to admit that these conditions are “strong idealizations” and are never fully met in real conversations. But Habermas never claimed that the ideal speech situation offers a picture of something we should be striving toward in the real world. Because so many people understood the ideal speech situation as offering such a normative goal, Habermas abandoned the term altogether. The four conditions outlined above articulate presuppositions of justification derived from a reconstruction of what it means for two people to communicate and understand each other and, according to Habermas, all speakers have an intuitive grasp of these conditions. The intuitive plausibility of these rules comes out particularly strongly when we think about the ways justification and persuasion can go wrong: “Should one party make use of privileged access to weapons, wealth or standing, in order to wring agreement from another party through the prospects of sanctions and rewards, no one involved will be in doubt that the presuppositions of argumentation are no longer satisfied” (1982, 272–​3). While few deliberative democratic theorists embrace the full Habermasian philosophical edifice that underpins and justifies this reconstruction of the presuppositions of argumentation, it is hard to exaggerate the influence that the general picture of the conditions of deliberation and discourse have had on the field of deliberative democracy. Some version of the four conditions outlined above are drawn on for almost all models of deliberation. A shorthand version of these rules is contained in the famous Habermasian phrase “the unforced force of the better argument” (1996, 306). This phrase appeals to the Kantian idea that reason operates in a different way from coercion and that only through reason can we coordinate our actions in a way that respects each person’s freedom and equality. In this phrase Habermas captures a central component lying deep in most theories of deliberative democracy: reason-​giving is both a means of arriving at better outcomes and a way of recognizing each participant as equal and free. The procedural conditions of the “ideal speech situation”2 are a counterfactual conceptualization of what would have to be the case if we were to say that only pure argumentation is going on. But the world has a lot more going on in it than pure argumentation, and all actual argumentation is embedded in and constrained by many factors in the empirical context. The question remains:  What normative, social or political conclusions can we draw from the reconstruction of the conditions of argumentation? Habermas is

Philosophic Origins of Deliberative Ideals    67 clear that concepts drawn from linguistic theory need a great deal of “mediation” to be usefully applied in politics (1996, 158). In Habermas’s own theory they point to a reinterpretation of the institutions of the liberal democratic constitutional state in terms of creating the broad conditions of public discourse: inclusion, equality, and the freedom to call out manipulation and coercion are at the center of this picture. In following Kant more than Rousseau, Habermas places a great deal of weight on the role and function of criticism (what he sometimes refers to as “no saying”) in the public sphere as instigating long-​term learning processes. The result is a two-​track model of democracy that repurposes his public sphere arguments from Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Public debate and criticism in the public sphere both shapes public opinion and holds the state accountable. Our actual debates are full of distortions and pathologies that we can identify and call out because we have an idea in the back of our heads of the general conditions of free and equal communication. Habermas himself has never been very interested in the institutional design of face-​to-​face deliberative initiatives (although he sees their democratic value). Many who do pursue such design agendas are inspired by the ideal of the unforced force of the better argument. But again it would be a mistake to think that mini-​ publics are aiming to instantiate the ideal speech situation. Understanding how objects move in a vacuum can be very helpful in grasping the factors that influence the movement of objects in the lived world. Something similar can be said about the role and function of the ideal speech situation in designing face-​to-​face deliberations between citizens.

Notes 1. Wilson and Ober read these passages as an endorsement of democracy input and Cammack and Lane as less friendly to democracy. 2. When Habermas does use the phrase now (which is rarely) he usually puts it in scare quotes (2008, 50).

References Aristotle (1984). The Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Cammack, D. (2013). Aristotle on the Virtue of the Multitude. Political Theory, 41: 175–​202. Cohen, J. (1996). Procedure and Substance in Deliberative Democracy. In Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Practical, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 95–​119. Cohen, J. (2010). Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Dewey, J. (1954). The Public and Its Problems (Chicago, IL: Swallow Press). Dryzek, J. S. (2000). Deliberative Democracy and Beyond:  Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Elster, J. (1998). Introduction. In Deliberative Democracy, ed. J. Elster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–​18.

68   Simone Chambers Elstub, S. and McLaverty, P. (2014). Deliberative Democracy:  Issues and Cases (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Estlund, D. (2008). Democratic Authority:  A Philosophical Framework (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Fishkin, J. S. (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Freeman, S. (2000). Deliberative Democracy: A Sympathetic Comment. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 29: 371–​418. Gutmann, A and Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (2004). Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Habermas, J. (1982). A Reply to My Critics. In Habermas: Critical Debates, ed. J. B. Thompson and D. Held, trans. T. McCarthy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 219–​83. Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere:  An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press). Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Habermas, J. (2008). Between Naturalism and Religion, trans. C. Cronin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Kant, I. (1996). Practical Philosophy (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant), ed. M. J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kant, I. (1998). Critique of Pure Reason (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant), ed. P. Guyer and A. W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Landmere, H. (2013). Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence and the Rule of the Many (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Lane, M. (2013). Claims to Rule: The Case of the Multitude. In The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Politics, ed. M. Deslauriers and P. Desrée (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 247–​74 . Lippmann, W. (1927). The Phantom Public (New York: Macmillan). MacGilvray, E. (2013). Democratic Doubts:  Pragmatism and the Epistemic Defense of Democracy. Journal of Political Philosophy, 22:105–​23. Manin, B. (1987). On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation. Political Theory, 15: 338–​68. Mansbridge, J. with Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Estlund, D., Føllesdal. A., Fung, A., Lafont. C., Manin, B. and Martí, J. L. (2010). The Place of Self-​Interest and the Role of Power in Deliberative Democracy. Journal of Political Philosophy, 18: 64–​100. Mill, J. S. (1975). Three Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Mizak, C. J. (2008). A Culture of Justification:  The Pragmatist’s Epistemic Argument for Democracy. Episteme, 5: 94–​105. Ober, J. (2013). Democracy’s Wisdom: An Aristotelian Middle Way for Collective Judgement. American Political Science Review, 107: 104–​22. Rawls, J. (2005). Political Liberalism (3rd edn, expanded, New  York:  Columbia University Press). Rousseau, J.-​J. (1987). The Basic Political Writings, trans. D. A. Cress (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett).

Philosophic Origins of Deliberative Ideals    69 Schwartzberg, M. (2015). Epistemic Democracy and Its Challenges. Annual Review of Political Science, 18: 187–​203. Wilson, J. L. (2011). Deliberation, Democracy and the Rule of Reason in Aristotle’s Politics. American Political Science Review, 105: 259–​74. Young, I. M. (1997). Difference as a Resource in Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Democracy:  Essays on Reason and Politics, ed. J. Bohman and W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 383–​406.

Chapter 4

The For ms of Deliberat i v e C omm u ni c at i on Francesca Polletta and Beth Gharrity Gardner

It is easier to identify what is not deliberative communication than to identify what is. People are not genuinely deliberating when they trumpet their own opinions without listening to those of others; when they discuss a single position without considering alternatives; when they credit the opinions of the person in the group with superior status rather than superior arguments. The more difficult question is how people should communicate when they deliberate. Should they be encouraged to make well-​evidenced arguments rather than tell personal stories? To what extent is reaching agreement necessary to good deliberation? Does passionate talk threaten reasoned talk? Does a reliance on rational discourse advantage some speakers over others? As deliberative democratic theory has moved from a macro theory of democratic legitimacy to prescriptions for institutional design, questions like these have become of increasing practical importance. At the same time, the proliferation of settings for organized public deliberation has offered new sources of data for answering them. Citizens today have many opportunities to talk with fellow citizens about issues of mutual concern: from urban development to health policy to police–​community relations to the national budget. Organized public deliberations take a variety of forms. Some deliberative forums unfold over days or even weeks while others are one-​off affairs; some recruit a random sample of participants while others invite only those with a direct stake in the issue, and still others invite anyone interested; some aim to arrive at a set of recommendations while for others the goal is a clarification of participants’ views; some operate with policymakers’ endorsement, if not their agreement to abide by the recommendations that come out of the forum, while others do not. For all their variety, however, forums increasingly are organized by professionals who are in contact with other

Forms of Deliberative Communication    71 deliberation professionals and who work with shared norms for what makes communication deliberative (Leighninger 2006; Lee 2015; Mansbridge et al. 2006; Polletta and Chen 2013; Ryfe 2002, 2006). In this article, we review existing research on the kinds of communication that contribute to good deliberation. We ask the following questions: Is telling emotional stories at odds with giving reasons? How important is it for deliberators to arrive at agreement? And should good deliberation be actively guided by facilitators or allowed to unfold naturally? To answer these questions, of course, we need to know what counts as “good” deliberation. Drawing on normative theories of deliberation and on criticisms of those theories, we identify three criteria. Good deliberation allows participants either to reach mutually-​agreed upon decisions or, if that is not the purpose of the forum, to gain a better understanding of the issue in question. Second, as much as possible, good deliberation avoids reproducing inequalities that exist outside the forum. Third, good deliberation has impacts after the forum is over, whether by increasing participants’ trust or participation in political institutions or more directly by influencing policymakers’ decisions. After locating these criteria within the normative theoretical literature, we turn to the ways in which deliberation is currently practiced, mainly within the organized citizen forums that scholars have characterized as “mini-​publics” (Fung 2003, 2007; Goodin and Dryzek 2006). We argue that deliberative talk today does not resemble the abstract, rational, and universalistic discourse championed in much deliberative theorizing. Precisely for that reason, though, deliberative talk today does have some of the benefits claimed for it by deliberative theorists.

The Case for Deliberative Talk Arguments for the virtues of public deliberation go back to Aristotle, but they re-​ emerged in the 1990s in the context of widespread concern about contemporary democracies’ low levels of citizen engagement as well as the generally polarized character of political debate. For deliberative democrats, the solution to this state of affairs is to create opportunities for public deliberation. Giving people the opportunity to talk about controversial political issues in a setting marked by civility and mutual respect may yield areas of unanticipated agreement. Even if deliberators do not reach consensus, they may come to understand the issues at stake more fully and recognize a greater range of preferences as legitimate. They may develop greater trust in political institutions and become more willing to participate politically in other ways (Bohman 1996; Dryzek 2000; Fishkin 1991; 1995; Habermas 1989; 1996). The character of deliberative talk is thus crucial to the theory. Most theorists agree that for discussion to be genuinely deliberative, it must be open to all and participants must be unconstrained in the arguments they make, save by the requirement of civility. Deliberation should be free of outside control and should aim for agreement that

72    Francesca Polletta and Beth Gharrity Gardner is uncoerced (Bohman 1996; Fishkin 1995; Gutmann and Thompson 2004; Habermas 1984). Inequalities that exist outside deliberation should be suspended within it (Knight and Johnson 1997). In such a setting, deliberation properly takes the form of reciprocal reason-​giving. Participants should justify their preferences by making arguments that others can reasonably accept as persuasive (Bohman 1996; Gutmann and Thompson 2004; Habermas 1984; 1996). The emphasis on reason-​giving owes much to Habermas’s notion of an enlightened consensus arrived at through public discussion. In his earliest work, Habermas ([1962] 1989) found historical precedent for such a consensus in the eighteenth-​century public sphere. In coffee houses, salons, table societies, and journals of opinion private citizens debated issues that were once the exclusive purview of the state. Such debates were conducted without regard for status; instead, the better argument should carry the day. And they formed the basis for criticizing the state in the name, not of private interests, but of public ones. To be sure, the progressive features of the public sphere were offset by its exclusive character. It was, Habermas recognized, barred to women. And it was quite specifically a bourgeois public sphere (the indifference to status operated only within the boundaries of the middle class). So, Habermas in no way advocated resuscitating the form of the eighteenth-​century public sphere; it was clearly obsolete. Where he saw emancipatory potential was in the notion of public debate governed by reason rather than status. In his later work, Habermas (1984) sought to ground that potential in the norms of ordinary speech rather than in a historical precedent. Habermas’s conception of reason-​giving offered a compelling standard for assessing the democratic character of public talk, and for grounding democracy in public deliberation rather than in formal structures of representation (Bohman 1996; Cohen 1989; Dryzek 2000). However, it has also raised a number of questions. One question, quite simply, is whether ordinary people are capable of rational discourse (Rosenberg 2007). Research suggests that people are “cognitive misers,” relying more on familiar scripts than on reflective judgment (Mutz, Sniderman, and Brody 1996). Reason-​giving may simply require too much work for most people. A related question is whether dispassionate reason-​giving is even the best way for individuals to evaluate opinions. Perhaps, to the contrary, rational judgment depends on the clarity and commitment that emotion provides (Nussbaum 1995). A second set of questions takes issue with the egalitarian character of deliberative discourse. Even if people are granted equal access to deliberative forums, the critique runs, they are not equally able to use the discourse that is privileged there. For one thing, the widely shared values and universal principles to which deliberators are supposed to appeal unfairly universalize the experience of particular, powerful groups. Those with different experiences are easily dismissed as deviant. Similarly, the abstract, ostensibly neutral language of reason-​giving deliberators are supposed to use disadvantages women, the working class, and racial minorities. No matter how they actually speak, they are less likely to be heard as giving good reasons (Fraser 1992; Mansbridge 1999; Sanders 1997; Young 2000). Critics argue that women and other disadvantaged groups

Forms of Deliberative Communication    73 would be better served by discourses other than those of reason-​giving, for example, storytelling and personal testimony, which are less clearly associated with middle-​class white men (Bächtiger et al. 2010; Sanders 1997; Young 2000). A third critique of deliberative democracy also centers on talk, but the charge here is that deliberation is “just talk.” It may be satisfying in the moment, but it comes with few mechanisms for holding policymakers responsible to the recommendations that are collectively arrived at (Young 2001). Most scholars believe that public deliberation can and should be integrated with existing electoral, legislative, and administrative processes (Fishkin 1995; Goodin and Dryzek 2006; Gutmann and Thompson 2004). However, just how it should be integrated remains uncertain (Warren 2009). This opens the way, say critics, for spectacles of democratic participation to substitute for mechanisms of genuine accountability. Each of these critiques raises empirical questions. What place do classical conceptions of reason-​giving, with its emphasis on appeals to the common good, abstract principles, evidence, and a cool emotional register, have in fostering mutual understanding and joint decisions? How do alternatives—​the exchange of personal perspectives, storytelling, and passionate talk—​fare in those tasks, and do they do a better job in fostering the participation of those who are often marginalized politically? And to what extent does the kind of talk that takes place in deliberation affect how much influence deliberation has on participants and policymakers? To answer these questions, we draw on studies that rely variously on ethnographic observations of people talking, content analysis of transcribed talk, surveys of self-​ reported conversation, and experimental simulations of deliberation. Deliberative talk takes place in many settings, each of which has been the subject of empirical research, including legislatures, social movement organizations, juries, and the conversations of everyday life. However, in what follows we focus primarily on the organized deliberative forums in which participants discuss issues of policy concern.

Empirical Research on Public Deliberation Discussing controversial issues with strangers is hard work. People generally are more comfortable avoiding political discussion than engaging in it (Eliasoph 1998; Hibbing and Theiss-​Morse 2002). When they do talk about political issues, they fear disagreement (Scheufele 1999), causing offense (Wyatt, Katts, and Kim 2000), and being embarrassed (Mansbridge 1980). When they engage politically, they prefer doing it with like-​minded others (even though exposure to competing views makes them more tolerant of those views) (Huckfeldt, Mendez, and Osborn 2004; Mutz 2006). Many of these findings come from the United States, but there is evidence that similar dynamics operate elsewhere (Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002; Wyatt et al. 1996).

74    Francesca Polletta and Beth Gharrity Gardner Insofar as deliberation’s contemporary organizers have succeeded in convincing people to deliberate, it has been in no small part by modifying the classical conception of deliberative talk that we sketched above. Deliberative forums today often emphasize empathetic listening more than persuasion, telling stories more than making formal arguments, and focusing on the personal dimension of issues (Dryzek 2007; Lee 2015; Polletta and Chen 2013). The dialogue professionals who have played key roles in organizing and facilitating deliberation are downright skeptical of formal arguments, which they see as unaccountably ruling out emotions and experiences as the basis for opinions (Walsh 2008, 54). This is not to say that public deliberation has become more about therapeutic self-​ expression than a joint evaluation of options. When Mansbridge et  al. (2006) asked practiced facilitators to evaluate recorded episodes of deliberation, they put a premium on the group’s ability to stay on task, whether that meant reaching a decision, arriving at recommendations, or identifying areas of agreement and disagreement. However, facilitators also believed that participants’ ability to engage in these ways required nurturing a certain kind of group atmosphere—​one characterized by mutual trust, candor, and free-​flowing discussion. Likewise, in an influential article, McCoy and Scully (2002) recommended organizing public deliberations so that the exchange of reasons occurs only after deliberation participants get to know and trust each other, tell personal stories about how the issue in question affects them, and discuss possible causes of the problem. Based on discussions with deliberation practitioners and activists, Levine and Nierras (2007) argue that practitioners do not emphasize rationality in distinguishing good conversations from bad ones and are open to a variety of discursive forms, including storytelling, emotional appeals, and even song. As these examples indicate, deliberation practitioners today try both to adapt deliberation to the way people are comfortable talking in their everyday lives and to make deliberation safe enough for people to talk in productive but unfamiliar ways. They also use a variety of techniques to foster free-​flowing but focused, civil, and inclusive discussion. These include ground rules and group contracts, brainstorming sessions, secret balloting, configuring groups so as to prevent some participants from monopolizing talk, and alternating between round robin and more free-​form conversation (Knobloch et al. 2013; Ryfe 2002; Smith 2009; Thompson and Hoggett 2001).

Reason-​Giving, Storytelling, and Emotional Expression Analysis of deliberation in action suggests that people tend not to talk in the ways described by classical deliberative theorists. Rosenberg’s (2007) observation of a highly educated group of people deliberating about education revealed very little in the way of sustained argument. Participants were polite and rarely focused narrowly on their own self-​interest. However, they also tossed out opinions and stories with little reflection on the claims that had come before. Other analyses have seen more deliberative virtue in the sometimes roundabout ways in which people reason. Meyers and Brashers

Forms of Deliberative Communication    75 (1998) found that small group discussion participants in an experimental setting tended to make, and find persuasive, simple statements of fact or opinion. Participants used a “more informal, plausible, satisficing form of argument that is less complex than formal, logical models describe,” the authors write (275). Even so, the groups tended to adopt proposals that were supported by more arguments. In a forum about genetic cancer services in the United Kingdom, participants almost immediately began to share personal experiences and their feelings about those experiences. Discussion circled among a variety of topics. Yet it did take up substantive issues related to the provision of cancer services (Martin 2012). The gender make-​up of groups in a British forum seemed to be important to the kind of talk that took place. Participants in men-​only discussions of organ donation described a fairly formal exchange of viewpoints, with an effort to assess the relative merits of each one. By contrast, participants in parallel women-​only discussions described their conversations as focused on personal experiences, emotionally involved, and emphasizing the validity of all viewpoints (Davies and Burgess 2004). In an Oregon deliberative forum, participants spent a great deal of time evaluating arguments and evidence (as the organizers intended), but complained that the process had not provided them enough time to reflect on the values informing their discussions (Knobloch et al. 2013). Scholars have paid special attention to the use of personal stories in deliberation. Although participants in an online forum on underutilized schools were supplied briefing documents about the topic in advance, they supported their opinions with personal stories more than with information from the documents (Stromer-​Galley 2007). In the deliberating groups Ryfe (2006) observed, participants told stories more than they gave reasons. Personal storytelling allowed people to weigh in on issues about which they lacked expertise, to forge bonds of trust with each other, to disagree without antagonizing each other, and to build a shared moral position on the issues under consideration. However, there was a cost: once having developed a shared moral position based on a common story about an issue, deliberators were reluctant to question or revise that position. Polletta and Lee (2006) found that people in an online deliberative forum gave reasons more than telling stories. But they turned to stories (by a margin of 5 to 1) when they characterized their opinion as likely to be an unfamiliar or unpopular one. There was a downside to narrative here too, though: people were unwilling to tell stories during segments of the discussion they characterized as technical or policy-​ focused. This was the case even though forum organizers encouraged participants to tell personal stories, and even though telling personal stories might have helped participants to recognize needs that were otherwise obscured. Comments by participants suggest that they viewed personal stories as subjective, biased, and a digression from discussion of policy. As with talk oriented to personal stories, talk that is emotionally engaged seems to have both benefits and risks for deliberation. On the plus side, research suggests that emotional engagement may enhance cognitive engagement and thus improve deliberation (Davies, Wetherell, and Barnett 2006). In an experimental study, Kim (2016) found that participants primed to feel angry prior to deliberation contributed more

76    Francesca Polletta and Beth Gharrity Gardner reasons for their opinions, better retained information during the deliberation, and developed more elaborated opinions by the end of the deliberation. The emotionally laden talk used by participants in the British cancer services forum helped them to quickly form bonds of solidarity that then sustained their participation in the group (Martin 2012). Mansbridge et al.’s (2006) facilitators praised moments when group members’ passion seemed to lead to a deeper engagement with the issues. On the minus side, the bonds created through emotionally engaged talk may make the group resistant to dissent. Just this happened in the cancer services forum, where group members quickly arrived at a consensus on issues and then discouraged anyone from questioning it (Martin 2012). Another problem surfaced in the forum: deliberators who were uncomfortable with an emotive style of discussion felt alienated from the group and soon dropped out (see also Kompozoros and Thompson 2015). Studies on the character of talk in public deliberation suggest that if classical deliberative talk excludes some voices, alternatives to classical deliberative talk may exclude others. But we actually know relatively little about how different forms of talk work to include or marginalize people. Research shows that deliberators with more political knowledge and experience are better able to provide reasons for their own opinions as well as for disagreeing with their opinions (Price, Cappella, and Nir 2002). In their study of town meetings about school desegregation in which only white people participated, Mendelberg and Oleske (2000) found that participants used the kind of universalist language, facts, and reasoning that deliberative theorists endorse but also made up some facts, ignored others, and consistently represented racial minorities as a threat to the community. In other words, a racially exclusive message was communicated in a universalist idiom. At the level of simple participation, we know that poor people, people of color, home renters, noncitizens, and, in some places, women are much less likely to participate in public deliberative forums (Coelho, Pozzoni, and Cifuentes 2005). Once in a forum, members of those groups often speak less and are less influential (Smith 2009; and see the essays in Cornwall and Coelho 2007). In forums studied in the United States, however, women seem to participate as much as men (and sometimes more), and to be as influential as men (Polletta and Chen 2013). This is true in online forums as well as face-​to-​face ones, and in forums on stereotypically masculine topics such as foreign policy. Polletta and Chen (2013) attribute women’s high levels of participation to the feminized character of American deliberation. Women predominate among the organizers and facilitators of deliberation. And they promote forms of discourse that are popularly seen as feminine. The result is that, contrary to the charge that deliberation marginalizes women, women are active and influential participants. However, the authors worry that the feminizing of deliberation may come at a price: if deliberation is seen as “women’s talk,” are policymakers less likely to credit the recommendations it produces? More generally, how important is the character of talk to the impacts that deliberation has after the forum is over? Scholars have generally struggled to capture the impacts of forums (see the discussion in Smith 2009), and have rarely taken the next step to assess the kinds of communication within forums that lead to particular impacts. Studies of

Forms of Deliberative Communication    77 Deliberative Polls have demonstrated change in individual policy opinions, as well as increases in learning and participatory attitudes (e.g. Fishkin and Luskin 2005). However, these studies have not examined features of the forums that made for more or less opinion change. In an experimental study, Schneiderhan and Khan (2008) compared the effects of writing an essay, participating in a discussion group, and participating in a deliberative discussion group on subjects’ opinions. In the deliberative group, subjects were instructed to give reasons for their opinions about the issue in question and to be inclusive. Not only were subjects in the deliberative group more likely than the other subjects to change their opinions; but the more often reasons were exchanged, the more likely participants were to change their positions. This suggests that reason-​giving has the capacity to alter participants’ attitudes. For policymakers, the perception that a discussion was informed, reasoned, and dispassionate may be particularly important. In their interviews with American state legislators, Nabatchi and Farrar (2011) found that few legislators were even familiar with public deliberation. Most struggled to distinguish it from traditional mechanisms for soliciting citizen input. When asked what would make a forum worth paying attention to, however, they agreed that the organizers of the forum should be seen as absolutely neutral and unbiased, and that discussion should be civil, informed, and attuned to the complexities of the issue under discussion. In some contrast with American policymakers’ emphasis on neutrality, policymakers in Germany credited the recommendations that came out of a partisan forum on genetic diagnostics, in which participants represented interest groups and nonprofits, more than the non-​partisan forum made up of lay citizens. Policymakers viewed partisans as expert and capable; they saw citizens not only as largely uninformed about the topic but also as likely to be swayed by charismatic experts or group dynamics (Hendriks, Dryzek, and Hunold 2007). For them, expertise was more important than neutrality. The latter finding also suggests that the persuasiveness of different kinds of talk may have to do with perceptions of the speakers. In their study of Brazilian health councils, Coelho, Pozzoni, and Cifuentes (2005) observed that citizen participants’ tendency to present loosely structured arguments, as well as to focus on local issues, led the health professionals, government officials, and manufacturers of health products who were participating in the councils to see citizens’ opinions as “unclear, emotional, disruptive, or irrelevant” (181). However, the authors point out that the citizen participants were mainly poor, Black, and/​or elderly, and that officials believed that inarticulate and vague talk was characteristic of those groups. In line with the deliberative critics we cited earlier, the authors suggest that the problem faced by lower status deliberators is not that they are incapable of reasoned arguments but that they are seen as incapable of such arguments. With respect to the effects of emotional rather than dispassionate speech, Barnes (2008) describes several episodes in which forum participants’ emotional speech alienated the officials who were participating in the forum (see also Kompozoros and Thompson 2015). In sum, the deliberative value of reason-​giving, storytelling, and what Barnes (2008) calls “passionate participation” depends on how comfortable speakers are with the form

78    Francesca Polletta and Beth Gharrity Gardner as well as how appropriate they see it as being in a deliberative setting. Those perceptions, in turn, depend on popular ideas about policy, rationality, emotion, and gender. And they may conflict with policymakers’ ideas about what constitutes appropriate talk.

Agreement and Disagreement If sometimes uncomfortable, disagreement is essential to good deliberation. Exposure to contrasting views allows one to re-​evaluate one’s own views and possibly modify them (Fishkin 1991; Mutz 2006; Price, Cappella, and Nir 2002). Deliberation professionals also emphasize the value of exposure to a diversity of views. Indeed, Mansbridge et al. (2006) found that facilitators prized inclusiveness in deliberation not on the grounds of equality but rather because exposure to diverse perspectives led to better decisions. The hurdle, as we noted, is that a powerful politeness norm often makes people unwilling to disagree in everyday conversation (Eliasoph 1998; Mutz 2006; Wyatt et al. 1996). People perceiving themselves to be in the minority, in particular, may withhold their opinions in a “spiral of silence” (Meyers and Brashers 1998; Noelle-​Neumann 1984). However, empirical research points to a number of circumstances in which disagreement is tolerable to deliberators. One is when deliberators are simply encouraged to be “open-​minded.” Noting that participants in deliberative forums are repeatedly reminded that conflicting viewpoints are to be expected and learned from, Barabas (2004) hypothesized that the injunction to be open-​minded would make people more willing to update their opinions when confronted with new information. He compared an organized forum on social security with a group of people discussing social security and found that, indeed, participants in the former both displayed greater opinion change as well as a greater understanding of social security. Another condition in which disagreement does not seem to undermine deliberation is when participants do not experience it as such. This may not be as unusual as it seems. While people deliberating online about issues such as gun control, the death penalty, and the 2000 US Presidential election result did report feeling disagreed with, this was not the case when the issues were perceived as less controversial, such as campaign funding and Internet voting (Wojcieszak and Price 2012). So even though they were in fact exposed to challenging opinions, participants did not experience it as disagreement. Stromer-​Galley and Muhlberger (2009) found that most participants in a one-​ day forum about education were aware of experiencing and witnessing diagreement but were not terribly bothered by it. On the other hand, witnessing agreements among participants did have a powerful positive effect on participants’ satisfaction with the forum and their motivation to participate in one again. Finally, conversation analysts have shown in other contexts that people have sophisticated ways of registering objections without violating the norms of political conversation. This seems to be true in deliberation too. For example, Ryfe (2006) and Polletta and Lee (2006) found that deliberators sometimes used stories as a way to disagree without antagonizing each other. Drawing on the norm that one responds to a story by telling

Forms of Deliberative Communication    79 another story, participants often followed up a speaker’s story with one of their own. But since the point of a story is rarely made explicit, deliberators were able to challenge the point of the first story without making the challenge explicit. Black (2008) sees stories performing a similar function but more by way of the shared identity that they allow storyteller and listener to create. Deliberators seem also to communicate disagreement in an acceptable way by expressing agreement with an opinion followed by “but” and a contrasting opinion (Stromer-​Galley and Muhlberger 2009). If disagreement is important to expanding participants’ access to diverse perspectives and to clarifying their own, how important is eventually reaching agreement? The requirement of unanimity seems to have mixed benefits. On one hand, requiring unanimity encourages participants to work hard to understand others’ points of view (Dryzek 2000). It may also combat inequalities. Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker (2012) found that requiring unanimity rather than a majority boosted the deliberative participation of women when they were in the minority, as well as of men when they were in the minority. On the other hand, the requirement of unanimity may backfire when participants’ interests are fundamentally opposed (Mansbridge 1980). In that situation, the likely outcome is either a manipulated consensus or stalemate. In line with this insight, the facilitators Mansbridge et al. (2006) interviewed emphasized a goal of “common ground” more than the “common good.” There is evidence to suggest that requiring unanimity may lead to decisions favoring the most extreme members of the group (Kaplan and Miller 1987). Karpowitz and Mendelberg (2007) argue that unanimity rule produces “stronger group norms—​whether cooperation and generosity or competition and stinginess—​than the majority rule condition” (p. 650). To what extent is agreement important to the effects of deliberation after the forum is over? In an experimental study, participants were more satisfied with the decision they reached, and perceived the deliberation to be fairer, when it was decided by unanimity rule. In majority-​rule groups, participants felt more tension and more pressure to agree (Kaplan and Miller 1987). Are policymakers less likely to take seriously forum recommendations that are divided or ambiguous? One would expect that forums sending a unanimous message would be more influential. However, when a German forum on agricultural gene technology revealed persistent disagreements, the government interpreted the forum as supporting its policy of incorporating GMOs with extreme caution (Hendriks, Dryzek, and Hunold 2007, 375). And more generally, deliberation’s impacts undoubtedly depend in part on how organizers, participants, and observers are able to represent the purposes and results of the forum in media coverage about it (Polletta 2015; Hendriks 2011). One of the chief sources of deliberation’s appeal is the opportunity for participants to talk with people holding different points of view (Polletta 2008). But bringing off that kind of cross-​cutting conversation requires that participants disagree without violating powerful politeness norms (Mutz 2002). The research shows that the considerable energy practitioners devote to making it safe for people to disagree is well worth it, but also that participants draw on conversational norms to which they already have access to disagree in acceptable ways.

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Facilitated Talk Talk in contemporary deliberation is almost always facilitated talk. As we have noted, facilitators play key roles in ensuring that deliberation is characterized by the expression of diverse points of view, attempts to seek out and evaluate evidence, and movement toward, if not consensus, then an appreciation of the legitimacy of conflicting interests. The role is a difficult one. Mansbridge et al.’s (2006) facilitator respondents were often critical of other facilitators, variously, for not keeping the group on task, allowing one or two people to dominate the discussion, or failing to step in when some participants felt uncomfortable. Yet, they also believed that the group should be self-​facilitated as much as possible. There are costs to directive facilitation and nondirective facilitation. When facilitators adopted a hands-​off approach to a forum on community policing in Chicago, the mainly white professional residents of the west side dominated both the discussion and the resulting list of priorities, even though east side African Americans suffered more serious crime. A year later, a new facilitator trained in conflict resolution was brought in and worked to ensure that each group of residents heard and understood the experiences of the other. As a result, the group collectively decided to rank higher the concerns of the less affluent residents (Fung 2003, 135–​7). But facilitators may also hinder deliberative objectives, albeit unintentionally. A  hands-​on facilitator, especially one who is expert on the topic, can unintentionally promote their own views (Thompson and Hoggett 2001). Ryfe (2006) argues that hands-​on facilitators discouraged some of the groups he analyzed from engaging in the kind of personal storytelling that made for a productive discussion. Davies, Wetherell, and Barnett (2006, 92) found that facilitators in one forum were so focused on ensuring full participation by group members that there was very little time for any real back-​and-​forth among participants. Facilitators’ neutrality seems likely to be important to policymakers’ reception of the forum (Nabatchi and Farrar 2011). However, Lee’s (2015) ethnography of the American deliberation field suggests that that neutrality may come with indifference to the ways in which deliberation is used. Deliberation practitioners find themselves in an ambiguous position, Lee argues. They view deliberation as an antidote to a market ethos that has turned citizens into self-​interested and passive consumers. Yet, they often sell their services to corporate executives as a way to gain employee “alignment” with policies that might lose employees their jobs or cut their benefits. Practitioners deal with these conflicting commitments by shifting their focus from the purposes of democratic facilitation to its quality. They have perfected techniques for ensuring that people with higher status do not monopolize talk, for arriving at conclusions that capture common ground while not precluding disagreement, for helping people to connect to their own feelings and fears. The same techniques for fostering collaboration, they insist, can be used in any setting: corporate or civic, in settings where participants are peers or where some participants employ others. Deliberation aimed at getting people to accept cuts in

Forms of Deliberative Communication    81 workplace benefits is thus assimilated to deliberation aimed at soliciting public input into the design of a new downtown. Practitioners do not broach the possibility that those settings might require different kinds of talk in order to be democratic. They do not broach the possibility that sometimes participants might not be well served by deliberation, even if sponsors are. The larger question, then, is whether facilitators can and should try to shape the discussion that takes place in a deliberative forum in order to maximize its impact with policymakers (see Knobloch et al. 2013 for an interesting effort along these lines). In his analysis of sixteen groups promoting deliberation, Ryfe (2002) observes that the groups seeking policy change rather than education tended to stress a more “rational” discourse of reason-​giving. At the same time, they struggled to give participants a sense that their deliberation had value in spite of the fact that it was unlikely to have policy impact. Deliberators want to believe that what they are doing is more than “just talk.” Facilitators, their determined neutrality notwithstanding, must convince them that it is.

Conclusion The research we have reviewed suggests that people have the capacity to deliberate in public forums in ways that they seem unable or unwilling to do in everyday life. They do not regularly use the abstract rational discourse described by classical theories of deliberation. But they do try to make their opinions seem reasonable to others and they do try to understand different priorities and positions. They disagree with other deliberators and they tolerate being disagreed with. Their emotional investment in the issue does not cloud their ability to reason, although the emotional bonds they forge with others in the group may make them resistant to dissent. Together, these findings suggest that deliberation practitioners have developed formal structures and informal norms that make it possible for people to overcome some of the barriers to deliberation in everyday life. There are continuing challenges. The kinds of talk that build solidarity among the group may not foster an openness to opposing views. The classical model of dispassionate, rational argumentation does not necessarily correspond to how people evaluate options effectively. But it may be important to policymakers, who are put off by emotional and inexpert talk. It may also inform participants’ ideas about what proper deliberation looks like. Most critical, perhaps, the lack of evidence for the effects of deliberative forums on policy represents an intellectual challenge and a practical one. We know that policy is made through political processes that are complex and often contentious. Just how policymakers’ exposure to citizens deliberating in a civil and reasoned fashion shapes those processes remains an open question, but one of enormous importance.

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Forms of Deliberative Communication    85 Schneiderhan, E. and Khan, S. (2008). Reasons and Inclusion: The Foundation of Deliberation. Sociological Theory, 26: 1–​24. Smith, G. (2009). Democratic Innovations:  Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Stromer-​Galley, J. (2007). Measuring Deliberation’s Content:  A Coding Scheme. Journal of Public Deliberation, 3(1): Article 12. Stromer-​ Galley, J. and Muhlberger, P. (2009). Agreement and Disagreement in Group Deliberation:  Effects on Deliberation Satisfaction, Future Engagement, and Decision Legitimacy. Political Communication, 26: 173–​92. Thompson, S. and Hoggett, P. (2001). The Emotional Dynamics of Deliberative Democracy. Policy and Politics, 29: 351–​64. Walsh, K. C. (2008). Talking about Race: Community Dialogues and the Politics of Difference (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Warren, M. E. (2009). Governance-​Driven Democratization. Critical Policy Studies, 3: 3–​13. Wojcieszak, M. and Price, V. (2012). Facts versus Perceptions:  Who Reports Disagreement during Deliberation and are the Reports Accurate? Political Communication, 29: 299–​318. Wyatt, R. O., Katz, E., and Kim, J. (2000). Bridging the Spheres:  Political and Personal Conversation in Public and Private Spaces. Journal of Communication, 50: 71. Wyatt, R. O., Katz, E., Levinsohn, H., and Al-​Haj, M. (1996). The Dimensions of Expression Inhibition: Perceptions of Obstacles to Free Speech in Three Cultures. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 8: 229–​47. Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Young, I. M. (2001). Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy. Political Theory, 29: 670–​90.

Chapter 5

Deliberati v e I de a l s Across Diverse C u lt u re s Jensen Sass

Deliberation is now among the central topics of political theory, and its practice is widely accepted as essential to democracy. But if the study of deliberation is vast, it is also strangely self-​limiting. Deliberation has mostly been studied in democratic states, developed and Western, over a short snatch of human history. This is a problem if we think deliberation is necessary for legitimate and effective rule, and even more so if we see it as central to the constitution of all human groups (Gintis, van Schaik, and Boehm 2015; Mercier and Sperber 2011). Our understanding of deliberation, of its prospects and limits, would be greatly enriched were we even minimally aware of its manifestation across a more diverse collection of societies and cultures, past and present. With this wider perspective, familiar questions could be asked anew, and perhaps answered differently. Consider the question of motivation. Given that deliberation requires considerable time and effort, and since its political effects are uncertain, there is good reason to wonder why people engage in it. Within democratic societies, an important source of motivation is the ideal of self-​rule, which implies that people deliberate, rather than just struggle or fight, because they feel a particular kind of ethical duty towards their fellow citizens. They seek to justify their politics, not just win. But this ideal is surely an atypical motivational source, not least given that collective deliberation predates parliamentary democracy and is widespread in non-​democratic polities. What social and political ideals motivate deliberation elsewhere, and how these other ideals shape its form and effects, are basic questions that remain to be studied.1 The comparative and historical study of deliberative ideals holds considerable promise for political theory. First, it may allow us to better specify the object of our analysis. Deliberation, at present, is conceived in a narrow way. In consequence, any theory which purports to explain deliberation, or in terms of it, will at best secure a limited domain of application. Second, in a period of human history defined by political challenges which are transnational, and increasingly global, the need to foster political discourse at new scales, and involving peoples who inhabit radically different states and

Deliberative Ideals Across Diverse Cultures    87 societies, is more pressing than ever. A prerequisite to such discourse is identifying the different kinds of ideals which might both motivate and regulate it. Third, we need not pursue the comparative study of deliberation as an exercise in applied ethics. Rather, it can be conceived as an explanatory and practical exercise, one aimed at uncovering the most basic causes of deliberation with an eye to reinterpreting and reforming our own imperfect institutions and practices. One of the typical purposes of a chapter within a handbook is to survey a field of research. The purpose of this chapter is somewhat different, because the field to be surveyed is mostly prospective. This chapter therefore aims to provide a warrant for a field, and to identify its prospects as well as some of the normative and methodological challenges it will need to confront. It begins, however, with a vignette, one describing how deliberative ideals shaped the early development of a democratic state.

Deliberative Ideals in Botswana’s Postcolonial Transition In 1966, on gaining independence from the British Empire, Botswana inherited the set of institutions which define liberal democracy. A  bicameral parliament, free and fair elections, an independent press and judiciary, and a familiar bill of rights and freedoms. In this respect Botswana was like many of the new states comprising postcolonial Africa. But as its peers collapsed or embraced various brands of authoritarianism, Botswana followed a different path. It consolidated its democracy through a series of successful elections and for decades its economy grew faster than any other in the world. Botswana’s political and economic success is routinely explained in cultural terms, even by mainstream economists (Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2003; Hjort 2010).2 But were a political culture analysis conducted in Botswana, prior to independence, or in subsequent years, it would not have predicted this country’s success.3 The political culture tradition, as initiated by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, examined the psychological attitudes of citizens, the sum of which they defined as a nation’s political culture (Almond and Verba 1963). But the attitudes of Botswana’s citizens were far from democratic. Following independence, they did not rate elections, indeed a large proportion of the country’s citizens were unaware that the franchise was universal. Botswana’s citizens celebrated neither civil liberties nor the free press (which was institutionally weak) and their participation in parties was limited, not least because they thought political activity vulgar. While the culture of democracy, understood in attitudinal terms, was non-​existent in Botswana, its democratic institutions endured. This paradox can be explained if we turn from an attitudinal to a symbolic view of political culture.4 Indeed, if we examine traditional ideals, we can readily appreciate how they helped meet the practical needs of this fledgling democracy.5 These ideals encouraged political inclusion and popular deliberation and they helped Botswana overcome the ethnic divisions that tore

88   Jensen Sass its peers apart, bolstering the country’s democratic institutions and thereby aiding its economic development (Hjort 2010). Among the Tswana, the dominant ethnic group in Botswana, party politics were long seen as a practical mechanism to sustain ethnic solidarity. Because engaging in politics could involve challenging one’s party, it might also threaten the power of the Tswana vis-​à-​vis other ethnic groups (Molutsi and Holm 1990; Hjort 2010). Participation was thereby discouraged, which is to say that loyalty mostly trumped voice. But there were forums in Botswana which, though not locally considered ‘political’, warrant the attention of deliberative analysis. At the village level, collective rule had long assumed popular inclusion and open deliberation. Where communal decisions were to be made, tribal chiefs would establish a communal meeting, a kgotla, near their personal residence. At the kgotla, chiefs would facilitate a process called therisanyo, which entails something like consultation. Adult men would represent their households. They would relay the needs of its members, provide assent and guidance to chiefs, and, if necessary, they would put a brake to proceedings (Comaroff 1975). While one aspect of this process was epistemic—​it involved weighing ideas and arguments—​therisanyo was more than a contest of ideas. It was a ritual through which community members revivify the social order and assert their moral status (van Binsbergen 1995). Tribal leaders needed to demonstrate, publicly, that they were responsive to their tribes, and that they could change their minds when warranted. Models of these ideals were ever present. They were found in legends of the great leaders of the Tswana, who were lauded not for their martial strength but for their wisdom in resolving communal division, and facing up to open criticism (Schapera 1965). Failing to attain the ideals of poise, wisdom, and openness could also be sanctioned. Where attendees of a kgotla became verbally belligerent, they could suffer immediate ridicule. Where they became physically violent, they could find themselves cast as fools or villains in everyday gossip and perhaps even lore (Durham 1999). And these principles applied most strongly to tribal chiefs, who knew that some of their forebears had been deposed at the kgotla. The kgotla persisted under British rule and was promoted and reconstituted by the state in the postcolonial era. When new policies were being developed at the national level, bureaucrats would organize kgotlas with local chiefs in towns and villages. The new purpose of the kgotla was bureaucratic and pragmatic—​it was to build local support for national policies. But policy could be revised and even rejected at this level, causing bureaucrats to rethink their assumptions. This direct interaction between local communities and national bureaucrats was significant because it compensated for the weakness of civil society and the press. Within the postcolonial kgotla an anti-​political norm emerged whereby speakers seeking party gain could be sanctioned for flouting the ideals of this forum (Moltusi and Holm 1990). Thus, whatever Botswana lacked in terms of familiar democratic attitudes, its traditional ideals and deliberative practices promoted a degree of accountability and responsiveness in government, as well as popular discourse and ethnic inclusion (Hjort 2010; Maundeni 2004; Molutsi and Holm 1990). The deliberative ideals seen in Botswana are not obvious in other parts of Southern Africa (Shapera 1967). But this case nonetheless raises questions neglected within

Deliberative Ideals Across Diverse Cultures    89 current scholarship. Deliberation is analogous to voting in being constitutive of democracy and necessary for its effective functioning. But if the problem of voter motivation is a central question in empirical democratic theory (Downs 1957; Brennan and Lomasky 1993; Mackie 2014), it is rarely asked of deliberation (cf. Neblo et al. 2010). This is surprising since political deliberation is personally taxing. It involves much more than checking boxes and its practical effects are highly diffuse. Why, then, do citizens do it? Answering this question demands we systematically examine the settings where deliberation takes place. It is a premise of this chapter that understanding these settings, and the motivations of the actors who inhabit them, should begin with the study of their deliberative ideals. Deliberative ideals are normatively charged concepts that describe how a particular kind of person ought to deliberate, or the place of deliberation in a larger social structure. Importantly, different ideals influence the character of deliberation, its role in a polity, and so the scope of its political effects. In addition to its explanatory promise, examining deliberative ideals could also aid the normative agenda of deliberative theory. To date, deliberative democrats have seldom engaged with the burgeoning field of comparative political theory. But the need to do so, in a globalizing world, could hardly be more clear. Meaningful exchange across cultural traditions is predicated on deliberation, so identifying forms that are widely desirable and effective is a pressing desideratum for normative theory.

Ideals in Context Idealized accounts of deliberation, and the conditions of its performance, have been the subject of much discussion since the birth of deliberative theories of democracy (Habermas 1990; Cohen 1989; Dryzek and Niemeyer 2006; Mansbridge et  al. 2010). Ideals have been used as normative standards against which to evaluate deliberation, and they have been used to structure deliberation within experimental contexts. But real-​world discourse is likely different to that lauded in philosophy or orchestrated in social science laboratories. To understand the varieties of political discourse, and what explains this variety, we need to examine the motivations of actors and the social and institutional contexts in which they speak, listen, and reflect. In these contexts we will inevitably turn up ideals which motivate different forms of interaction, and which provide criteria against which to evaluate one another. Ideals, in this respect, are images of perfection concerning some role or institution, or the ends of human action. What we term deliberative ideals may directly concern the form or aim of discourse, or they may concern other matters yet indirectly shape the way people engage in speech. In light of the diversity of social, ethical, and political ideals the world over, the character, purpose, and effects of deliberation will also vary, and so discourse in the kgotla differs from that seen in Japanese craft circles or in the New England town hall. Although there has been considerable philosophical discussion about the relationship between deliberative ideals and everyday political discourse, there has been limited

90   Jensen Sass study of the situated ideals which motivate and constrain speech, listening, and their in situ normative evaluation. Interpreting these ideals will depend on close knowledge of particular societies and will require new research directed to this end. Nonetheless, it is possible to identify relevant ideals within existing comparative and historical scholarship, especially from the disciplines of anthropology and sociology. Although ideals can be examined philosophically, our focus here is empirical. We examine how actors are motivated and constrained by ideals in recurring social situations (Diehl and McFarland 2010).

Ideal Explanations Collective deliberation is universal within human societies but its social scientific study has mostly been limited to a few countries over a short period of history (Sass and Dryzek 2014).6 This criticism is not entirely new. Critics of Habermas suggested that his focus on the bourgeois public sphere occluded the political worlds of many other groups in the societies he studied (Calhoun 1992). But these calls for a more inclusive theory barely extended beyond the period and the region on which Habermas had focused his attention. The limited sample of deliberative practices which we routinely study, and often stage via experimental design, does not match the field’s ambitions. Not only is it unrepresentative of the wider population of deliberative practices, it limits the range of questions that social scientists ask about the character of deliberation across human societies. The case of Botswana, if only sketched briefly, illustrates the profound effect of a traditional form of deliberation on the consolidation of a modern state. Deliberation in Botswana can be viewed as rationalistic self-​rule but it is also an ethical practice through which that society’s members reproduce their shared normative commitments, which partly explains its power. Findings of this sort need not conclude in particularism. Our purpose in studying more diverse cases of deliberation is not to ‘discover’ that the world is a heterogeneous place—​quite the reverse. Studying diverse cases allows us to formulate research questions relevant to a wider slice of humanity. In what follows I consider a number of instances of deliberation which might broaden our conception of what deliberation can entail, how it is both shaped by and shapes other institutions, and how its ideal articulation affects its form and effects. As should be clear, political theory provides at best a rough guide to deliberative practices outside the developed West. The best coverage is for South America, where experimentation with deliberative governance is widespread (see Thamy Pogrebinschi, this volume, Chapter 53). Coverage for other regions, including East Asia, South Asia, and Africa, is in a relatively early stage of development (see Emmanuel Ani, this volume, Chapter 52). Part of the disconnect is explained by the estrangement of political theory and the other social sciences, which might otherwise have helped extend the field’s reach. Political theory and anthropology, for example, are beset by an intellectual disjuncture that is deep and longstanding (Easton 1959; Friedrich 1968). Anthropologists

Deliberative Ideals Across Diverse Cultures    91 have often resisted normative theory due to their commitment to cultural relativity and their painful awareness of their discipline’s fateful role in other normative projects, not least colonial rule (Lewis 1973; Preis 1996). And yet anthropologists have often described practices relevant to deliberation, even when their substantive interests rest elsewhere (Urfalino 2014). Anthropologists have also developed a vast field of study concerned with the effect of social structures and cultural norms on the character and use of language, a field which is ready for harvest by students of deliberation (Hymes 1974). Historical sociology, at least in the United States, has often shared interests with political theory but has seldom engaged its disciplinary cousin, especially in recent years (cf. Adams and Steinmetz 2015). But the prospects for exchange are good here too, not least because historical sociologists count the early public sphere scholarship as classic in their field (Habermas 1989; Somers 1995). Further, historical sociologists are prepared to undertake the kinds of ambitious comparative studies often resisted by other fields, not least history, so the pairing may be especially fruitful (Burke 2016). The promise of historical sociology for deliberative theory can be seen in the work of Eiko Ikegama. In her Bonds of Civility (2005), Ikegama evaluates the public sphere as a construct for studying the political development of non-​Western societies. She argues that the public sphere concept, as it applies to Western Europe, is routinely used normatively to measure other societies but that it should, instead, be seen as a particularistic and perhaps even parochial notion. Ikegama argues that the bourgeois public sphere presumes normative categories that do not hold in other places and which were mere contingent successes in Western Europe, where other paths might have been taken. Focusing on Japan, Ikegama examines how the nascent unitary state constituted and shaped a universe of public spheres over a period of nearly two centuries. During the Tokugawa Dynasty (1603–​1868), the state excluded political discourse from the public realm while promoting various kinds of aesthetic discourse, especially in the poetry and craft circles which mushroomed across the country. While these organizations did not affect the short-​term behavior of the Japanese state, they profoundly shaped its long-​ term development. Ikegama suggests that poetry and craft circles fostered cross-​class exchange, and that in this exchange—​and in the norms on which it depended—​civility was first cultivated among the Japanese. In poetry and craft circles, ideals of politeness, taste, and self-​refinement were paramount and shaped a discourse oriented to aesthetic judgment. Ikegama thereby traces the emergence of civility via a very different concept of the public sphere, one with non-​political ends. Crucially, Ikegama also shows that the geographic prevalence of craft circles, and so the depth of civility, is a good predictor of democratic support during Japan’s subsequent transition to democracy. In this respect, the institutionalization of aesthetic deliberation, and the new patterns in social ties it depended upon, represent an important topic for political analysis. The Japanese experience also serves as a warning to those, most often conservatives, who promote civility as a cure-​all for the afflictions of modern democracy (Carter 1999; Shils 1991). While the civility cultivated through the arts may have aided the emergence of democracy, Japan’s first system of parliamentary government collapsed within a few short decades, paving the way for fascism.

92   Jensen Sass In a radically different context, a recent study of development programs in Malawi shows how non-​political ideals can limit the effects of collective discourse. Swidler and Watkins (2015) suggest that Malawian village chiefs regularly hold village meetings—​in or near their residence, as in Botswana—​but that these meetings do not allow for consequential deliberation. Village elites tend to make decisions behind closed doors and thus public meetings are mostly intended to distribute information and secure affirmation. Although this practice may seem problematic to democratic observers, it is guided by an ideal of social harmony, one which discourages confrontation and conflict. But in addition to its ideal motivation, non-​consultation is also supported by the norms which regulate interaction across social hierarchies. In Malawi, interaction across social status positions follows a model of “advising” whereby those with high status adopt a patrimonial stance towards their social inferiors. This dynamic holds across many such routinized interactions. In classrooms, by way of example, teachers are afforded relatively high status due to their superior knowledge. Students are to accept the teacher’s advice, to absorb as much knowledge as possible and, crucially, to ritualistically signal their deference. It is a far cry from an image of the student as active and critical. This model of status relations also appear in development programs. Even where such programs encourage wide participation in deliberation, it proves difficult for both facilitators and participants to escape their idealized understanding of how superiors and subordinates should properly relate. Ironically, these traditional relations are further reinforced by a widespread belief that to be “modern” is to attain the factual knowledge held by superiors. Even basic terms associated with modern education, such as “debate,” are interpreted in culturally specific ways. Debate, it turns out, is understood to involve one party dutifully listening to another. Though it is often mere prejudice, the notion that traditional social ideals can be a strong barrier to political discourse finds some support in the case of Malawi. But in other contexts, ideals of this kind can become the object of politics, suggesting a reversal in the causal relation between ideals and politics. The growth of the Western public sphere is predicated on the spread of literacy, the distinction between public and private realms, and the separation of religious and secular reason. In their study of the Ashram movement in early twentieth century India, Rudolph and Rudolph (2014) ask what is required to produce a public sphere where most of its members are illiterate and are ensconced in a society where religion is the main site for normative reflection. Satyagraha, which are usually understood as acts of civil disobedience (famously including Gandhi’s Salt March) were also sites for moral and political reflection about the structure of Indian society. In place of the rational discourse which defines the idea of the public sphere, in some satyagraha participants performed what, ostensibly at least, were aesthetic performances. In this context, theatre was deployed as a form of moral pedagogy, one that could be appreciated by an unschooled audience. The aim of these performances were not merely political. They sought to transform the private character of participants. Satyagraha allowed for widespread and often profound participation of a broad swathe of Indian society in a context where public and private, political and non-​ political had not yet been sharply differentiated. In this respect, a distinctive kind of

Deliberative Ideals Across Diverse Cultures    93 deliberative politics emerged in a context where few if any of the basic conceptual foundations assumed in Western deliberative theory were present. Other scholarship from across the social sciences has directly and indirectly touched on themes of interest to deliberative democrats. Ani (2014), for example, has examined traditional African notions of consensus and the prospects for deliberative democracy on that continent. Relatedly, Urfalino (2014) has considered collective decision practices across a broad swathe of the non-​Western world. Berry (1998) examines the meanings of the concept of the public in Japan, revealing how they differ from the Western model. She further suggest that criticisms of the weakness of the public vis-​à-​vis the Japanese state are misplaced because, on the Japanese understanding, the state is not to be steered by the public. Also in East Asia, Tan (2014) explores the place of deliberation within the Confucian tradition, while He and Warren (2011) show how deliberation has emerged within local government under the Chinese Communist Party. At the other end of Asia, Wedeen (2008) describes how the chewing of Qat in Yemen is a forum for open discourse within an authoritarian polity. As in Botswana, public officials attend these events and must justify policy in the face of public criticism. In the United States, Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003) suggest that the way people deliberate depends on the “group styles” of the small groups in which most discourse takes place and, further, that these styles are not predictable in terms of larger social or cultural patterns. Leeson (2007) shows that pirates deliberated too and, as such, were more democratic than the empires on which their trade depended. Although the scope of these studies is impressive, they do not represent a coherent literature since their authors seldom recognize in one another’s efforts a common intellectual project.

Defining Deliberation: Even More Minimal In proposing the study of deliberative ideals across cultural worlds, the question inevitably arises as to how to define our object of analysis. Within political theory, deliberation is typically defined in a normative register. This is hardly surprising given that deliberation rose to scholarly prominence at the unlikely intersection of critical theory and Rawlsian liberalism. Thus, in addition to its being defined as discourse which induces reflection and/​or precipitates decision, deliberation is often defined in terms of certain ethical goods, not least inclusion and equal respect. Mansbridge (2015) breaks from this habit of thought. She argues that deliberation per se should be distinguished from good deliberation. To this end, she proposes (following Dryzek 2000) a “minimal” definition of deliberation, where it comprises two-​way communication which involves the “ ‘weighing and reflecting on preferences, values, and interests on matters of common concern.’ ” (28). Mansbridge excludes aesthetic practices from her definition, noting, for example, that a dance performed at the United

94   Jensen Sass Nations is not deliberative because its communicative arrow points in one direction (cf. Appadurai 2015). But if Mansbridge’s definition holds, many of the non-​Western practices described here might suffer a similar exclusion. Since this position would limit the range of practices which social scientists might study in deliberative terms, a shift in Mansbridge’s definition seems warranted. Rather than assume that a simultaneous two-​ way exchange is necessary, it would be preferable define deliberation in terms of the intention motivating a communicative action as well as its concrete effects. On these terms, dance, as such, may or may not be deliberative depending on the intentions of those who perform it. If a dance, or any other aesthetic practice, is intended to induce reflection and does so, even at a temporal remove, it can thereby be seen as deliberative. While this redefinition draws a number of practices into the concept deliberation that it would otherwise not encompass, it also allows us to make sense of practices which we consider fundamental to deliberation within large-​scale democracies. Newspapers and the print media, by way of example, are crucial for mass deliberation and yet a published article does not generate the immediate two-​way exchange which Mansbridge appears to demand. (Indeed, it could be argued that immediate two-​way exchanges are exceedingly rare within mass democracies.) But if we turn to the intentions of journalists, we see that, among other things, they seek to induce reflection and that, when writing, they imagine their readers and take account of their concerns. In this respect, there is indeed a two-​way exchange between journalists and the reading public, if of a somewhat abstract sort. In addition to her minimal account of deliberation Mansbridge also defines “good” deliberation, but she does not suggest for whom, to what ends, or in what context this kind of deliberation should be preferred. As we have seen, deliberation takes radically different forms and its ethical and political significance likewise varies. Mansbridge ought to specify that her preferred form of deliberation is a ratio-​cognitive variety and “good” so long as we accept the political and ethical ideals on which Western democracies are founded. To make more general normative claims about deliberation, it would be necessary to first explore why other actors engage in deliberation in different cultural contexts. In this respect, the comparative research program we have begun to describe is a prerequisite for the robustness of the current normative program.

Normative Justifications: Even More General The very idea of undertaking comparative research with a normative ambition is likely to encounter resistance. In political science, the most prominent example of this is the tradition of political culture research which, as noted above, assessed national democracies in terms of cultural standards drawn from mid-​century America. Unsurprisingly,

Deliberative Ideals Across Diverse Cultures    95 the rest of the world came up short (apart perhaps for the United Kingdom). Critics of that tradition noted that the method only makes sense if the liberal pluralism of the United States is generally accepted as the guiding ideal for other nations, or if there is a kind of Rostowian path along which all societies and states must tread, with the United States representing its terminus (Pateman 1989; Rostow 1960). These premises are clearly untenable, and so the political culture tradition, in its psychological form, is at best irrelevant from the present field of study. Comparative normative inquiry need not involve a moralistic weighing of foreign social practices, unlike the old political culture tradition. Rather, these practices can be studied to enrich our own conceptual repertoire and to assemble normative theories deserving attention from beyond our own cultural horizons. The need for political theories of this kind could hardly be starker given the proliferation of governance challenges whose scope is global. Indeed, if the world is heading towards a post-​Westphalian political order, the need for new ways to conceive of the relations between peoples is stronger than ever (Dryzek 2012). Political scientists are thus faced with a series of challenges with both theoretical and practical implications. Williams and Warren (2014, 32) pose these questions in clear terms, asking: [What] would it mean to engage in nondominating political discourse in global public space, across vastly different cultural and material conditions, and to form action-​orienting political imaginaries across these differences? [What] would generate and sustain agents’ motivation to participate in such discourses, given the combined challenges of power asymmetries, the difficulties of cross-​cultural understanding, and the competing pressures for attention from other scales of politics (local, national, regional)?

Before answering these questions, we need to understand how political discourse is organized elsewhere, and why actors engage in it. Although the larger aim of such inquiry may be to fashion forms of discourse in which all may participate, there are short-​term gains to be had, too. First, it should be recognized that many of the democratic innovations adopted over the past century have emerged not in the core democracies but rather from their peripheries. The secret ballot and universal franchise, by way of example, reached the core democracies from the outer edges of empire (Markoff 1999). Still other innovations might turn up from unlikely places. In this respect the purpose of comparative inquiry is less to judge the practices of other peoples but rather explore their value for our own imperfect democracies. This agenda is hardly controversial in current political theory. The past decade has seen surging interest in non-​Western political traditions (Ackerly 2005; Dallmayr 2004; Euben 1997; Jenco 2007). Central to this is the recognition that no single group should determine the categories or ends of political discourse. Since the early calls for a more inclusive political theory, many variants of this work can now be identified and they encompass the agenda described here, not least for emphasizing scholarship that is interpretive, critical, and globally democratic (March 2009).

96   Jensen Sass

Conclusion In the scheme of human history, most collective deliberation has occurred outside of developed Western democracies. But for a familiar set of reasons, the study of deliberation, however extensive, has largely ignored this wider world. Examining how deliberation manifests across a more diverse collection of societies, and in varying cultural contexts, has considerable promise for both explanatory and normative political theory. A key question which political theorists should consider in much greater depth is why people deliberate at all, given the sizeable personal costs and uncertain collective results. But to explain why people deliberate, it is necessary to first examine how people deliberate, and how the forms of deliberation, and its meanings, vary across societies. Doing so, even in the preliminary fashion presented here, reveals the centrality of social and cultural ideals in motivating the practice of collective deliberation. And if collective deliberation is to prevail in transnational and global governance, it will be necessary to fashion political ideals which motivate peoples to come together in discourse, rather than confront their problems, or compound them, by less desirable means.

Notes 1. For their comments and corrections, I  would like to extend my gratitude to Thomas Crosbie, John Dryzek, John Min, Jonathan Pickering, Ana Tanasoca, and Peter Verovsek. 2. Hjort (2010) writes of the “renaissance” of interest in cultural explanation among economists. Among the more prominent proponents of this approach are Douglas North and David Landes. 3. The closest approximation to such a study is Parson (1977), whose findings do not predict Botswana’s democratic success. 4. Symbolic theories of culture are associated with anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) and also appear in political science and sociology (Johnson 2000; Wedeen 2002; Alexander 2006). 5. Ironically, an early strand of political culture analysis examined African traditions with these aims in mind. See Fortes and Evans-​Pritchard (1940). 6. The field shares similarities to psychology, which was built on the study of US college students, research subjects who are now known as WEIRD, i.e. Western, Educated, and from Industrialized, Rich and Developed countries, thus non-​representative.

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Chapter 6

Indigenou s Sph e re s of Deliberat i on Martin Hébert

The Indigenous Situation Indigenous peoples are culturally and socially diverse. Size of groups, settlement patterns, kinship and political structures, and visions of self and of others, both human and non-​human, are only some of the dimensions that intervene in the multiplicity of their approaches to political deliberation. Although the concept of “Indigenous peoples” has gained currency in the vocabulary of global governance over the last few decades, it must be recognized that its meaning is not without ambiguities. Some groups have been associated with indigeneity for centuries by eurocentric discourses, but are reluctant to refer to themselves as being subsumed in a broader global set of “Indigenous peoples.” Other groups, especially in Asia and Africa, have not historically been part of global Indigenous politics and rather were situated as ethnic minorities or tribal groups until they started to link their struggle for self-​determination with the rights outlined in international documents, especially the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIPS) of 2007. Such has been the case of the Uyghur in China (UHRP 2009) or the Maasai of Tanzania and Kenya, for instance (Hodgson 2001). Any general discussion of Indigenous forms of deliberation must be bounded by the acknowledgment of this heterogeneity of contexts, practices, and ways of being. It must also be mindful of the fact that Western narratives have often misrepresented the egalitarian or hierarchical character of the Indigenous political systems. Fantasies of native despotism, as well as romantic depictions of stereotypical horizontal societies abound in colonial, and even post-​colonial, literature. The political charge of these narratives further complicates any attempt to discuss traditional decision-​making processes. For the purpose of a broad comparison of forms of political deliberation, it could be argued that insisting on the commonalities existing between various Indigenous experiences is relevant. As Rodolfo Stavenhagen, former UN Special Rapporteur on

Indigenous Spheres of Deliberation    101 the rights of Indigenous peoples has pointed out, although Indigenous peoples are diverse, they also experience colonial situations with many constants (Stavenhagen 2001). Dispossession of land, incorporation and subalternity within the institutional structure of a state, and cultural assimilationist pressures are three major dimensions of this Indigenous situation. They manifest in different forms in different socio-​ historical contexts, but their common underlying logic seems clear enough: the denial of self-​determination. In terms more immediately pertaining to the topic of the present chapter, the systemic assault on the self-​determination of Indigenous peoples generally meant that colonial administrations and settler States tried to impose their own forms of government on the first occupants of the land. This intervention involved several colonial tactics, found in various combinations. These included the direct repression of Indigenous political practices and institutions, the imposition of colonial modes of government, sometimes down to the local level, or the co-​optation of existing Indigenous authorities (Salisbury 1964). These colonial tactics were generally carried out with the goal of imposing State policies in Indigenous regions, extracting value from Indigenous productive forces, or in a broader context “pacifying” regions resisting colonial or State rule. In some instances, as with the Juzgado General de Indios set up in 1591 in New Spain, the colonists created some institutions to hear grievances formulated by Indigenous communities against their rule. But most colonial and state administrations have historically been top-​down, with few channels of substantial deliberation and decision-​making going up the governance chain. However, Indigenous peoples have generally proven to be particularly resilient in maintaining their deliberative practices in this hostile context. Thus, various forms of indirect rule emerged from the contact between states and Indigenous societies, combining some extremely intrusive policies with areas of substantial autonomy. The creation of the Band Council system by the Canadian government, through the Act for the gradual enfranchisement of Indians of 1869, illustrates this dichotomy. This document is by all standards, current and historical, an assimilationist law. It fully expressed the authoritarian approach of the State by granting the Superintendent General of Indian Affairs the right to interfere in many aspects of the lives of his so-​called wards, and to depose elected members of the Band Council at any moment. A representative of the Superintendent was to sit on each Band Council, with exclusive executive powers. Nevertheless, however colonial and top-​down it was, this governance structure still could not exist without a significant level of tension and articulation with traditional modes of decision-​making. Although they might aspire to insinuate themselves in all aspects of Indigenous lives and to silence modes of being and doing that they do not themselves produce, colonial institutions never have that degree of totality. Thus, dual processes of deliberation were at play simultaneously: those within colonial or State institutions, often self-​defined as “formal” and “official,” instrumental in reproducing the colonial order, and those modes of deliberation that continued to play themselves out in the interstices of colonial institutions and in autonomous spheres of activity, including many aspects of conflict resolution, the governance of traditional territories, and the forging and maintenance of alliances.

102   Martin Hébert Such a pattern of intertwined political spheres persists to this day. Discussing Indigenous forms of deliberation requires us to acknowledge that the articulations between these spheres are extremely complex and that Indigenous peoples have had to constantly decode the explicit and implicit rules of colonial, State, corporate, or global governance systems in order to find strategic possibilities for making themselves heard and exercising their agency in shaping the exogenous institutional frameworks imposed on their lives; all this while engaging with their own forms of deliberation. The tension between these spheres is especially acute for Indigenous leaders and representatives, who often act as an interface between profoundly different political processes. One example of how this complex articulation was negotiated can be found among the Me’phaa of the state of Guerrero, in Mexico (Dehouve 1990). As the Mexican state was consolidating in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some Me’phaa communities took the expedient of hiring Mestizos to act as their emissaries in dealing with the state. The deal was that the Me’phaa community would provide a house and food to the Mestizos if they, in return, would act as relays between the community assembly and any State institutions it needed to address. This arrangement provided many levels of translation common to colonial situations: from the Me’phaa language to Spanish, from orality to written form, and from Me’phaa categories to state categories. It also provided an expendable link between the community and the State: should things go wrong, the Mestizo could always be blamed for incompetency and expelled. Thus, setbacks suffered by the community would be less likely to create (or fuel) internal factionalism. Such arrangements are but one way of negotiating one’s place and expressing one’s voice in the colonial context. They nevertheless highlight the importance of consensus building and maintenance, probably the most salient characteristic of many Indigenous forms of deliberation. The next sections will address this theme further, as the paths of consensus building are complex, and not without their own tensions. Another issue raised by this brief evocation of the Indigenous situation is the multi-​scalar nature of deliberation. From intra-​and inter-​family dynamics, up to the formation of global coalitions, and down again toward the local level, we note a constant flow of discussions, debates, and translations that shape Indigenous political subjectivities. Drawing attention to these networks of deliberation will be a way to discuss the diversity of actors involved in them, the scale at which they operate, and how they contribute to the definition of what is deliberation in the Indigenous world, and how it should be carried out. A final section will look at particular issues that are likely to shape practices and expectations of deliberation as Indigenous peoples continue to confront the colonial legacy of the global World system.

Deliberation and Consensus-​Building Many contributions dealing with conflict resolution, community decision-​making, and Indigenous political movements have stressed the importance of consensus as a central

Indigenous Spheres of Deliberation    103 criterion for success in deliberation. Long assemblies in which many points of view are expressed, reformulated, and negotiated are the most visible aspect of this process. One example drawn from my fieldwork among the Me’phaa might be used to illustrate some aspects of the dynamics I am referring to here. Following a case of embezzlement in the village, a community assembly was called to determine what should be done about the situation. A man, who had been entrusted with public funds in cash money, had disappeared. It had been weeks since anyone had seen him in the village, and all indications pointed to the fact that he had definitely fled the community and used the money to start a new life in the city. In the process, he had left behind his wife and children, who had continued to inhabit the family house. The man’s elder daughter, of adult age, was present at the assembly in which the fate of her father was discussed. About one hundred members of the community, men and women, were present, although men were mostly the ones speaking in this particular instance. We will return to the issue of gender in the next section. But for now, I will simply note that commentaries were abundant and revolved around the fact that the community should be seeking reparations for the theft. In practical terms, the village needed the money returned. As a matter of principle, it was agreed that it would be a wrong message to send if the community remained passive after such an affront. The authorities of the village had contacted the state police and denounced the man, but not much was expected out of that procedure, given the low priority given to cases involving Indigenous communities in the region. The culprit being out of reach, the attention of the assembly turned to his family. It was suggested that the members of the thief ’s household had somehow benefited from the stolen money, be it only for the fact that they were still living in a house paid for by the culprit. For more than an hour, various takes on this suggestion were expressed, some arguing that the man’s family, being abandoned, were his first victims, others stating that, on the contrary, his family were his accomplices and that they secretly knew where he was. Throughout the long and heated exchange elders, along with the village’s authorities, were listening to the debate. Their interventions mostly centered on summarizing what they understood of the case and constantly reminding the audience of the need to remain civil and think about what would be best for the community as a whole. After nearly two hours of discussions, the comisario, being the highest elected official in the village, summarized the debates and proposed a settlement. He said that somebody should be responsible for reimbursing the community for the money stolen. Furthermore, he continued, the people likeliest to find the fugitive and convince him to give the money back were his family. Thus, he proposed that the man’s family should be responsible for refunding the money to the community. However, he instantly added, it is clear that the man’s family had been left in a very precarious situation by their fugitive father and they did not have, in any way, the money necessary to replace what the man had stolen. Thus, said the comisario, the community should help the family to gather the funds necessary to pay their “debt.” He remarked that the family lived in an isolated area, along a much-​used trail. It would be nice if the family could start selling soft drinks to travelers. The village government would

104   Martin Hébert provide a few cases of bottled drinks; the family would set up shop. Furthermore, concluded the comisario, every person in the community should make a special effort to drop by the new tienda and make it their responsibility to buy drinks there . . . after all, the profits would benefit the whole village and they would be taking a good action in helping the now fatherless family earn an income. If we try to link this account with elements discussed in the first section of this text, we notice, first, that one important premise of this episode is the assumption that the state’s judicial system would not solve the community’s problem. This fact speaks to a long history of neglect and marginality characteristic of “Indigenous situation” as it is experienced by the Me’phaa. However, the obvious lack of interest in the case displayed by the judicial police and municipal prosecutors creates an interstice, an institutional space in which the Me’phaa employed traditional modes of deliberation and conflict resolution. Another important aspect highlighted by this account concerns the principle guiding deliberation. The unity of the community is the foremost preoccupation here. It is very unlikely, for instance, that the state’s judicial system would have found the man’s family personally responsible for refunding the embezzled money. But during the community assembly’s deliberations, it became clear that a significant number of people would not be content with simply condemning a man who, most probably, would never be seen again. The consensus had to take this fact into account. The comisario listened to suggestions that would mitigate the effects of the verdict as much as possible. But condemnation there had to be in this case. In the end, the commisario’s suggestion captured the problems that the man’s family faced and brought the villagers themselves (or at least those who so desired) into the community-​strengthening exercise of buying drinks from the now fatherless family. The window opened here on Me’phaa consensus politics is but one glimpse of its complexities, observed by an outsider. Before the public assembly, numerous rumors circulated within the community concerning the case of the embezzled money. Thus, a significant amount of informal deliberation had already been done privately before the opening of the hearing. Equally, the conclusion of the assembly did not end the comments, discussions, and interpretations of what had occurred during the formal discussion. Influential members of the community, elders and public authorities in particular, had to remain aware of these deliberations. In fact, one could argue that part of their influence is due to the very fact that they are well aware of the narratives that flow through the community. As we have seen, another dimension of this influence is having the moral authority to invoke the well-​being of the community, and be recognized as someone who will uphold the common good. All these words, “well-​being,” “community,” “common good” are imbued with deep moral connotations. But understanding deliberation and consensus-​making as a political practice also leads us to consider these terms as performative. Working among the Zapotec neighbors of the Me’phaa, Laura Nader coined the phrase “harmony ideology” (Nader 1990) to account for the fact that in some cases consensus might be not only a desirable outcome of deliberation but also an imperative to which the community must

Indigenous Spheres of Deliberation    105 submit. In such cases, the cost of not reaching consensus would be factionalism and potentially the scission of the group.

Multi-​S calar Deliberation The discussion of Me’phaa deliberation presented in the previous section is not meant to be representative of the cultural and historical diversity of Indigenous modes of deliberation. Even its relevance to our understanding of Me’phaa practices should prudently be limited to a context in which community scission and the founding of new villages by dissident factions has today become quite difficult. The scarcity of available land as well as the greater administrative rigidity imposed by the State have put a premium on maintaining community harmony. However, the search for consensus is often seen as emblematic of Indigenous decision-​making processes. In that respect a discussion of Me’phaa consensus-​making practices can be relevant to our understanding of broader communities of deliberation. As we have seen, the “Indigenous situation” is a concept that was developed to speak not only to local experiences but also to their systemic, global context. Thus, if we take as a starting point the community-​level example discussed in the last section and gradually zoom out from it, we see that the Me’phaa’s political agency transcends the level of the community. They are involved in regional organizations, themselves linked within broader national, continental, and global networks of indigeneity. The particular forms of Me’phaa deliberation get hybridized along the way, as those of their allies do. But consensus remains a common referent. Thus, it would be reductionist to cast autonomous Indigenous spheres of deliberation as necessarily small-​scale and traditional. Regional, national, and international Indigenous organizations play an important role in the affirmation of self-​determination as well as in the development of national and international standards and expectations. These organizations are quite diverse. Some, such as the Sami Parliament or the Customary Senate of New Caledonia, have a formalized legal status as the State’s interlocutors and are consulted as part of the State’s legislative process. Others are set up as non-​governmental advocacy groups, as is the case with the Assembly of First Nations of Canada and the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples. Still other organizations are set up to function as governments. For instance, in January 2017 Bolivia’s first officially recognized autonomous Indigenous government began its functions in the municipality of Charagua, following a referendum on autonomy. In other cases, relations with the state are more problematic, as with the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampis Nation formed in Peru in 2015. However, whether they are created through a state-​sanctioned process or emerge from unilateral declarations of sovereignty, these autonomous deliberative and representative political bodies have come to play an major role in Indigenous peoples’ relations with the State. Indigenous political agency is active at all scales. As the examples just cited indicate, Indigenous organizations and institutions play a key role in engaging the state and

106   Martin Hébert affirming self-​determination within its context. In most of these cases, the styles of deliberation involved in decision-​making combine various inspirations. The Autonomous government of Charagua, for instance, has two election models. Rural communities, with stronger Indigenous identity, choose their candidates through community assemblies and open deliberation. Sectors that are more urbanized use secret ballots (Sonco 2017). The statutes of the Wampis’ government also exhibit innovation in procedures. The general description of their governance system is as follows: In the Wampis traditional system of government, the population is under the leadership of the patriarchs, who have gained recognition as warriors and visionaries. In matters of autonomous territorial governance, a mechanism is established for the designation of authorities through democratic elections (Nación Wampis, 2015; my translation from Spanish).

This article is interesting in the context of the present discussion because it illustrates the articulation of various practices: the traditional patriarchal structure of leadership, the designation of local representatives through the community assembly (art.74, sect.a), and in addition the processes of secret vote, with monitoring and rigorous counting procedures (art.74, sect.b). As we move toward greater scale, the processes of deliberation and decision are adapted to the exigencies of including a larger number of people in the process, either directly, by inviting them to vote, or indirectly through the representatives they have nominated. Thus, while the community assembly remains a key site of deliberation in these regional and national organizations, we observe that at this scale it also articulates with secret voting and majority decisions. The aim is always to build consensus, but the challenge of reconciling all points of view and all interests increases as the constituency becomes larger. In this sense, voting is a practical expedient that creates its own framework for deliberation in regional and national politics. This discussion of consensus-​building organizations and institutions must also consider a broader arena in which deliberation and affirmations of self-​determination take place:  that of global politics. As noted earlier, the “Indigenous situation” defined by Stavenhagen is a product of global dynamics such as colonialism, capitalist expansion and the diffusion of the paradigm of the nation state. The synergy between these global vectors of direct and structural violence has created the particular configuration of marginality that Stavenhagen identified. But resilience and resistance to these global forces has also prompted the emergence of globalized Indigenous political subjectivities and increased participation of Indigenous peoples within global civil society. Two dimensions of this participation will be addressed here. First, as one might expect, the relevant global civil society is quite diverse—​not only because of the sheer diversity between Indigenous peoples themselves, but also because many issues addressed at this scale involve working with non-​Indigenous actors in civil society—​ particularly those organized as ecological groups, feminist groups, and human rights organizations. These interactions arise at the local, regional, and national scales, but

Indigenous Spheres of Deliberation    107 I will address them particularly at the global scale, the scale of maximum diversity. Finding common ground in such a context requires a substantial amount of deliberation. Second, the search for consensus changes its meaning and dynamics in the global context. As noted earlier, Indigenous organizations and institutions at the regional and national levels often have formal structures that articulate community assemblies and voting procedures. However, no formal charters, constitutions, and statutes frame deliberation within the global civil society. Nor is deliberation in the global context framed by a harmony ideology of the sort described earlier in the context of community assemblies, one that would make consensus an imperative. Here, consensus is rather a desirable outcome, one for which actors are often ready to work, acknowledging the incremental, long term, and always provisional process of changing global structures. Even some of the most impressive accomplishments to date, such as arriving at the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, are seen as steps in a much larger process. An illustration, among many possible, of such complex processes within global governance is the Indigenous Peoples’ Forestry Forum (IPFF), held in Quebec City in 2003. Conducted as a parallel event outside the FAO’s 12th World Forestry Congress (WFC), the IPFF was a two-​ day meeting in which 320 delegates representing Indigenous organizations from around the world concerned with forestry assembled to discuss a common declaration. This document, which came to be known as the Wendake Action Plan, was then presented to the delegates of the WFC as part as a consultation track of three “Special parallel events” devoted respectively to Indigenous peoples, youth, and private forests. In the flowchart representing the process that would lead to the writing of a final statement representing the outcomes of the WFC, the input from these “parallel events” would be synthesized with the results of thirty-eight thematic sessions, ten debates relating to current challenges, five ecoregional roundtables, and seven plenary sessions organized for the thousands of participants. The dizzying scale of these deliberations is not uncommon for such global forums. It involved building a consensus between Indigenous participants, which then became but one voice in elaborating the final declaration of the forum that aimed to represent the point of view of all stakeholders present. Admittedly, the place of Indigenous peoples in global forums has become more prominent since the 12th World Forestry Congress. However, that case helps us bring a magnifying glass to the complexities of participating in global arenas. During the deliberations leading to the formulation of the Wendake Action Plan, careful attention had to be paid to the words and concepts used in the document. Although the discussions involved only Indigenous delegates, another implied figure was in the room:  the non-​indigenous WFC participants to whom the Wendake Action Plan would be communicated. Thus, deliberation had to address equally both the form and substance of the document. The dual goals were to ensure that Indigenous delegates from diverse backgrounds felt comfortable with the consensual declaration, and to increase the chances that the Wendake Action Plan would influence the final declaration of the WFC.

108   Martin Hébert

Conclusion From the smallest scales of social life up to the forums of global governance, from private conversations concerning what should be done concerning a local normative transgression to the formalization of general principles of self-​determination in UN documents, Indigenous deliberation and agency go hand in hand. The ambition of repressing, co-​ opting, and short-​circuiting these relational processes, as well as efforts at undermining the particular forms of authority that operate within them, have been hallmarks of coloniality (Lander 2000). The processes of keeping traditional forms of deliberation active and central to decision-​making processes, adapting those forms, and innovatively articulating them with other practices of autonomous government have all proven key in exercising self-​determination and decolonizing Indigenous lives. As we have seen in this brief overview, consensus building remains a central goal of Indigenous deliberation. Ethnographically, we observe that consensus can be built through a diversity of processes and its nature varies according to the scale at which it is sought. But its normative value is strong in all the cases examined here. The contemporary context brings many challenges to the deliberative processes just outlined. Many of these challenges are related to the ways in which industries and governments have approached their duty to consult and receive prior informed consent from Indigenous collectivities before engaging in extractive activities and infrastructure construction. Deliberation takes time. Deliberation seeking consensus takes even more time. So industries and state governments constantly deploy a variety of strategies to limit the scope and time frame of these consultations, even though the proposed projects may have significant impacts on territories. Among these strategies, we observe promoters that seek confidential agreements with Indigenous authorities, the terms of which might not even be known to the rest of the community. Expert knowledge has also often become a serious limit to deliberation. Inappropriate formatting of information, impregnable jargon, and thousand-​page-long impact studies often leave discussions in the hands of a few technical and legal experts on both sides of the table. The list of the ways in which deliberation is circumvented or short-​circuited in such contexts could extend considerably. But even this brief sample should be enough to indicate that external actors seeking access to Indigenous territories can put deliberative processes under considerable pressure at moments when crucial decisions need to be made. The various scales at which Indigenous people express their political agency can have a mutually reinforcing effect on each other and contribute to countering these dynamics of exclusion. The maintenance and revitalization of collective decision-​making processes, the elaboration of formal structures of autonomous government, and the participation in global networks of solidarity all nourish one another. They can be seen as both products of deliberation and as spaces facilitating it.

Indigenous Spheres of Deliberation    109

References Dehouve, D. (1990). Quand les banquiers étaient des Saints. 450 ans de l’histoire économique et sociale d’une province indienne du Mexique (Paris: Éditions du CNRS). Hodgson, D. L. (2001). Once Intrepid Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity and the Cultural Politics of Maasai Development (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Lander, E. (ed.) (2000). La colonialidad del saber: Eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas latinoamericanas (Buenos Aires, CLACSO). Nación Wampis. (2015). Estatuto del gobierno territorial autónomo de la nación Wampis, https://​ ia601309.us.archive.org/​11/​items/​EstatutoWampis/​EstatutoNacionWampis_​29Nov2015. pdf. Nader, L. (1990). Harmony Ideology:  Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Salisbury, R. F. (1964). Despotism and Australian Administration in the New Guinea Highlands. American Anthropologist, New Series, 66: 225–​39. Sonco, J. (2017). Charagua lyambae, el primer gobierno autónomo indígena de Bolivia. Pagina Siete, Sunday, January 15, http://​www.paginasiete.bo/​ideas/​2017/​1/​15/​charagua-​iyambae-​ primer-​gobierno-​autonomo-​indigena-​bolivia-​123591.html. Stavenhagen, R. (2001). La cuestion étnica (Mexico, D.F.: Colegio de México). UHRP (2009). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and the Uyghurs of East Turkestan (also known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region or XUAR, People’s Republic of China) (Washington, DC: Uyghur Human Rights Project).

P a r t   II

T H E ORY OF DE L I B E R AT I V E DE M O C R AC Y

Chapter 7

The Epistemic Va lu e of De mo cratic Del i be rat i on David Estlund and Hélène Landemore

Deliberation, roughly the weighing of reasons, is something individuals do for themselves, but it also has an interpersonal (or “intersubjective”) form—​the collective weighing of reasons with others, by communicating, arguing, debating, and persuading. Democratic deliberation is not only interpersonal, but also public and structured in ways necessary to count as democratic, a matter handled differently by different theories of democracy. 1 Deliberation has long been valued by deliberative democrats for reasons that have to do more with its intrinsic properties or the byproducts it generates rather than what some now see (and some saw all along) as its primary point: figuring out the truth. Probably influenced by John Rawls’s famous stance of “epistemic abstinence” (Rawls 1985, as read by Raz 1990), early deliberative democrats mostly focused on the expression of respect and equality that letting everyone speak and exchange reasons for their views before deciding on them was supposed to represent. Others emphasized the airing of grievances, the mutual understanding, the consensus and community-​building that deliberating together was taken to allow for. Only recently have so-​called epistemic democrats been paying attention to the more purely instrumental value of deliberation: maximizing the chances of getting to the correct or right decision, or at least getting as close to it as possible. By “correct or right decision” here, or “the truth,” can be meant an array of things, from objective truth of the matter (about facts or morality) to a more intersubjective, culturally dependent, and temporary construct (about more socially constructed facts or moral questions). What epistemic democrats emphasize, on some readings, is merely the Habermasian (and commonsensical enough) point that we wouldn’t be exchanging reasons in the first place if we did not believe that there was something to figure out, whether we call this something the truth, the right, or the correct, just, or socially useful answer (see also Martí 2006).

114    David Estlund and Hélène Landemore Epistemic democracy was first articulated in a 1986 article by Joshua Cohen entitled “An epistemic conception of democracy,” which borrowed from Jules Coleman and John Ferejohn’s epistemic interpretation of voting. Cohen’s article was an attempt to defend so-​called populist approaches to democracy (such as Rousseau’s2 and, on some readings, John Stuart Mill’s) from the liberal conception of Schumpeter and Riker, which supposedly did away with the problematic notion of a “common good” or “general will” notoriously found in populist authors. Cohen proposed an interpretation of the populist view intended to be both coherent and more plausible than Riker’s own interpretation. The main step consisted in showing that Riker’s attribution of a “pure proceduralist” position to populist democrats was a mistake. He instead identified their view as epistemic. Cohen then went on to characterize an epistemic interpretation of voting as having three main elements: (1) an independent standard of correct decisions; (2) a cognitive account of voting (voting is supposed to express views about what the correct policies are according to the independent standard); (3) an account of how people adjust their beliefs in light of other people’s beliefs. Cohen then proceeded to plug this interpretation of voting into a more general epistemic conception of democracy, applying all these three elements not just to voting but also to other forms of democratic decision-​making such as deliberation. Epistemic democracy was further developed as a distinctive approach to democracy in the work of David Estlund (1997; 2008a). Revisiting the question of political authority, Estlund argued that pure proceduralists (whether deliberative or aggregative) were mistaken in believing they could ignore questions of epistemic competence and performance. He offered instead a new philosophical framework—​epistemic proceduralism—​to reconcile concerns for procedures and outcomes. Estlund further argued that the minimal epistemic performance one should expect from a political authority must be set at “better than random” and conjectured that democracies met that threshold, though probably underperforming compared to what he labeled “epistocracies” (regimes in which the few “knowers” rule). One epistemic engine he considered obvious was deliberation. Since then, a number of other epistemic democrats have contributed to the paradigm and pursued the complex philosophical questions opened up by an epistemic approach.3 When it comes to the question of epistemic (democratic) deliberation per se, two dimensions—​normative and descriptive/​explicative—​have been explored. The normative dimension covers questions such as:  Does democratic deliberation need to have epistemic properties in order for its outcomes to be normatively authoritative or to have legitimacy? Or is public exchange of reasons among free and equal citizens valuable in and of itself, even if it tends to yield, say, more polarized views? How should we balance epistemic and other properties of democratic deliberation in an overall evaluation? The descriptive/​explicative dimension includes questions such as:  Does deliberation have epistemic properties? Does democratic deliberation have distinct

Epistemic Value of Democratic Deliberation    115 epistemic properties? If so, could those explain the success of democracies in the real world? What role does consensus or unanimity play in these properties? Should democratic deliberation aim at consensus? What is the relation of democratic deliberation to majority rule? The rest of this chapter is organized as follows. The next section takes stock of the debates in the field of deliberative democracy that have been generated by advocates of the new paradigm of epistemic democracy. We then turn to the epistemic properties of deliberation per se and, specifically, democratic deliberation.

Normative Frameworks Epistemic Democracy: Why? There are two distinct ways in which one might speak of an “epistemic element” in a democratic theory. Often, the meaning is that the right or best decision is produced by voters thinking and reasoning about what would be right. This element is clear in Cohen’s account, described above, and such accounts are usefully distinguished from others in which the decisions tend to be good or best, but through the mechanism of some invisible hand—​for example, sectarian interests cancelling each other out in the aggregate. A second and distinct sense of “epistemic element” emphasizes the discovery of truths rather than merely the achievement of valuable results. Indeed, as we will see (see also Landemore 2013), some approaches emphasize mechanisms that are held to be truth-​revealing quite apart from whether the truths in question also have moral value—​ as, of course, such accounts also hold. It is not hard to see why an epistemic element might be important to a theory of justified (or legitimate or authoritative) political rule. Otherwise, why not have rule by the person or procedure who can best determine what ought to be done? Traditionally, this question is a challenge to democratic thought since elites or experts can seem likely to outperform the body of all citizens consulted together. Maybe no specially chosen subset whatsoever could in fact do better than democratic arrangements, though that is a strong and contestable claim. Some advocates of democracy eschew any epistemic criteria at all, relying for its justification on features entirely apart from claims about the substantive quality of its likely decisions. Many, however, appeal to public deliberation as a potentially powerful epistemic engine—​in which case the epistemic and the democratic strands of our thinking might not be in conflict. It would be possible, of course, to argue that democracy could tend toward correct answers on some questions, and even by way of interpersonal deliberation, despite voters not being seen as addressing those questions. This would count as a kind of invisible-​hand example, and there are such mechanisms in contexts—​such as certain idealized economic markets—​that are not democratic. On this approach some plausible mechanism would need to be described for the democratic context.

116    David Estlund and Hélène Landemore Normative democratic theory that insists on an epistemic element does not necessarily make any claim about whether democracy (either actual or idealized) has epistemic value. Rather, it claims that unless democracy does have epistemic value there is no adequate case for its legitimacy, or authority, or justification (whereas if it does, then there is). So the interest in epistemic approaches can arise initially out of theoretical difficulties faced by wholly non-​epistemic alternatives. That would tempt one to wonder and explore whether introducing an epistemic element could avoid the problems. Then, of course, the further question arises as to how appealing to (the right kind of) epistemic value would solve those problems without raising worse ones. For example, one of the more prominent worries about epistemic approaches is that whatever reasons there are for introducing an epistemic element would also exert theoretical pressure to abandon democracy (partially or altogether) in favor of rule by some wise subset of subjects.4 There are non-​epistemic but still instrumental approaches, a category mentioned above (Riker 1982, criticized by Cohen 1986). A more popular route is to eschew all appeal to the instrumental value of democracy—​including epistemic versions of it—​in favor of some value deriving wholly from a decision’s origins in a democratic process. An influential line of thought is that voting is a procedure that is fair to all who have the right to participate. For example, a decision made by majority rule might count as fair in that sense, quite apart from whether it is a good decision on procedure-​independent grounds:5 it might be an unwise or even unjust decision but, in its favor, it is at least the outcome of a “fair” procedure. If the measure of fairness is merely that each participant has an equal chance of influencing the outcome, then this would not commend a voting procedure over choosing the outcome by a random procedure such as a coin flip—​which, like majority rule, gives no one more power than anyone else. However, mere procedural fairness of that kind is obviously not enough to be called democracy. Such considerations suggest that a plausible theory would need to give some role to a tendency to make substantively good decisions—​at least, say, better than random. A somewhat different approach from that of procedural fairness—​but still non-​ instrumental and so non-​epistemic—​is to argue that a moral right to participate equally in political decisions is implied by a requirement of social justice whereby all citizens are of one class or status and none is inferior (Christiano 1996; Pettit 2012). Of course, if everyone is equally morally important or deserving, then it would seem to be of high importance that political decisions give everyone what is due to them through decisions that are substantively just and not merely procedurally fair. The equal-​status account would need to explain why the equal status of having a vote carries such moral weight that it should be respected even when doing so would, by eschewing more epistemically powerful procedures, lead unnecessarily to social injustice of other kinds—​such as invidious discrimination against less favored groups by the majority. Retaining the right to vote is one kind of equal status, but if it were to facilitate unjust relations of oppression or hierarchy through unjust political decisions it might be unclear why it had such trumping weight. These approaches have variants, and there are other non-​epistemic approaches as well. We put them all aside here for the purpose of understanding epistemic approaches,

Epistemic Value of Democratic Deliberation    117 central to which are, characteristically, potential epistemic benefits of interpersonal deliberation leading up to political decisions—​epistemic deliberation.

Deliberative and Non-​Deliberative Epistemic Approaches To understand the importance of interpersonal deliberation to epistemic approaches it is helpful to first consider epistemic approaches to democracy that make no appeal to it. One simple view, associated with logical critiques stemming from Arrow’s “Impossibility Theorem” (Arrow 1951) is that the process of voting registers and aggregates people’s preferences, resulting in a sound measure of what is in a group’s aggregate interests. Another approach relies on mathematical theorems such as Condorcet’s Jury Theorem to argue that a majority is far more likely to be correct than any individual voter, and under minimally favorable conditions highly likely to be correct—​ none of this depending on any interpersonal discussion or debate (Estlund et al. 1989). Deliberative epistemic approaches, by contrast, would be those that rely at least partly on epistemic benefits of certain forms of public communication and discourse, especially forms involving offering and responding to practical (what to do) and epistemic (what to believe) reasons. If the non-​deliberative aggregative approach were sound, then an epistemic approach to democracy might not need to query the epistemic value of deliberation. For example, if, even without public deliberation (whatever exactly “no deliberation” would mean), every voter’s chance of choosing the better candidate or law were just a bit better than random, and each voter’s acts were statistically independent of those of other voters, the Jury Theorem’s math alone shows that decisions made by majority rule would be highly likely to be good or correct (where this means only “the better of two”).6 There is no dispute about the truth of the Jury Theorem as a piece of math, but scholars continue to debate whether the conditions on the applicability of the Jury Theorem are plausibly met in realistic democracies.7 If not, then the mere number of voters might not support any claim for democracy to have epistemic value. Although this important point is often overlooked, it is a departure from that approach to introduce ostensible epistemic benefits of interpersonal deliberation. Below, we concern ourselves only with approaches that appeal to deliberation.

How Epistemic? How epistemically ambitious must such appeals to deliberation be? If the question is why all the people should rule by voting, rather than any subset organized in any other way, there is some pressure to try to show that democratic deliberation outperforms every alternative. In a simple case, certain democratic arrangements could be held to be (actually or potentially) supreme: the most reliably accurate procedure on the relevant questions—​better than any single expert or panel of experts, for example. On a

118    David Estlund and Hélène Landemore more epistemically moderate view, democracy’s epistemic value is held to be, even if not better than all other sources, at least sufficient to justify or require a democratic arrangement given certain additional non-​epistemic virtues of democracy. Perhaps certain other values would serve to explain why epistemically better arrangements are not required or justifiable. For example, maybe democratic arrangements are necessary to avoid a morally undesirable social hierarchy, but would not be permitted if they were not at least epistemically adequate. Or maybe there is not wide enough agreement on what would constitute the epistemically best available elite that would provide for enough stability and for the liberal moral standard of acceptability to all reasonable points of view. Indeed, whether the alleged epistemic value is supreme or only sufficient, the justification of democracy might rest on its supposedly true epistemic virtues, or on its epistemic virtues so far as these can be agreed within the politically permissible set of reasons, excluding considerations that are disputable among reasonable citizens. This last idea embeds epistemic deliberative democracy within a form of political liberalism, as developed especially by Rawls. The epistemic potency that is required of deliberation, then, will vary depending on the broader normative theory in which the idea is embedded.

Epistemic About What? Since the epistemic dimension of a democratic theory is one in which political decisions tend toward being good or correct or true, it is important to say what it is that they might be correct or true about, or in what way they might be good. Some epistemic deliberative democratic theories emphasize the question of arriving at good or correct answers to practical or moral political questions, and this is arguably the main line of epistemic approaches from Rousseau through Rawls, Cohen, Estlund, and others. On that approach, voters might be seen as faced with the question: “Which of the available alternatives best respects or promotes justice?” or “Which of these is the right thing (collectively) to do?” A common complaint about morally construed epistemic approaches of this kind is that (so it is claimed) there is no correct answer to what ought morally to be done in political decisions.8 If this is a sweeping skepticism about moral ideas, or even just about moral ideas in political contexts—​that they are all mistakes—​then it is not any distinctive challenge for epistemic approaches to democracy, since it would deny that there is any answer to the question whether any society at any time ought to be democratic or to respect certain legal rights or engage in wars of conquest, and so on. There are critiques of “moralism” in political philosophy in favor of an approach sometimes dubbed “realism,” though the terms of the debate are themselves under dispute.9 Suffice it to say that deliberative epistemic approaches to democracy have been content to assume that some political decisions are morally wrong, and some more than others. Such theories, then, do not aim to go deeper in order to refute the outright moral skeptic.

Epistemic Value of Democratic Deliberation    119 A different approach to the idea of good or correct outcomes focuses less on correct answers to moral questions, arguing instead in favor of broadly democratic social (not merely political) arrangements on the ground that they are epistemically favorable for the discovery of good or sound actions and beliefs of all kinds, ranging from morality and politics to science and the arts. Classic antecedents for such views would include John Stuart Mill’s theory of the value of broad social freedom of action and expression, and Dewey’s account of human knowledge as a process of identifying and overcoming problems, a value by no means limited to moral or even political problems. (Anderson 2006; Talisse 2007)

Some Critiques and Defenses of Epistemic Deliberative Normative Democratic Theories There are several common lines of critique of deliberative approaches to democracy, arguments that have nothing in particular to do with the subset that contain an epistemic dimension. They would need to be answered, but they are not especially pertinent to our narrower topic here. Briefly, one obvious line of critique of epistemic approaches is to deny that democratic arrangements really do, or could, have the degree of epistemic value that certain theories would need them to have to render democracy legitimate, authoritative or justified. These debates depend on questions, to be surveyed in the next section, about what the epistemic mechanisms are and how much might be expected of them. But in the background it is important to see that a normative theory is not refuted by the claim that its standards are not likely to be met, unless it (optionally) claims otherwise. As for objections that are more specific to epistemic versions of deliberative democratic theory, we have briefly encountered one of these already, namely that there is no such thing as a procedure-​independent standard on the relevant questions, such as that of what justice requires. A second line of objection is that the epistemic value of democratic deliberation could never be assessed without having independent access to the right answers, in which case the democratic procedure would be epistemically unnecessary.10 A third line of objection claims that epistemic justifications for democracy seemingly violate the “non-​convergence constraint,” namely the intuitive premise that we should not expect political disagreements to disappear once the democratic procedure has issued its verdict.11 A fourth line of objection is that epistemic justifications violate the “evidence constraint” in that while they should provide evidence for voters’ competence or the quality of democratic outcomes, epistemic justifications cannot do so without presupposing disputed political judgments.12 A fifth line of objection is that focusing on the epistemic as opposed to the intrinsic value of democratic procedures would somehow endanger and perhaps even “disfigure” democracy itself.13

120    David Estlund and Hélène Landemore

Epistemic Mechanisms What reasons do we have to believe that democratic deliberation, understood as a way of arriving at collective decisions, has epistemic properties—​that is, the ability to track a procedure-​independent standard of correctness (whatever one may understand by this)? The following aims to give an account of deliberation, and more specifically democratic deliberation, as the epistemic engine of a properly conceived (“deliberative”) democracy. It also aims to clarify the relation of democratic deliberation to consensus and majority rule.

Epistemic Properties of Deliberation As noted at the start of this chapter, deliberation means, roughly, the pondering and weighing of reasons or an exchange of arguments for or against a given view. In that sense deliberation can refer to an internal dialogue in the vein of “deliberation within” (Goodin 2005), an intersubjective exercise among individuals, or a deliberation occurring among entities larger than individuals, as in system-​thinking (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012). The idea that intersubjective deliberation (leaving aside anything about “democratic” for the moment) has epistemic properties is an old one. It can arguably be traced back all the way to Aristotle’s idea that a “feast to which the many contribute” is better than a feast organized by one person only, through to Mill’s emphasis on diversity of points of view in helping the truth overcome falsities and triumph in a free marketplace of ideas. An underlying assumption of these views is that there is a self-​revealing nature of the truth, which when made apparent by the exchange of viewpoints is supposed to convince all participants in the deliberation (if not instantaneously then over time, and if not inexorably then at least under favorable conditions). This is something best expressed, perhaps, by Habermas’s idea of the “unforced force of the better argument” (Habermas 1991). How does this “unforced force of the better argument” work in practice? Let us look at the way deliberation functions in a nicely idealized (but not too idealized) model: The deliberations of jurors in the film 12 Angry Men.14 One of the turning points in the deliberation comes when Juror 8 produces a copy of the murder weapon, a cheap switchblade that he said he was able to buy for a fistful of dollars around the corner of the tribunal, disproving at once the unusualness and identifying nature of the weapon. Another argument is produced by Juror 5, who grew up in a violent slum and can explain the proper way of using a switchblade, raising doubts in the process about the plausibility of the eyewitness’s description. The eyewitness’s reliability is further put in doubt when it becomes clear that she usually wears glasses (as evidenced by red marks on the side of her nose observed by the jurors

Epistemic Value of Democratic Deliberation    121 when she came to testify to the bar). Ultimately a unanimous consensus emerges that the young man should be found not guilty. The story illustrates the epistemic properties of deliberation. First, it allows participants to weed out the good arguments, interpretations, and information from the bad ones (e.g. the switchblade is not as unique a weapon as previously thought and can only be used a certain way). Second, deliberative problem solving can also produce synergies, that is create new solutions out of the arguments, information, and solutions brought to the table (e.g. making sense of the red marks on the eyewitness’s nose in a way that proves decisive to the interpretation of her reliability). Third, hearing the perspectives of others may entirely reshape a person’s view of the problem and introduce possibilities not initially considered (e.g. the eyewitness testimony cannot be trusted after all). Finally, in the ideal, deliberation produces unanimous consensus on the “right” solution (“not guilty” in this case). The example also illustrates the specific merit of deliberation among a diverse group of people. In the story all twelve jurors mattered, in all their differences, because it is only through the interplay between their conflicting interpretations of the evidence and arguments—​colored as those are by their personal history, socio-​economic background, type of intelligence, and so on—​that something like the truth ultimately emerges. The epistemic properties of deliberation importantly manifest in spite of the fact that the protagonists are far from ideal human beings. One juror just wants to be done with the deliberation and go to a baseball game, one is a racist, another is biased by irrelevant fatherly emotions . . . Deliberation, in other words, can overcome a number of moral and cognitive limitations. The logic of epistemic deliberation is well captured by a theorem by Lu Hong and Scott Page, the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem, which states that under certain conditions15 “a randomly selected collection of problem solvers outperforms a collection of the best individual problem solvers” (Hong and Page 2004, 16388; Page 2007, 163). In other words, “diversity trumps ability” and our twelve angry men are better than twelve clones of, say, juror number 8 (arguably the smartest of the lot) would have been. Diversity here refers to cognitive diversity, which is roughly the difference in the ways different people will think about a problem in the world. On this model, cognitive diversity is not diversity of fundamental values or goals, which would actually harm the collective effort to solve a problem, though it is compatible with degrees of less fundamental value-​diversity. This counterintuitive result can be made more comprehensible through the spatial metaphor of the passing of the baton between variously resourceful climbers on a rugged landscape. Whereas smart but homogenously thinking problem-​solvers will tend to get stuck at high but local optima, the diverse group is more likely to have members guide each other from lower optima to the global one, because as a group of diverse individuals they explore more of the rugged landscape. It is worth emphasizing that this account of the epistemic logic at work in problem-​ solving among cognitively diverse groups is distinct from the statistical logic behind the Condorcet Jury Theorem or the Miracle of Aggregation (or another one of Hong

122    David Estlund and Hélène Landemore and Page’s results, the Diversity Theorem) in that it has nothing to do with the law of large numbers. The point here is not that a clear signal will emerge out of the noise of random errors that cancel out, even though the good and bad input alike get aggregated. It is that deliberation will weed out the bad information and arguments from the outcome entirely.

Epistemic Properties of Democratic Deliberation While the arguments above may account for the epistemic properties of deliberation among cognitively diverse people, it does not quite justify democratic deliberation in the sense of deliberation that (1) involves all and (2) involves all on an equal standing. Democratic deliberation can indeed be specified as intersubjective deliberation that takes place specifically in a “public” manner “among free and equal individuals” (adapted from Cohen 1989) and is also inclusive of the entirety of the relevant group, though this condition is generally left implicit in a lot of the literature in deliberative democracy.16 Democratic deliberation, in order to count as plausibly democratic, thus requires publicity of its exchanges, full inclusiveness, and equal standing and equal opportunities for participation among participants (“free and equal”). Theorists appreciative of the epistemic value of deliberation may not necessarily see the epistemic value of democratic deliberation thus understood. Mill, after all, though a deliberative democrat on most readings, was also an advocate of a plural voting scheme that gave more voice (in the form of votes) to the learned. Clearly one can believe in the value of deliberation and not think that all involved should have an absolutely equal right to be heard. Landemore (2012; 2013) proposes a missing link between the epistemic properties of deliberation and democracy per se, at least when it comes to the inclusive and egalitarian features of democratic deliberation (the publicity element has yet to be shown to have epistemic properties of its own). Landemore argues that more inclusive assemblies are simply more likely to be cognitively diverse. To the extent that cognitive diversity is a key ingredient of collective intelligence, and specifically one that matters more than average individual ability, the more inclusive the deliberation process is, the smarter the solutions resulting from it should be, overall. Numbers, in other words, function as a proxy for diversity (“Numbers Trump Ability Theorem”). Where all-​inclusiveness is not feasible, a second-​best solution is delegation to a randomly selected sample of the group. A key assumption of this argument is the radical uncertainty faced by political decision-​ makers when it comes to issues of the common good. This fundamental uncertainty (which is an assumption about the world, not necessarily the subjective epistemic stage of the deliberators) is what renders all-​inclusiveness on an equal basis epistemically attractive as a model for collective decision-​making. Given the complexity of the world, which generates this uncertainty, egalitarian inclusiveness is “ecologically rational” (Landemore 2014).

Epistemic Value of Democratic Deliberation    123

Measuring The Epistemic Quality of Democratic Deliberation? Empirical research on deliberation was not until recently framed in epistemic terms and to that extent has yet to fully prove or falsify the claims of epistemic deliberative democrats. It was, however, always understood as empirical research about a specifically democratic type of deliberation (as defined above) and thus in what follows we use “deliberation” and “deliberative” as shorthand for “democratic deliberation” and “democratically deliberative.” There are various ways one could go about measuring the epistemic quality of outputs generated by (democratic) deliberation, from the more indirect to the more direct. A first proxy for the substantive quality of deliberative outcomes is, for example, the objective level of information people have post-​deliberation, as compared to their pre-​deliberative beliefs and preferences. This is in some respects what Jim Fishkin’s deliberative polls measure (e.g. Fishkin 2009). The presumption here would be that as people’s views are more informed, they are also more likely to be right—​although there is of course no guarantee. Another route is to measure the procedural properties of deliberation, as in the Discourse Quality Index (DQI) (Steenbergen et al. 2003; Bächtiger, Pedrini, and Ryser 2010), which codes, among other things, for how equal, respectful, and argumentatively sophisticated people’s speech acts are. Yet other routes are the index of intersubjective consistency (Niemeyer and Dryzek 2007), the index of “cognitive complexity” (Wyss, Beste, and Bächtiger 2015), or the measurement of adequate support for given conclusions (Friberg-​Fernros and Schaffer 2017). Finally, one may also want to measure the quality of deliberative outcomes in terms of the corresponding decision’s impact on the world. Are the solutions put forward “validated” by the outside world, i.e. actual empirical success? At a first level of intuition, the fact that democracies (more “deliberative” regimes than their known alternatives) have been doing well by multiple standards both in Ancient Greece (Ober 2008) and over the last 250 years—​even causing economic growth on some readings of the available evidence (Acemoglu et al. 2014)—​would seem to at least not contradict this prediction. Small-​scale lab experiments involving problems with mathematical, logical, factual, or otherwise uncontroversial answers also support the case that deliberating groups solve riddles faster and better than less deliberative ones (Clément et al. 2013). Experimental evidence obtained in the developing world, finally, suggests that deliberation promotes a certain number of uncontroversially good outcomes, such as efficiency (Goeree and Yariv 2011) or the reduction of clientelism (Fujiwara and Wantchekon 2013).17

Should (Democratic) Deliberation Aim at Consensus/​Unanimity? The ideal of consensus as unanimous agreement on a decision resulting from a deliberative process lies at the heart of early theories of deliberative democracy (Cohen 1986, 22; Habermas 1991, 66; Elster 1986, 112; Young 1996, 122).

124    David Estlund and Hélène Landemore Does consensus form a promising normative horizon for epistemic deliberation? In order to answer this question, Landemore and Page (2014) suggest first distinguishing between at least three meanings of consensus as a normative ideal: consensus as (i) a goal, (ii) a stopping-​rule, or (iii) an outcome. While consensus can be two or three of these things at once, it need not be, and these analytical distinctions clarify the debate. First, consensus can be a goal—​that is, a direct aim that deliberators seek or should seek to achieve when discussing with each other—​in contrast with, say, truth or the promotion of certain interests. Second, consensus can also be interpreted as a stopping-​rule, that is, the rule by which deliberation is brought to an end and a group decision considered taken. On that interpretation, consensus is equivalent to unanimity rule and to be contrasted with other stopping-​rules, such as simple majority rule or super-​majority rule. Lastly, consensus can be interpreted as an ideal outcome—​that is, the result of an ideal deliberation. Being an outcome rather than a goal, consensus in that sense is not something that deliberators necessarily pursue directly. It happens instead as a byproduct of something else, like pursuing the truth. Distinct lines of criticism questioning consensus can be identified in light of these distinctions. The first criticism of consensus is aimed at the stopping-​rule that requires unanimity—​equivalent to each individual having a veto, thus giving undue weight to minorities’ preferences (see Rae 1975 and McGann 2006). Another line of criticism objects to consensus as a direct goal of deliberation, because rational consensus may be hard in practice to distinguish from compromise (Steiner et al. 2004); because defining consensus as a goal distorts incentives for participants in a deliberation, creating pressure to reach an agreement (e.g. Mackie 2006, 285); or, conversely, because defining consensus as a goal invites strategic conformism18 (Feddersen and Pesendorfer 1998). These criticisms suggest that the only way consensus should ever be considered a “goal” of deliberation is in the sense of being an indirect goal of deliberators, namely a hoped-​for by-​product of their argumentative exchanges, while they are directly aiming for something else, such as the truth or a better understanding of the issues (Fuerstein 2014). The third, most important line of criticism, however, is directed at consensus as the ideal outcome of deliberation. Gutmann and Thompson (2004) thus argue that there is no agreement among deliberative democrats that consensus should be the goal of deliberation (by which they mean the “indirect goal” of deliberators or their ideal “outcome”). Indeed, some claim that at the level of principles, other components of the deliberative democracy ideal, such as reason and public justification, point away from rational consensus, not towards it (e.g. Gaus 1997, 207). Still other objectors point out that when it is reached, consensus as an outcome often signals something less than ideal, for example polarization—​a post-​deliberative reinforcement of previously held beliefs—​rather than rational consensus (see e.g. Mendelberg and Oleske 2000; Sunstein 2002). While not all of the objections to consensus prove decisive, their cumulative effect has been to generate discomfort with the ideal of consensus among deliberative democrats (a discomfort shared early on by some philosophers, e.g. Rescher 1993). Symptomatically, influential deliberative democrats have recently gone back to embracing the full legitimacy of stopping-​rules for deliberation that used to be considered regrettable

Epistemic Value of Democratic Deliberation    125 second-​best of consensus, such as majority rule or even the kind of non-​communicative agreement reached through bargaining (e.g. Mansbridge et al. 2010). In this approach, the ideal termination of deliberation is not agreement but disagreement, followed by a non-​deliberative decision rule. It is possible, however, that the epistemic appeal of consensus will vary depending on the context and task at stake. In problem-​solving contexts, consensus as an ideal outcome of deliberation retains an epistemic appeal as a “marker” of truth, signaling that no one knows or can construct a better idea. In predictive contexts, however, consensus has almost no normative appeal as a stopping-​rule and little normative appeal as an outcome. Instead, when relatively equally compelling logic and evidence support multiple models, the group members should cultivate “positive dissensus,” a form of disagreement that is epistemically beneficial for the group and ultimately leads to more accurate aggregated predictions (Landemore and Page 2014).

Deliberation and Majority Rule Deliberation and majority rule have sometimes been pitched as rival mechanisms for decision-​making, one being championed by the deliberative democracy camp, the other by so-​called aggregative democrats. Recent research in epistemic democracy tends to portray them as complementary decision-​procedures and emphasize their distinct epistemic properties. Whereas deliberation is more adapted to pure problem-​solving contexts, majority rule is a faster and more accurate tool for purely predictive tasks.

Empirical Objections Some critics have suggested that intersubjective deliberation (democratic or not) may in fact have no tendency to improve outcomes, and may even make them worse. Robert Goodin and Simon Niemeyer (2003) have thus suggested that “deliberation within” is in fact doing all the work in observed deliberations, as opposed to the intersubjective deliberation going on in various mini-​publics that they observed. For them, it is the internal pondering of reasons that people engage in when reading briefing material that changes people’s minds, not the exchange of arguments that takes place in small groups or plenary discussions. However, given the likely evolutionary reasons behind human use of reasoning and the well-​documented motivation bias of individual reasoning, it can be argued that deliberation is more likely to produce the truth when it is intersubjective, i.e. social, rather than internal (Mercier and Landemore 2012). Cass Sunstein has made the stronger argument that deliberation can make things worse because the “law of polarization” dooms even slightly like-​minded groups to become more entrenched in their pre-​deliberative beliefs. Deliberation as celebrated by deliberative democrats, Sunstein concludes, is overrated. In his view, the underlying mechanisms of group deliberation “do not provide much reason for confidence”

126    David Estlund and Hélène Landemore (Sunstein 2002, 187). He further suggests that in the context of groups engaged in so-​ called enclave deliberation (Mansbridge 1994), one is better off aggregating judgments as they are rather than make things worse by encouraging people to talk things out. The gist of the answers to Sunstein so far is to deny that the “talk” that went on in the experiments he reports on amount to genuine deliberation, because participants fail to engage conflicting arguments as opposed to merely diverse ones (e.g. Manin 2005, 9; see also Thompson 2008, 502 and Landemore 2013, 123–​42 for similar points). It has also been argued that while Sunstein’s evaluation of group discussion is too pessimistic, his evaluation of prediction markets and Internet devices is too optimistic, markets being imperfect and the Internet being vulnerable to astroturfing by the powerful and wealthy (Mackie 2009). Others conjecture that the difference between talk that polarizes and talk that does not lies in the enforcement by trained moderators of deliberative norms such as speaking one’s mind, listening to others, behaving respectfully, and learning and persuading others through reasons. This conjecture is supported by experimental results (Grönlund, Herne, and Setälä 2015). Discussion following deliberative norms arguably reverses polarization tendencies within like-​minded groups (Strandberg, Himmelroos, and Grönlund 2017).

Conclusion As we have seen, the topic of epistemic democratic deliberation has gained its prominence in recent democratic theory partly from close interpretations of the seminal normative works in the broader research paradigm of “deliberative democracy,” such as Cohen and Habermas, and partly out of critiques of normative democratic theories emphasizing certain purely procedural values such as procedural fairness or other symmetrical ruling relations. But the underlying issue of how well democracy can perform is, and always has been, also central to a reflective political engagement in broadly democratic culture. As we write in 2016, though this is nothing new, just as some ostensible political disasters are chalked up to insufficiently democratic political procedures (for example, critiques of widening material inequality), others are put down to an excess of democracy (such as the rise of Donald Trump or other demagogues, or abrupt momentous changes by referendum such as “Brexit”). Are some forms of politics to be preferred to others on grounds of their being expected to make better decisions at all, or is that issue (somehow) to be put aside? If it is not put aside, is democracy the site of a separate value that might compete with such an epistemic criterion? Is democracy to be recommended partly on epistemic grounds, and if so, what institutional features of democratic arrangements might drive the epistemic value, and by what mechanism? And is the epistemic democracy paradigm wholly aspirational, at best, or are real political choices already properly informed by these matters? If no version of democracy could perform as well as some specified non-​democratic

Epistemic Value of Democratic Deliberation    127 alternative, how are the non-​epistemic procedural values that democracy might instantiate (or is that just as unrealistic?) to be weighed against the values by which the alternative would perform better—​values ranging from matters of basic health, welfare, education, distributive and relational equality, anti-​bigotry, equitable infrastructure, cultural climate, limiting state and non-​state violence, incarceration, economic monopoly, accumulation of economic and political power, and much more? Procedural fairness and equality plausibly have some intrinsic value, but so do outcomes that are up for political decision (or political default, as in an anti-​state position), and they are presumably not easily outweighed. If democracy is held to have an epistemic response to this challenge, it needs to rely at least partly on epistemic effects of interpersonal, public, democratic deliberation, a set of topics on which there is much work being done, and much left to do.

Notes 1. Contrary to a common critique of “deliberative democracy,” none of this implies that democratic deliberation must take the form of explicit appeals principles, logic, etc. Young (e.g. 1996) has emphasized the importance of other modes of expression such as stories, songs, and performances, and deliberative accounts of democratic theory can (arguably) agree. For an instructive critical discussion of the evolution of this strand of Young’s thought, see Talisse (2012). 2. Brian Barry (1965) was an early interpreter of Rousseau as having, in part, an epistemic conception of democracy, including nascent reference to Jury Theorem reasoning. Grofman and Feld (1988) developed the Jury Theorem reading of Rousseau. See replies by Estlund and Waldron, with a rejoinder by Grofman and Feld (Estlund et al. 1989). 3. For a sampling see special issue of the journal, Episteme devoted to “Epistemic Approaches to Democracy,” (Estlund 2008b) and references therein. 4. Jason Brennan (2016) follows this line of argument to what he claims is, indeed, its anti-​ democratic conclusion. A crucial question for epistemic deliberative democracy is how that slope might be made less slippery. 5. One important account of the value of democracy in terms of procedural fairness, for example, is Waldron (1999). 6. For an accessible sketch of the proof, see Estlund 1994, 132–​7. 7. For a critique of the Jury Theorem’s use in democratic theory, see Estlund 2008, ­chapter 12, “The Irrelevance of the Jury Theorem.” For a more detailed treatment of the theorem and its prospects in democratic theory see Goodin (2003), esp. ­chapter 5, and his discussion of the Bayesian variant in c­ hapter 6. Both Estlund and Goodin contain reference to further sources as well. 8. “[S]‌urely democracy must be largely occupied with questions that are not plausibly truth-​ apt” (Schwartzberg 2015, 199). 9. For a review of recent literature see Rossi and Sleat 2014. 10. Waldron 1999, 252–​4. 11. Ingham 2012. 12. Ingham 2012. 13. Urbinati 2014, 81–​127; see Landemore 2017: 292–​3 for a defense.

128    David Estlund and Hélène Landemore 14. Here we borrow from Landemore (2013). 15. There are four distinct conditions for the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem to apply (Page 2007, 163). Whether or not they all translate neatly to the real world of politics and democratic citizens is a contested issue. See Anderson 2006 and Landemore 2013 for application to the democratic context. 16. This is less true of Habermas (1996) and Young (2000) who both make use of the all affected interests principle to define the appropriate scope of inclusion. Neither, however, theorizes this condition with the degree of elaboration it probably deserves. 17. None of this evidence, howeve, fully answers the “evidence constraint” according to Sean Ingham (2012). More still needs to be said about how we can extrapolate from the cases where all reasonable people agree that democracy does better than a random to the vast majority of political questions where disagreement subsits. 18. Aiming for unanimity gives individuals an incentive to vote against their preferences to produce what, given their information, is likely to be the better outcome.

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Chapter 8

De l iberation a nd J u st i c e Stefan Rummens

In recent decades, the debates on democracy and justice have been among the most prominent within political philosophy. Somewhat remarkably, perhaps, the two debates have remained separate to a large extent. Although there has been some explicit discussion of the relationship between justice and democracy (Shapiro 1999; Young 2000; Dowding, Goodin, and Pateman 2004), the topic has overall drawn relatively little attention. Additionally, most scholars within political philosophy can be classified rather uncontroversially as working in the field either of democracy or of justice. Scholars working in both domains at the same time have remained the exception. In a way, this separation should not really surprise us. If you are mainly concerned with the proper functioning of democracy as a regime in which citizens decide for themselves how they want to organize society, you might look with some suspicion at philosophers who are apparently trying to decide among each other what an ideally just society looks like. The other way around, philosophers dedicated to the debate on justice might be somewhat suspicious about the role and importance of democracy, because they might feel that the democratic process all too often leads to outcomes that are incompatible with the requirements a just society, according to them, should meet. Although the mutual suspicion is, in certain respects, understandable, I will argue that it is unjustified. The main problem with the concerns on both sides is that they are premised on the shared assumption that democracy and justice are two different things, only contingently and externally related within the context of the democratic state. Because, on this assumption, a genuine conflict between the two can always arise, it seems as though we are put in a position where we have to choose sides. In case of conflict, should democracy trump justice or should we, rather, prioritize justice over democracy? Some of the leading scholars working in discourse theory—​Jürgen Habermas (1996; 2003) and, in his wake, Rainer Forst (2011; 2012; 2014)—​have argued, however, that this alleged tension between justice and democracy is spurious. On the deliberative model of democracy, as they conceive it, justice and democracy are internally related in the

Deliberation and Justice    133 sense that there can be no justice without democracy and no democracy without justice. They defend, more specifically, a constructivist conception of justice which is committed to the substantive ideal of justice-​as-​impartiality but which recognizes, at the same time, that the specific requirements of justice can only be determined on the basis of an inclusive process of democratic deliberation. There is, on this account, no justice without democracy in the sense that the specific content of justice can only be democratically determined by the citizens themselves. At the same time, there is no democracy without justice in the sense that democratic outcomes are legitimate only to the extent that they can, indeed, be understood as proper elaborations of the substantive but abstract ideal of justice-​as-​impartiality.

Mapping the Debate In order to appreciate the unique way in which a constructivist understanding of the deliberative model of democracy is able to unsettle and overcome the basic oppositions characterizing the debate about the relation between justice and democracy, it is important to first clarify the structure of this debate more generally. Here, two related but different distinctions play a key role. The first of these looks at the relation from the side of democracy and asks whether democracy has instrumental or intrinsic value. Authors arguing in favor of the instrumental value of democracy assume that democracy is valuable only to the extent that it generates outcomes which are just according to some standard independent from the democratic ideal itself (Arneson 2004; 2009). This instrumental relation has been understood, by some, as a relation of implementation, whereby democracy serves the purpose of implementing an ideal of justice which can be determined prior to the democratic process. Philippe Van Parijs (2011), for instance, characterizes the task of the philosopher in terms of a “Rawls–​Machiavelli program”: the political philosopher should first determine what a just society looks like and then try to determine which political institutions are most conducive to the realization of the just society thus conceived. Alternatively, the instrumental relation has been understood in essentially epistemic terms, whereby democracy aims to discover rather than implement the requirements of justice. Most prominent, in this regard, are the contributions by David Estlund (1997; 2008) and Hélène Landemore (2012; 2013), who both argue that the democratic procedure effectively provides the best means available for tracking the truth about justice. Authors emphasizing the intrinsic value of democracy, in contrast, argue that the importance of democracy does not depend on the consequences of its operation, but rests on the intrinsic features of the democratic procedure itself. This intrinsic value can be spelled out in different ways. Maria Paula Saffon and Nadia Urbinati (2013) and Christian Rostbøll (2015), for instance, argue that democracy expresses our respect for the political freedom of our fellow citizens. Others, however, have focused more on the idea of equality. Jeremy Waldron (1999) conceives of the democratic

134   Stefan Rummens procedure as expressing equal respect for all citizens. Laura Valentini (2012) further specifies the idea of equal respect in terms of mutual justifiability, arguing that the democratic procedure reflects citizens’ status as autonomous agents and practical reasoners. Thomas Christiano (2004; 2008), in turn, has argued that democracy is intrinsically valuable because it publicly expresses the ideal of the equal advancement of interests. The second main distinction in this debate looks at the relation between justice and democracy from the side of justice and concerns the meta-​ethical status of the ideal of justice. Here, the question arises whether we should think of justice in procedural or substantive terms. Most authors in this debate adhere to a substantive conception of justice. This means that they assume that there is always exactly one objectively correct answer in matters of justice and that this answer is, moreover, independent of the democratic procedure itself. Authors advocating a procedural conception of justice, in contrast, believe that the justice of democratic decisions does not depend on their substantive content but is constituted, rather, by the fact that they are the outcomes of the appropriate democratic procedures. This position has been defended by, for instance, Hans Kelsen (2013) and is also presupposed, as argued by Gerry Mackie (2011), in aggregative or social choice models of democracy. Recently, Fabienne Peter (2007) has defended a proceduralist reading of the deliberative model of democracy. Although many authors also ascribe the proceduralist position to Robert Dahl (1979; 1989), his position is not always clear and often involves more substantive assumptions. Although the two main distinctions are related, they do not coincide. They are related in the sense that people who emphasize the instrumental value of democracy are, thereby, necessarily committed to a substantive conception of justice because they are assuming that there is a procedure-​independent standard of justice which democracy helps to either implement or discover (Arneson 2004, 43; Estlund 2008, 21–​39; Landemore 2013, 208–​31). They are not identical, however, in the sense that authors committed to the intrinsic value of democracy can subscribe to either a procedural or a substantive conception of justice. Perhaps somewhat unexpectedly, most of these authors in fact endorse a substantive conception and, thus, assume that there is a procedure-​independent truth of the matter with regard to justice (Christiano 2004, 269; Valentini 2012, 182). They argue, however, that this truth is epistemically intractable and that there exists, therefore, a deep and ineliminable disagreement about basic questions of justice. In the face of this disagreement about the substantive requirements of justice as equal respect, we have no alternative but to fall back on the intrinsic value of democracy as the procedural expression of the equal respect we owe each other as citizens (Christiano 2004, 274; 2008, 75–​8; Valentini 2012, 193). Waldron’s position is a bit different, in this regard, in the sense that he chooses to remain agnostic. He has explicitly argued that his endorsement of the intrinsic value of democracy is independent of the meta-​ethical status of the idea of justice and, thus, compatible with both a procedural and a substantive conception (Waldron 1999, 164–​87).

Deliberation and Justice    135

Democratic Deliberation as the Construction of Justice Ever since Habermas first developed his discourse theory of democracy, there has been an ongoing debate about whether the theory should be qualified as either procedural or substantive (e.g. Habermas 1995; Rawls 1995; Lafont 2003; McMahon 2011). I  believe, however, that this debate has been hampered by the fact that most of the participants tacitly assume the relevance of the distinctions just presented and, thus, take it for granted that there exists a genuine dichotomy between procedure and substance. Only a few commentators (Forst 2011; 2012; Gilabert 2005; Gledhill 2011; 2017) have fully appreciated that Habermas’s model of deliberative democracy in fact fails to conform to these distinctions because his constructivist approach combines procedural and substantive elements in a unique an inextricable manner (Rummens 2006; 2007). One way of explaining this is by focusing on Habermas’s characterization of the democratic state as a constitutional project. In Between Facts and Norms (1996), he explains that the core of every constitutional system consists of a basic but abstract scheme of rights which essentially aims to protect both the private and the public autonomy of all citizens in an impartial manner. Although this abstract scheme provides the universal and substantive normative core of every democratic state, actual democratic procedures—​in which citizens effectively exercise their public autonomy—​are needed to further elaborate this abstract scheme into a more specific constitution as well as more specific legislation and policies. Importantly, Habermas’s conceptualization of the ideal of impartiality—​captured by his moral principle of universalizability—​contends that impartial norms are context-​ sensitive in the sense that they give equal concern to the values and interests of all the people affected by the norm (Habermas 2003). Because cultural, social, economic, and other circumstances necessarily have an impact on the values and interests of people and since these circumstances will also always differ from one society to the next, it is no surprise that this democratic elaboration of the universal scheme of rights will yield different outcomes in different societies. For Habermas (1996, 126–​31), this is not a problem, but simply means that every democratic state should be understood in terms of a particular and historical constitutional project in which the citizens of a political community jointly determine the unique ways in which they want to realize their private and public autonomy as free and equal citizens. In line with the work of Habermas, Rainer Forst has elaborated his own version of the constructivist understanding of the democratic process, which more explicitly, and rightly so, highlights that duties of justice do not merely arise within the context of an already existing constitutional state. According to Forst (2011, 35–​7), individuals enjoy a basic right to justification which implies that the norms and institutional arrangements structuring society should be justifiable on the basis of reasons which are general and

136   Stefan Rummens reciprocal. When discussing the characteristics of a just society, we should, furthermore, distinguish a “minimal” or “fundamental” account of justice from a “maximal” or “full” account. A minimal account of justice is concerned with the institutionalization of a basic structure of justification (national and/​or transnational) which guarantees, in still general terms, the basic (human) rights of all individual people. These basic rights, thereby, realize the conditions of possibility for further processes of democratic justification in which the people themselves provide a maximal account of justice which gives much more specific and context-​sensitive content to these basic rights and which determines how the citizens want to organize their own society in a just and impartial manner.

Beyond the Traditional Distinctions On this kind of constructivist account, justice and democracy are no longer competing concerns but, rather, mutually presuppose each other. As a consequence, the distinctions between the instrumental versus intrinsic value of democracy or the procedural versus substantive nature of justice are inadequate to capture the proper nature of this account. Let us turn, first, to the way in which justice presupposes democracy. When defending the instrumental value of democracy or the substantive nature of justice, scholars assume that there are substantive standards of justice independent of the democratic procedure. Although the constructivist account agrees with these scholars that there is a substantive standard of justice—​the requirement of impartiality (or generality and reciprocity)—​it also maintains, importantly, that this standard is not independent of the democratic procedure itself. The basic reason for this is that deliberative democracy advocates a context-​sensitive conception of impartiality which aims to take into consideration the concerns and values of citizens as concrete others (Benhabib 1992, 158–​70). As a result, the specific requirements of justice-​as-​impartiality can only be determined on the basis of actual democratic processes in which these citizens effectively participate. As I have explained elsewhere (Rummens 2007), actual deliberation is ineliminable because of its heuristic and transformative roles. The heuristic role of actual participation refers to the fact that it serves the purpose of detecting all the possibly relevant needs, interests, and concerns people might have. Since people have a privileged understanding of their own concerns, it is crucial that they are not only being spoken for, but that they can actually speak for themselves and bring their own concerns to the table. The transformative role of deliberation refers to the fact that an actual exchange of reasons is also always a learning process in which the preferences of the participants are susceptible to change. As Habermas has explained, reasonable discourse is always a process of mutual role-​taking in which citizens learn to look at issues from the perspective of others and, subsequently, jointly determine how the different needs, interests, and values of all the participants should be reconciled in an impartial manner (Habermas 2003).

Deliberation and Justice    137 Since justice-​as-​impartiality refers to the concrete values and interests of citizens and since the relevant values and interests are not independently given, but actually formed and transformed in the democratic process itself, this process is not an “instrumental” procedure in which independent, substantive truths about justice are either implemented or discovered but, rather, one in which the specific requirements of justice are always newly constructed. If we turn, next, to the way in which democracy also presupposes justice, it will become clear why deliberative democracy equally fails to fit the categories of “intrinsic” democracy or “procedural” justice. On the deliberative model, democracy is understood as a practice of mutual justification in which citizens jointly determine the specific content of justice-​as-​impartiality. This means that democracy is not assumed to have a merely intrinsic value which is independent of the value of justice. On the contrary, democracy is valuable precisely because it is the only way in which we can construct the specific requirements of justice. Democratic deliberation thereby also does not represent a case of procedural justice. If we compare the democratic procedure with throwing a die—​a paradigm example of proceduralism—​the difference becomes clear. In the case of throwing a die (or any other form of gambling), the “rightness” of the outcome is determined exclusively by procedural aspects—​throwing in the correct manner, using a die that is not loaded, etc.—​and it is, thereby, furthermore irrelevant which of the possible outcomes (one to six) is actually realized. In the case of democratic deliberation, however, the situation is completely different. Although the right outcome can, here, also only be determined on the basis of the democratic procedure itself, not all possible outcomes are equally acceptable. On the contrary, in this case, the quality of the actual outcome is highly relevant: deliberation serves the purpose of determining that particular outcome which best realizes the substantive ideal of the impartial realization of both the private and the public autonomy of all citizens. The presence of this substantive ideal implies, furthermore, that there is a specific sense in which requirements of justice can sometimes “trump” democracy. If the democratic process yields outcomes which are clear violations of the ideal of impartiality—​ for instance because they violate the basic liberties of some citizens—​there is adequate reason for rejecting these outcomes as illegitimate. This does not bring us back to a “justice first” position, however, because—​as Habermas repeatedly emphasizes—​the constraints thus imposed by (minimal) justice are not “external” constraints but rather represent the “internal” conditions of possibility of democracy as a process in which we elaborate the requirements of (maximal) justice. Although this claim is of central importance for the constructivist conception of just­ ice, I have to agree with Forst that Habermas has not provided a fully adequate argument for it since he wrongly assumes that the need for the protection of basic liberties is essentially inherent in the medium of law as such (Habermas 1996, 118–​31). Forst, in contrast, rightly argues that the protection of basic liberties is a moral duty which does not depend on the prior existence of a legal framework but which is, rather, necessarily presupposed by the requirement to provide general and reciprocal justifications for the

138   Stefan Rummens norms governing human interactions (Forst 2012, 101–​16, 205–​21). As I  have argued elsewhere (Rummens 2006; 2008), a commitment to democratic deliberation as the ultimate source of political authority effectively precludes the possibility of justifying the curtailment of the basic liberties of some of the participants. Therefore, a democratic practice of mutual justification yielding manifestly unjust results—​although always a possibility in real-​life politics—​necessarily amounts to a performative contradiction perpetrated by its participants.

The Roles of the Philosopher The distinction between minimal and maximal justice implies that philosophers can participate in the debate about justice on two different levels. Much of the discourse-​ theoretical work of both Habermas and Forst can be understood as contributing to the development of an adequate account of minimal justice. Both have been investigating the basic requirements that any minimally just society has to meet and that constitute the conditions of possibility permitting the development of a more fully just society. Although such an account of minimal justice necessarily operates at a generally abstract level—​in the sense that it is unable to provide very specific principles of justice—​it is substantive enough to have significant critical bite. Forst (2011), for instance, has shown how the basic right to justification entails a strong commitment to universal human rights and both Forst (2011) and Habermas (2001; 2006) have extensively argued that—​ in our current postnational constellation—​the pursuit of a more just society requires the development of much stronger transnational democratic institutions and even the constitutionalization of the world order (see also Fraser 2009). At the same time, philosophers are of course also capable of contributing to the development of a maximal account of justice. From the perspective of the constructivist account defended here, most of the philosophical work that is being done in the field of justice should effectively be understood as philosophical contributions to the democratic debate about (maximal) justice in which, ultimately, citizens have to decide how they want to shape their own society. This means that a constructivist account of minimal justice does not want to choose between, say, utilitarianism, luck-​egalitarianism, capability theory, or a Rawlsian approach to justice, but can, rather, welcome all of these as conceptual enrichments of the wider public debate on maximal justice. In an interesting exchange with Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth about the proper nature of a critical theory of justice, Rainer Forst (2011, 109–​25) consequently rejects their attempts to interpret all issues of justice in terms of either “recognition” (Honneth) or “recognition and redistribution” (Fraser) and pleads, instead, for a radically pluralistic approach. In his view, arguments about maximal justice “should be open to a wide range of normative considerations, from the tradition of a political community to general human needs or particular capabilities, questions of effectiveness, specific ethical values and so on” (Forst 2011, 119–​20).

Deliberation and Justice    139 This pluralism also marks a decisive difference between the constructivist approach of Forst and Habermas on the one hand and Amartya Sen’s recent attempts to reconcile his capability theory with deliberative democracy on the other (Sen 1999; 2009; Crocker 2008). Interestingly, Sen emphasizes the constructive role of democratic deliberation as a process in which the values and priorities of citizens with regard to the kinds of capabilities that need to be fostered in a just society are being formed and transformed on the basis of a discursive exchange of reasons (Sen 1999, 152–​54; 2009, 326, 336; Robeyns 2005, 198). As Rutger Claassen (2011, 497) rightly argues, however, the choices that Sen’s theory thus “outsources” to democracy remain limited in the sense that the most fundamental choice, i.e. the choice for capabilities as the appropriate metric of justice (over and against alternative metrics such as utility, resources, or primary goods), is always already presupposed and not open to the public’s discretion. From the point of view of discourse theory, this simply means that Sen’s theory, in spite of its affinities with the deliberative paradigm, already represents a contribution to a more maximal account of justice. According to Claassen (2011), Sen’s theory illustrates the more general fact that every theory of justice is characterized by an arbitrary cut-​off point between things that it decides on the basis of philosophical reasons and things that it is prepared to outsource to the democratic process. Here, however, the constructivist approach strongly disagrees since the cut-​off point between minimal and maximal justice it advocates is not arbitary at all but refers, rather, to the minimal conditions of possibility that have to be met for a discursive process of justification to become possible in the first place. Although philosophers can and do contribute to the development of both minimal and maximal accounts of justice, it is important to analytically distinguish the different roles philosophers are taking up in each case. Whereas a minimal account of justice is concerned with a reconstruction of the presuppositions of democratic practices of justification, a maximal account aims to contribute to the democratic construction of the requirements a more fully just society should meet. In order to appreciate the nature of this distinction, it is important to avoid some possible misunderstandings. The difference between the two roles should, first of all, not be understood in terms of a difference between the philosopher-​king and the philosopher-​ citizen (Walzer 1981; Claassen 2011). In a response to Anthony Simon Laden (2014), Forst rightly argues that the reconstructive role of the philosopher does not turn him into an expert who paternalistically aims to impose a conception of minimal justice on society. The reconstruction simply aims to lay out the implicit commitments all participants necessarily already accept when engaging in democratic practices of mutual justification (Forst 2014, 196–​7). This also means, secondly and relatedly, that Forst’s own attempt to characterize the difference as one between moral and political constructivism is misguided (Forst 2012, 213–​21). The reconstructive analysis of the preconditions of a just society has more than mere moral importance. The requirements of minimal justice are obviously political in the sense that they refer to the conditions a minimally just political order has to meet. Because these conditions can only be realized and maintained through actual political processes, it is, moreover, important that they are also

140   Stefan Rummens thematized in the public debate in order to ensure that politically engaged citizens have an adequate understanding of their own practices and commitments as participants in justificatory processes. Since neither minimal nor maximal accounts of justice aim to replace or sidestep actual political processes, the main difference between them lies elsewhere. In my view, this difference essentially concerns their status within the actual public debate. Whereas accounts of minimal justice refer to non-​negotiable preconditions of the democratic practice, accounts of maximal justice are necessarily fallible and partial contributions to the democratic construction of justice-​as-​impartiality. This difference can be further clarified by making use of the conceptual framework developed by the later Rawls (1996).

Overlapping Consensus and Reasonable Disagreement In my view, a coherent understanding of the constructivist conception of justice shares with Rawls a commitment to the need for an overlapping consensus on matters of just­ ice, but disagrees with Rawls about the scope and nature of this consensus. A stable, just, and democratic society presupposes an overlapping consensus on the requirements of minimal justice because these represent the basic conditions under which a just society becomes possible. People failing to acknowledge the importance of protecting both the private and the public autonomy of all citizens in an impartial manner are unreasonable in the sense that they fail to endorse the basic commitments necessarily presupposed by discursive practices of democratic justification. As Rawls has rightly emphasized, unreasonable people can pose an important threat to a just and democratic society and should therefore be contained “like war and disease” (Rawls 1996, 64 n.19; see also Rummens and Abts 2010). With regard to the scope and the nature of the overlapping consensus, there are, however, two main differences between the constructivist approach defended here and Rawls’s political liberalism. Rawls assumes, first of all, that the overlapping consensus is much thicker than a mere minimal account of justice. He argues that the consensus concerns a political conception of justice which is complete in the sense that it is capable of providing answers to all questions involving constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice (Rawls 1996, 225). For discourse theory, in contrast, the overlapping consensus which cannot be reasonably challenged is restricted to the much thinner substantive core which consists of the basic scheme of rights or the basic right to justification. In this context, Forst (2012, 106–​7) argues that Rawls’s political conception of justice already overly pre-​empts the democratic debate as a procedure in which the principles of justice need to be constructed by the citizens themselves in a historically particular and context-​specific manner. The strict separation between the political

Deliberation and Justice    141 conception of justice (“the right”) and the wider comprehensive doctrines of citizens (“the good”), which Rawls’s notion of “completeness” aims to emphasize, is, thereby, alien to the constructivist approach. Because minimal justice is underdetermined (rather than “complete”), a maximal account of justice will necessarily have to rely on input from the wider conceptions held by citizens and will therefore also necessarily be “ethically colored” in the sense of reflecting the diversity of values and interests of the people involved (Habermas 1998, 225). The second and related difference concerns the scope for reasonable disagreement, which, for Rawls, only exists with regard to matters pertaining to the good life. In this regard, I believe that a coherent account of deliberative justice needs to take a different position and make an important distinction. On the one hand, the overlapping consensus on the requirements of minimal justice has to be presupposed as the condition of possibility of reasonable processes of discursive justification, and has to be fought for and imposed over and against the unreasonable views held by the enemies of the just society. Against the background of this overlapping consensus, there is, on the other hand, room for the existence of reasonable disagreement with regard to matters of maximal justice. Since the “truth” in matters of justice is the outcome of a heuristic and transformative process of deliberation, it can never be accessible from the position of any one single individual in society. Individual contributions to this debate therefore always necessarily embody partial and limited perspectives. In this context, disagreement is not only to be expected, but is actually an ineliminable ingredient of the discursive process of construction. Of course, discourse theorists are often keen to emphasize that reasonable deliberation not only starts from a shared consensus on minimal justice but should ideally also result in a wider consensus regarding matters of maximal justice. As I have argued elsewhere (Rummens 2008; 2012), however, this wider consensus should remain a counterfactual regulative ideal. Since justice requires us to take into consideration the needs and values of concrete individuals living in a historically evolving society, the democratic contestation of all actual agreements forms a crucial and constitutive part of the deliberative process. In a society of concrete human beings, the realization of justice is an open-​ended and contested project in which no final answers can or schould be given.

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142   Stefan Rummens Claassen, R. (2011). Making Capability Lists: Philosophy versus Democracy. Political Studies, 59: 491–​508. Crocker, D. (2008). Ethics of Global Development:  Agency, Capability, and Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Dahl, R. A. (1979). Procedural Democracy. In Philosophy, Politics and Society: Fifth Series, ed. P. Laslett and J. Fishkin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press), 97–​133. Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Dowding, K., Goodin, R. E., and Pateman, C. (eds) (2004). Justice and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Estlund, D. (1997). Beyond Fairness and Deliberation: The Epistemic Dimension of Democratic Authority. In Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, ed. J. Bohmand and W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 173–​204. Estlund, D. (2008). Democratic Authority:  A Philosophical Framework (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Forst, R. (2011). Justification and Critique: Towards a Critical Theory of Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press). Forst, R. (2012). The Right to Justification:  Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice (New York: Columbia University Press). Forst, R. (2014). Justice, Demoracy and the Right to Justification:  Rainer Forst in Dialogue (London: Bloomsbury). Fraser, N. (2009). Scales of Justice:  Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (New York: Columbia University Press). Gilabert, P. (2005). The Substantive Dimension of Deliberative Practical Rationality. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 31: 185–​210. Gledhill, J. (2011). Procedure in Substance and Substance in Procedure: Reframing the Rawls–​ Habermas Debate. In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, ed. J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (New York: Routledge), 181–​99. Gledhill, J. (2017). The Ideal and Reality of Epistemic Proceduralism. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 20: 486–​507. Habermas, J. (1995). Reconciliation through the Public Use of Reason:  Remarks on John Rawls’s Political Liberalism. Journal of Philosophy, 92: 109–​31. Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Habermas, J. (1998). The Inclusion of the Other:  Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Habermas, J. (2001). The Postnational Constellation, trans. M. Pensky (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Habermas, J. (2003). Rightness versus Truth: On the Sense of Normative Validity in Moral Judgments and Norms. In Truth and Justification (Cambridge: Polity Press), 237–​75. Habermas, J. (2006). The Divided West (Cambridge: Polity Press). Kelsen, H. (2013). The Essence and Value of Democracy, ed. N. Urbinati and C. Invernizzi Accetti, trans. B. Graf (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Laden, A. S. (2014). The Practice of Equality. In Justice, Democracy and the Right to Justification: Rainer Forst in Dialogue, ed. R. Forst (London: Bloomsbury), 103–​26. Lafont, C. (2003). Procedural Justice? Implications of the Rawls–​ Habermas debate for Discourse Ethics. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 29: 163–​81.

Deliberation and Justice    143 Landemore, H. E. (2012). Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and Why It Matters. Journal of Public Deliberation, 8 (1): Article 7. Landemore, H. E. (2013). Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Mackie, G. (2011). The Values of Democratic Proceduralism. Irish Political Studies, 26: 439–​53. McMahon, C. (2011). Habermas, Rawls and Moral Impartiality. In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, ed. J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (New York: Routledge), 200–​23. Peter, F. (2007). Democratic Legitimacy and Proceduralist Social Epistemology. Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 6: 329–​53. Rawls, J. (1995). Reply to Habermas. Journal of Philosophy, 92: 132–​80. Rawls, J. (1996). Political Liberalism: With a New Introduction and the “Reply to Habermas” (New York: Columbia University Press). Robeyns, I. (2005). Selecting Capabilities for Quality of Life Measurement. Social Indicators Research, 74: 191–​215. Rostbøll, C. F. (2015). The Non-​Instrumental Value of Democracy: The Freedom Argument. Constellations, 22: 267–​78. Rummens, S. (2006). Debate:  The Co-​ Originality of Private and Public Autonomy in Deliberative Democracy. Journal of Political Philosophy, 14: 469–​81. Rummens, S. (2007). Democratic Deliberation as the Open-​Ended Construction of Justice. Ratio Juris, 20: 335–​54. Rummens, S. (2008). Deliberation Interrupted: Confronting Jürgen Habermas with Claude Lefort. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 34: 383–​408. Rummens, S. (2012). Staging Deliberation:  The Role of Representative Institutions in the Deliberative Democratic Process. Journal of Political Philosophy, 20: 23–​44. Rummens, S. and Abts, K. (2010). Defending Democracy: The Concentric Containment of Political Extremism. Political Studies, 58: 649–​65. Saffon, M. P. and Urbinati, N. (2013). Procedural Democracy, the Bulwark of Equal Liberty. Political Theory, 41: 441–​81. Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books). Sen, A. (2009). The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Shapiro, I. (1999). Democratic Justice (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Valentini, L. (2012). Justice, Disagreement and Democracy. British Journal of Political Science, 43: 177–​99. Van Parijs, P. (2011). Just Democracy: The Rawls–​Machiavelli Programme (Colchester: ECPR Press). Waldron, J. (1999). Law and Disagreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Walzer, M. (1981). Philosophy and Democracy. Political Theory, 9: 379–​99. Young, I. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Chapter 9

Deliberat i on and Equa l i t y Edana Beauvais

Political systems are democratic to the extent that people are empowered to participate in political practices—​such as voting, representing, deliberating, and resisting—​ that contribute to self-​and collective-​ rule (Warren 2017). Equality distributes empowerments that enable those affected by collective endeavors to participate in, and influence democratic practices. In this chapter, I explain why equality and inclusion are required before deliberation functions democratically, and I identify institutional arrangements for promoting equality and empowered inclusion in deliberative practices. In the first section of this chapter, I elucidate the relationship between equality, inclusion, and deliberation in democratic systems. I describe two distinguishable values of equality required for distributing empowerments that enable people’s participation in forming individual and collective judgments and decisions: the value of universal moral equality, and the value of equity. I argue that both values can and must be achieved to empower those affected by collective endeavors to participate in deliberative processes of linking personal preferences into collective agendas, and implementing agendas as democratic collective decisions. In the second section, I  describe different practices and institutional arrangements for promoting equality and empowered inclusion in deliberative practices. I  begin by describing how deliberation requires a legal framework guaranteeing liberties and participation rights to engender formally equal opportunities for participation. Within this legal context, positive efforts must be made to ensure disempowered social group members can use these opportunities. Finally, I  turn my attention to the different ways equality’s twin values can be achieved when designing face-​to-​face deliberative “micro-​institutional” forums, such as deliberative mini-​publics.

Deliberation and Equality    145

Equality and Inclusion in Democratic Systems Political systems are democratic to the extent that people are included in political practices (such as voting or deliberating), can communicatively link personal preferences into collective opinions and agendas, and are empowered to turn collective agendas into collective decisions (Warren 2017). Democratic processes always begin with inclusion, since collective agendas and decisions are only “democratic” to the degree that those affected by collective outcomes are empowered to influence them (Beauvais 2017; Fung 2013; Goodin 2007; Young 2000). There is a close relationship between equality and inclusion. Note that by “equality” I mean “structural equality,” or equality between the members of salient social groups such as class, gender, ethnic, or linguistic groups (rather than, say, where there are idiosyncratic differences between individuals) (Harell and Stolle 2010). Social groups are an expression of social relations, and structural equality between social groups denotes egalitarian social relations (Young 2011). The problem with inequality is that it engenders asymmetrical empowerments which prevent disempowered social group members from participating in political practices whose outcomes, nevertheless, affect them. Equality contains two distinguishable values:  universal (moral) equality and what I call equity (cf. Williams 1973; Beauvais and Bächtiger 2016). Universal moral equality distributes symmetrical empowerments by recognizing certain liberties that guard against coercion. Universal moral equality involves abstracting from social circumstances as well as recognizing the fundamental sameness of common humanity, by treating people as if they shared a universal starting point—​such as the same baseline of moral worth—​and had the same fundamental needs, such as the need for life and liberty. However, members of different social groups do not “arrive at life’s starting lines” with the same resources even if they share the same baseline of moral worth (Williams 2000, 60). So the second value of equality—​which I refer to as equity—​requires the demands of justice to attend to social circumstances, and recognizes systematic differences (such as structural inequalities) between the members of different social groups (see also Beauvais and Bächtiger 2016). “Justice” refers not only to the redistribution of wealth when large economic inequalities distort empowerment, but more generally to the promotion of conditions enabling social group members to develop and exercise their individual and collective capacities (Young 2011, 39). Unlike universal moral equality, the value of equity lies in treating members of different social groups as if they have different starting points—​in their access to wealth and power, or their physical, cognitive, or linguistic styles and abilities—​and so have different needs for developing and exercising individual and collective capacities to their fullest extent.

146   Edana Beauvais As I have suggested, structural inequalities threaten to undermine democratic governance precisely because inequalities engender asymmetrical power relations that entail exclusions. Inequality and the resulting exclusions can be thought of as “systematic constraints” on social group members, limiting their ability to exercise and develop their individual capacities and preventing their participation in political practices (Young 2011, 41). Not only does inequality prevent political practices such as deliberating or voting from functioning democratically, but its disabling constraints and resulting exclusions contribute to harms of oppression. The absence of universal moral equality historically permitted the exclusion of racial minorities and women from legal standing as “persons,” and helped maintain racist and patriarchal systems of oppression. Even when the moral equality of all citizens is legally recognized, failure to address remaining inequities contributes to the ongoing powerlessness and marginalization of members of historically disempowered social groups (Williams 2000; Young 2011).

Achieving Equality and Inclusion in Deliberative Practices Both the value of universal equality and the value of equity can, and must, be accommodated in democratic systems, to ensure that different political practices—​such as voting, deliberating, and representing—​entail the inclusion of those affected by collective outcomes. Empowered inclusions enable speakers to communicatively form personal preferences into collective opinions and wills, and to implement those collective wills as democratic collective decisions. In this section, I focus on achieving equality and inclusion in deliberative political practices. By “deliberation” I  mean “practices that generate influence through the offering and receiving of cognitively compelling reasons about matters of collective concern” (Warren 2017, 47). As a generic tool for achieving democratic functions, deliberation is especially suited for communicatively relating individual preferences to collective judgments. It also helps to ensure that people know the reasons that justify collective judgments, “so that individual self-​government extends through collective self-​government” (Warren 2017, 44). Universal moral equality must be recognized in the legal framework defining the context of political and deliberative practices, so that those affected by discourses cannot be barred from participating in them. This constitutional or legal framework must enable empowerments by recognizing “the universal right to equal individual liberties” as well as “participatory rights,” which include not only voting rights but also the right to speak and associate (Habermas 1998, 458). The constitutional or legal recognition of universal liberties guards against coercion and distributes symmetrical empowerments as formally equal opportunities for participation. This is the first step to promoting inclusive deliberation that contributes to democratic public opinion and will formation.

Deliberation and Equality    147 Furthermore, within this “framework guaranteed by constitutional rights,” the mass media must effectively channel public communication through a pluralistic, open network of subcultural publics that develops “more or less spontaneously” within the public sphere (Habermas 1998, 307). In addition to legally recognizing universal liberties and democratic participatory rights, democratic systems require a self-​regulating media independent of market forces (Chambers 2009). Protecting mass media from market forces requires efforts to make media more equitable, such as campaign finance reforms, or regulating political advertisements during and between elections (Bohman 1996). Other positive efforts to make media more equitable might include public subsidies for local and regional public television and radio, local or minority language programs, and internet and phone infrastructure in remote areas. As I started to explain, even when a legal framework of universal liberties and participation rights ensures social group members have formally equal opportunities to participate in political practices, and a self-​regulating media channels communication through different publics, inequalities can produce asymmetries in social group members’ abilities to use these universal empowerments. For instance, structural inequalities engender external exclusions when the poor and members of other historically disempowered groups do not have the time or resources to participate in political practices at all. Inequalities also engender “internal exclusions,” when members of disempowered groups are formally present in deliberation but their utterances are given less weight, or are ignored (Young 2000). As I explained in the previous section, people do not arrive at life’s starting lines with the same capacities and resources. People vary in their facultative and rhetorical abilities (Knight and Johnson 1997; Rosenberg 2007; Young 2000), and stereotypes, loaded metaphorical language, and aggressive conversational behaviors do disproportionate harm to disempowered social group members (Beauvais 2015; Mendelberg, Karpowitz, and Oliphant 2014; Young 2011). When structural inequalities entail external and internal exclusions that prevent historically disempowered group members from using their political rights or from influencing deliberative processes, communication can become “distorted,” and contribute to maintaining social hierarchies and harms of oppression (Bohman 2000a; 2000b; Habermas 2001). Distributing symmetrical empowerments that engender deliberative inclusion also requires pursuing the value of equity, and positive efforts to develop individual and collective capacities. This means that deliberation must be underwritten by enabling rights and practices that attend to social circumstances, and aim to ensure the participation and equitable influence of all social group members in the variegated, interlocking deliberative sites in democratic systems. Enabling rights include social programs designed to increase individual and collective capacities, among them the provision of public services such public education and healthcare, and redistributive efforts such as unemployment insurance or social security. Public services and social welfare rights help mitigate the exclusionary consequences of socio-​economic inequalities, which otherwise might deprive disadvantaged social group members from having the skills, resources, or time to deliberate. As I have mentioned, positive efforts can also increase the accessibility and responsiveness

148   Edana Beauvais of public media so as to ensure more genuinely universal and equitable access to these means of communication (Bohman 1996). State or civil society actors can help ensure that members of all social groups make use of their formal opportunities for participation, and can in particular promote more equitable influence by encouraging members of disempowered groups to participate in the public sphere. For instance, in the 1960s the Canadian federal government began publicly funding minority language protection, multicultural, and women’s advocacy groups to try and achieve the policy goal of a more unified, harmonious country (Pal 1995). Public support for these organizations helped increased participation in the public sphere by members of historically disempowered groups, enriching public deliberation and opinion formation. Furthermore, by maintaining the links thus created, the government established a communication channel between these groups, typically under-​represented in electoral politics, and Canada’s federal legislative, decision-​making body. Organizers of civic associations or public meetings may also use selective recruitment techniques to ensure that members of disempowered social groups are adequately represented (or even over-​represented) in deliberative venues in civil society, to help boost their discursive authority in deliberative interactions. Consider Nancy Fraser’s (1990, 67) description of the “feminist subaltern counterpublic,” with its diverse array of “lecture series, research centers, academic programs, conferences, conventions, festivals, and local meeting places.” Precisely because these “parallel discursive arenas” are disproportionately comprised of women, almost exclusively feminists, they empower feminist women to participate in and influence counterdiscourses, and to “formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs,” which feed back into broader public discourses about women’s interests and roles in society. Most deliberative interactions take place in civil society: through the mass media’s highly mediated and unidirectional communication flows, in the rational discourses about matters of collective concern that take place in civic associations and religious or cultural groups, and in everyday conversations (with neighbors, at parent-​teacher association meetings, and so on). Many important deliberative interactions also take place in state institutions, including legislatures, the courts, the bureaucracy, and through the dialogue between state institutions and civil society. And most reforms designed to promote equal opportunities for participation, and equitable influence in deliberative processes in the mass public, pertain more to the macrostructural context within which deliberation takes place. The hope is that “once the established rules constitute the right game—​one that promises the generation of considered public opinion—​then even the powerful actors will only contribute to the mobilization of relevant issues, facts, and arguments” (Habermas 2001, 420). Promoting equality and inclusion in public deliberation is not in essence about regulating the nature of face-​to-​face interactions: it is scarcely feasible to assign referees to regulate every such interaction in the public sphere, nor to ensure everyone is using their discursive faculties in an equal or egalitarian way. Yet a growing body of research is focusing on how to design small-​scale deliberative forums that are “symmetrical,

Deliberation and Equality    149 face-​to-​face, and equal” (Chambers 2009, 339; see also Warren 2007), or what I refer to as “micro-​institutional deliberation.”

Engineering Micro-​Institutional Deliberation Studies of micro-​institutional deliberation typically focus on small-​scale, face-​to-​face forums and institutions such as deliberative mini-​publics, where “citizens can deliberately come together to choose a course of action” (Chambers 2009, 332). A growing body of empirical research on micro-​institutional deliberation lends insight into different institutional design choices for promoting equality and inclusion in micro-​institutional deliberative forums. In this section, I review the empirical literature on institutional design choices related to participant selection methods, facilitation styles, communication formats, and decision rules. The requirement for face-​to-​face interaction imposes practical limitations on participation, and those designing deliberative events must decide who gets to participate and how they are selected. One of the most popular selection methods is self-​selection, where deliberating groups are open to any interested participants (at least, until the deliberating group is at capacity). Self-​selection promotes a kind of universal opportunity for participation that ostensibly ignores social circumstances.1 The primary benefits of self-​selection include ease of implementation, and the kind of legitimacy that comes with allowing people to use their formal equalities to influence things they care about. Of course, self-​selection is not always blind to social circumstances. Since historically empowered social group members are often more likely to participate in political practices, self-​selection can produce more homogeneous groups that reflect these inequalities (Urbinati and Warren 2008; Warren 2001). Another popular selection technique for promoting universal equality is random selection. However, rather than creating an open opportunity for participation, random selection promotes universal equality through the principle of justice referred as “isegoria,” or the equal chance for every member of a population to have their voice heard (Dworkin 2000, 194–​8). Furthermore, random selection prevents empowered social group members and powerful organized interests from over-​selecting into deliberations, and thus helps prevent asymmetrical empowerments from engendering exclusions in deliberative bodies. Compared with self-​selection, random selection also tends to do a better job of ensuring a diverse range of voices are included, which—​in addition to promoting inclusion—​promotes cognitive diversity and epistemic benefits related to learning (Landemore 2013). One drawback of a purely random sample is that it still does not guarantee the representation of disempowered social group members, particularly when they are only a small proportion of the population. This problem is exacerbated when the deliberating

150   Edana Beauvais groups are also small, since smaller random draws are, of course, less likely to be representative. Random stratified sampling—​a random sample designed to ensure the proportionate representation (or over-​representation) of certain groups—​can be used to overcome these problems. Random stratified sampling retains the fairness embodied in the principle of isegoria, but is more attentive to social contexts. Because of these attributes, it is one of the preferred techniques for selecting participants for mini-​publics, including deliberative polls, citizens’ assemblies, and citizen juries (Fung 2003; Grönlund, Bächtiger, and Setälä 2014; Smith 2009). For instance, random stratified sampling was used to ensure the representation of Indigenous participants in the Australian Citizens’ Parliament (Dryzek 2009), as well as in citizens’ assemblies in Canada (Beauvais and Warren 2015; Warren and Pearse 2008). Because Indigenous citizens comprise a small proportion of the population in both Australia and Canada, they likely would have been excluded in a purely random draw. By ensuring their representation in the citizens’ parliament and assemblies, organizers helped ensure that the resulting deliberations and collective will formation were attentive to these historically disempowered group memberss. However, as I discussed, even when members of disempowered social groups are formally represented in conversations, internal exclusions can undermine their discursive influence. Purposive sampling (or targeted recruitment) can be used specifically to recruit participants based on some social or sociodemographic criteria, and to achieve at least a given minimum—​a “threshold presence”—​of disempowered group members in mixed groups (Kymlicka 1995; Mansbridge 1981). Purposive sampling can also be used to promote “enclave deliberation among the disempowered,” when groups are mostly or entirely populated by members of disempowered social groups. While enclave deliberation is sometimes treated with skepticism because of the concern that it may contribute to groupthink and polarization (Sunstein 2000), this problem is mitigated if the enclave meets under deliberative conditions (tGrönlund, Herne, and Setälä 2015). Although greater diversity in deliberation is generally associated with positive epistemic outcomes such as learning (Bohman 2006; Landemore 2013), enclave deliberation among the disempowered can produce many of the same benefits as heterogeneous deliberation (Karpowitz, Raphael, and Hammond 2009). Another important institutional design choice for promoting equality and inclusion in micro-​institutional settings is facilitation. This is one of the most important techniques for ensuring participants’ internal inclusion (Landwehr 2014), since facilitators can ensure that everyone can use the formal opportunities to speak and, by ensuring that different sides of the debate are heard, can promote equity. It is useful to think of facilitation style in terms of a three-​category distinction: passive, where the facilitator plays a “turn-​taking enforcer” role; moderate, in which the facilitator moves the conversation along as a “designated driver,” without adding new interpretations; and active or involved, with a “quasi-​participant” facilitator who editorializes or interprets the conversation (Dillard 2013, 220). Passive facilitators may be most effective in ensuring everyone can use their formal opportunities to speak, while moderate and active

Deliberation and Equality    151 facilitators may achieve more equitable discourses that are attentive to disempowered group members. Moderate and active facilitators can engage in a kind of “discursive representation” (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008) to speak for those who are not present. For instance, they might offer hypotheticals (“What would you reply if someone argued that because of p, q?”) to increase awareness of diverse views and engender empathetic concern for those affected by the outcomes of collective opinions and decisions, even if not present in homogeneous deliberating groups (Landwehr 2014). Communication format can also have an impact on equality and inclusion in micro-​ institutional settings. Specifically, there is the question of whether deliberation should involve more combative, argumentative discussion formats (such as dialectical inquiry and devil’s advocacy), or more consensual, supportive communication. There is a concern that debate-​style, argumentative forms of deliberation may suppress marginalized voices and contribute to the internal exclusion of the disempowered. For instance, research shows there is a gender bias when assigning roles such as devil’s advocate, as women’s reputations can be harmed when they appear to challenge men (Sinclair and Kunda 2000). Summarizing their findings on gender inequality in deliberation, Mendelberg, Karpowitz, and Oliphant (2014, 35)  conclude “that egalitarian discussion rests not on adversarial but on supportive communication, which lifts women’s authority.” However, while argumentative communication formats carry the risk of marginalizing the disempowered, debate can promote epistemic benefits related to learning, by unraveling inconsistencies, bringing to light unconsidered facts, and pushing participants to provide more, and better, reasons for their positions (Manin 2005). Experimental research suggests both dialectical inquiry and devil’s advocacy can lead to a higher level of critical evaluation of assumptions and better-​quality recommendations than consensus decision-​making (Schweiger, Sandberg, and Ragan 1986). When making institutional design decisions, practitioners should be clear on what goals they want to achieve, as well as be attentive to the context within which deliberation takes place. For instance, where disempowered group members’ status is lower (for instance, if they are the numerical minority in a mixed group), consensual communication that achieves the goal of equal influence may be more appropriate. But where disempowered group members’ status is higher (such as in enclave deliberation), more argumentative formats that achieve deliberation’s epistemic aims might be preferable (Beauvais and Bächtiger 2016). Finally, if deliberating groups are expected to reach a collective decision, the decision rule affects how participants interact with one another, with consequences for equality and inclusion. For instance, experimental research reveals that the wrong institutional rules can exacerbate women’s internal exclusion in deliberation (Karpowitz and Mendelberg 2014; Mendelberg, Karpowitz, and Oliphant 2014). Thus, under majority rule when there are few women—​and women’s status is lowest—​the balance of male interruptions can contribute to women’s internal exclusion, silencing women’s voices. This problem appears to be mitigated when women’s authority is highest, such as when they comprise the majority under majority rule.

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Conclusion Democracies begin with the empowered inclusion of those affected by collective endeavors. Political systems are only democratic to the extent that people are empowered to participate in political practices—​voting, representing, deliberating, resisting, and so on—​that contribute to self-​and collective rule (Warren 2017). In this chapter, I described how equality’s twin values distribute symmetrical empowerments that enable participation in forming individual and collective judgments, and identified institutional arrangements for promoting equality and empowered inclusion in deliberative practices. Both universal moral equality, which requires abstracting from social circumstances, and equity, which requires attending to social circumstances, are essential for distributing symmetrical empowerments that entail inclusion in political practices, including deliberative practices. Institutional arrangements that promote the twin values of equality include, firstly, a legal framework guaranteeing liberties and political rights to engender formally equal opportunities for participation. Democratic systems require a self-​regulating media that is independent of market forces. Furthermore, positive efforts—​including social welfare programs, and actively engaging disempowered group members in civil society—​must be made to ensure disempowered social group members can use their opportunities for political and deliberative participation. A growing body of research also offers insight into the different ways equality’s twin values can be achieved in “micro-​institutional” forums, such as deliberative mini-​ publics. Organizers designing these kinds of micro-​institutional forums have choices related to participant recruitment, facilitation style, communication style, and decision-​ making which have different consequences for empowering participation and both external and internal inclusion. Practitioners organizing micro-​institutional forums should consider the goals of deliberation and the context within which the deliberation is taking place, with an eye to potential consequences or trade-​offs of institutional design choice (Beauvais and Bächtiger 2016). Interestingly, most empirical studies of deliberation focus on these kinds of modest, small-​scale deliberative settings, and ignore the question of how structural reforms impact deliberative quality in the unbounded mass public (Chambers 2009). Of course, some of research on micro-​institutional deliberation offers lessons for deliberative moments in the broader public. For instance, the finding that the wrong institutional rules can exacerbate women’s internal exclusion in deliberation, while the right institutional rule can close the discursive authority gap between men and women, offers important lessons for parliamentary committees or other decision-​making groups in civil society and private industry. However, we cannot ignore deliberation in the mass public, since it comprises the context within which smaller-​scale deliberative events take place, and can determine their success or failure.

Deliberation and Equality    153 For instance, small-​scale deliberative mini-​publics may produce excellent policy proposals, only to be ignored by the “benighted” mass public (Chambers 2009; cf. Warren and Pearse 2008). Alternatively, the outcomes of micro-​institutional deliberations could be ignored by decision-​makers or, worse, used as legitimating devices for their predetermined policies (Johnson 2015; Pateman 2012). Micro-​institutional processes also risk falling capture to organized interests in civil society (Beauvais and Warren 2015); this is particularly true if those interests do not expect to like the outcomes (Hendriks 2011). No matter how effectively we learn to design micro-​institutional deliberative forums, deliberation in the mass public is likely to remain the primary means for individuals to link their own preferences to collective judgments, as well as to learn about the reasons that justify those judgments. Future research might look more specifically at which institutions, including legal frameworks, redistributive schemes, and public media policies, most effectively contribute to inclusive deliberation in the unstructured mass public, and at ways of integrating micro-​institutional deliberative forums into broader public discourses.

Note 1. Of course, institutional design choices can and should be made with an awareness of context in which the deliberation takes place. Allowing participants to self-​select into a deliberating body could result in enclave deliberation—​though that might be the intention of the organizers: for instance, if organizers wished to encourage deliberation among a disempowered minority group, they could invite residents from disproportionately minority neighborhoods to self-​select into a deliberative process. The result should be enclave deliberation among the disempowered.

References Beauvais, E. (2015). Political Communication and the Use of Political Language. Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law, Special Issue:  The Informed Citizens’ Guide to Elections: Electioneering Based on the Rule of Law: 221–​44. Beauvais, E. (2017). Discursive Equality. PhD thesis, University of British Columbia. https://​ open.library.ubc.ca/​cIRcle/​collections/​24/​items/​1.0354400. Beauvais, E. and Bächtiger, A. (2016). Taking the Goals of Deliberation Seriously:  A Differentiated View on Equality and Equity in Deliberative Designs and Processes. Journal of Public Deliberation, 12(2): Article 2. Beauvais, E. and Warren, M. E. (2015). Can Citizens’ Assemblies Deepen Urban Democracy? Paper presented at the American Political Science Association. Bohman, J. (1996). Deliberative Inequalities. In Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Bohman, J. (2000a). Distorted Communication: Formal Pragmatics as a Critical Theory. In Perspectives on Habermas, ed. L. E. Hahn (Chicago, IL: Open Court), 3–​20.

154   Edana Beauvais Bohman, J. (2000b). “When Water Chokes”:  Ideology, Communication, and Practical Rationality. Constellations, 7: 382–​92. Bohman, J. (2006). Deliberative Democracy and the Epistemic Benefits of Diversity. Episteme, 3: 175–​91. Chambers, S. (2009). Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Has Deliberative Democracy Abandoned Mass Democracy? Political Theory, 37: 323–​50. Dillard, K. N. (2013). Envisioning the Role of Facilitation in Public Deliberation. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 41: 217–​35. Dryzek, J. (2009). The Australian Citizens’ Parliament:  A World First. Journal of Public Deliberation, 5(1): 1–​9. Dryzek, J. S. and Niemeyer, S. (2008). Discursive Representation. American Political Science Review, 102: 481–​93. Dworkin, R. (2000). Sovereign Virtue:  The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. Social Text, 25/​26: 56–​80. Fung, A. (2003). Survey Article: Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences. Journal of Political Philosophy, 11: 338–​67. Fung, A. (2013). The Principle of All-​Affected Interests:  An Interpretation and Defense. In Representations: Elections and Beyond, ed. J. H. Nagel and R. M. Smith (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press), 236–​68. Goodin, R. E. (2007). Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 40: 40–​68. Grönlund, K., Bächtiger, A., and Setälä, M. (eds) (2014). Deliberative Mini-​Publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process (Colchester: ECPR Press). Grönlund, K., Herne, K., and Setälä, M. (2015). Does Enclave Deliberation Polarize Opinions? Political Behavior, 37: 995–​1020. Habermas, J. (1998). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Habermas, J. (2001). On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Harell, A. and Stolle, D. (2010). Reconciling Diversity and Community? Defining Social Cohesion in Developed Democracies. In Social Cohesion:  Contemporary Theoretical Perspectives on the Study of Social Cohesion and Social Capital, ed. Marc Hooghe (Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts), 8–​43. Hendriks, C. M. (2011). The Politics of Public Deliberation:  Citizen Engagement and Interest Advocacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Johnson, G. F. (2015). Democratic Illusion: Deliberative Democracy in Canadian Public Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Karpowitz, C. F. and Mendelberg, T. (2014). The Silent Sex:  Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Karpowitz, C. F., Raphael, C., and Hammond, A. S. (2009). Deliberative Democracy and Inequality: Two Cheers for Enclave Deliberation among the Disempowered. Politics and Society, 37: 576–​615. Knight, J. and Johnson, J. (1997). What Sort of Political Equality does Deliberative Democracy Require? In Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, ed. J. Bohman and W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 279–​319.

Deliberation and Equality    155 Kymlicka, W. (1995). Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Landemore, H. (2013). Deliberation, Cognitive Diversity, and Democratic Inclusiveness: An Epistemic Argument for the Random Selection of Representatives. Synthese, 190: 1209–​31. Landwehr, C. (2014). Facilitating Deliberation:  The Role of Impartial Intermediaries in Deliberative Mini-​Publics. In Deliberative Mini-​Publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process, ed. K. Grönlund, A. Bächtiger, and M. Setälä (Colchester: ECPR Press), 77–​92. Manin, B. (2005). Democratic Deliberation:  Why We Should Promote Debate rather than Discussion. Paper delivered at the Program in Ethics and Public Affairs Seminar, Princeton University, October 13th, 2005. Mansbridge, J. J. (1981). Living with Conflict:  Representation in the Theory of Adversary Democracy. Ethics, 91: 466–​76. Mendelberg, T., Karpowitz, C. F., and Oliphant, J. B. (2014). Gender Inequality in Deliberation: Unpacking the Black Box of Interaction. Perspectives on Politics, 12: 18–​44. Pal, L. A. (1995). Interests of State: The Politics of Language, Multiculturalism, and Feminism in Canada (Montreal: McGill-​Queen’s University Press). Pateman, C. (2012). Participatory Democracy Revisited. Perspectives on Politics, 10: 7–​19. Rosenberg, S. W. (2007). Rethinking Democratic Deliberation: The Limits and Potential of Citizen Participation. Polity, 39: 335–​60. Schweiger, D. M., Sandberg, W. R., and Ragan, J. W. (1986). Group Approaches for Improving Strategic Decision Making:  A Comparative Analysis of Dialectical Inquiry, Deevil’s Advocacy, and Consensus. Academy of Management Journal, 29: 51–​7 1. Sinclair, L. and Kunda, Z. (2000). Motivated Stereotyping of Women: She’s Fine if She Praised Me but Incompetent if She Criticized Me. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26: 1329–​42. Smith, G. (2009). Democratic Innovations:  Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sunstein, C. R. (2000). Deliberative Trouble? Why Groups Go to Extremes. Yale Law Journal, 110: 71–​119. Urbinati, N. and Warren, M. E. (2008). The Concept of Representation in Contemporary Democratic Theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 387–​412. Warren, M. (2007). Institutionalizing Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberation, Participation, and Democracy:  Can the People Govern?, ed. S. W. Rosenberg (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan), 272–​88. Warren, M. E. (2001). Democracy and Association (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Warren, M. E. (2017). A Problem-​Based Approach to Democratic Theory. American Political Science Review, 111: 39–​53. Warren, M. E. and Pearse, H. (eds) (2008). Designing Deliberative Democracy:  The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Williams, B. (1973). The Idea of Equality. In Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–​1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 230–​49. Williams, M. S. (2000). Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation (Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press). Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Young, I. M. (2011). Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

Chapter 10

De l iberative De mo c rac y and Multicu lt u ra l i sm Monique Deveaux

There is much in deliberative democracy that is conducive to an inclusive and diverse public sphere. The theory’s grounding in communicative as opposed to strategic and instrumental action (Habermas 1984) requires that we respect citizens’ moral differences and not seek to remove these from democratic political life. The requirement that political decision-​making be based on public deliberation and the respectful exchange of shared reasons—​rather than on mere interests or sheer power—​ought to encourage citizens to share their different values and seek mutually acceptable agreements. Deliberative democracy’s core commitments to political equality and mutual respect in public discourse, and to the principle that legitimate outcomes are ones that all participants to deliberation can accept, arguably helps to enfranchise people who hail from disempowered communities—​including racialized and (some) cultural minorities. Finally, the acknowledgment in deliberative democracy theory of an informal public sphere, in addition to the formal public sphere of constitutional democratic politics (Habermas 1996), has the potential to open up additional pathways for democratic participation for marginalized social groups (Williams 1998; Young 1990; 2000).

Multiculturalism and Problems of Deliberative Injustice and Exclusion Despite its seeming advantages, critics have argued that deliberative democracy may throw up obstacles to the political participation of some social groups, thus hampering efforts to deepen democratic inclusion in multicultural liberal societies. These concerns, which have prompted numerous proposed amendments to deliberative democracy, can be distilled into four clusters of problems.

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Deliberative Inequalities Proponents of deliberative democracy have long acknowledged that social and economic inequalities negatively impact people’s deliberative capacities and standing (Bohman 1996; Young 1990). Just as low income and socio-​economic standing are widely understood to track low political participation rates in many democracies, so is social disadvantage thought to impact citizens’ capacities and opportunities to deliberate in political life—​their deliberative “capabilities.” This leads to a condition of “political poverty”—​“a group-​related inability to make effective use of opportunities to influence the deliberative process” (Bohman 1996, 125)—​deriving from the fact that “the material prerequisites for deliberation are unequally distributed” (Sanders 1997, 349). Where socio-​economically disadvantaged status tracks ethnic or racial minority status, deliberative inequalities are compounded. To the extent that socially disadvantaged racialized and cultural minority groups have less access to educational and political resources, their members may lack the deliberative skills of more privileged citizens to engage in reasoned public deliberation (Bohman 1996; Sanders 1997; Young 1990), as well as opportunities to do so. Group-​based structural inequalities reflecting historical injustices like colonialism and slavery also give rise to contemporary status differentials that affect whose voice carries in deliberation, and whose does not (Williams 1998). This second aspect of the problem of deliberative inequalities—​how one’s social status or standing enhances, or decreases, one’s deliberative inclusion and impact—​is bound up with ongoing practices and structures of racial and gender discrimination. Young argues that status differentials and accompanying “inequalities of power and resources” (Young 2000, 54) give rise to both external and internal forms of exclusion. Deliberative democracy has arguably tried to address the most visible forms of external exclusion affecting aggregative democracy, which “concern how people are kept outside the process of discussion and decision-​making” (Young 2000, 55). But many models of deliberation may fail to prevent internal exclusion, manifesting, for example, as an attitude of dismissal and disrespect towards those with lesser social and economic power and status (55). While there is evidence that special efforts are made to include linguistic minorities in some formal deliberative settings by making frequent reference to their interests and concerns (Pedrini, Bächtiger, and Steenbergen 2013), the same cannot be said for racialized and subordinated groups.

Cultural Group Differences and Deliberative Styles Deliberative inequalities affecting ethnocultural and racial minorities do not only arise as a result of socio-​economic disadvantage per se. Members of communities with social experiences, worldviews, or values far from the mainstream—​among them indigenous peoples, some cultural (including immigrant) identity groups, and racialized

158   Monique Deveaux minorities—​may find their views simply dismissed or “discounted” (Young 2000, 55) in seemingly democratic forums. Quasi-​deliberative public hearings or consultations sometimes block more radical perspectives on social problems by deeming certain concerns outside the scope of their mandate. In Québec, the Taylor–​Bouchard Commission on “reasonable accommodation” insisted that its sole focus was the challenges posed by religious and ethnocultural diversity to integration into Québec society and democratic political life; accordingly, it excluded justice claims relating to indigenous identity and status, and sidelined those pertaining to racism and racialization (Bouchard and Taylor 2008). Such boundary-​setting moves arguably lead to a failure of democratic legitimacy insofar as those groups that are excluded or marginalized from political deliberation are nonetheless impacted by the outcome: “they are the legal addresses of the deliberative agreements over which they have no real influence or public input” (Bohman 1996, 125–​6). Members of cultural and religious minorities may also have styles of political communication that contrast sharply with the modes of communication assumed or stipulated by norms of deliberative democracy, especially those of engaging in formal public dialogue and deliberation, and providing publicly accessible and (in some sense) impartial reasons. Some ethnocultural minorities and indigenous peoples balk at the requirement that they “translate” their claims into terms demanded by idealized models of moral dialogue, expressing a sense of alienation in response to demands that they give reasons that are universalizable (Coulthard 2010; Deveaux 2000; Young 2000). Indeed, such demands are arguably unjust insofar as they require “one party to set aside its culturally specific ways, while the other party has the luxury not only of having its style of conflict prevail but of believing that its style is culturally unmarked and universally applicable” (Kahane 2004, 42). Racialized and cultural minority groups with styles of political speech and argumentation may therefore face significant disadvantages. This has led some deliberative democrats to propose that communication in deliberative contexts should be expanded to include less formal modes of speech, such as storytelling, narrative, and testimony (Sanders 1997; Young 2000). Yet it has become clear that to fully respond to group-​based deliberative inequalities and the justice claims of ethnocultural and religious communities, core norms of deliberative democracy will need to be critically rethought and revised. For example, three categories of validity claims set out by Habermas (1984, 1996)—​those relating to truth and facts; norms; and sincerity or self-​expression—​do not capture the full range of speech that should be considered prima facie valid in moral and political discourse (Bohman 2004; Deveaux 2000; Young 2000). Traditional and indigenous societies in particular make claims that interweave myth, storytelling, and oral histories, many of which do not readily fit into any of these existing categories of validity claims (Young 2000; Hemmingsen 2016). On some interpretations, the publicity demand requires that citizens treat their identities as constructed and contestable, thereby disadvantaging indigenous peoples (Coulthard 2010; 2014). Critical interventions by those concerned about securing democratic justice for ethnocultural and racialized groups have thus led some theorists to move away from an orthodox version of discourse ethics and towards what Urbinati has called “an agonistic form of deliberative democracy” (2000, 774).

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Identity Group Claims and Deliberative Virtues To better understand calls for a shift towards an agonistic form of deliberative democracy, it is useful to consider which deliberative virtues are required by more traditional approaches to discourse ethics, and how these might be expected to disadvantage different social groups in multicultural and racially diverse societies. Melissa Williams (1998) has argued that the requirement that deliberative participants refrain from appealing to self-​interest affects members of cultural minority groups asymmetrically and unjustly. This demand, which stems from a commitment to the deliberative virtues of impartiality and universalizability, “hamper(s) marginalized group representatives’ capacity to conform to the standards of public discourse while also effectively representing their constituents’ perspectives and interests. Indeed, the status of marginalized groups as marginalized reflects, by definition, the fact that some of their fundamental interests are now systematically and unjustifiably neglected” (Williams 1998, 144). This leads Williams to conclude, rightly in my view, that “any discursive process in which that neglect can come to light must make space for the expression of group-​specific interests” (144). The valid interests that some minorities may potentially seek to introduce into deliberation may include claims about the value of their group identity and particular traditions and practices; about the importance of a specific territory (e.g. in the case of indigenous peoples); and about the need for special group representation, or other special political arrangements up to and including sovereignty, in light of their historical exclusion. Indeed, the validity of a range of cultural group-​ based justice claims in multicultural societies has been persuasively defended by (non-​deliberative) democratic theorists on the grounds of equality and individual autonomy (see especially Kymlicka 1995). It is not hard to see how the presentation and defense of these cultural group claims is hampered by a prohibition on appeals to (individual or group) self-​interest. The requirement that cultural identity and its preservation be treated as fully contestable in the context of deliberation—​ as demanded by Benhabib’s deliberative democratic approach, for example—​also flows from norms of universalizability and impartiality (Benhabib 1996; 2000). Coulthard has suggested (2014) that this requirement may disadvantage Aboriginal participants to deliberation, given the central importance of identity claims in their justice struggles. A related deliberative virtue that has come under scrutiny in light of cultural group-​based interests and justice claims is that of reciprocity. Pedrini, Bächtiger, and Steenbergen (2013) argue that the “burden of reciprocity” ought not to be demanded equally of linguistic minorities and majorities: “it is legitimate for minorities to be less responsive to majorities and do politics in a slightly more adversarial and passionate way when their vital interests are affected” (508). Their research on the Swiss political system also suggests that at least in some political contexts, when linguistic majorities reference linguistic minorities’ group interests frequently, this may lead to greater deliberative inclusion and interaction across linguistic cleavages. The more agonistic, contestatory

160   Monique Deveaux approach to deliberative democracy advocated by Urbinati (2000), Deveaux (2006), and others permits appeals to group-​based interests and advocacy within political deliberation more readily than do models of deliberation that equate any reference to interests with aggregative politics.

The Ideal of a Common Good A much-​touted advantage of Habermas’s model of discourse ethics over Rawls’s conception of political deliberation is that it does not seek to limit the scope of citizens’ contributions in advance of actual deliberation. Those liberal theories of justice in which citizens’ deliberations figure prominently —​including Rawls’s later writing—​appeal to unrevised norms of impartiality and public reason that arguably pose barriers to the inclusion of cultural minority citizens in political deliberation on terms that are acceptable to them; these models require that citizens bracket or translate their identity-​related interests in the course of making justice claims. Relatedly, Young (1990; 1996; 2000) argues that some deliberative democratic norms contribute to an ideal of the public sphere that demands an implausible and unnecessary unity. Appeals to unity or to a notion of the common good may require participants in public dialogue to set aside their identity-​ based differences and treat “difference itself [as] something to be transcended, because it is partial and divisive” (Young 2000, 42). While the idea of a common good is reflected in some communitarian approaches to deliberative democracy, it has been widely rejected by many deliberative democrats as incompatible with respect for concrete (as opposed to abstract) pluralism (Bohman 1995; 1996; 2010; Deveaux 2000; 2006; Festenstein 2005; Mansbridge 2012; Parekh 2006; Young 2000). An adjacent ideal, shared public reason, is, however, still widely endorsed by deliberative democracy theorists. But as with the notion of a common good, this norm may be taken to require that members of cultural minorities treat their identity-​related claims as contestable and negotiable in deliberation (thus rendering their claims consistent with commitments to norms of impartiality and shared public reason). This seemingly reasonable norm may therefore unwittingly compound existing colonial structures of power and privilege (Coulthard 2010; 2014). For similar reasons, a deep commitment to respect for cultural pluralism may require that we revisit strong moral consensus (Gutmann and Thompson 1996; 2004) as a goal of democratic communication; and indeed, there are good grounds to abandon consensus in favor of an ethic or ideal of compromise (Bohman 1996; Deveaux 2006). The advantages of compromise over consensus for deep moral conflicts are obvious: compromise allows citizens with significantly disparate viewpoints or worldviews to reach some form of agreement without resorting to (unjust) coercion. Where processes of moral argumentation and public discourse are expected to culminate in moral consensus, deliberative participants may be pressured to set aside identity-​based claims or demands that challenge the political status quo.

Deliberative Democracy and Multiculturalism    161

Revising Deliberative Democracy in Response to Multicultural Challenges Shifting away from consensus and towards compromise—​and possibly a more agonistic model of deliberation—​may make deliberative democracy more receptive to the justice claims of indigenous, racialized, and cultural minority groups. Deep cultural conflicts in particular may be more readily acknowledged through such shifts: it may be that “in the more difficult cases of intercultural disagreement, it will suffice that participants believe they have equitably influenced the deliberative process and agree to continue to cooperate in good faith in future deliberations” (Valadez 2001, 5). For some deliberative democrats, compromise is still primarily construed as a moral process rather than as a strategic process akin to bargaining (Festenstein 2005; Bohman 2010). Presenting public reasons is essential on this account of deliberative compromise, which may be either procedural (relating to proposed changes to deliberation or decision-making itself) or else substantive in nature (Bohman 2010, 99). Yet there is also reason to think that deliberative democracy ought to embrace negotiation (Mansbridge et al. 2010; Mansbridge 2012; Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2016) and even bargaining (Deveaux 2006; Habermas 1996; James 2004), despite the association of these mechanisms with what Mansbridge (1996) refers to as the “adversary tradition” of democracy. Negotiation and bargaining could in some circumstances require participants to make more transparent (and so to confront) their strategic interests, including in the context of intracultural disputes (Deveaux 2003; 2006). A more political conception of compromise recognizes that deep disagreements are often of a political rather than moral nature, as in the case of the conflicts arising in the reconciliation process between aboriginal peoples and settlers in Australia (Ivison 2010, 133). Importantly, more moralized conceptions of discourse ethics, such as that represented by Habermas’s (1984) earliest elaboration of communicative ethics, are more vulnerable to the multicultural challenges set out above than are more political accounts of deliberative democracy. Helpful here is Bächtiger et  al.’s (2010) distinction between two types of deliberation, one faithful to Habermas’s theory of communicative action—​with its emphasis on proceduralism and rational discourse—​and the other encompassing “more flexible forms of discourse, more emphasis on outcomes versus process, and more attention to overcoming ‘real world’ constraints on realizing normative ideals” (Bächtiger et al. 2010, 33). Along with a number of other deliberative democrats, I have argued that deliberative democracy conceived of as a political (and moral) dialogue between citizens of diverse cultural and religious communities is crucial to the construction of a more just, democratic polity (Benhabib 1996; 2002; Bohman 1996; Deveaux 2000; 2006; Mansbridge 1999; 2010; Tully 1996; Williams 1995; 1998; Young 1990; 2000).

162   Monique Deveaux In response to concerns about the consequences of discourse-​ethical norms of publicity and impartiality for the inclusion of diverse cultural communities, a number of deliberative democracy theorists have urged a shift to a more “pluralistic ideal of deliberation” (Bohman 2010, 110) consisting in a more inclusive or plural conception of public reason. Theorizing in this vein corresponds to Bächtiger et al.’s Type II deliberation in that it emphasizes “outcomes versus process” and “incorporates alternative forms of communication, such as rhetoric or story-​telling” (2010, 33–​4). A more expansive public sphere, with a wider view of what can count as potentially acceptable political communication—​moving beyond discourse ethics’ existing categories of validity claims and forms and styles of discourse—​arguably opens politics up to the discursive styles of some cultural and religious minority citizens. Nor is this opening limited to the domain of politics; law, too, can be deployed in efforts to construct more inclusive discursive norms. For example, some democratic theorists point to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (Benhabib 2002, 140–​1; Bohman 2010), which established the legal validity of indigenous oral traditional and history as evidence in court cases, as an example of how legal changes to evidentiary norms can propel broader norms of public discourse in a more democratic direction (though for a more pessimistic and critical view of this case, see Coulthard 2007, 451). But significant challenges remain. Might the worldviews and discursive modes of some communities within liberal democracies, such as traditional religious groups, be so incommensurable that not even democratic processes guided by a pluralistic account of public reason will suffice to enfranchise these groups? What of situations in which there is no common commitment to norms of democratic legitimacy and universal political equality? Then there is the matter of social and political inequality: how do entrenched disadvantages that track ethnocultural, racialized, or recent immigrant status in liberal democracies prevent members of such groups from participating in democratic deliberation (Bohman 1996, 105; Valadez 2001; Young 2000)? And how might these injustices be reversed? One way forward is suggested by Young’s idea of treating group-​based differences as a resource in democratic communication and deliberation (Young 1999; 2000). Focusing on the non-​ideal context that actually exists in liberal constitutional democracies rather than that supposed by discourse ethics’ ideal speech situation or ideal liberal and republican theories, Young argues that background social–​ structural injustices exist that powerfully shape the opportunities and perspectives of social groups (2000, 97). These “structural groups sometimes build on or overlap with cultural groups, as in most structures of racialized differentiation or ethnic-​based privilege” (Young 2000, 98). Rather than viewing “situated knowledges” (Young 2000, 114) as an impediment to public deliberation, we should treat them as a powerful deliberative resource in democratic communication. By including these socially-​situated perspectives in democratic deliberation and decision-​making a plurality of perspectives—​ especially those of socially marginalized persons and cultural and racial minorities—​we can help to counter the imposition of the status quo views of those with social privilege (Young 1999, 399).

Deliberative Democracy and Multiculturalism    163 The intertwining of social inequality with cultural or religious minority status may demand more radical revisions to deliberative democracy theory and practice than Young envisaged, however. Social inequality and disadvantage need to be borne in mind when asking what deliberative mechanisms could help to more fully (and authentically) include minority citizens in public dialogue, and how diverse citizens’ deliberative capacities might be developed in a multicultural and multiracial context (Song 2007, 70). To genuinely ensure the inclusion of citizens that are not only cultural, racial, or religious minorities, but also disadvantaged in socio-​economic terms, we will need to move past well-​meaning visions of difference-​friendly dialogue. In particular, it will require tangible measures to equalize access to the resources and capacities that citizens need to participate effectively in deliberative forums: Valadez, for example, proposes a number of concrete steps that states could take to ensure what he calls “epistemological egalitarianism” in deliberation (Valadez 2001, 7). And as suggested above, it may be that shifting away from consensus and towards compromise might better serve the goal of including cultural and religious minority citizens, regardless of the question of socio-​economic disadvantage. Similarly, as we saw, we ought arguably to include interests within deliberation, rather than bracketing them, so long as these are constrained by “ideals of mutual respect, equality, reciprocity, mutual justification, the search for fairness, and the absence of coercive power” (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 94; Mansbridge 1996). Developing more deeply democratic and inclusive forms of public deliberation depends, at least in part, on a deeper welcoming of diverse citizens’ values, perspectives, interests, and styles of political communication. The demand that cultural minority citizens bracket their identity-​related interests in order to make normative claims consistent with public reason and impartiality is, in some contexts at least, problematic and even unjust. These diverse and situated perspectives are valuable for public deliberation—​ a resource for democratic communication, and ultimately, democratic justice (Young 1999; 2000; Tully 1996). Legitimate interests evolve from the situated perspectives of those who experience disadvantage and even oppression, and these may need to be asserted in order to challenge one’s very marginalization. An important task for deliberative democracy theory, then, is to “[parse] out the appropriate normative and practical relationships between a politics aimed at forging a common good and a politics aimed at legitimately pursuing and negotiating conflicting self-​interests” (Mansbridge 2012, 790). Including interests within the domain of public deliberation opens up the possibility of using some of the components associated with adversarial politics. Negotiation and even bargaining may, in some contexts, serve to make deliberative democracy more inclusive of the diverse worldviews and reasoning of cultural minority citizens is of course a controversial one. Despite Habermas’s own acknowledgment that contexts of deep pluralism may warrant the use of bargaining and compromise (Habermas 1996: 165–​ 6), some deliberative democrats see such mechanisms as at odds with the process of public reasoning. They worry that negotiation and bargaining, and indeed political compromise in general, deny the authority of moral argumentation and so have more in common with coercive politics than discourse (Benhabib 1996, 79). But it is not clear that this is so. Arguably, reasons can and should be given to support and justify

164   Monique Deveaux identity-​related reasons for wanting particular cultural rights or access to resources, for example (Eisenberg 2009). But these reasons need not necessarily refer to deep moral differences, such as fundamental ethical conflicts; rather, reasons could speak to a range of what political scientists refer to as “ideational” factors as well as practical, real-​world interests. Where negotiation, bargaining, and compromise are used in political deliberation, it is important that agreements be treated as revisable. This is especially important in cases where deliberative decision-​making is used to mediate intra​cultural conflicts (Deveaux 2003; 2006)—​for example, around the status of religious personal or family law for settling legal disputes within a religious minority community. Revisability allows the positions of members of communities to change over time, and does not leave members beholden to a particular agreement or compromise in perpetuity—​especially to agreements which may later be rejected as unsuitable or unjust. The shifts within deliberative democracy theory that I have described and defended here have largely been propelled by demands for cultural recognition and inclusion. They move us towards a more political, less procedurally orthodox approach to public deliberation (Bächtiger et al. 2010) that permits a wider variety of styles and forms of political discourse; acknowledges a broader range of validity claims than Habermas’s model does; replaces strong moral consensus with compromise (as the goal of deliberation); and admits the legitimate role that (self-​) interests may play in dialogue and decision-​making—​allowing bargaining and negotiation in relation to these. Crucially, this revised version of deliberative democracy recognizes the frequent intertwining of cultural minority status, socio-​ economic disadvantage, and relative political powerlessness. These changes, which are more characteristic of theorizing that corresponds to Bächtiger et al.’s Type II deliberation, may appear to push deliberative democracy closer to the political approaches of its main rivals—​aggregative interest-​based and adversarial models of politics—​than some would like. Explicitly political conceptions of public deliberation do, after all, incorporate mechanisms—​bargaining, negotiation, polling, and voting—​that early iterations of discourse ethics eschewed as at odds with moral argumentation. But it may well be that incorporating “both deliberative and aggregative characteristics” makes sense from the vantage point of concerns about cultural pluralism, for all of the reasons discussed above, and because “bargaining and voting [etc.] may be needed to reach collective decisions in a plural polity” (James 2004, 51–​2). Not surprisingly, the affinities between deliberative democracy and agonistic theories of politics (Chambers 2003) become more apparent when we consider these proposed revisions to public deliberation as driven by multicultural challenges. It remains the case, of course, that even accounts of political deliberation that foreground interests, bargaining, and negotiation remain committed to the use of normative reason and the principle of communicative (as opposed to strategic) action in politics. But on the more political conception of deliberative democracy I have outlined here, conflict—​ including interest-​based conflict—​is no longer treated as something (necessarily) to be sidestepped, sublimated, or even necessarily transcended. Rather, conflict is seen as part

Deliberative Democracy and Multiculturalism    165 and parcel of an understanding of democracy as a process that includes struggle (Young 2000, 50).

The Uses of Public Deliberation for Resolving Intercultural Disputes Concrete political practices have evolved that exemplify the application of deliberative mechanisms to conflicts or disagreements involving cultural or religious minority communities. There are three main domains in which deliberative democracy has been applied to concrete issues of cultural accommodation or intercultural disputes. (i) The emergence of indigenous cultural dispute resolution models, which combine indigenous emphases on mutual decision-​making and consensus with elements of deliberative democracy (Kahane and Bell 2004). In Canada, these indigenous approaches have influenced dispute resolution processes involving indigenous land claims, and have also contributed to the shaping of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concerning the legacy of Canada’s residential school system for aboriginal children. (ii) Deliberative democratic principles have been proposed as a guide to reconciling differences in liberal yet deeply divided societies, in which national religious or linguistic minorities have a deep historical mistrust of one another and/​or the state. Examples of such societies include countries with different national linguistic communities, such as Belgium, and those with significant religious cleavages, such as Northern Ireland and Lebanon (Dembinska and Montambeault 2015; Dryzek 2005; Luskin et al. 2014; O’Flynn 2006). For more discussion of the application of deliberative mechanisms to divided societies, see Chapter 47 in this volume by Ian O’Flynn and Didier Caluwaerts on “Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies.” (iii) Deliberative democracy processes have been proposed as a means of addressing policy disagreements concerning the status (or permissibility) of social/​cultural practices or arrangements in culturally plural democratic societies; I elaborate on this below. It is easy to see the appeal of a deliberative democratic approach to resolving conflicts between cultural or religious minority groups and the state. Rather than issuing an ultimatum to groups whose social practices or arrangements run afoul of the liberal state’s norms and laws, a deliberative democratic approach makes possible a respectful dialogue based on the exchange of mutually shared reasons. Democratic legitimacy and respect for cultural groups’ own processes of internal reform also point in favor of resolving disputes through dialogical and deliberative processes. Deliberative

166   Monique Deveaux consultations—​such as government and para-​governmental deliberative hearings and consultations on policy matters affecting cultural and religious communities—​and intercultural, dialogue-​based legal dispute resolutions are a few examples of mechanisms that have been advanced and (in some jurisdictions) implemented. A dialogical intercultural approach to amending and negotiating contemporary constitutions in multination and plural societies is defended by Tully (1996) as an infinitely more just process of constitution-​building than non-​dialogical ones. Song has also argued for a broadly deliberative approach to mediating inter-​and intracultural justice conflicts; situated on the liberal end of the spectrum of deliberative democracy proponents, Song insists that deliberation in all cases must be bound by a strong commitment to liberal principles of (substantive) political equality and individual freedom (2007, 69). She urges a strong role for government in ensuring that the rights and other requirements associated with these principles are met, and cautions against leaving such matters up to groups themselves. The propensity of some cultural and religious groups to subordinate or discriminate against their own members is Song’s primary concern here; she also contends that the lack of political equality in a deliberative process necessarily undermines its democratic legitimacy. Concerns about whether women’s voices in particular are adequately included in deliberative processes have been raised by a number of theorists: Mahajan (2005, 109), for example, warns that in India “the inclusion of women in the deliberative process is by no means enough for altering existing community practices and making Personal Laws more just to women.” I share these concerns about whether women and other “minorities-​ within-​ minorities” (such as religious minorities and LGBT persons) may face discrimination and obstacles to participation in deliberative democratic processes. Yet it is not clear that merely insisting that core liberal principles be applied to deliberative designs solves these difficult problems. The insistence on seemingly uncontroversial liberal norms, such as that of gender equality—​the precise meaning of which is highly contested—​is unlikely to be effective if stipulated in advance of meaningful consultations with the community in question. Deliberative processes that pay no heed to processes internal to cultural or religious communities for deciding on matters related to the reform of social practices and arrangements also fail to accord them equal respect. Arguably, more minimalist norms—​those of non-​domination, political inclusion, and revisability—​are more relevant and just norms to guide both inter-​and intracultural democratic deliberation (Deveaux 2006, 114–​17). The advantages of these norms (unlike “thicker” deliberative norms like shared public reason and impartiality) is that they demand that deliberative processes that impact cultural communities meet a high standard of democratic legitimacy—​whether these concern inter-​or intracultural matters. Unlike deliberative liberals like Song, I contend that deliberative outcomes may still be democratically legitimate even if they affirm policies or practices/​arrangements that stand in some tension with some of the normative principles of liberalism. I came to this conclusion through studying the (partial) success of deliberative democratic processes directed at the legal reform of certain cultural practices. One of these concerned the deliberative consultations and negotiations organized by the South African Law

Deliberative Democracy and Multiculturalism    167 Commission in 1998 regarding how best to reform customary marriage in the country. The consultations, which included diverse stakeholders from different national communities, ultimately yielded legal reforms that improved yet still permitted the continuation of customary marriage under African customary law (Deveaux 2003; 2006). The country’s 1996 Constitution, which accorded protection to women’s sexual equality right yet also recognized the validity of African customary law in matters of marriage and inheritance, could not resolve the clear tension between the two. Negotiation, bargaining, compromise, and revisability were crucial to the political deliberation that stakeholders engaged in, and made possible wide agreement on new laws governing customary marriage. When thinking about the promise and perils of deliberative approaches to conflict resolution within cultural communities and between those communities and the state, it is of course essential to ask hard questions about whose voices are heard and how decisions are ultimately made. But equally, it is important to remember that public deliberation need not be confined to the traditional political forums conceived by deliberative democrats, and that a broader scope of democratic activity bodes well for less powerful group members. I noted at the outset of this chapter that activity in the informal public sphere may serve to advance democratic inclusion. For instance, the political activities of certain cultural or religious associations may help to foster greater participation in formal political processes on the part of minority citizens (Deveaux 2006; Song 2007). However, as in the case of the formal public sphere, there exist tangible barriers to the meaningful participation of marginalized subgroups within even informal political spaces. Resources are required in order to enhance the deliberative capacities of minority communities, and internal minorities within these communities, as well as to help ensure that democratic activities in the informal sphere contribute to political decision-​making in formal institutions.

Conclusion The modifications proposed in response to the challenges of multiculturalism have not satisfied all critics, or defenders, of deliberative democracy theory. Those who reject the theory’s framing of multicultural politics as chiefly problems of misrecognition and lack of inclusion—​rather than of colonial power and domination—​are unlikely to be satisfied by these changes (Coulthard 2014). At the other end of the spectrum, some see a basic tension between deliberative democracy’s core aspirations and a politics driven by cultural group claims (James 2004). According to this view, a model of democratic inclusion which views recognition in terms of the acknowledgment of so-​called authentic group identities risks excluding many voices within minority communities, for it demands deference from both members and nonmembers (McBride 2005). Despite these and other valid concerns, there are good reasons to think that deliberative democratic theory and practice will continue to inform debates about how

168   Monique Deveaux to make liberal constitutional democracies more open and inclusive of ethnocultural and religious minorities. Nor is this just a matter of applying deliberative democratic tools developed within a Western philosophical framework to conflicts within liberal societies. Deliberation in non-​Western societies is becoming an important subject of study, as democracy theorists attempt to understand the extent to which political deliberation is universal and the particular forms it takes in diverse societies (Dryzek and Sass 2014; see also Chapter 5 by Sass in this volume). Just as the challenge from multicultural groups within liberal democracies pushed the boundaries of deliberative democracy in the past, it seems likely that alternative deliberative forms in other parts of the world will stretch the frontiers of this theory still further—​perhaps even extending its relevance outside of the realm of democracy, as conventionally understood.

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170   Monique Deveaux Mansbridge, J. (2012). Conflict and Commonality in Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Political Theory, 40: 789–​801. McBride, C. (2005). Deliberative Democracy and the Politics of Recognition. Political Studies, 53: 497–​515. O’Flynn, I. (2006). Deliberative Democracy and Divided Societies (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press). Parekh, B. (2006). Rethinking Multiculturalism:  Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Pedrini, S., Bächtiger, A., and Steenbergen. M. (2013). Deliberative Inclusion of Minorities:  Patterns of Reciprocity among Linguistic Groups in Switzerland. European Political Science Review, 5: 483–​512. Sanders, L. (1997). Against Deliberation. Political Theory, 25: 347–​76. Song, S. (2007). Justice, Gender, and the Politics of Multiculturalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tully, J. (1996). Strange Multiplicity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Urbinati, N. (2000). Representation as Advocacy:  A Study of Democratic Deliberation. Political Theory, 28: 758–​86. Valadez, J. (2001). Deliberative Democracy, Political Legitimacy and Self-​Determination in Multicultural Societies (Oxford: Westview Press). Warren, M. E. and Mansbridge, J., with Bächtiger, A., Cameron, M. A., Chambers, S., Ferejohn, J., Jacobs, A., Knight, J., Naurin, D., Schwartzberg, M., Tamir, Y., Thompson, D., and Williams, M. (2016). Deliberative Negotiation. In Political Negotiation: A Handbook, ed. J. Mansbridge and C. J. Martin (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press), 141–​96. Williams, M. (1995). Justice towards Groups: Political not Juridical. Political Theory, 23: 67–​91. Williams, M. (1998). Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Young, I. M. (1996). Communication and the Other:  Beyond Deliberative Democracy. In Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 120–​35. Young, I. M. (1999). Difference as a Resource for Democratic Communication. In Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics, ed. J. Bohman and W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 383–​406. Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Chapter 11

Deliberati on a nd Representat i on Mark B. Brown

Representation makes things difficult for deliberative democracy. It is relatively easy to argue that democracy should involve more and better deliberation, but it is much less clear whether and how deliberators should stand for, speak for, or act for those not present. Questions of representation appear in concerns about the demographic makeup of deliberative bodies and the subtle forms of exclusion that suppress or discount historically marginalized groups. They appear in debates about the democratic legitimacy of unelected deliberative bodies that are neither authorized by nor accountable to those affected by their decisions. And representation is an important issue for recent efforts to understand how different elements of a deliberative system might speak to and for each other. Deliberative democrats concerned about such issues can benefit from the resurgence of interest in the concept of representation in contemporary political theory (Brown 2009; Disch 2015; Manin 1997; Mansbridge 2003; Phillips 1995; Plotke 1997; Schwartz 1988; Urbinati 2006; Urbinati and Warren 2008; Williams 1998; Young 2000). Until the late 1990s, most research on political representation was undertaken by empirical political scientists who focused on the degree of correspondence between public opinion and the decisions of elected officials. Political theorists tended to view representation through the skeptical lens of participatory models of democracy, which generally echoed Rousseau’s view that popular sovereignty requires direct expression of popular will. The prevailing assumption was that representation is inherently opposed to both participation and democracy. This skeptical stance toward representation has also been evident in the widespread decline of public trust in representative institutions, and in the rise of various forms of populism in Europe and the United States (Norris 1999; Dalton 2004; Hay 2007). Citizen activists today often adopt the language of direct democracy and seek to distance themselves from established modes of political representation. Some scholars view these developments as the emergence of “post-​representative

172   Mark B. Brown politics” or “post-​democracy” (Tormey 2015; Crouch 2004). Other scholars, however, have challenged the view that representation necessarily conflicts with participation and democracy. Over the past two decades, they have developed a view of representation as a dynamic process that mobilizes and shapes constituencies in a wide range of venues (Disch 2012). For many of these scholars, representation is not opposed to popular participation but depends on it (Plotke 1997). In contrast to the previous focus on electoral representation through state institutions, recent work examines the proliferation of both elected and unelected representatives in local, regional, and transnational arenas. It explores the representative claims of non-governmental organizations, civil society groups, and deliberative mini-​publics, as well as the often implicit representative claims of business leaders, artists, scientists, and other actors of all kinds. The range of potential constituencies includes not just the voters of territorially defined states but also nonvoters, undocumented immigrants, people in other countries, children, future generations, and nonhumans. For many authors working in this vein, representative democracy is not a second-​best alternative to direct democracy but a normatively superior form of politics. Political representation fosters critical distance between society and government, creating time and space for citizen deliberation, mobilization, and protest (Kateb 1981; Urbinati 2006). These recent studies on representation often criticize the emphasis on reasonable discussion in many accounts of deliberative democracy (Disch 2011; Urbinati 2006, 119–​20; Young 2000, 36–​51). Deliberative democrats might respond that they have generally seen deliberation as an enhancement rather than a replacement of other elements of representative democracy (Chambers 2003, 308; Chambers 2012, 52–​3; Gastil 2000). And while deliberative democrats have left behind the rationalist approaches of early deliberative theory (Mansbridge et al. 2010). Most scholars now define both participation and deliberation very broadly. Deliberation includes reasoned argument, strategic bargaining, experiential testimony, and other kinds of discursive claims. Moreover, although deliberation is an important form of participation, participation also includes non-​deliberative modes of engagement such as voting, mobilizing, and protesting (Walzer 1999). All of these activities potentially contribute to political representation. Scholars of both deliberation and representation thus increasingly take a systems approach that embraces an ecology of different kinds of practices and institutions. Indeed, to some extent any division between research on “deliberative democracy” and “representative democracy” is merely an artifact of academic politics, and some scholars are active contributors to both areas. There is thus much to gain from a closer look at how these areas of scholarship relate to each other. This chapter first briefly sketches selected aspects of the historical relation between representation, deliberation, and democracy. It then examines some of the ways that deliberative theorists have taken up questions of representation with regard to representative thinking, social perspectives, and mini-​publics. The chapter then discusses systemic and constructivist approaches to representation, focusing on their implications for collective identity, democratic legitimacy, and the relation between political theory and politics.

Deliberation and Representation    173

Elite Deliberation in Representative Government While democracy comes in many varieties, most have involved some kind of deliberation. Citizens have wanted not only to enjoy equal political power but to justify and enhance their power with argument and persuasion. Representation, in contrast, has a much more tenuous historical and conceptual relationship with democracy. The mythology of Western democracy rests on an origin story of ancient Athens as a direct democracy without representative institutions. This story is doubly mistaken. Democratic practices and institutions arose not only in Athens but in ancient Mesopotamia, India, China, and elsewhere in the ancient world (Isakhan and Stockwell 2011). Moreover, Athenian juries served representative functions, and loquacious members of the Assembly often claimed to speak for those who were quiet or absent. But the ancient Greeks did not have a word that translates to the English representation, and until the late Middle Ages the word meant to depict a person or thing in language, art, theater, or religion. A distinctly political meaning of representation only emerged in the thirteenth century, and it initially meant that a ruler stood for, embodied, or symbolized the people. Representation was understood not as a means for citizens to express concerns to their rulers, but for rulers to secure the consent of feudal lords to new taxes. Representation was used to exercise elite power, not to control it (Brito Vieira and Runciman 2008, 6–​10; Pitkin 1967, 244–​9; Pitkin 1989). By the seventeenth century, representation had become associated with representatives who “act for” those they represent, but it still had little to do with democracy. Democracy was generally understood as an unstable form of government, at best comprising the popular branch in systems of “mixed government” that combined democratic, aristocratic, and monarchical elements (Wood 1992). Representation was a process for producing wise decisions by an enlightened and deliberating group of elites. Edmund Burke famously told his electors at Bristol that a representative should communicate frequently with his constituents and “prefer their interests to his own,” but representatives are not bound to the “inclination” and “opinion” of their constituents, because “Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole” (Burke 1999, 155–​6). Similarly, when James Madison and Alexander Hamilton defended a proposed system of government designed to move on the “pivot” of “the principle of representation,” they argued that elected governments had the task of refining citizen preferences through rational deliberation. Their hope was that “the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good, than if pronounced by the people themselves” (Madison, Hamilton, and Jay 1987, 372, 126). Madison contrasted the proposed “republican” constitution with a “pure democracy” dominated by “spectacles of turbulence and contention” (81). Madison thus linked representation to republicanism, and democracy to mob rule, driving a wedge between representation and democracy. These early theorists of representative government remained within the terms outlined

174   Mark B. Brown earlier by Rousseau, who rejected both representation and public deliberation as incompatible with the expressive character of political action. In Rousseau’s Social Contract, political participation was largely reduced to voting, because only in voting are citizens truly independent (Urbinati 2006, 76–​85). Despite this restriction of deliberation to elite representatives in early theories of political representation, since the end of the eighteenth century representative government has also been linked to the idea of freedom of public opinion, and in that respect, to public deliberation. To make informed decisions about how to cast their ballots, citizens require freedom of speech and assembly, access to political information and an active press, and a certain degree of government publicity and transparency. These mechanisms offer a potential counterweight to the independence of representatives. The protection of free public opinion does not aim to ensure that representatives will do exactly what their constituents want, but that constituent wishes will be heard and considered. In theory, at least, public opinion prevents representatives from entirely displacing the represented (Manin 1997, 167–​75). Unlike both direct democracy and absolutism, representative government preserves a gap between representatives and the represented. Citizens must wait for election day rather than voting immediately on each government decision, so they have time to consider the consequences of public policies (Manin 1997, 182–​3). During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the extension of the suffrage in most Western societies led to a gradual linkage of the concept of democracy to the election of representatives (Manin 1997, 132). The categorical opposition between representation and democracy gave way to the notion of “representative democracy.” But traces of the dichotomy between democracy and representation remained, and they are still prevalent in contemporary political theory. This dichotomy appears in the notion that, ideally, representatives substitute for their constituents, doing what they would have done if they had deliberated (Fishkin 2009). It appears in the widespread association of democratization with an increase in popular participation and voting, rather than either deliberation or representation. It also appears in the long-​standing division of labor between empirical and normative approaches in political science, which despite their differences have generally shared a view of political representation that has come to be known as the “standard account” (Disch 2011; Urbinati and Warren 2008). According to this standard account, representation is understood as a principal–​agent relationship in which a unified people (the principal), usually identified on the basis of territorial sovereignty, elects representatives (the agent) to do what it cannot do for itself. Representation takes the form of a juridical relationship in which representatives act on behalf and in place of the represented (Urbinati 2006). The primary means of political participation is voting, which lends democratic credentials to the elitism of representative government but also greatly restricts the role of the represented (Urbinati and Warren 2008, 389). Empirical political scientists working with the standard account often cite Hanna Pitkin’s statement that representation requires “responsiveness” of representatives to constituents, rather than the other way around (Pitkin 1967, 233). In this respect, as Lisa Disch (2011) argues, the standard account took a small part of Pitkin’s nuanced discussion and turned it into a

Deliberation and Representation    175 sound bite that reinforced the dominant view of representation as direct correspondence between public opinion and government policy.1 Most participatory democratic theorists, for their part, from the 1960s onward, while not entirely rejecting representative democracy, focused their attention on participation rather than representation (Barber 1984). They tended to adopt the same model of representation as their empirically oriented colleagues on the other side of the empirical–​normative divide. Both sides assumed that participation and representation inevitably conflict, and for a long time nobody developed a different view of representation to replace the standard model.

Representation in Deliberative Democratic Theory In the 1990s the standard account of representation also became embedded within early work on deliberative democracy. Theorists defined deliberative democracy as a “talk-​ centric” model of politics and contrasted it with a “vote-​centric” or “aggregative” model. Each model focused on a particular practice, thus making it difficult to see how representation might link them together (Warren 2017). Accordingly, most early theorists of deliberative democracy had little to say about representation (Saward 2010, 165; Urbinati and Warren 2008, 392–​3). At the most basic level, however, deliberation always involves representation, insofar as thinking and speaking inevitably involve making representations of some kind.2 Indeed, there is a tradition of political thought that views political deliberation as a matter of making representations primarily to oneself.3 For Hannah Arendt (1977, 241), for example, “Political thought is representative. I form an opinion by considering a given issue from different viewpoints, by making present to my mind the standpoints of those who are absent; that is, I represent them.” Drawing on Kant’s Critique of Judgment, Arendt portrays representative thinking as a matter of imagining the perspectives of others. The goal is to reach an intersubjective judgment that is neither subjective and arbitrary nor objective and universal. Similarly, John Rawls portrays the thought experiment at the heart of his theory of justice, the “original position,” as a “device of representation” that “serves as a means of public reflection and self-​clarification” (Rawls 1993, 26). Robert Goodin (2003) echoes this tradition with his proposal for “democratic deliberation within” as a way of coping with the lack of face-​to-​face deliberation in large-​ scale democracies. Since we can never deliberate with everyone, we should at least try to imagine other people’s perspectives. Goodin acknowledges that “the representativeness of the population which we could conjure up in our mind’s eye” will rarely be fully inclusive, but he argues it could easily be more inclusive than most instances of face-​to-​face deliberation (Goodin 2003, 185). Art and literature offer powerful assistance for imagining the lives of others, and Goodin notes that “we must ensure the representativeness of those representations” with respect to social and economic inequalities (190).

176   Mark B. Brown Of course, representing others in this manner easily fuels authoritarian ambitions, as Rawls’s critics have claimed, since those who believe they have adequately imagined others often start speaking for them as well. Goodin thus rightly notes that our internal deliberations lack democratic legitimacy until they are ratified by others though interactive deliberation and decision-making (192–​3). The first sustained attention to questions of representation in deliberative democracy appeared in studies that called for making deliberation more inclusive of diverse social perspectives (Kymlicka 1995; Williams 1998; Phillips 1995; Young 2000). Whereas the standard account had focused on representation of ideas and interests, these studies showed that members of marginalized groups often share experiences and concerns (social perspectives) that are not always captured by interest representation. Experiences of poverty or sexual assault, for example, may lead to shared questions and concerns, but not shared interests. Social perspectives, therefore, are best represented by group members themselves. But given the contingency and internal multiplicity of group identities, scholars also argued that social perspectives should be understood as a consequence rather than cause of political mobilization. Whether a person is able and willing to represent a particular social perspective should not be assumed based on conventional markers of group identity (James 2004, 55–​6; Young 2000, 138–​9). The representation of social perspectives is especially important with regard to complex, uncertain, emerging issues, when interests have not yet crystallized to the point where anyone could adequately represent them (Mansbridge 1999a, 643–​8). Another key intersection between research on deliberation and representation has appeared in the enormous literature on citizen juries, deliberative polls, and other kinds of randomly selected citizen advisory bodies or “mini-​publics” (Brown 2006; Goodin 2008, 11–​37; Smith and Setälä, this volume, Chapter 18). Mini-​publics have been understood both as representative institutions in themselves and as enhancing representation throughout society and government. Mini-​publics are not directly authorized or held accountable through elections, so their primary claim to serve as representative institutions in themselves rests on their descriptive representativeness of diverse social perspectives and forms of knowledge. By maximizing the diversity of epistemic resources, descriptive representation potentially enriches deliberation within mini-​ publics (Bohman 2006). However, evidence suggests that, regardless of formal inclusiveness, members of disadvantaged groups tend to speak less and be taken less seriously (Gerber 2015). In terms of their potential contribution to representation in society and government, mini-​publics have been criticized for lacking direct connections to political decision-​ making. Participants often have high expectations about influencing public policy, but policymakers have a wide range of obligations, not least to their non-​deliberating constituents. Policymakers have good reason to take account of mini-​public recommendations as, at best, one factor among many to consider. In some cases, however, mini-​publics have been linked very closely to decision-​making by either voters or public officials. The Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review, for example, involves mini-​publics that provide voters with information and recommendations on citizen ballot initiatives.

Deliberation and Representation    177 Warren and Gastil (2015) argue that mini-​publics in such cases function as information proxies that, when well designed, elicit the trust of citizens. Today’s complex, pluralistic, individualized societies depend on trust, because citizens cannot attend to every issue themselves. Public trust in representatives need not take the form of blind deference, but can rest on critical judgment. Nonetheless, if representatives become too distant from their constituents, they are no longer representing (Brito Vieira and Runciman 2008, 77–​9; Pitkin 1967, 127–​31). I trust my doctor, but my doctor doesn’t represent me. Representation requires not just trust but also some kind of figurative presence of the represented in the actions of the representative (Runciman 2007). These considerations suggest that in some cases mini-​publics may provide knowledge and information that improves representation in society and government, without serving as representative institutions in themselves. The deliberative polls designed by James Fishkin (Fishkin 1995; 2009; Fishkin and Luskin 2005) offer a different approach to influencing public policy, based on the claim that they represent the views of a hypothetical ideal deliberative public. Fishkin notes that the purpose of deliberative polls is merely to inform rather than replace the non-​ deliberative public, but he devotes considerable energy and expense to recruiting several hundred participants that comprise a statistically representative sample of the population (Fishkin 2009, 111–​19). What exactly is the purpose of seeking a statistically representative sample? For an ordinary public opinion poll, statistical representativeness has both epistemic and instrumental aims: pollsters want to know what percentage of the public holds various opinions, and they want to predict the public’s future actions and beliefs with regard to voting, consumer purchases, and so on. In Fishkin’s portrayal, deliberative polls have neither of these goals. He writes that a deliberative poll “offers a picture of what everyone would think under good conditions.” A deliberative poll is a “proxy” for an ideally deliberative society (Fishkin 2009, 194, original italics; see also Fishkin 1995, 171). A deliberative poll thus has a “recommending force” for policymakers and the general public, which “depends on the credibility of the inference that these considered judgments are the ones the public would support under good conditions” (Fishkin 2009, 98; see also 15, 27, 35, 84, 98, 151). The credibility of the inference, in turn, depends on “a social science research program assessing the merits and limitations of various institutional designs” (98). In short, the purpose of statistical representativeness, for Fishkin, is not only to enhance deliberation by including all relevant social perspectives—​for that purpose a societal cross-​section of all relevant perspectives would be sufficient. Instead the apparent purpose is to enhance the poll’s recommending force. This recommending force does not rest primarily on deliberative competence, but on the deliberative poll’s claim to offer a representation of what the public would think under ideal conditions—​that is, its claim to represent a public that does not yet exist and quite likely never will. Deliberative polls thus claim to represent, not the population from which they are drawn, since most of that population has not deliberated, but an imaginary population of an ideal deliberative society. Deliberative polls thus amount to unelected representatives. They are not like unelected representatives who speak for nonvoters, children, or nonhumans, since these

178   Mark B. Brown potential constituencies currently exist. Rather, deliberative polls are like representatives who speak for not-​yet-​existing future generations (see MacKenzie, this volume, Chapter 16). As I discuss below, representative claims of this kind are legitimate insofar as an audience accepts the claims, and Fishkin discusses cases in which audiences actually accepted the recommendations of a deliberative poll (Fishkin 2009, 151). But it is audience acceptance and not social scientific validation that produces legitimacy. Therefore, unless the audience is unusually enamored of social science, social scientific assessments of statistical representativeness are largely irrelevant for the purpose of securing legitimacy. A sufficiently inclusive societal cross-​section, as assessed by the relevant audience rather than by social scientists, would serve just as well. Nonetheless, deliberative polls and other kinds of mini-​publics, especially if they are linked to established representative institutions (Setälä 2017), can improve the democratic legitimacy of the political system as a whole.

Democratic Systems and Legitimacy In recent years deliberative theorists have shifted from their earlier focus on deliberative ideals and institutions to research on the ecology of diverse institutions and practices that make up a “deliberative system” (Mansbridge 1999b; Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012; Dryzek 2010; Steiner 2012). The idea of a deliberative system offers several advantages (Elstub, Ercan, and Mendoça 2016, 139–​40). It makes it possible to study deliberation in a variety of formal and informal venues, rather than solely within specially designed deliberative bodies. It conceives democracy in terms of a division of labor among different kinds of institutions with different normative standards. A systems approach thus also makes it easier to relax the standards of what counts as “deliberation” and to recognize that even highly partisan practices and institutions (e.g. civil disobedience) may improve the representativeness and, hence, deliberative quality, of the system as a whole. Finally, the notion of a deliberative system shifts the analysis of normative criteria to the system level, thus opening up important questions of representation. In many respects, the systems approach builds on Habermas’s (2006) “two-​track” model of deliberative politics, which emphasizes the relation between deliberation in civil society and representation in government. For Habermas, deliberation must be embedded within various kinds of institutions that secure rights for public speech and action, and which provide conduits for translating deliberative public opinion into government decision-​making. But Habermas’s discussion of the “transmission” of deliberative public opinion to governmental institutions echoes the standard model of representation with its assumption of a unidirectional relation between constituents and representatives. In contrast, Mansbridge and colleagues suggest a view of the parts of a deliberative system as loosely and dynamically “coupled” together (Mansbridge et al. 2012, 22–​4).

Deliberation and Representation    179 Loose coupling allows the different parts of the system to correct each other. A system characterized by the groupthink of nationalism and xenophobia is “too tightly coupled” to correct itself. To make the same point in the language of representation, such a system has allowed a single representative to establish itself as the sole authentic spokesperson of the people, which is a hallmark of antidemocratic forms of populism (Urbinati 2014, 128–​70). Conversely, a system in which the parts are “decoupled” from each other lacks the ongoing relationships through which audiences assess claims to represent them. Although the notion of “coupling” is multidirectional, Mansbridge and colleagues share Habermas’s emphasis on deliberation as a means of legitimating representative claims. The ideal is that “through processes of convergence, mutual influence and mutual adjustment” different parts of the system “would consider the reasons and proposals generated in the other parts” (Mansbridge et al. 2012, 23). Similarly, in a related article, Mansbridge and colleagues argue that voting, bargaining, negotiation, and even coercive power potentially complement deliberation, and yet “they can and must be justified deliberatively” (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 64). According to a systems approach, citizens can “deliberatively authorize certain non-​deliberative democratic mechanisms” (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 65). Recent work on political representation has also adopted an approach focused on an internally differentiated “system of representation” rather than dyadic relations between representatives and their constituents (Mansbridge 2003, 515; see also Brown 2009; Rosanvallon 2011; Saward 2010, 163–​5; Urbinati 2006; Urbinati and Warren 2008; Young 2000, 121–​53). Work in this vein echoes a long-​neglected feature of Pitkin’s classic study on representation, which noted that political representation is “not any single action by any one participant, but the over-​all structure and functioning of the system, the patterns emerging from the multiple activities of many people” (Pitkin 1967, 221–​2; Disch 2011, 106–​7).4 The recovery of Pitkin’s systems perspective is part of a broader shift in attention from electoral representation by national states to a diverse landscape of representative claims. As noted previously, many pressing public issues today—​climate change, migration, trade—​are not confined to the territories of national states, and claims to represent various constituencies are made by a wide range of unelected transnational actors and organizations (Kupyer 2016). Does it matter whether one views representation as part of a deliberative system or deliberation as part of a representative system? Perhaps not. But the notion of a deliberative system arguably risks exaggerating the role of an important but limited political practice (deliberation), as well as those who are good at it (political theorists). A systemic view of representative democracy, in contrast, potentially offers a broader framework. It also raises challenges for deliberative democracy with regard to two key issues: collective identity and democratic legitimacy. The standard account of representation, as noted previously, assumed a linear relation between pre-​existing constituencies (the represented) and their representatives. A key feature of recent work on representation, in contrast, which Disch calls the “constructivist turn,” is that it views representatives as partly constituting the represented (Ankersmit 1996, 45–​51; Saward 2010; Disch 2015). An especially fruitful approach in

180   Mark B. Brown this regard, with clear links to questions of deliberative democracy, appears in Michael Saward’s work on the concept of a “representative claim” (Saward 2006; 2010). Rather than viewing representation as a product of electoral authorization, Saward conceives representation as a dynamic process with an aesthetic and performative dimension. Representation involves making claims not only about what the represented want or need, but also who they are (e.g. “hard-​working people,” “forgotten Americans”). This does not mean that representatives create their constituencies from scratch. Pre-​existing physical properties, cultural values, and societal interests shape and constrain the range of representative claims that will seem plausible to any given audience (Disch 2015, 490, 493; Saward 2006, 192–​3; 2010, 75, 80, 192). But these pre-​existing properties, values, and interests do not determine what counts as representation. Most significantly, Saward builds on Rehfeld’s (2006) argument that what determines whether someone counts as a representative is not formal authorization but whether an audience accepts a claim to represent it. Usually the audience of a representative claim is also the proposed constituency, but sometimes people make a claim to some people that they speak for other people or things. Saward (2010, 143–​60) argues that such claims are legitimate to the extent the audience accepts them as valid. But it is important to note that representative claims may be legitimate but not democratic, such as when the United Nations accepts the envoy of a non-​democratic country as representing the citizens of that country. Representative claims are democratically legitimate to the extent the claims are accepted by the represented themselves.5 From this perspective, the democratic legitimacy of representation depends on the power of representatives to both constitute and mobilize a constituency (Montanaro 2012). Disch (2011) builds on Saward’s account by arguing that democratic theorists have tended to idealize political interests as, first, developing through deliberation among citizens in civil society, and then, in a second stage, being conveyed to elite representatives. Empirical research on public opinion, in contrast, shows that citizens develop their interests partly in response to partisan competition among elites. Put simply, deliberation in civil society does not precede (and provide a standard for) interest representation, since the two are closely intertwined (Disch 2011, 105). When elites claim to represent citizen interests, they simultaneously identify and mobilize those interests, while often inhibiting the mobilization of other interests, especially those associated with disadvantaged groups. Disch (2012) calls this power to either facilitate or undermine latent constituencies the “constituent effects” of the representative system. The representative system of the United States today, for example, makes it extremely difficult for groups concerned with homelessness, global poverty, reparations for racial injustice, and other unpopular issues to reach the public agenda. Assessing the legitimacy of the system according to a standard of “responsiveness,” therefore, amounts to “not only a simplistic but even a complacent measure of democratic representation” (Disch 2012, 611). Disch thus suggests a different standard of legitimacy as a matter of systemic reflexivity, which is “the measure according to which a representation process can be judged as more or less democratic insofar as it does more or less to mobilize both express and implicit objections from the represented” (Disch 2011, 111). Representation is

Deliberation and Representation    181 more democratically legitimate the more citizens enjoy extensive and effective means to challenge claims to represent then. By reframing representation as a claim that must be assessed by the represented, Saward, Disch, and others writing in this vein open up new avenues for studying the relation between representation and deliberation. Systemic approaches to representation “may both find a place for the deliberative model, and put the deliberative model in its place” (Saward 2010, 165). Disch’s notion of systemic reflexivity cannot be reduced to deliberation, since objections to representative claims may well take non-​deliberative forms. But such objections might pressure representatives to be more attentive to marginalized constituencies, thus contributing to the deliberative quality of the system as a whole. Similarly, Saward argues that the legitimacy of representative claims depends not only on acceptance by the appropriate audience but on such acceptance occurring “under reasonable conditions of judgment” (2010, 145, original italics). He associates the conditions of judgment with “the reach and quality of public deliberation” (151) and also with the larger ideal of an “open society,” which includes familiar features such as fair elections, freedom of expression, and associational pluralism (154–​60). Saward sees the open society ideal as less restrictive than deliberative theory (186 n. 16), but it seems nearly indistinguishable from systemic approaches to deliberative democracy that include a prominent role for non-​deliberative institutions and practices. Similarly, Nadia Urbinati portrays the relation between representatives and constituents as a matter of public judgment, which she says combines reasoned argument with rhetorical and ideological modes of argumentation (Urbinati 2006, 118–​19). In many respects, it makes little difference whether one sees deliberation as part of a representative system or representation as part of a deliberative system. But it seems clear that they are closely intertwined.

Conclusion What about the role of political theory itself? Political theory clearly involves both deliberation and representation, but what does it mean to practice political theory as part of a representative democratic system? Deliberative theorists have often portrayed their task as articulating and applying a deliberative standard as a regulative ideal. One recent assessment, for example, warns that “the standards to judge deliberative democracy at the system level need to be kept normatively robust and stringent,” because an “overly capacious set of deliberative criteria” could lead to “watering down” deliberative democracy (Elstub, Ercan, and Mendoça 2016, 146; see also Bächtiger et al. 2010; Owen and Smith 2015, 218). From this perspective, political theorists have the task of evaluating citizen deliberation not as equal participants but as experts with epistemic authority. In contrast, Saward writes that the “ultimate judge” of the democratic legitimacy of representative claims should be “the constituency and not the theorist or other observer” (Saward 2010, 145). For Saward, there is something presumptuous and antidemocratic about a political theorist judging a representative claim on someone else’s behalf.

182   Mark B. Brown Theorists should instead restrict themselves to the second-​order role of “elaborating the character of the representative claim; paying detailed attention to the conditions under which claims are made, received, and assessed; and playing a role as particularly well-​ informed citizens who alongside others will often be targets of representative claims or perceptive members of audiences of claims” (Saward 2010, 147; Disch 2015, 493). Whereas many deliberative theorists seem to view political theory as a critical enterprise that prescribes standards for deliberative practice, Saward urges a more restrained descriptive-​analytical role. While Saward’s humility is admirable, he actually overstates the power of political theory. First-​order normative judgments by political theorists about the quality of either deliberation or representation are unlikely to shut down judgments about the same questions by ordinary citizens. Most people don’t take us that seriously! And political theorists can work against any technocratic potential by explicitly presenting their first-​ order judgments as contributions to public deliberation, rather than as definitive assessments. Proceeding with appropriate caution, theorists should have no qualms about both interpreting and evaluating an audience’s assessment of a representative claim or deliberative process. Such caution, however, is not always apparent in contemporary political theory. It might be developed and inspired by viewing political theory itself as offering representative claims. As an academic discipline that bridges philosophy and politics, political theory combines theoretical and political modes of representation. Political theorists offer both assessments of what has occurred and proposals for what to do. We describe a potential constituency and, in some cases, claim to represent it. In a recent opinion piece, for example, I  implicitly claimed to represent the ideas and interests of participants in the March for Science, which was a worldwide day of science advocacy in April 2017 (Brown 2017). I offered an interpretation of how march participants understood the relation between science and politics, and I proposed a way of revising that understanding to help marchers more effectively pursue their goals. Regardless of how persuasive other political theorists might find my arguments, as representative claims they only become democratically legitimate to the extent that practioners themselves adopt them. Not all political theory needs to be written for non-​academic audiences, of course, and in many cases scholars have good reason to adopt primarily theoretical rather than political modes of representation. As an academic enterprise, political theory is political in the sense of having political origins, implications, and effects, but it is not the same as politics understood as a specific form of activity (Brown 2017). Similarly, all representations of the world may be political in a broad sense, but not all political theorists are explicitly engaged in political representation as a form of political activity.6 Nonetheless, viewing political theory as part of a system of democratic representation means becoming more attentive to our various potential audiences. Like other representative claims, those of political theorists lack democratic legitimacy until an audience evaluates and accepts them. With some luck and effort, that audience could reach well

Deliberation and Representation    183 beyond academic political theory, engaging broader publics in both deliberation and representation.

Acknowledgment Many thanks to Lisa Disch and Mark Warren for helpful feedback on this chapter.

Notes 1. Disch (2011, 108) calls this view the “etymological protocol,” because its defenders often argue that the word representation means to “re-​present” or “present again.” Disch suggests we instead interpret the “re” of representation in the sense of repetition. 2. Bohman (2012, 76) also claims that deliberation is inherently representative, but in a political rather than epistemic sense: “In any particular deliberation, it is impossible for all to deliberate and hence those who do so are acting as representatives for those who are not participating. . . . Thus, given the limits on the number of participants, real-​world deliberation is inherently representative.” This claim neglects the need for representative claims to be assessed and accepted by an audience, as I discuss later. 3. Authors writing in this vein generally use the term representation quite broadly, and not in the specific sense employed in analytic philosophy with regard to “mental representations.” Philosophers once argued that mental representations should meet a standard of direct and immediate correspondence to the world, the impossibility of which led to the much-​ discussed “crisis of representation” in philosophy, literary theory, and other fields. See Rorty (1979). 4. Whereas most scholars have read Pitkin as endorsing a unidirectional view of representation as “responsiveness,” Disch (2011) shows that neglected aspects of Pitkin’s account suggest a view of representation as mobilizing potential constituencies. 5. More precisely, the democratic legitimacy of a representative claim depends on its acceptance by the “appropriate constituency,” which includes both the actual and intended objects of a representative claim. That is, it includes all the people who accept or assert that a claim represents them, regardless of whether or not the person making the claim intended to represent them (Saward 2010, 148–​9). 6. In the first case, “political” is as an adjective that modifies the noun “representation,” and all representations are arguably political in this broad sense. In the second case, “political representation” is a compound noun that designates a specific activity.

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184   Mark B. Brown Bächtiger, A., Niemeyer, S., Neblo, M., Steenbergen, M. R., and Steiner, J. (2010). Disentangling Diversity in Deliberative Democracy:  Competing Theories, their Blind Spots and Complementarities. Journal of Political Philosophy, 18: 32–​63. Barber, B. R. (1984). Strong Democracy:  Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Bohman, J. (2006). Deliberative Democracy and the Epistemic Benefits of Diversity. Episteme, 3: 176–​91. Bohman, J. (2012). Represetation in the Deliberative System. In Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 72–​94. Brito Vieira, M. and Runciman, D. (2008). Representation (Cambridge: Polity Press). Brown, M. B. (2006). Citizen Panels and the Concept of Representation. Journal of Political Philosophy, 14: 203–​25. Brown, M. B. (2009). Science in Democracy:  Expertise, Institutions, and Representation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Brown, M. B. (2017). Not Everything Political Is Politics: Reflections on the March for Science. Public Seminar (June 2), http://​www.publicseminar.org/​2017/​06/​not-​everything-​political-​ is-​politics/​#.WUxOkIqQxAY. Burke, E. (1999). Speech at Mr. Burke’s Arrival in Bristol. In The Portable Edmund Burke, ed. I. Kramnick (New York: Penguin), 155–​7. Chambers, S. (2003). Deliberative Democratic Theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 6: 307–​26. Chambers, S. (2012). Deliberation and Mass Democracy. In Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 52–​7 1. Crouch, C. (2004). Post-​Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press). Dalton, R. J. (2004). Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (London: Chatham House Publishers). Disch, L. (2011). Toward a Mobilization Conception of Democratic Representation. American Political Science Review, 105: 100–​14. Disch, L. (2012). Democratic Representation and the Constituency Paradox. Perspectives on Politics, 10: 599–​616. Disch, L. (2015). The ‘Constructivist Turn’ in Democratic Representation: A Normative Dead End? Constellations, 22: 487–​99. Dryzek, J. S. (2010). Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Elstub, S., Ercan, S., and Mendoça, R. F. (2016). The Fourth Generation of Deliberative Democracy. Critical Policy Studies, 10: 139–​51. Fishkin, J. S. (1995). The Voice of the People:  Public Opinion and Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Fishkin, J. S. (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fishkin, J. S. and Luskin, R. C. (2005). Experimenting with a Democratic Ideal: Deliberative Polling and Public Opinion. Acta Politica, 40: 284–​98. Gastil, J. (2000). By Popular Demand:  Revitalizing Representative Democracy through Deliberative Elections (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).

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186   Mark B. Brown Pitkin, H. F. (1989). Representation. In Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed. T. Ball, J. Farr, and R. L. Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 132–​54. Plotke, D. (1997). Representation Is Democracy. Constellations, 4: 19–​34. Rawls, J. (1993). Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press). Rehfeld, A. (2006). Towards a General Theory of Political Representation. Journal of Politics, 68: 1–​21. Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press). Rosanvallon, P. (2011). Democratic Legitimacy:  Impartiality, Reflexivity, Proximity, trans. A. Goldhammer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Runciman, D. (2007). The Paradox of Political Representation. Journal of Political Philosophy, 15: 93–​114. Saward, M. (2006). The Representative Claim. Contemporary Political Theory, 5: 297–​318. Saward, M. (2010). The Representative Claim (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schwartz, N. L. (1988). The Blue Guitar:  Political Representation and Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Setälä, M. (2017). Connecting Deliberative Mini-​Publics to Representative Decision Making. European Journal of Political Research, 56: 848–​63. Steiner, J. (2012). The Foundations of Deliberative Democracy:  Empirical Research and Normative Implications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tormey, S. (2015). The End of Representative Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press). Urbinati, N. (2006). Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Urbinati, N. (2014). Unpolitical Democracy:  Opinion, Truth, and the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Urbinati, N. and Warren, M. E. (2008). The Concept of Representation in Contemporary Democratic Theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 387–​412. Warren, M. E. (2017). A Problem-​Based Approach to Democratic Theory. American Political Science Review, 111: 39–​53. Warren, M.E. and Gastil, J. (2015). Can Deliberative Minipublics Address the Cognitive Challenges of Democratic Citizenship? Journal of Politics, 77: 562–​74. Williams, M. S. (1998). Voice, Trust, and Memory:  Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Walzer, M. (1999). Deliberation, and What Else? In Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement, ed. S. Macedo (New York: Oxford University Press), 58–​69. Wood, G. S. (1992). Democracy and the American Revolution. In Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 bc to ad 1993, ed. J. Dunn (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 95–​105. Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Chapter 12

Deliberati v e a nd Part icipatory De mo c rac y Stephen Elstub

Participatory democracy and deliberative democracy are often confused, equated, or at the very least treated as strongly related (Floridia 2014). It is easy to see why. Both offer powerful normative critiques of liberal democracy; and protagonists from both argue that liberal democracy suffers from an avoidable democratic malaise and legitimation crisis, and they advocate overarching democratic reform and rejuvenation to supplement and improve (rather than replace) representative institutions. In addition, both theories developed in response to the dominance of empirical democratic theory (Schumpeter 1942; Berelson 1952; Downs 1957; Converse 1964), critiquing the negative conclusions drawn about the capacity of citizens (Vitale 2006; Böker and Elstub 2015). Despite these similarities the relationship between the two is highly contested. There seems to be agreement that deliberative democracy developed from participatory democracy (Bohman 1996; Hauptmann 2001; Vitale 2006; Pateman 2012; della Porta 2013; Floridia 2014; Böker and Elstub 2015). On a methodological level it has been argued that they are indistinguishable (Coppedge and Gerring et al. 2011) and on a practical one that they suffer from the same flaws (Hardin 2009), including the failure to achieve consequential input into central decision-​making processes (Goodin 2012, 806). Some see deliberative democracy as a continuation of participatory democracy (Bohman 1996; Vitale 2006; della Porta 2013) and others a departure (Hauptmann 2001; Goodin 2012; Pateman 2012; Floridia 2014). Deliberative democracy is perceived to be the defense and savior of the core of participatory democracy by some camps (Bohman 1996, 238; della Porta 2013, 7), and blamed for its subsumption by others (Hauptmann 2001; Pateman 2012). Some argue they are mutually supportive (Vitale 2006; Cohen 2009; della Porta 2013; Davidson and Elstub 2014); incompatible (Warren 1996a; Mutz 2006; Pateman 2012); or that the relationship is agnostic (Fishkin 2009). Given these debates, this chapter will consider the relationship between participatory and deliberative democracy; exploring their similarities and differences, compatibilities and tensions, to ascertain whether they should, and can, be pursued in

188   Stephen Elstub tandem. The chapter starts with a definition and overview of participatory democracy before exploring its relationship to deliberative democracy through a typology of democracy based upon two dimensions: who makes decisions and how are they made? It is argued that they can be conceived as conceptually distinct, with an “aggregative participatory democracy” that does not value deliberation, and a “liberal deliberative democracy” that that does not require mass citizen participation in deliberation. The case is made that in these conceptions the normative and explanatory potential of each approach is diminished without the presence of the other, so it is desirable and coherent to pursue a “participatory deliberative democracy” in which citizens make collective decisions through deliberation. Participatory democracy can enhance and facilitate the inclusion of all relevant reasons and assent from all affected, as a deliberative interpretation of legitimacy requires. In turn a specific focus on “deliberative” participation makes participatory democracy less vague, can contribute towards delivering the educative effects that political participation is considered to cultivate in citizens, and help reduce inequalities by promoting public reasoning. We then consider whether it is possible to combine these approaches given the practical challenges presented by complexity in large-scale modern societies. A review of the mixed empirical evidence, suggests that many citizens would welcome more opportunities to participate in meaningful and consequential deliberation. The chapter therefore concludes, in agreement with Cohen (2009, 248), that “advancing both is coherent, attractive, and worth our attention.”

Participatory Democracy The origins of participatory democracy lay in the Port Huron Statement produced by the “Students for a Democratic Society” in 1962 (Mansbridge 1983; Floridia 2014). At this time the study of democracy was dominated by empirical democratic theory (Schumpeter 1942; Berelson 1952; Downs 1957; Converse 1964). This school of thought concluded that citizens did not have the inclination or ability to participate, and that democracy was all the better for this. For example, it was suggested that citizens were unlikely to feel the consequences of their political preferences directly (Schumpeter 1942) and would be highly unlikely to determine final decisions (Downs 1957), which meant that there were few incentives for citizens to become informed participants. Participatory democracy “took up the cudgels” (Pateman 2012, 7)  against empirical democratic theory by asserting that citizens, in the right circumstances, should, could, and would participate effectively in democratic processes (Pateman 1970; Macpherson 1977; Barber 1984). Participatory democrats argued that it was neither the inability of citizens to participate in decisions that affected them, nor their rational choice not to, that led to political apathy, but rather that socio-​economic inequalities determined the extent of the available opportunities—​and that, given the incentives and opportunities to become informed, citizens would take an interest in politics and gain the skills to

Deliberation and Participatory Democracy    189 participate, thereby overcoming the instrumental rational barriers to political participation noted above (Böker and Elstub 2015). Participatory democrats argue for the “direct participation of citizens in the regulation of key institutions of society, including the spheres of work and the community” (Held 1996, 379; see also Pateman 2012, 10). They therefore advocate citizen participation as the principal political practice (Vitale 2006, 749): “The underlying participatory idea is that citizens in a democracy are to engage with the substance of law and policy, and not simply delegate responsibility for such substantive engagement to representatives” (Cohen 2009, 248). On this basis, there should be numerous opportunities and avenues for political participation in the workplace, community, media, and state (Arnstein 1969; Kaufmann 1969; Pateman 1970; Barber 1984; Green 1985). Political participation in the traditional liberal democratic format of voting in elections is considered as simply insufficient, by these standards, in the sense of number and diversity of occasions to participate (della Porta 2013, 7). Voting is also considered too restrictive. The counting of votes, based on equal voting rights, prevents citizens being able to demonstrate the intensity of the preferences that they hold, whereas participatory democracy provides “more decisional capacity to those who are more committed, and therefore participate more” (della Porta 2013, 39; see also Barber 1984, 205).1 Moreover, participatory democrats want avenues for citizen participation to represent genuine opportunities to determine collective decisions (Arnstein 1969; Pateman 1970, 70; Barber 1984). A  distinction is made here between “partial” participation which only achieves influence on decisions and “full” participation where there is equal decision-​making power given to all (Pateman 1970, 70–​1). Arnstein (1969) adds nuance to this distinction and offers a “ladder” of participation to evaluate the extent that processes and institutions enable citizens to determine decisions and outcomes. By this account, simply increasing citizen participation in democratic processes can be insufficient, tokenistic, and ritualistic: it may enable citizens to “hear and be heard” yet not be “heeded” (Arnstein 1969, 217),2 and, if they are not given genuine decision-​making power could result in manipulation. It is therefore understood that these participatory opportunities have to be seized by citizens: “since those who have power normally want to hang on to it, historically it has had to be wrested by the powerless rather than proffered by the powerful” (Arnstein 1969, 222). There are three broad justifications of participatory democracy. Firstly, it is suggested that it represents a more authentic and normatively strident interpretation of democracy than liberal representative democracy. If citizens themselves make collective decisions on issues that affect them, whether in the political, social, or economic sphere, political equality and personal autonomy are enhanced. It delivers the true meaning of democracy as “rule by the people.” In turn democracy is deepened and improved, as more citizen participation can increase trust in political institutions, which then gain greater public support (della Porta 2013, 9). Secondly, and relatedly, it is suggested that more participation can reduce socio-​ economic inequalities, thereby promoting political equality and consequently a more

190   Stephen Elstub substantive democracy (Macpherson 1977, 94). Macpherson identifies a “vicious circle” of cause and effect that perpetuates socio-​economic inequalities in political participation.3 The less that certain socio-​economic groups participate in politics the less they are able to organize themselves to form and articulate demands. This in turn leads to the domination of decision-​making by privileged socio-​economic groups who may have no reason to protect the interests and needs of non-​participants, and may even restrict the opportunities for these groups to participate. Macpherson concludes that the only solution is “a great deal more democratic participation than there is now” (Macpherson 1977, 100): an increase in equality would be reciprocated by an increase in participation and vice versa. There need to be breaks in the vicious circle to achieve cumulative increases either in equality or in democratic participation (Macpherson 1977, 101). Macpherson’s claims are supported by the third justification for participatory democracy—​that it has an educative effect on citizens. It is asserted that avenues for citizen participation can be schools of democracy, with increased participation leading to more informed and publicly conscious citizens. Through participating in collective decision-​making “people are able to learn a new self-​respect, a deeper and more assertive group identity, public skills and values of co-​operation and civic virtue” (Evans and Boyte 1992, 17–​18; see also Pateman 1970; della Porta 2013, 9). Therefore participation begets participation as citizens learn the skills needed to participate (Pateman 1970, 43). For participatory democrats this also accounts for the seemingly low capacities of citizens in liberal democracies where participation has largely been limited to the ballot box: “the habit of delegating tends to make citizens not only more apathetic, but also more cynical and selfish” (della Porta 2013, 7). Pateman (2012, 8)  suggested that deliberative democracy has “overtaken and subsumed its predecessor of participatory democracy,” losing some degree of these three advantages of the participatory approach in the process. For Thompson (2008, 512), in contrast, “the turn toward deliberative theory has not displaced participatory theory.” It is to the relationship between the two that we now turn.

Compatibilities and Synergies between Participatory and Deliberative Democracy Della Porta (2013, 2)  highlights two typological dimensions, with different qualities, useful for categorizing different approaches to democracy, as illustrated in Table 12.1. The first relates to who makes decisions: is participation of citizens seen as an integral decision-​making element or does this power lie with citizens’ representatives? The second dimension relates to how decisions should be made. The distinction here is between aggregative and majoritarian decision-​making mechanisms on the one hand and

Deliberation and Participatory Democracy    191 Table 12.1 Conceptions of Democracy Dimension 2: Mode of Decision-​Making

Dimension 1: Decision-​Makers

Majority Vote

Deliberation

Representatives

Aggregative Liberal Democracy

Liberal Deliberative Democracy

Participation

Aggregative Participatory Democracy

Participatory Deliberative Democracy

Source: Table based on della Porta (2013, 6).

deliberative ones on the other. Although most deliberative democrats would consider deliberation leading to consensus not to be the norm, and that majorities should still win out when consensus is not reached, they would emphasize the importance of the debate preceding the vote, and in particular how the majority conclusion was reached and the influence of minorities upon the final outcome (della Porta 2013, 6). The application of these two dimensions, to the theories of liberal, participatory, and deliberative democracy, results in a typology of democracy with four classifications.4 The first, aggregative liberal democracy, combines representation and majority voting. The second is aggregative participatory democracy, without deliberation and with political views and identities formed externally to democratic processes rather than within them—​therefore combining participation with majority voting.5 Thirdly we have liberal deliberative democracy, where representatives deliberate to make decisions. Therefore, according to della Porta’s (2013) analysis participatory and deliberative democracy can exist discretely and separately from each other, at least conceptually. However, there remains the fourth concept, participatory deliberative democracy, where citizens deliberate to make collective decisions. It is maintained here that this last approach to democracy is conceptually more coherent, and therefore desirable, than either aggregative participatory democracy or liberal deliberative democracy, since participation and deliberation can be mutually supportive. Firstly, participation makes possible the assent of all and the inclusion of all reasons required by deliberative democrats. Secondly, deliberation makes participatory democracy less vague, enhances educative effects, and reduces inequalities by promoting public reasoning. Each of these points will now be considered in turn.

Why Deliberative Democracy Benefits from Participation Two of the key norms of deliberative democracy are inclusion of those affected by decisions and inclusion of all relevant positions on the issue at hand: “According to the deliberative interpretation, democracy is a political arrangement that ties the exercise of collective power to reason-​giving among those subject to collective decisions” (Cohen

192   Stephen Elstub 2009, 248). The “all affected” norm and the requirement to include all relevant positions create a strong conceptual relationship to participatory democracy. The same link can be seen in Dryzek’s (2010, 23) seminal account of deliberative legitimacy, which requires “reflective assent through participation in authentic deliberation by all those subject to the decision in question.”6 There is scope for the assent of all affected to be delivered through authorized representation (liberal deliberative democracy in Table 12.1), but deliberative democrats also require reflective assent to be based upon the consideration of all relevant reasons. If it is only our elected representatives who engage in deliberation, the assent of citizens in the ballot box will not meet this requirement of reflection. This takes us to participatory deliberative democracy:7 “deliberative reason should not be divided so that representatives give reasons while citizens merely receive them” (Gutmann and Thompson 1996, 358–​9). Consequently, for Steiner (2012, 32) “there is consensus among deliberative theorists that ordinary citizens should have the opportunity to take part in political deliberation” (see also Vitale 2006, 749; Goodin 2008, 266). Despite this commitment to citizen participation among deliberative democrats Pateman (2012) argues that, firstly, deliberative democrats have shown little interest in the expansion of participatory opportunities and, secondly, when they do they take them as examples of deliberative democracy.8 These two points seem to be in tension. Either deliberative democrats are interested in a variety of participatory opportunities or they are not. Given the discussion above, the former seems to be the case—​although the opportunities are indeed judged from a “deliberative perspective” (Thompson 2008, 513). More specifically, Pateman (2012, 10) thinks that deliberative democrats have been too obsessed with mini-​publics as an avenue for participation.9 She is highly critical of mini-​publics from a participatory democracy perspective, as they rely on sortition rather than giving citizens rights to participate. This critique seems to neglect the point that although mini-​publics have been designed to ensure favorable conditions for good citizen deliberation, random and stratified sampling is also used to overcome the socio-​ economic determinants of political participation that concerned Macpherson. Indeed Fishkin (2009), the architect of deliberative polling (a prominent type of mini-​public), believes the socio-​economic inequalities that are produced in political participation render mass participation in deliberation unobtainable, hence the need for sampling to ensure participants are descriptively representative of the broader public. Moreover, although it is certainly the case that mini-​publics have received the most attention by deliberative democrats (Elstub 2014)  they have been far from the only interest. For example deliberative democrats have focused on parliament (Steiner et al. 2004), constitutions (Elster 1998), referendums (Tierney 2012), political parties (Manin 1987), social movements (della Porta 2013), governance networks (Dryzek 2010), the Internet (Dahlgren 2005), protests (Mendonca and Ercan 2015), workplaces (Felicetti 2016), the mass media (Wessler 2008), voluntary associations (Elstub 2008), and interest groups (Hendriks 2012), to name just some. A more pertinent critique of deliberative democrats from Pateman (2012, 10) is that they have not sufficiently engaged with the radical changes required to current political, social, and economic structures to ensure meaningful opportunities for citizens to

Deliberation and Participatory Democracy    193 participate in deliberation that determines collective decisions. Indeed Pateman (2012, 10) contends that deliberative democratic theory “still leaves intact the conventional institutional structures and political meaning of ‘democracy.’ ” Deliberative democrats should then embrace more strongly some of the key ideas of participatory democracy, particularly the establishment of political, social, and economic rights to enhance the opportunities for citizens to participate in decision-​making, as “unless actual discursive contexts are supported by minimal social and economic contents . . . autonomy, free argumentation and communicative rationality will be impossible” (Vitale 2006, 758), which are of course all central to the theory of deliberative democracy. So one similarity between participatory and deliberative democracy, at least, is that both require the extension of political participation beyond the ballot box as they “seek the expansion of spaces in which will formation constitutes itself ” (Vitale 2006, 759); however, they disagree on what the nature of this participation should be (Böker and Elstub 2015). It is to this disagreement that we now turn.

Why Participatory Democracy Benefits from Deliberation Deliberative democracy is distinct from participatory democracy in that it requires public reasoning to be central to the decision-​making process, while this is not necessarily so for participatory democracy (Cohen 2009, 250), which takes a more ecumenical view about the types of political participation that are desirable and is ultimately more concerned with the variety, breadth, and depth of participation (Cohen 2009, 256): “participatory democracy is founded on the direct action of citizens who exercise some power and decide issues affecting their lives, while deliberative democracy is founded on argumentative exchanges, reciprocal reason giving, and on public debates which precede decisions” (Floridia 2014, 305). For some this renders participatory democracy excessively vague (Sartori 1987). Indeed, it is claimed that it was in response to exactly this vagueness that deliberative democracy emerged (della Porta 2013, 187). While participatory democrats are open to a variety of forms of political activity for citizens, they too have praised dialogic approaches that induce preference reflection (Pateman 1970; Macpherson 1977; Barber 1984). For example, despite her criticisms of deliberative democracy, noted above, Pateman (2012) acknowledges that deliberation is crucial for all forms of democracy, including the participatory variant. Indeed, most participatory democrats reject Rousseau’s vision of citizens forming their wills in isolation in favor of a dialogic and communicative approach (Vitale 2006, 749). In providing a genealogy of participatory and deliberative democracy, Floridia (2014) emphasizes the importance of a “transitional phase” that stemmed the two, which was “still within the discussion on participatory democracy,” but went beyond this model, and directed the discussion towards the subsequent deliberative turn through a focus on discursive participation (Floridia 2014, 300). In particular, he highlights the work of Mansbridge (1983) and Barber (1984). Barber stressed the importance of “public talk” aimed at consensus in participatory decision-​making:  “Talk enables us to examine rank orders,

194   Stephen Elstub commensurable scales, and the effect of time and place; it allows us to get at what we really want as individuals and as a community . . . choices are generally more coherent and less paradoxical than the logical dilemmas extrapolated from them, especially if the choices are informed by a process of strong democratic talk” (Barber 1984, 205). Through her empirical work on town-​hall meetings and cooperative workplace democracy, Mansbridge (1983, 3) praised processes that involved decision-​makers reasoning “together until they agree on the best answer.” The point is that a focus on deliberation as a specific form of participation would enhance both the normative and explanatory potential of participatory democracy. Without it we are left with “aggregative participatory democracy” (see Table 12.1) with citizens’ preferences seen as exogenous. Given this position, participatory democrats would be unable to fully account for why participatory opportunities can be “schools of democracy” that enhance civic virtue (Grönlund et al. 2010) and broaden the views of the participants; they would also be incapable of distinguishing between authentic views and manipulated ones.10 In contrast deliberative democrats have repeatedly focused on how deliberation can improve people’s opinions and make them more authentic: “the justifications of political consciousness and the learning processes attendant on participation make sense only in a context of public discussion wherein each individual can think, ponder and have the opportunity to change, either totally or in part, his or her original position as a result of the exchanges” (Vitale 2006, 753–​4). It is, then, specifically by participating in deliberation that citizens will be encouraged and enabled to gain the greater focus on public goods that participatory democrats attribute to participation. Once again the conception of democracy is stronger when participatory and deliberative democracy are combined in ‘participatory deliberative democracy’ (Table 12.1). By failing to highlight deliberation as a particularly important type of participation, participatory democrats also miss its contribution to another of their justifications, the reduction of socio-​economic inequalities. The argument is that by generating public reasoning, deliberation encourages all, including powerful elites, to justify their demands to all. This makes it harder for people and groups to promote their own self-​interest,11 and also provides the opportunity for subordinate groups to highlight inequalities and explain why they are unjust or inefficient. As this section has acknowledged, participatory democracy and deliberative democracy have important differences between them, but nevertheless it is coherent and desirable to combine them into a participatory deliberative democracy. We now turn to consider whether this is possible.

Combining Participation and Deliberation As well as making participation in deliberation immensely challenging, the complexity of society also affects participatory democracy and deliberative democracy differently.

Deliberation and Participatory Democracy    195 We first examine the debates on complexity in theory, before turning to practice and a consideration of the empirical evidence on how far citizens want to participate in deliberation.

Theoretical Debates On Complexity, Participation, and Deliberation Vitale (2006, 754) argues that participatory democracy has been less cognisant of the complexity of modern societies than its deliberative counterpart. This seems clear in the work of notable deliberative democrats such as Warren and Cohen. Warren (1996a, 242)  questions the extent to which people want more opportunities for participation, dismissing it as “romantic dogma,” which would ultimately result in instability: “Individuals are likely to find decision-​making so burdensome and inefficient that most will withdraw into cynical apathy. This will leave most decisions to an activist few who will, ironically, make decisions based on the authority they derive from a participatory process” (Warren 1996a, 243).12 He also contends that participatory democrats fail to acknowledge the importance of expertise in complex societies (Warren 1996b). Cohen (2009, 257) suggests that “social complexity and scale limit the extent to which modern polities can be both deliberative and participatory” and that improving deliberative quality requires reducing political participation to ensure that those who are deliberating are insulated from public pressures and demands. Conversely, if participation is expanded then deliberative quality will be reduced (see also Thompson 2008, 513). Deliberation on a given issue will be effective only if participants are, or are willing to become, informed about it: but the more participants there are, the more likely it is that some (and perhaps most) will lack the necessary interest and incentive. The quality of deliberation thus tends to decline as the number of participants increases, even if deliberation can increase knowledge on the issue—​which is why deliberative democrats have not been able to agree on how many citizens should participate (Steiner 2012, 32). For some deliberative democrats this critique does not “gut” participatory democracy, but rather “shores it up” (Hauptmann 2001, 399). For example, according to Bohman (1996, 29) the specific focus on deliberative participation is more achievable on the large scale than is the broader view of participation taken by participatory democrats. According to Dryzek (1987, 436), participatory democracy without deliberation “will add to the burdens of complexity,” while deliberation without inclusive participation can lead to self-​interested elite dominance. Hauptmann (2001) is however skeptical of the coherency of this position, arguing that the deliberative critique stabs at the heart and fundamentals of the participatory model and therefore should not be considered a continuation of this project but rather a departure. Although she accepts the validity of the deliberative critique of participatory democracy, she suggests that democratic theory loses a critical edge with the deliberative turn: “dulling and even losing one’s critical perspective on the world as it is and, consequently, one’s sense of how it might be made better. Deliberative democrats have made the latter error; while their theories cannot be criticized for the weaknesses characteristic of utopian political visions, their

196   Stephen Elstub critical perspective on the world is too blurred to be useful” (Hauptmann 2001, 413). Elstub (2010) and Elstub, Ercan, and Mendonça (2016) argue that this problem has been on the increase in deliberative democracy. Ultimately for Hauptmann, deliberative democrats take complexity too seriously, while she still accepts the critique that participatory democrats do not take complexity seriously enough.13 Although not explicitly stated, the impetus here seems to be a democratic approach that stems this divide. It is not clear though that participatory deliberative democracy is such an approach. Can the available empirical evidence shed any further light on the extent to which mass participation and deliberation are compatible in complex societies?

Empirical Evidence on Mass Deliberation Certainly a considerable amount of evidence has been invoked to suggest that participation and quality deliberation are not compatible. Reservations remain though on whether this evidence is actually measuring deliberation or just talk. New evidence is also emerging which indicates a more positive relationship between participation and deliberation. In her qualitative studies on town-​hall meetings and a cooperative workplace democracy, highlighted above, Mansbridge (1983) observed that people do not always find it easy to engage in deliberation. More damningly for participatory deliberative democracy, Hibbing and Theiss-​Morse (2002) draw from survey and focus group evidence, which they believe indicates that citizens do not want to participate in deliberation. They offer a “stealth democracy” thesis, arguing that people reluctantly participate when corruption in representative democracy becomes excessive, and feel their input is required to address this imbalance, but ultimately would much prefer a functional representative system that required minimum involvement from citizens.14 Jacobs, Cook, and Delli Carpini’s (2009) quantitative study provides an important counter, indicating that when citizens engage in debating political issues they are more likely to engage in other forms of political participation, and that “public talking is a vibrant and surprisingly wide-​spread process by which citizens form opinions about civic life” (25). Steiner (2012, 39) is skeptical, suggesting that “the data only indicates what Americans say about political talking, not about how much they actually talk about politics.” In general, Steiner (2012, 45) finds that surveys give a much more positive picture of the level of deliberation than when actual behavior is observed. Moreover, he is concerned that the data measures talk and not necessarily deliberation (Steiner 2012, 40; see also Dryzek 2010, 24). The most powerful evidence against the stealth democracy thesis comes from Neblo et al. (2010, 566), who suggest that the limitations of these studies is that they “extrapolate from current, naturally occurring patterns of political participation, to conclusions about latent demand for deliberative opportunities.” Their counter-​argument is that if offered more meaningful opportunities to participate in deliberation, people would be more likely to seize them. They report results from another American

Deliberation and Participatory Democracy    197 survey-​based study that looked at hypothetical willingness to deliberate. This found a greater willingness to deliberate than many theorists have assumed and, moreover, “that those most willing to deliberate are precisely those turned off by standard partisan and interest group politics” (Neblo et al. 2010, 582). It is important to stress that although their evidence suggests that some citizens agree with the stealth democracy thesis, importantly they “found vastly more evidence in favour of the deliberative thesis—​that is, that people would participate more if they thought that the system were less [as opposed to more] corrupt.” Indeed, eight to eleven times more respondents in their survey fitted the deliberative thesis than the stealth alternative. Stealth preferences are then conditional, it seems. This study also found “more enthusiasm for specifically deliberative opportunities than for more general political participation” (570). Overall 83% expressed some willingness to participate in a deliberative event (573). Moreover, the usual determinants and patterns of political participation such as education, age, gender, income, and race were not statistically significant indicators to attitudes towards deliberative participation. Indeed, “younger people, racial minorities, and lower income people expressed significantly more willingness to deliberate” (574). Neither was people’s willingness to participate affected by the issue they might deliberate (Neblo 2015, 137). Neblo et al. complement this study with a test of whether people were actually willing to deliberate with a range of members of Congress. They found no real determinants to differentiate between those who expressed an interest in participating, but failed to attend, and those who actually participated. In sum, actual deliberative participation was less biased and skewed than voting: “these findings suggest that it is deeply misleading to think of deliberative participation as the provenance of activists and political junkies or any other proper subset of participants in ‘real’ politics” (Neblo et al. 2010, 578). So it seems that citizens may well be amenable to participating in deliberation after all. However, there is some evidence which suggests that this is only possible in homogeneous groups. Following another American-​based quantitative study Mutz (2006, 2) concludes that “there are fundamental incompatibilities between theories of participatory democracy and theories of deliberative democracy.” Deliberation and participation undermine each other as citizen participation is possible, but not through deliberative participation, and deliberation is possible but not through citizen participation: “The problem with much of what deliberative democracy asks of participatory democrats is that both of these tasks—​activism and deliberation—​have been embedded in a single model as simultaneous responsibilities of the individual” (Mutz 2006, 131). For Mutz (2006) deliberation between those with differing viewpoints can increase toleration, but reduces participation as people seek to avoid conflict. Participation is motivated by political passion that is reduced through deliberation. Much of this because many people are so desperate to maintain social harmony that they refrain from engaging in argument or making a contribution that might destroy solidarity (Mutz 2006, 84)—​though Mutz’s own study suggests this is a problem not merely for deliberative democracy but for democratic participation generally, as cross-​cutting influence also reduces private acts

198   Stephen Elstub of political participation such as voting (Mutz 2006, 9). Sunstein’s (2007) evidence too suggests that people avoid discussing politics with those with whom they disagree. But there are limitations with this study too. In Mutz’s study the primary sources of the research data are three representative surveys of Americans and their political networks. However, two were actually designed to establish levels of social influence during election campaigns. Only one had the explicit aim of quantifying levels of exposure to different political preferences (Mutz 2006, 22): the results from this survey are therefore by far the most important for the research, but unfortunately have been combined with those from the other two surveys and are no longer easily identifiable. Moreover, we must question whether Mutz was actually measuring deliberation as the survey focused on “everyday talk.” The absence of key deliberative elements of publicity and decision-​ making cannot be dismissed. If they were present in “everyday talk” then the talk would change, and so would people’s experiences of it and their approach to it. People who might not discuss politics on a day-​to-​day basis with those they disagreed with might nonetheless welcome the opportunity to try to persuade those with differing viewpoints if they knew that their opinion could influence a collectively binding decision. Let us return to Neblo’s evidence. He acknowledges that substantial numbers do not want to deliberate, but finds that although conflict aversion was a key reason it was not decisive: the main reason was that people did not feel they knew enough about the issue (Neblo 2015, 149)—​which of course participation in deliberation is meant to overcome. The evidence on the relationship between participation and deliberation is then far from decisive, but there is certainly none that would simply rule out the possibility of a participatory deliberative democracy.

Conclusion The relationship between participatory democracy and deliberative democracy has been repeatedly scrutinized. The argument here is that they are certainly distinct and different approaches to democracy, but that ultimately it is beneficial—​though not essential—​to combine them. Fishkin (2009) is therefore right to suggest the relationship is agnostic. Participation is beneficial, but not essential, to the realization of deliberative norms, helping secure assent from all and the inclusion of all reasons. Similarly, deliberation is beneficial, but not essential, to the realization of participatory norms, helping to educate citizens and combat inequality, while giving participatory democracy a more coherent focus. Participatory democracy tells us that citizens should govern and deliberative democracy that decisions should be made through deliberation. Their combination, participatory deliberative democracy, says that citizens should govern through deliberation. Although certainly there are challenges in combining the two approaches, the inconclusive evidence on their compatibility provides insufficient reason not to try, given the legitimacy benefits that could be accrued if successful. Combined, they would “provide a richer alternative for the improvement of

Deliberation and Participatory Democracy    199 democracy in search for political legitimacy” (Vitale 2006, 753), and may well be our best hope to save democracy (della Porta 2013).

Notes 1. Carson and Martin (1999, 57) refer to these politically active citizens as “the incensed and the articulate.” It is still problematic for participatory democrats that if participation is skewed by socio-​economic factors—​which it usually is—​then those who participate more get more influence. It is also a problem from a deliberative perspective that those who shout the loudest (rather than those with the best reasons) gain most influence. Mini-​ publics have been designed to combat these problems and will be discussed further below. 2. For deliberative democrats hearing others and being heard by others are vital, but they would still want the resulting preferences to be consequential. 3. Macpherson focused on class, but this is just one determinant of political participation: it is necessary to extend his conclusions to other cleavages such as gender, race, ethnicity, and age. 4. In practice there are of course more than four conceptions, as various combinations of the four stylized models presented here are possible. For example, given its routinized use of referendums, Switzerland could be considered as a combination of aggregative liberal democracy and aggregative participatory democracy. 5. It is not clear that this is an accurate portrayal of participatory democracy, as organizations in the 1960s and 1970s calling themselves “participatory democracies” tried to make face-​ to-​face consensual decisions (Mansbridge 1983, 290) and their critiques of voting were noted above. But this does not make the classifications futile and irrelevant, as they are still useful for analytical purposes. Indeed, as will be explored below, it provides an indication of why participatory democracy is less coherent without deliberation. 6. It should be acknowledged that this is just a starting point for Dryzek (2010, 23–​35) and he continues to suggest that the problem of scale inevitably limits the number of people that can participate in deliberation. His solution is for deliberative democracy to be conceived as the interchange and contestation of discourses in the public sphere. 7. It is important to note that most participatory deliberative democrats see representation as essential. As previously mentioned it is a reformist position. They desire more citizen participation in deliberation in decision-​making than currently present in liberal democracy to complement the representative processes. However, a full discussion of representation is beyond the scope of this chapter. 8. She also claims that “some of the more enthusiastic advocates of deliberative democracy tend to present deliberation as if it were synonymous with democracy itself ” (Pateman 2012, 8). However, she cites no deliberative democrat to support this claim, and I do not know anyone who makes such a claim or holds this position. 9. For a more detailed discussion of mini-​publics and their relationship to deliberative democracy see Smith and Setälä, this volume, Chapter 18. 10. Admittedly there is a need for more empirical studies comparing different types of participation with deliberative participation and looking at their relationship to civic virtue. 11. Participants can of course cloak their self-​interest in insincere claims to common goods. Through this they do though become exposed to these reasons, which could provoke dissonance reduction and the consequent adoption of the public reasons offered.

200   Stephen Elstub Furthermore, participants may be concerned about their reputation if their insincerity is exposed publicly. Insincere claims can be challenged and therefore potentially exposed by reasons and information provided by other participants (Elstub 2008, 85–​6). 12. Barber (1984, 267) is perhaps less guilty than other participatory democrats here as he proposed a more measured demand of “some participation some of the time on selected issues.” 13. Although Femia (1996) argues deliberative democrats do not take complexity seriously enough themselves. 14. Dryzek (2005, 207–​8) is highly critical of what he considers dubious interpretations of both the survey and focus group data in this study, which consequently renders the case for stealth democracy tenuous, while Neblo labels this evidence as both “circumstantial” (2015, 127–​8) and yet also “strong” (2015, 129).

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Chapter 13

Religious Re as ons i n Public Delib e rat i on Andrew F. March and Alicia Steinmetz

Religion, Public Reason, and Deliberative Democracy The role of religion in the public sphere has become one of the most extensively discussed topics in modern political philosophy, and nowhere more so than on the question of the normative status of religious reasons in public deliberation. If political decisions are to reflect something other than the outcomes of power battles or the mere aggregation of individual desires, it is necessary to offer an account of one’s preferences to others in terms that one’s interlocutors can understand and to which they can respond. However, in order to achieve public justification, a society either must already have access to some universally recognized and mutually understood set of shared reasons (a requirement that many view skeptically in highly pluralistic societies) or must engage in a process of testing, discovering, or constructing such reasons (for which public deliberation is often thought necessary). This is where the use of religious reasons in public creates a dilemma for deliberative democracy: arguments drawn primarily or exclusively from specific religious traditions or doctrines may be perceived as hostile or irrelevant to citizens with differing religious or non-​religious worldviews, but to categorically condemn the use of all religious reasons runs the risk of being arbitrary or unfair to religious citizens, whose political convictions may be deeply informed by their faith. The literature on the problem of deliberation and religious reasons is massive, complex, and often quite technical, but there are some distinct trends and identifiable schools of thought. The early contributions to this debate mainly took the form of critique against the “standard” liberal articulation of public reason and its typical exclusion of religious reasons. In light of these critiques, liberal scholars have developed a variety of approaches to allow for religious reasons to play a greater role in public deliberation,

204    Andrew F. March and Alicia Steinmetz typically subject to certain restraints or preconditions. Inclusivism—​which suggests that “a citizen is morally permitted to support (or oppose) a coercive law even if he has only a religious rationale for that law” (Eberle 2002, 10)—​has come to be the overwhelmingly dominant approach in the literature. As James Boettcher points out, there are few contributors to these debates that embrace the extreme positions “that (1) religious discourse and argument should play no role in political decision-​making or (2) citizens and officials have no reason to seek nonsectarian political justifications that are suitably addressed to others as fellow citizens” (Boettcher 2005, 497). Some version of inclusivism thus appears in nearly all the major arguments and voices writing on religion and deliberation today. But in the absence of wide disagreement about the provisional inclusion of religious contributions in public reason, there has emerged a plethora of internal diversity as to the extent to and conditions under which religious arguments can contribute to the process and outcomes of political decision-​making.

Exclusivism and Its Critics The so-​called standard approach to discerning the relationship between religion and public reason (Boettcher and Harmon 2009; Weithman 2002) tends to start by specifying a particular purpose or set of purposes seen as fundamental to the liberal or democratic project that public justification serves to secure or realize (such as mutual respect, freedom, equality, legitimacy, non-​domination, or social integration). For instance, in the Rawlsian approach, treating others as free and equal citizens under conditions of value pluralism requires that politically coercive action be justifiable to them using “the right sorts of reasons, or by what we call suitable political justifications” (Boettcher and Harmon 2009). To help determine what sort of reasons are acceptable for use as public justifications, the standard approach then provides an account of what makes a reason justifiable, typically according to some variation on the standard of accessibility—​for instance, shareability (Macedo 2000), rational acceptability (Audi 1997), intelligibility (Bird 1996), or publicity. Other theorists reject the idea that public justification is meant to manifest liberal values, and instead come to standards of justification by specifying ideal conditions for deliberation. For Habermas, for instance, communicative action is distinguished from instrumental action in that parties are oriented towards agreement or consensus as the end of action and not just the “respective success” of their preferred positions (1985, 173). In entering the process of trying to persuade a fellow citizen to adopt one’s position, discourse participants have to treat each other as equal and capable of being convinced by the best argument. To that end, individuals have to reach out of their private ethical frameworks and present reasons that are comprehensible and convincing to all discourse participants, and under ideal speech conditions, coercion-​free communication will allow for the rational testing of validity claims based on the convincing force of good reasons. Because sectarian religious reasons are not universally

Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation    205 shared in a diverse society, they may not be accessible or even comprehensible to those with different religious or moral worldviews. Thus, reasons grounded solely in some particular religious doctrine are seen as prima facie inadmissible. This articulation of the standard approach is typically referred to as “exclusivism,” although there is a wide variation of stronger and weaker forms of this argument—​ ranging from those that call for the strict exclusion of religion from public discourse (Rorty 1994) to those that allow religious reasons to serve supplemental, expressive, or dissenting roles (Gutmann 2009, 190). According to the original Rawlsian articulation, for instance, citizens have a moral “duty of civility” to justify their political action to others in terms that they could reasonably expect other citizens to accept, making religious rationales unacceptable as sufficient justifications (although they might serve as supplemental to secular rationales). Robert Audi offers a similar, but in some ways more demanding version of this approach, by specifying two principles of civility—​the principle of secular rationale, which is nearly identical with the Rawlsian principle, and the principle of secular motivation, which additionally requires that the secular rationale also offer sufficient motivation for political advocacy (Audi 2000). What characterizes exclusivism is thus usually not the complete exclusion of religion from political discourse but, rather, the conviction that religious reasons cannot serve as discourse participants’ only or sufficient justification for supporting politically coercion action. In addition to the aforementioned thinkers, Ackerman (1994), Cohen (1989), Greenawalt (1988), Larmore (1990), Macedo (1990), and Nussbaum (2011) are typically seen as falling under the exclusivist approach. The standard exclusivist account has been the focus of a dizzying array of critiques, some of which aim at a more comprehensive critique of the liberal terms of public reason, and some of which are tailored more specifically to the status of religion within this framework. We find roughly seven core arguments against excluding religious reasons from public deliberation, which we call the arguments from (1) Arbitrariness, (2) Political Agonism, (3) Epistemic Agonism, (4) Fairness, (5) the Poverty of Secular Reason, (6) Moral Motivation, and (7) Incompleteness. (For other lists, see Boettcher and Harmon 2009, 9–​11; and Quong 2011, 259–​60) (1) Arbitrariness: It is often argued that secular reason is no more inclusive and no less partial than religious reason. The contours of public reason are often deeply contested, even within the exclusivist literature, suggesting that there is apparently no single form of public reason on which all reasonable citizens agree. Because justice is no less a subject of reasonable disagreement than the good life, all attempts to identify a purely political morality free from and neutral between judgments about the good and moral truth fail. In this case, excluding religious reasons for their allegedly unique inaccessibility to others is arbitrary and jeopardizes legitimacy in a society in which many people identify as religious. (For this critique, see D’Agostino 1996; Fish 1999; McConnell 1999; Perry 1987; Thunder 2006; 2014.)

206    Andrew F. March and Alicia Steinmetz (2) Political Agonism: Given the possibility that any attempt to formulate a neutral public reason may be inherently unstable, many argue that the very idea of politics that lies behind this vision of public justification needs to be revised. Politics will always involve competition not only between different interests but also between different ideals of value and the good. Since this cannot be avoided by retreating to a yet higher or more abstract idea of shared public reason, we should embrace an agonistic or competitive idea of democratic political debate and political life in general rather than a deliberative one. (See Connolly 1999; Quinn 1995; Walzer 1999; Wolterstorff 1997.) (3) Epistemic Agonism: Connected to the previous claim, but more open to the idea of a consensus-​driven form of politics, is the idea that we should see reason and judgment as more agonistic than deliberative in process, if not necessarily in outcome. J. S. Mill is at times invoked as an authority for the view that if secular liberals don’t approve of certain religious claims then they should not seek to exclude these claims from the outset but to counter them in public debate, to show what is wrong with them substantively, not merely by virtue of being “religious” and thus out of bounds per se. While this view allows that, in the long run, we may reach agreement on currently contested political issues, it suggests that the best hope we have for building such consensus lies in confronting rather than bracketing off the epistemic sources of our disagreement (See Eberle 2002; McConnell 1999; Waldron 2012) (4) Fairness: Others continue to maintain mutual justification within a democratic community as an ideal to be pursued. All citizens, including the religious, ought to show respect to others by giving them reasons for why a law is morally appropriate all things considered. However, religious reasons do not necessarily fall afoul of this obligation to respect others, and in a society with many religious citizens, religious views and rationales ought to be prima facie admissible within the justificatory process on grounds of fairness. This is the hallmark of the “inclusivist” position: that (contra the agonists) not all rules or exclusions within public justification are arbitrary, but also (contra the standard form of exclusivism) not all religious reasons are excluded under this more inclusive set of rules. (See, in addition to the above cited critiques, Lafont 2007; 2009; Talisse 2015.) (5) The Poverty of Secular Reason: A related argument is that the ideal of public debate proceeding on the basis of what we already agree on works better when the issues under consideration are less momentous and less contested. However, many public issues are deeply momentous and usually persist in public life not only because groups of citizens disagree but also because multiple compelling values or interests are at stake. Abortion, poverty and social justice, duties to nature and the environment, war and torture are paradigmatic such issues. Even if secular liberals believe they have adequate answers to many of these questions (that public reason is not “incomplete” in these areas), those answers may fail to be persuasive to a wide range of citizens. Those unpersuaded citizens, however, are not manifestly unreasonable. At least for the purposes of persuasion, then, secular public reason itself could benefit from drawing on the wellsprings of religious traditions,

Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation    207 and public life more broadly might be enriched by such novel and often deep perspectives. (See Eberle 2015; Perry 1996; Stout 2004; Waldron 2012.) (6) Moral Motivation: A closely related claim is that political liberalism’s own commitments require a wider view since they often lack motivational force. For all of its attempts to thin itself out and refer to existing shared beliefs, political liberalism nonetheless remains a demanding doctrine. Part of the agonistic objection, after all, is that deliberative and consensus-​driven forms of politics are unrealistic for citizens who live in worlds of self-​interest and partial moral attachments. Secular public reason would often require citizens to act for moral reasons contrary to their existing desires. Dry references to a social contract, an original position, an ideal speech situation, and reciprocity or shared views implicit in our political culture will often fail to move people, especially when acting morally is thought by some to come at great risk to one’s own interests. Given that many of the most celebrated liberal victories in modern democratic societies—​enshrining religious freedom, the abolition of slavery, advances in social justice and civil rights—​were often fought for using religious arguments by individuals manifestly motivated by their religious faith, why would adherents of a theory of justice want to deprive themselves of such a historically effective source of moral motivation? (7) Incompleteness: A final claim, often given in its own terms but possibly implied by the preceding is that public reason is “incomplete” and indeterminate. Advocates of public reason can only offer it as a standard for conducting public debate if it has the resources to lead practitioners of it to clear answers to all political questions and, ideally, one single most reasonable answer to such questions. If public reason, however, fails to achieve this even in its own terms (as a number of scholars claim it does), then there might be a strong argument for widening the bounds of public reasons to include additional sources of claim-​making which we currently identify as nonpublic. (See Reidy 2000; Quinn 1995; Waldron 2012.)

Varieties of Liberal Inclusivism Many theorists of liberal public reason and deliberative democracy have recognized the force of the preceding objections. With a few exceptions, it is possible to claim that “we are all inclusivists now.” But what we call “liberal inclusivism” does not come without qualifications. “Liberal inclusivism” shares with exclusivism a belief that discourse participants have a moral obligation to offer public justifications for their support of political coercion, but it argues that religious citizens may, under certain conditions, fulfill this obligation even if they offer only religious rationales in the process of deliberation. It employs a similar approach to exclusivism in that it is focused on the extent to and conditions under which the use of certain types of reasons can demonstrate a respect for others as free and equal cooperating members of society; it just imagines that religious

208    Andrew F. March and Alicia Steinmetz reasons are not ipso facto inadmissible on the basis of their status as religious. The liberal inclusivist approach attempts to differentiate acceptable from unacceptable religious reasons by tweaking the ethical principles required to fulfill the duty of civility. We discuss a number of such approaches in what follows.

The Rawlsian Proviso In response to criticisms that his early formulation of public reason was too restrictive, Rawls eventually revised his view. Rawls recognized that there might be circumstances under which an unjust society might either currently lack the political principles implied by a liberal regime or fail to fully recognize their implications. If the parties who wished to introduce reasons based solely on their own comprehensive doctrines believed that doing so would help to make society more just, and could be in accord with the commitments of a liberal regime (demonstrated by the eventual introduction of proper public reasons), Rawls allowed that such defections from the normal requirements of public reason could be justified provided that “in due course proper political reasons—​and not reasons given solely by comprehensive doctrines—​are presented that are sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines introduced are said to support.” It is important to note that the proviso did not “change the nature and content of justification in public reason itself ” (Rawls 1997, 784), which has led many to point out that the proviso does not allow for any greater justificatory role for religious reasoning, although it may increase its symbolic role. After all, if religious reasons must always eventually be supplemented with sufficient proper public reasons, then they seem to act mainly as “promissory notes” (Talisse 2015, 54) or ex post justifications given the historical reality of productive aberrations to the normal terms of public reason (McCarthy 1994, 53). A different interpretation of the Rawlsian proviso, which does potentially allow religious reasons to play a greater justificatory role, has been offered in Paul Weithman’s mutual assurance approach (Weithman 2011; 2015). The problem which public reason is meant to solve, Weithman suggests, is a version of the prisoner’s dilemma: Social cooperation requires that most people have sufficient reasons to follow the rules, so long as others can generally be expected to do the same. The use of public reasons in making justifications assures others that we are in fact acting in view of the common good and not simply in view of our own private reasons. The problem with the use of religious reasons is that they might lead others to doubt a religious person’s commitment to the authority of the public conception of justice over their own vision of the good. Unless one assumes that all instances of religious reasoning necessarily represent a defection from the commitment to a public conception of justice, which inclusivists generally do not, then the challenge is to discern which religious reasons are legitimate contributions and which are defections. Weithman thinks that the Rawlsian proviso can answer this problem if we interpret it as only applying in circumstances where mutual commitment is in doubt. Citizens are justified in advocating in wholly

Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation    209 religious terms, so long as, should doubt arise about their commitment to a public conception of justice, they are willing to offer properly public reasons in support of their preferred political positions. (See also Cristina Lafont’s mutual accountability approach (Lafont 2009).)

Habermasian Translation Habermas’s reformulated approach to religion in the public sphere attempts to allow for a deeper epistemic role for religious contributions to public discourse. He rejects the idea that religious individuals should be forced to justify their preferred policy positions in the public sphere solely through secular values, and indeed admits that many people might not be able to distinguish between their religious beliefs and secular justifications or feel independently compelled by secular reasons. More importantly, he argues that there may be religious arguments for which no public reasons can be found, in which case citizens would have to be allowed to express themselves in religious terms or else secular society might “cut itself off from key sources for the creation of meaning and identity” (Habermas 2006, 10). Habermas suggests that discussion in the public sphere, alongside a certain willingness on the part of secular citizens to engage seriously with religious viewpoints, can allow religious arguments to be translated into secular arguments and thereby enter the potential justificatory pool, although he asserts that ultimately only secular reasons can be used in formal political decision-​making bodies. Thus, while both Rawls and Habermas argue that citizens have a moral duty to pursue mutually intelligible justification, only Rawls requires that citizens refrain from further political advocacy if no such justifications can be found. In contrast, Habermas suggests that it is morally permissible for religious citizens to pursue political advocacy using wholly religious reasons as long as they do so with the understanding that in the end coercive political action can only be justified on secular terms. Yet Habermas admits that his theory of translation still places a rigorous demand on both religious and secular citizens, requiring that “complementary learning processes” resulting in “new epistemic attitudes” (Habermas 2008, 139–​40) must happen as a precondition to ethical discourse. This has opened up a series of questions about the motivational resources necessary to make deliberation across deep value and epistemic pluralism possible, a problem which Habermas has freely acknowledged, but on which he has been largely silent in offering proposed solutions: “What will motivate citizens—​both religious and nonreligious—​to become more self-​reflective and open to the ‘cognitive substance’ of clashing views? Delineating the ‘epistemic conditions’ that ought to govern postsecular society is not sufficient: it does not address ‘the affective-​ motivational basis’ for adopting the mentality that Habermas recommends” (Bernstein 2010, 164). Thus, one critique of Habermas’s translation criterion wonders whether, in an attempt to allow for the potential epistemic benefits of religion to enter public discourse, Habermas puts too much focus on the truth-​content of reason-​giving when what is necessary for building the type of civic solidarity and mutual understanding that

210    Andrew F. March and Alicia Steinmetz would allow for the translation process he imagines are more affective, imaginative, or expressive approaches to public deliberation.

Context-​Sensitive Inclusivism A different approach that has gained increasing traction among liberal inclusivist thinkers issues from the idea that the moral requirement to appeal to public reasons may fluctuate depending on context, and that some situations may demand more strict adherence to shared or widely accessible reasons than others. For instance, Robert Talisse suggests that while all legislation is coercive, some types of coercive legislation should concern us more than other types. There is a difference between coercion which forces us to do something we would not otherwise do or would rather not do and coercion that forces us to do something we believe it would be wrong to do. Thus, Talisse recommends envisioning coercion as falling on a spectrum of “severity” and “irretrievability.” The more severe or irretrievable the coercion is, the more strictly people should keep to using properly public reasons. On the other hand, political issues that involve less severe levels of coercion or are relatively easy to reverse may be justified according to less accessible types of reasons (Talisse 2015, 69). The intuition expressed in this approach is that there is a deep relationship between the moral demands of respect and civility and the level or type of coercion at stake; not all political coercion is created equal, and therefore what we demand from others in justifying their political advocacy should be sensitive to what exactly is at stake in any given case. Andrew March has tried to develop a more systematic version of this approach (March 2013). He argues that public reason should be sensitive to variation in two major respects. First, the requirements of public reason can be flexible in regard to the form of religious argumentation employed. March argues that religious reasons often take four very different forms, in descending order of exclusive religious authority: (1) a command from a revealed text or religious authority; (2) a theological or moral doctrine that is not clearly attributed to a specific claim from a revealed text, but is derived from certain theistic claims and revealed knowledge; (3) an appeal or reference to traditional religious commitments and practices; or (4) an appeal to wisdom or moral knowledge found in traditions of religious thought. These should not all be treated as equally “uncivil” or “theocratic” from a liberal perspective. Second, standards of judgment can be sensitive to what kinds of political decisions are the subject of deliberation. March argues that we should distinguish between five different common areas of deliberation, roughly in descending order of paternalism: (1) the freedom of fully self-​representing citizens to act and make choices based on their understanding of their own interests (individual “negative” freedoms and rights); (2) the interests of those who cannot fully represent themselves within a social contract framework; (3)  the interests of those who cannot represent themselves or advance claims within a social contract framework at all; (4) the morality of indivisibly and unavoidably

Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation    211 collective action; and (5) the morality of a society’s overall character or direction. This approach recognizes that the core goals of public reason or deliberation—​mutual respect, autonomy, and justice—​are at stake in some kinds of laws more than in others. March’s argument demonstrates the way in which some of the most prominent inclusivists, such as Waldron and Eberle, fail to establish a prima facie justification for religious arguments in whatever form and on all topics of deliberation, while his own approach provides a more nuanced way to justify the public use of religious reasons in some situations but also principled grounds on which to exclude them in others. March’s conclusion is that public reason liberals should be more open to religious arguments when they are less theocratic in their formulation and do not concern the basic negative rights and freedoms of self-​representing citizens.

Alternative Frameworks While debate continues about how to differentiate civil from uncivil religious contributions to the public sphere, other scholars posit that the “publicness of a reason” may itself be a topic about which there can be reasonable disagreement (Maclure 2006). Some theorists argue for the rejection of public reason entirely, while others seek to reinterpret it in ways that move away from approaches focused on “civility” or consensus-​seeking to models that emphasize disclosure, acknowledgment, confrontation, and compromise. Simone Chambers, for instance, argues that public reason should be understood as “first and foremost a responsibility that the public has to judge right from wrong in the public sphere rather than a set of reasons” (Chambers 2009, 365). In other words, rather than presuming that democratic norms should be demonstrable in the content of public reason-​giving, the approaches reviewed in this section tend to think about public reasoning as a practice which leads to the cultivation of such norms and the capacity for judgment as a public. More recently, in a new book that aims at a comprehensive account of a kind of “minimal secularism” as the correct liberal approach to religion, Cécile Laborde argues for a “thin epistemic theory of public reason.” On this account “religious conservative appeals to the public good of social order, to the good of the institution of marriage, to the right to life, and so forth, cannot be ruled out as incompatible with public reason (as long as they are publicly accessible and do not directly appeal to scriptural or theological authority)” (Laborde 2017, 123).

Laissez-​Faire or Agonist Public Reason A few scholars have argued for the total or near-​total elimination of constraints on the types of reasons that may be employed in justifying coercion. In the most extreme version of this approach, the “laissez-​faire” model, citizens are permitted to use any type of reason they find most compelling or expedient; all reasons are potentially

212    Andrew F. March and Alicia Steinmetz public reasons. For Stanley Fish, for instance, all liberal norms of public reason are pretty much reducible to acts of power, and “any regime of tolerance will be founded by an intolerant gesture of exclusion” (Fish 1999, 167). The implication is that “citizens need not seek suitable political justifications in their political choices and discourse, even as they rely indiscriminately on their religious beliefs,” although few, if any, within the laissez-​faire model actually take such an extreme stance (Boettcher 2005, 499). There are a slightly wider range of approaches which could be said to fall under the model of agonist public reason. An apparent contradiction in terms, this model aims at maintaining the language of public reason as an ideal or hoped-​for eventuality while rejecting it as rule of argumentation. Jocelyn Maclure, for example, argues that the process of exchanging reasons with others in itself helps us to “develop a reflexive stance toward our own judgments,” “see the association from a plurality of perspectives,” and “cultivates a thin or second-​order form of belonging that can withstand periodic disagreements on substantive matters” (Maclure 2006, 50). Agonist approaches attempt to promote the same values that liberal public reason is meant to promote without imposing the constraints typically thought necessary. Mark Button’s Arendtian-​ informed model of public reason suggests that the liberal goals of mutual respect can be achieved through the democratic benefits of self-​disclosure:  “From an Arendtian perspective, values like mutual respect and the norms of reciprocity are not violated or harmed by citizens invoking their comprehensive religious or philosophic views in public; to the contrary, the conditions for mutual respect and civic friendship are provided by individuals honestly speaking, as far as they are able, their ‘truths’ as they see them” (Button 2005, 274; see also Zerilli 2012).

Convergence On the other end of the spectrum, a number of scholars have reinterpreted the moral requirements of public justification as a duty between legislators and those subject to the laws, rather than a duty between different citizens. These thinkers agree with the Rawlsian view that public justification is important for respecting the freedom and equality of all citizens, but they reinterpret that requirement as meaning that “each citizen must have conclusive reason to accept each law as binding” (Gaus and Vallier 2009, 51). Convergence public justification is thus grounded in a view of “self-​ legislation” as crucial to realizing mutual respect, rather than the conception of “civility” typical of the standard view. Instead of arguing that citizens ought to search for shared reasons for supporting or opposing a piece of legislation, convergence suggests that “members of the public” can have entirely different (and even contradictory) reasons for finding the same law eligible, and therefore, if enacted, legitimate. To offer a basic illustration of this view, consider a public composed of two citizens, Alf and Betty, who are considering whether a given law, L, is eligible. Alf has some reason R1

Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation    213 for finding the law eligible, but it is derived from his religious comprehensive doctrine. Meanwhile, Betty has some reason R2 for finding the law eligible, but it is derived from her own, different, religious comprehensive doctrine. Since both Betty and Alf have decisive reasons for finding L eligible, even though these reasons are different, L meets the test of public justification.

Process-​Based Models of Public Reason Between the extremes of laissez-​faire and convergence, the former of which relies entirely on the process of public deliberation, whereas the latter almost entirely does away with it as a moral requirement, lies a growing body of literature that can be characterized as process-​based models of public reason. These views emphasize the “manner and spirit” in which religious arguments are made in public discourse rather than the nature of religious arguments per se (Chambers 2010, 19). This might require that religious citizens express themselves in less exclusive or alienating terms, even while maintaining their substantive religious arguments, or to be willing to revise (not necessarily abandon) their arguments in the process of engaging with those that believe differently (Bohman and Richardson 2009). For Christopher Eberle, it is acceptable for a religious citizen to argue based solely on religious reasons as long as they “sincerely and responsibly attempt to articulate reasons for his or her favored coercive laws that his or her compatriots regard as sound” (Eberle 2009, 167). As long as religious citizens take seriously the task of trying to listen to and learn from their fellow citizens and attempt to address their concerns in the course of political persuasion—​a process called “ideal conscientious engagement”—​then they have fulfilled their civil obligation. If they then fail to persuade their compatriots, they are under no further obligation to restrain themselves from advocating for their preferred political policy through religious justifications. Jeff Stout recommends a “mixed rhetorical strategy” in which citizens can express their own reasons for supporting a political policy (even if those reasons are wholly religious), but when engaging in criticism of other citizens’ views they must do so through “fair-​minded, nonmanipulative, sincere immanent criticism” (Stout 2004, 85). This view thus places fewer constraints on the expressive public acts of citizens than it does on their critical public acts. Against the Rawlsian proviso, which suggests that we can see examples such as the role of religion in the Civil Rights Movement as productive aberrations to public reason or “IOUs” to be filled in by properly public reasons eventually, Stout’s “pragmatic expressivism” argues that such examples “move ‘reasonableness’ forward” in that they “involve either dramatically significant innovations in the application of an entrenched normative vocabulary or especially memorable exemplifications of discursive virtue” (81). Treating them as marginal misses that fact; their religiosity was not separate from but, rather, constitutive of the way in which they shift our understanding of what is reasonable. This approach thus tries to maintain the expressive

214    Andrew F. March and Alicia Steinmetz potential of religious reasoning while still acknowledging that constraints are necessary for freedom through a pluralist view of public deliberation where not all utterances are held to the same standards. Finally, we might include those thinkers that embrace some variant of “postcolonial liberalism” (Ivison, Tully, Thaler). While most of this literature is concerned more with the role of aboriginal and indigenous people within public reason rather than religion specifically, it has contributed an approach to the religion and deliberation literature that is perhaps the most process-​based view today. The postcolonial approach argues that justification cannot be spoken of without some account of power, which makes it particularly suspicious of any account of public reason that makes distinctions on what can be said to be “reasonable” or “intelligible.” In contrast to the dominant Rawlsian and Habermasian views, it sees society as characterized by a series of “discursively legitimated forms of agreement that do not over-​idealize consensus,” which Ivison refers to as “discursive modi viviendi; discursive because they emerge from the constellation of discourses and registers present in the public sphere at any given time, and subject to at least some kind of ‘reflexive control’ by competent actors; and modi vivendi because they are always provisional, open to contestation and by definition ‘incompletely theorized’ ” (Ivison 2002, 73–​4). The public sphere is conceived as a space in which interlocutors, considering the task of justification and the pervasiveness of power in tandem, can participate from within their own cultural perspectives. Collectively, participants work towards intercultural understanding without needing to presuppose or construct a common comprehensive language of justification.

Conclusion The debate over the role of religion in public deliberation rages on, but the literature as a whole has moved from a position of critique of the original “exclusivist” paradigms, to the development of a wide variety of models that shift the ethical duty of civility in order to (conditionally) accommodate religious reasons, to models that have tried to reconceive the purpose of public justification more fundamentally such that religious reasons can be affirmed as potentially constitutive of public reason rather than aberrations from its normal terms. While it is an incredibly saturated literature, potential for contribution remains in drawing on alternate liberal and non-​liberal models of public reason and public judgment or considering more deeply the epistemic and motivational conditions of religious/​secular dialogue. As with deliberative democracy more generally, revising normative models in light of empirical research over how religious/​secular discourse operates in reality is likely necessary for moving the field forward. Ultimately, however, the relationship between religious reasons and liberal deliberation rests on how we understand the “problem of religion” against the moral demands of civil claim-​ making in liberal democratic regimes, and in order for reconciliation to be possible, a fundamental rethinking of either or both may be required.

Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation    215

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216    Andrew F. March and Alicia Steinmetz Larmore, C. (1990). Political Liberalism. Political Theory, 18: 339–​60. Macedo, S. (1990). The Politics of Justification. Political Theory, 18: 280–​304. Macedo, S. (2000). Diversity and Distrust (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press). Maclure, J. (2006). On the Public Use of Practical Reason:  Loosening the Grip of Neo-​ Kantianism. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 32: 37–​63. March, A. F. (2013). Rethinking Religious Reasons in Public Justification. American Political Science Review, 107: 523–​39. McCarthy, T. (1994). Kantian Constructivism and Reconstructivism: Rawls and Habermas in Dialogue. Ethics, 105: 44–​63. McConnell, M. (1999). Five Reasons to Reject the Claim that Religious Arguments Should Be Excluded from Democratic Deliberation. Utah Law Review: 639–​57. Nussbaum, M. (2011). Perfectionist Liberalism and Political Liberalism. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 39: 3–​45. Perry, M. J. (1987). A Critique of the “Liberal” Political-​Philosophical Project. William & Mary Law Review, 28: 205–​33. Perry, M. J. (1996). Religious Arguments in Public Political Debate. Loyola of L.A. Law Review, 29: 1421–​58. Quinn, P. L. (1995). Political Liberalisms and Their Exclusions of the Religious. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 69: 35–​56. Quong, J. (2011). Liberalism without Perfection (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Rawls, J. (1997). The Idea of Public Reason Revisited. University of Chicago Law Review 64: 765–​807. Reidy, D. A. (2000). Rawls’s Wide View of Public Reason:  Not Wide Enough. Res Publica, 6: 49–​72. Rorty, R. (1994). Religion as a Conversation-​Stopper. Common Knowledge, 3: 1–​6. Stout, J. (2004). Democracy and Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Talisse, R. B. (2015). Religion and Liberalism: Was Rawls Right After All? In Rawls and Religion, ed. T. Bailey and V. Gentile (New York: Columbia University Press), 52–​74. Thaler, M. (2009). From Public Reason to Reasonable Accommodation: Negotiating the Place of Religion in the Public Sphere. Diacritica, 23: 249–​70. Tully, J. (1995). Strange Multiplicity:  Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Thunder, D. (2006). A Rawlsian Argument Against the Duty of Civility. American Journal of Political Science, 50: 676–​90. Thunder, D. (2014). Citizenship and the Pursuit of the Worthy Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Waldron, J. (2012). Two-​Way Translation: The Ethics of Engaging with Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation. Mercer Law Review, 63: 845–​68. Walzer, M. (1999). Drawing the Line: Religion and Politics. Utah Law Review, 3: 619–​38. Weithman, P. (2002). Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press). Weithman, P. (2011). Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation    217 Weithman, P. (2015). Inclusivism, Stability and Assurance. In Rawls and Religion, ed. T. Baily and V. Gentile (New York: Columbia University Press), 150–​67. Wolterstorff, N. (1997). The Role of Religion in Decision and Discussion of Political Issues. In Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate, ed. R. Audi and N. Wolterstorff (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield) 67–​120. Zerilli, L. M.  G. (2012). Value Pluralism and the Problem of Judgment:  Farewell to Public Reason. Political Theory, 40: 6–​31.

Chapter 14

De l iberation a nd Vot i ng Ent wi ne d Gerry Mackie

The deliberative conception of democracy, by many accounts, arose in reaction to the aggregative conception of democracy. Two major and two minor tributaries joined to form the now mighty river of deliberationism. The first, minor, current was the participatory ethos of the New Left. In the United States after World War II, the new science of politics described and prescribed an apathetic citizenry governed by the power equilibrium bargains of a plurality of self-​seeking interest groups. The great American civil rights movement, however, was neither apathetic, nor essentially self-​seeking, nor in equilibrium. The whole world seemed to change in 1968, with the movement against the Vietnam war, the Paris student revolt, the Prague Spring, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This spirit manifested itself in political theory proper with Pateman’s Participation and Democratic Theory (1970). The personal was the political. From the civil rights to the antiwar to the feminist movement, in rebellion against the Old Right and the Old Left, the main political action was decentralized, face-​to-​face, and often organized by consensus rule. Although momentarily liberating, these many unitary democracies proved limited in scope and often unsustainable, as hinted in Jane Mansbridge’s Beyond Adversary Democracy (1980). Whatever the failings of liberal representative democracy, participation was a palliative, not a cure. The second current arose in reaction to a major development in political science, where interest-​group pluralism was overtaken, not by theories of participatory democracy but by the economic theory of democracy. An influential version of rational-​ choice theory replaced the self-​seeking group with the self-​seeking individual of economics. In this theory, just as consumers purchase commodities in the market, so do citizens cast their vote in the democracy. Just as the formal and numerical qualities of the price system opened academic careers to mathematical talent, so did the formal and numerical qualities of the voting system. William Riker (1982, 5), leader of the Rochester rational-​choice school, declared that voting is the central act of democracy:

Deliberation and Voting Entwined    219 All the elements of the democratic method are means to render voting practically effective and politically significant, and all the elements of the democratic ideal are moral extensions and elaborations of the features of the method that make voting work.

Although discussion has as much to do with democracy as voting, it is much harder to mathematize, and thus there were few career rewards in political science for theorizing discussion. Indeed, the emigration of homo economicus to politics displaced several earlier ideals of democracy. If in the free market the many self-​interests of individuals sum to a common good, perhaps the same would be true of the democratic forum? Riker knocked out any such hope with his Liberalism against Populism (1982). Not only are voters self-​interested; but voting is irremediably arbitrary (because apparently fair voting rules can each select a different public good from a single profile of voter preferences); and meaningless (because voting can result in an endless cycle over alternatives rather than an ordered ranking); there is no common good. Voting was siphoned dry of normative content. The good is revealed only by free market exchange. Mathematics dictates that democracy should be minimized and the market maximized. This dead-​ ending of the aggregative conception of democracy gave rise to the first major current in the rise of deliberationism. A second major current arose when, amidst radical democratic ferment, the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas fought to escape from another dead end—​the pessimism of Frankfurt critical theory. Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action (in German, both volumes, 1981; in English, vol. 1, 1984, vol. 2, 1987) sought to restore emancipatory reason through a theorization of communicative action as an indispensable supplement to the impoverished strategic account of action such as the economic theory of democracy. Communicative action brings about an understanding, strategic action a response. Normative validity is redeemable in what Habermas once glancingly called an “ideal speech situation,” where no one is excluded, anyone can introduce a question, and no one is prevented by internal or external coercion from exercising their rights. In this hypothetical and frankly counterfactual situation, which many would later call a “regulative” or aspirational ideal, the force of the better argument would lead to consensus. Such consensus would define the true and the right. If the ideal situation would define justice, some approximation of the ideal situation in real political institutions would establish democratic legitimacy. Habermas’s major current was joined, in the English-​speaking world, by a stream that flowed from Rawls’s Theory of Justice (1971). That theory had restored the prestige of normative political theory in the English-​speaking countries after fifty years of disdain and decay. Yet, although Rawls admirably defended social liberalism, democracy was secondary in his scheme. The Habermasian fountain played the greater role in reviving arid American democratic theory, thanks to Benhabib, Bohman, Chambers, Dryzek, Mansbridge, among other interlocutors. Europeans Manin and Elster added innovative responses to Habermas on democracy. Political philosophers in the orbit of Rawls (Cohen 2002; Gutmann and Thompson 1996; Freeman 2000),

220   Gerry Mackie perhaps repelled by Riker (Cohen 1986) and attracted by Habermas (Cohen 1999), then erected more direct justifications of democracy on Rawlsian and deliberative foundations. Rawls and Habermas went face to face intellectually in a 1995 issue of the Journal of Philosophy, after which Rawls declared himself a deliberative democrat (1999, 139). The Rawlsian contribution thus constitutes the second minor current in the rise of deliberationism. Inspired implicitly by the participatory movements of the 1960s and 1970s, repelled consciously by the claims of the rational-​choice school, and drawing from both Habermas and Rawls, theorists of deliberation had eventually to face the question of the ideal relation between voting and discussion, each of which is essential to democracy. In the 1980s an aspiring democratic theorist would encounter on the one hand a theory of voting populated by self-​interested citizens and an absence of the common good except in the case of unanimity, and on the other hand a theory of discussion populated by impartial citizens and pursuit of a common good defined by rational consensus. Is it any wonder that democratic theorists stampeded away from voting and to discussion? Samuel Freeman, in a “sympathetic comment” on deliberationism as late as 2000 (416), observed that, “For many normative political theorists, the revival of interest in democratic deliberation can bring welcome relief from the seeming predominance of rational choice theory in normative discussions.”1 The historical origins of deliberative democracy produced certain distortions in understanding the relation of deliberation to voting. In the next sections I will suggest why, despite the criticisms of both rational-​choice and deliberative theorists, voting plays an essential and dignity-​enhancing role in democracy, and how deliberation is not opposed to, but properly shapes, the act of voting. The chapter proceeds as follows. The trend in deliberative democratic theory was to flee rather than fight the pessimistic findings by economistic political science about democratic voting. Those claims, however, are quite vulnerable to challenge. I summarize work that contests the postwar definition of representative democracy as merely competitive elections; and the views of the Rochester school that democratic voting is irremediably arbitrary and meaningless, that no rational person would vote, and that voting incentivizes perfect ignorance and the market incentivizes perfect knowledge. Next, deliberative democratic theory has evolved from posing deliberation as a substitute for voting to its current view that the two mechanisms are complements, and I connect to that discussion. I enrich that view by adding to the present understanding that deliberation shapes voting several observations about how non-​ deliberative voting can undermine or improve public deliberation. I  relate studies that show how the plurality voting rule incentivizes the non-​deliberative horse-​race coverage of American elections, how in Papua New Guinea the plurality rule rewarded narrow particularism and encouraged violence and how its replacement by the so-​called limited preferential voting rule rewarded more general discourse and policy and discouraged violence, and how in Colombia similarly centripetal voting rules incentivized particularistic policies and discourse. Furthering the comparative evaluation of deliberation and voting, I scrutinize the claim of evolved deliberative

Deliberation and Voting Entwined    221 theory that deliberation is more free from coercion than is voting. Finally, I conclude that the values of ideal democratic deliberation are closely entwined with the values of ideal democratic voting.

Economic Theories of Democratic Voting are Fallible It is remarkable that the economic accounts of democratic voting that have so much influence on elite opinion happen to find that it is irremediably flawed in one way or another. In contrast the market, the ideal market anyway, tends to inerrancy. Deliberative theorists should not meekly accept the deflationary accounts of voting popular among economistic political scientists. Representative Democracy Is Merely Competitive Elections. The economist Joseph Schumpeter, a reactionary monarchist, provided the canonical definition of representative democracy in postwar American political science. He argued that democracy is only a method, of no intrinsic value; its sole function to select leaders. There are no such things as individual will, common will, or common good. Leaders impose their views, and are not controlled by voters, and this is as it should be, according to Schumpeter. The behavioralist movement in political science in the 1950s found the criterion of competitive elections a convenient way to partition democratic from authoritarian regimes because it is easy to measure. But many in political science apotheosized that assumption of convenience into the only defensible definition of democracy (its unique truth was once literally yelled at me by my professor in a graduate seminar). Respectable political scientists dismissed all other aspects of ideal and existing actual democracies, including public deliberation, as scientifically meaningless. Schumpeterian electoralism was accidentally useful for comparative analysis with an earlier population of regimes, when countries with competitive elections typically shared free and fair elections, real civil liberties, a flourishing public sphere, civilian control of the military, and other democratic features. However, empirical researchers were forced to abandon the electoralist definition of democracy around 2000 because the population of regimes had changed considerably over time. The proportion of pseudo-​ democracies among world regimes grew faster than the proportion of actual democracies, partly in response to incentives created by the widespread definition of democracy as merely competitive election (Mackie 2009). Democratic Voting Is Arbitrary And Meaningless. The followers of Riker formed at one point the modal force in the American political science profession. For them, we have seen, voting is the central fact of democracy. Next, they claimed to have shown scientifically, through arduous formal theories and numerous empirical investigations, that democratic voting is unavoidably chaotic, arbitrary, meaningless, and impossible. By

222   Gerry Mackie the end of the twentieth century, many serious people reflecting on representative democracy believed something like the following: The idea that there is a “social decision” that can satisfy everyone has been annihilated by Kenneth Arrow, who in his “impossibility theorem” has demonstrated that no social decision can amalgamate the diverse preferences of a group in the way a single individual can amalgamate his own. Thus, theoretical economics, in its denial of a communal welfare function . . . undermines the application of rationality to public decisions. . . . William H. Riker has . . . . shown that . . . amendments might be adopted which are not favored by a majority—​without this fact ever being known! (Bell 1974, 365, 307–​8)

Even in theory, however, the problems of cycling, agenda control, strategic voting, and dimensional manipulation that rational-​choice theorists exposed are not sufficiently harmful, frequent, or irremediable to be of normative concern. Moreover, almost every empirical illustration of cycling and instability has been shown to be erroneous (Mackie 2003). The impossibility view is accordingly no longer hegemonic in political science, although it lingers in antidemocratic neoliberal punditry. No Rational Person Would Vote. The cycling phenomenon discussed above was sometimes called the “paradox of voting.” Another influential idea from the economic model of democracy is the “voting paradox”: A single vote has no effect on the outcome of an election, and thus no rational person would vote. “An economist would be embarrassed to be seen in a voting booth” (Dubner and Levitt 2005). The model assumes that the voter is pursuing his self-​interest, and that his action is effective if and only if he is the pivotal voter making the difference in the outcome of the election. The odds of being the pivotal voter are infinitesimal, hence, voting is irrational. An abundance of evidence from multiple research programs, however, shows that citizens vote socially, for their conception of the public good. Legitimate self-​interest is part of the public good, and a voter seeking lower taxes or better schools often does so on behalf of all similarly situated. Next, no one expects to be pivotal in an isolated election. Most voters seek to advance their conception of the public good over a series of elections and other collective actions. In a single election they want their candidate or issue to lose by the smallest amount or win by a larger amount than 50% + 1. Call this the mandate value of voting, which is not infinitesimal like the pivotal value. Doing one’s part to advance the mandate value of a greater public good can be instrumentally rational. Survey research shows that voters do not believe they are pivotal but do believe their vote influences the (mandate) outcome. The contributory model of voting—​contributing to advance a greater public good—​is also consistent with the facts that turnout is higher in more important elections, that it is higher in countries whose constitutions are more responsive to voters’ preferences, and that billions of people in the world have in fact voted over untold centuries (Mackie 2015). Consumers Are Perfectly Informed And Voters Are Perfectly Ignorant. Another tenet of the economic theory of democracy is that since no rational person would vote, no

Deliberation and Voting Entwined    223 rational citizen would have reason to gain political knowledge. Voters are “rationally ignorant.” Nor do citizens have any incentive to deliberate about politics. The argument continues that the aggregation of the votes of ignorant millions for issues or candidates is bound to be ignorant and even dangerous. In contrast, consumers are decisive when buying a product or service on the market. Economics assumes that market actors have perfect information, and the efficient-​markets hypothesis proposes that price encapsulates all available information on the item purchased. This line of argument concludes that democracy should be minimized or even done without, and the market should be maximized. There are three middlebrow books on the market by libertarians promoting ideas along these lines (Caplan 2011; Shenkman 2009; Somin 2013). The ignorance of the citizens has been an argument against democracy from Plato through Mussolini. These conclusions, however, flow from theoretical assumptions rather than empirical investigations (Mackie 2012). We are born ignorant creatures with many urgent goals in life. Other than direct experience in our personal lives, most of our knowledge comes from various short cuts, such as the testimony of others or quick cues. Citizens seem to be ignorant about politics, but also about much else, because they have lives to lead. Research shows, however, that they do know some important political information (where the Soviet Union is, the length of a presidential term) and that they lack some important economic information (almost no one can properly evaluate housing mortgage alternatives). In politics, low-​information voters take rational short cuts to decide on candidates and issues, for example, to vote out incumbents if peace or prosperity declines, or to decide on ballot measures by looking at who funds advertising for them. There is also reason to believe that the aggregation of weak information distributed across a population can be stronger than the average of weak judgments—​not uniformly, and not as much as the Condorcet jury theorem would suggest, but nevertheless an improvement on randomness (Landemore and Elster 2012; Landemore 2013). Finally, voting can combine with representative democracy to produce an efficient division of labor on information (Sieyés [1789] 2003; Paine 1791). Representatives and the bureaucracies they appoint gather information to formulate policy, while citizens judge the results. Voting is not as foolish as the economists say. And ideal voting is as noble as ideal deliberation, I shall argue.

Deliberation vs Voting? Originally, classic deliberative democracy offered itself as the overcoming of merely aggregative democracy, although there were several exceptions to this generalization (for details, see Mansbridge et al., 2010, 64 n. 24, 85 n. 56). Today’s evolved model of deliberative democracy is more nuanced in its description and evaluation of voting, especially on the confluence of discussion and voting commonly observed in practicing democracies (e.g. Goodin 2008; Mansbridge et al. 2010; Mansbridge et al. 2012). Mark

224   Gerry Mackie Warren (2017), for example, deplores the binary opposition of deliberation to aggregation as a fateful and costly misstep in the development of deliberative democratic theory. One cost of the dichotomy, and particularly of the ranking of deliberation as superior to aggregation, was the neglect of quintessentially political issues of power, conflict, and interest. Another was to treat deliberation and aggregation as substitutes rather than complements. The result was deep confusion at this early stage about the relationship among deliberation, voting, and decision. After developing ideas about public deliberation at multiple sites—​legislative bodies, election campaigns, small citizens’ initiatives at the municipal or neighborhood levels, the mass media, advocacy groups, mini-​publics, special deliberative assemblies, and so on—​the evolved model of deliberative democracy turned to the idea of the deliberative system to chart the complex relationships among various modes and sites of deliberation in a political society (Mansbridge et al. 2012). Warren (2017) then identified three functions of a democratic political system more broadly: empowered will-​inclusion, communication and collective will-​formation, and collective decision-​making.2 In turn, each of five mechanisms—​competition, consensus, association, voting, and deliberation—​serves each of the three purposes more or less adequately. Deliberation better fulfills will-​formation but does not fulfill empowered inclusion or decision-​making. Voting empowers inclusion and makes decisions. And so on. I don’t have a better scheme to offer. I would, however, single out public deliberation, voting, and representation as the three central mechanisms of modern political democracy. Although each mechanism is usually considered in isolation, each can augment, correct, or thwart one of the others. Deliberation can shape voting and voting can shape deliberation. Each of those two can affect representation and representation can affect each. Here, I will consider some interactions between discussion and voting,

Deliberation Shapes Voting At its best, deliberation transforms preferences in the direction of the common good (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 79, detailed at 72–​80). Predeliberative preferences ideally become more accurate and fair in deliberation. Those preferences improved by deliberation ideally are made even more accurate and fair through being aggregated by a properly democratic voting rule. In an entirely different manner, public deliberation offers considerations acceptable to all for resorting to mechanisms of joint decision based on fair voting or fair bargaining (89). More broadly, public deliberation—​in civil society, in parliaments, or in constitutional moments—​can and should weigh the advantages and disadvantages of a variety of formal democratic institutions, including alternative voting rules (see the example of the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly in Warren and Pearce 2008).

Deliberation and Voting Entwined    225

Voting Shapes Deliberation At The  Ideal Level. Compare conceptually one body subject to the deliberative constraints of “mutual respect, equality, reciprocity, fairness, and mutual justification” (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 76), and another body subject to the same constraints plus the constraint that any decision must be enacted by the explicit vote of all—​for example, by the unanimity rule. Many of our intuitions about the deliberative constraints, I suggest, would be frail without the further assumption that speakers are constrained to gain the active consent of their interlocutors. Or consider how nearly-​ideal deliberation would alter if members were equal in every respect except that arbitrarily some had the right to vote and others did not. Next, an ideal deliberation abstracted such that the participants were outside our existence in space and time could depend on a unanimity rule. In the real world, the cost of delay in reaching a decision by unanimous vote can justify a more majoritarian voting rule. Far more important though, in the real world there is always a status quo, and a unanimity rule unjustifiably enshrines that status quo. The best approximation of unanimity in the real world of space and time thus is some variety of majority rule.3 And a deliberator in the world of space and time constrained to win the active approval of a potential majority is thereby more likely to be gripped by deliberative constraints. I am claiming that the intuitive appeal of the deliberative ideal depends on the almost invisible inclusion of a voting rule. In other words, our evolved democratic theory begins not from ideal deliberation but rather from ideal deliberation-​aggregation. Moving from the ideal to the real, non-​communicative factors can powerfully shape public discussion. We’ll consider how voting rules and larger electoral institutions can do so, often behind people’s backs. This is important to understand because voluntarist efforts to improve deliberation are likely to founder mysteriously when they attempt to remedy political communication that is distorted by powerful but obscure incentive structures, such as plurality-​rule voting in the US and in Papua New Guinea, or even more “centrifugal” voting rules in Colombia that rewarded candidates for pursuing partial and local interests rather than the more general good of the country. In American Plurality-​Rule Elections. Consider the effect of plurality-​rule voting on deliberation. In the US, the political journalism of candidate elections is more about ongoing claims and assessments concerning the comparative likelihood of victory among the candidates and less about their policy views. It’s called horse-​race journalism (Patterson 1977).4 A public journalism movement seeks to improve the quality of public deliberation by encouraging journalists to report more on policy and less on who is edging in and out of the lead, but its success has been limited (Dzur 2002). Why does horse-​race coverage remain so common? The reason could be mere tradition. This is the way it has been done and the way to succeed in journalism is to do what everyone expects to be done. It could be psychological. Perhaps journalists have learned by trial and error that the racing metaphor gains larger audiences because it is

226   Gerry Mackie cognitively simple and emotionally exciting. Another explanation is that such coverage follows from the incentives of the plurality voting rule in American elections. Under the plurality rule, any number of candidates can run, and the candidate with the most votes wins the election, even with less than a majority of votes. Assume that many voters have preferences over three or more of the candidates and that many want their vote to make a difference. When there are more than two candidates, such a voter can encounter the following problem. He or she prefers candidate C to B to A, yet he or she believes it likely but not certain that the collective ranking by plurality rule is A > B > C. He or she can vote for his or her most-​favored but least-​likely to win candidate C, or vote for his or her second-​ranked B in order to contribute to the defeat of his or her least-​favored candidate A. In plurality elections, many cast “strategic” votes in this way. The story continues that candidates in plurality elections, knowing of this behavior by voters, are deterred from entering unless they believe they have a reasonable chance of being among the top few vote-​getters (some candidates enter who for one reason or another are not primarily motivated to win the current contest). Further, notice that the best way for a serious candidate to win a plurality election is to make potential competitors, journalists, and likely voters believe that she or he will be among the top vote-​getters—​whether or not that is initially true. This pattern is most pronounced in the sequence of American presidential election primaries. Given the incentive structure of the voting rule, information about who is probably in the lead is of practical interest to citizens who do not want to waste their votes. Plurality voting only records first preferences, and thus throws away important information about what voters want below their first-​ranked preferences. Worse, monied interests can at the outset or early in the race so heavily fund a less popular candidate that the weight of their funding creates a belief, in potential candidates and likely voters, that their candidate is among the inevitable top vote-​getters, such as when huge donations to George Bush locked up the US 2000 Republican presidential primary election for him before actual voting commenced and before many voters had the deliberative opportunity to consider other candidates (see Myerson and Weber 1993 for a more formal account of this weakness of the plurality voting rule). By contrast, if potential candidates were voted on by some preference-​ranking rule, say Australian preference voting, the winner would be closest to what the most voters think best. Adoption of such a rule could both more accurately select the candidate thought best by the most people and change the content of public discussion more towards the deliberative ideal by shifting public discourse more towards the content of proposed policies. Public Deliberation Under Two Different Voting Rules In Papua New Guinea. A vivid actual example arose in the country of Papua New Guinea (PNG) (Reilly 2001). Under Australian colonial rule PNG conducted three national elections with limited preferential voting. Each voter in a legislative district was required to record votes at least for his first-​ranked, second-​ranked, and third-​ranked candidates. In the tally of the preferential rule, if one candidate gets a majority of first-​ranked preferences she or he wins. Otherwise the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and the second-​rankings of voters who favored her or him first are redistributed to the remaining candidates.

Deliberation and Voting Entwined    227 The process is repeated until one candidate has a majority of votes. There is a majority winner, and fuller rankings are taken into consideration. In PNG, one’s primary duty is reciprocity within the clan, and each district contains a number of clans. Under preference voting, candidates would obtain first-​ranked votes from their own clan members, but those votes would not be enough to win a majority. Thus, the most successful candidates solicited second-​and third-​preference votes from members of other clans, building cross-​clan relationships and promising a more general distribution of benefits to the district. The electoral rule incentivized more general outcomes and a public discourse more oriented to the general good. Legislators of this type tended to carry more generalized policy and discourse into the national parliament. Upon independence, thinking it would be simpler for voters to understand, PNG switched to electing candidates by plurality. The story I  told above of voters under plurality-​rule voting strategically to select their lower-​ranked but more likely-​to-​win candidate does not apply, however, in PNG. That story assumes a sociology of many cross-​cutting cleavages, with each voter practically and psychologically attached to many groups, not mainly to one. In a PNG plurality election, however, almost all of the voters are obliged to vote for the candidate from their own clan regardless of that candidate’s chance of winning a plurality of votes. Similarly, candidates from various clans are not deterred from entering the race. As a result many candidates would enter and the candidate from the largest clan in the district would win, even if the largest clan was relatively small in proportion to the whole population in the district. In 1992, half the PNG members of parliament hailed from districts where they won less than 20% of the district’s vote, and the candidate from one district had won with 6% of the vote. Candidates seeking particularistic gains and engaging in particularist discourse succeeded. Elections also became more violent, as the election began to center on who gained in zero-​sum redistribution. Legislators elected this way carried their particularist policy and discourse into the national parliament, which in turn became more fractious. In 2002, PNG returned to preferential voting. Elections in 2004 held under the new system “featured higher support levels for winning candidates, more cooperative campaign tactics and lower levels of electoral violence than those held in the same regions just two years earlier under plurality rule. These patterns were repeated at the 2007 elections, which were much more peaceful than previous contests” (Reilly 2008, 17). In Papua New Guinea, the content of public deliberation in elections, the media, and parliament was quite particularistic under plurality rule and more general under preferential voting. Under plurality rule, voluntaristic efforts to improve public deliberation would have come up against powerful electoral incentives to the contrary and would probably have had little result. The best way to start on improving public deliberation would have been to change the voting rule, as they did. Centripetal Electoral Rules And Deliberation In Colombia. More generally, some political scientists (Cox 1990) find that some electoral institutions provide “centrifugal” incentives and others “centripetal” incentives to officials seeking election and conducting governance. Centripetal incentives reward officials who take positions in the center of the issue space. The center is analogous to what deliberativists call more generalizable

228   Gerry Mackie interests. Centrifugal incentives reward officials for taking positions away from the center, in the pursuit of more particularistic interests. In a polity with many centrifugal incentives, purely deliberative efforts to realize more generalizable interests are trying to paddle up the rapids. The Colombian constitutional reform of 1991 nicely illustrates this dynamic (Shugart, Moreno, and Fajardo 2005). Colombia is geographically fragmented and the state has never been sovereign through its whole territory. Absence of sovereignty or competing sovereignties contribute to its long history of civil wars and conflicts, continuing into the present. Beginning in the 1960s, a combination of leftist guerillas, rightist paramilitaries, and criminal gangs warring in the countryside, along with internal economic migration, rapidly shifted the bulk of the population from the country to the cities. The Colombian president is elected by plurality vote by the whole country. Although there are more tightly centripetal voting rules, plurality vote over the whole territory is far more centripetal than the severely centrifugal rules that then governed the election of Colombian legislators. Comparatively, the president is selected by the center of opinion, which over time had shifted to the urban areas. The two chambers of the legislature, however, were elected by a perverse combination of electoral rules that rewarded victory to candidates who pursued fragmented particularistic interests, many of them in the depopulated and traditionalist countryside. By 1990, Colombia had become one of the most dangerous countries on earth, but a national response was blocked by conflict between a series of generalizing presidents and particularist legislatures. A purely deliberative response to the country’s problems would never be able to overcome the centrifugal forces ensconced in the legislature. Unusually, Colombia’s constitution could be revised only on the initiative of the legislature, and the legislature uniformly blocked revision. The President and his ministers deliberatively and otherwise assisted the formation of a student movement for constitutional reform, and that movement conducted an unofficial plebiscite on constitutional reform, handing out its own ballots for insertion into the official voting box, on the same day as congressional elections in March 1990. The movement provoked national deliberation on the problem and gained more than a million non-​binding votes in the referendum. Given that result, the President invoked emergency powers and put an official constitutional reform measure on the ballot for the May 1990 presidential election, which passed handily. The Supreme Court, to the surprise of many, judged the measure to be legitimate, and a constitutional convention was called. The new constitution changed the voting rules of the upper house so that it would be more oriented to general interests, and reduced but did not eliminate particularist incentives in the lower house. Colombia still has many problems to solve, but political reform and progress has been striking, especially in the construction of active citizenship culture and strong public spheres in the two largest cities of Bogotá and Medellín (Bajaj, Cislaghi, and Mackie 2016). People recall the constitutional convention as the pivotal point of renewal in the country’s politics.

Deliberation and Voting Entwined    229 Non-​deliberative electoral institutions can indirectly undermine or improve deliberation. Any “systems” approach to deliberation should take into account not only how different kinds of deliberative forums contribute to or detract from the broader patterns of deliberation in the system but also how other non-​deliberative mechanisms, particularly voting, can affect public deliberation in many venues. The two democratic mechanisms of voting and deliberation interact.

Is Deliberation More Free from Coercion than Voting? One criticism of public deliberation as a mechanism of democracy is that it is a procedure that does not result in a collective decision (unless the deliberators happen on unanimity). Deliberative democrats typically offer voting as a supplement to deliberation so that a political democracy can coordinate on binding decisions in the absence of reasoned unanimity (compare Chambers 2012, 60–​1). Deliberation does not by itself result in a binding decision. China, for example, conducts “authoritarian” deliberation unconnected to the requirement of a binding decision (He and Warren 2011). Even if deliberation were to terminate in unanimous agreement, the agreement would not from that alone result in a binding decision, I contend. The deliberators might unanimously agree on an option, then go their separate ways without taking any collective action. There would have to be a prior constitutional understanding that unanimous agreement binds everyone to comply with its result. Similarly, but seldom mentioned in this context, voting also need not result in a collective decision. First, some voting rules are “incomplete.” If simple majority is the rule, and there are three or more options, it’s possible that none of the options wins 50% of the vote, for example if the tally over three options were 25%, 35%, and 40%. The rule has no result. Both voting and deliberation can be incomplete. A somewhat different example is that proposals to add the option “none of the above” to ballots have stalled on the problem that if that option wins a majority of votes then the public office goes unfilled. Second, some votes can be non-​binding. American states occasionally conduct non-​binding referenda; although there is an official vote, that vote does not entail a binding directive to the government or its citizens. In democratic bodies (more in civil society but sometimes in the state), the group takes straw votes, to see where people stand and to help clarify discussion. Having an explicit understanding of where each member stands can advance legitimate deliberation. Straw votes can be useful for democracy, but do not result in a binding decision. Democratic voting is, however, often a central part of a procedure which leads to a decision that is recognized by a prior constitutional understanding as binding on the

230   Gerry Mackie state and its subjects. The vote itself does not bind without that prior understanding. To consider another social choice rule, suppose that a polity consults divination in order to select among political options. The divination does not bind unless there is a prior constitutional understanding that it does. Decision is logically independent from deliberation or voting. Of course, in a political democracy they are usually combined. When Mansbridge et  al. (2010) consider the place of self-​interest and the role of power in deliberative democracy, they conclude that although the implementation of any decision will usually involve coercive power (which they define as the threat of sanction or the use of force), deliberation itself can be relatively free of power. Thus the unanimous agreement following deliberation is relatively free from power but non-​deliberative mechanisms—​non-​unanimous voting and negotiation among cooperative antagonists—​are coercive in essence. It is not clear, however, that voting is coercive in their sense.5 An equal right to vote can have causal influence on the outcome of a vote. The equal right to participate by offering considerations can have causal influence on the course of deliberation. In both instances, it seems to me, the causal influence does not derive from the threat of sanction or the use of force. Although reasons can motivate a vote, they say, the vote itself is act of will and an exercise of the equal voting power of each participant. The internal content of the act of voting can vary, however. Two prominent types of content are first, voting as expression of an individual desire, and second, as Rousseau observed, an expression of opinion about what is best for all. Voting, they say, means that a majority coerces a minority. I have argued, however, that it is not voting itself but the prior constitutional understanding of the vote’s outcome as binding that licenses the coercion. The social contract theorists recognized this in their typical argument that a prior unanimous consent, real or imaginary, authorizes majority voting decision.6

The Ideal Standards of Voting and Deliberation are Entwined Many, although not all, of the excellences of ideal democratic deliberation are shared with ideal democratic voting. For convenience of exposition, I develop this argument in parallel with Mansbridge’s (2015) presentation of standards of good deliberation. These regulative ideals of deliberation, she says, are evolving, contestable, and not necessarily in harmony with one another. The standards apply not to any kind of discussion, but to deliberation at its feasible best. I will compare deliberation to voting at its feasible best, not to any kind of voting.

Deliberation and Voting Entwined    231 Mansbridge begins with two classic and unchallenged standards of deliberation: respect and absence of power. The remainder are more contested. Respect. Ideal deliberation presumes respect by all of the worth and dignity of others. This is manifested by offering reasons that others could accept, listening with others, and in respectful personal demeanors. Real discussion in its weaker moments can be dominated by bullying sophists. Voting too, in the ideal, presumes respect. Indeed, Mansbridge et al. (2010) state that, “the voting process makes a statement of equal respect parallel to, but qualitatively different from, the respect accorded by listening in deliberation” (85). Waldron (1999, 109) is even stronger in detailing the respect shown to people by the institution of majority voting: First, it respects their differences of opinions about justice and the common good: it does not require anyone’s sincerely held view to be played down or hushed up because of the fancied importance of consensus. Second, it embodies a principle of respect for each person in the processes by which we settle on a view to be adopted as ours even in the face of disagreement.

Absence Of Power. Another regulative ideal of deliberation is the absence of power, which even at best can be only approximated in real circumstances. Real discussion in its weaker moments is the discursive equivalent of unjustifiably unequal power relations. Although all are capable of basic deliberative competence, some are more persuasive than others, sometimes in patterned ways that can advance particular rather than general interests. In contrast, assignment of an equal vote to each neutralizes the asymmetries of competence in deliberation. Also, recall that I contested above the claim by Mansbridge et al. (2010) that voting is essentially coercive. Reason, Or Rational Or Emotional Considerations. This standard is deliberation’s specialty. Although it is essential to the decision on how to vote, it is absent from the act of voting. Aim At Consensus And At Clarifying Interests When They Conflict; Common Good Orientation. It is popular these days to justify voting in terms of its epistemic value in approximating some independent but unspecified standard of justice. The epistemic justification neglects the important democratic value that the government should do what most of its members think best or, sometimes, what most of its members want most (Mackie 2014). Kelsen (1955) defends the majority principle because it best approximates individual autonomy. Unlike Rousseau’s, Kelsen’s model does not pretend that a voter on the losing side nevertheless governs himself or herself. A voter on the losing side of a proposition is subject to the will of the winning side. However, the stronger a supermajority needed to pass a law, the more likely it is that the average voter will be subject to a contrary will. As mentioned earlier, if the will of all were required for a decision, a single individual could block a change in the social order desired by all the rest, as if that individual were a king.

232   Gerry Mackie Thus, “it is the principle of simple majority which secures the highest degree of political freedom that is possible within society” (25). Independently of Kelsen, Rae (1969) showed that simple majority rule optimizes the correspondence between a voter’s values and those values expressed by imposed collective policy. If one were to choose a voting rule for society, not knowing what values one would have in that society, then simple majority rule would be the rule most likely to realize one’s values. Supermajority rules reduce that probability; again, they favor the status quo, whatever it is. Taylor (1969) more formally deduced this result from some simple assumptions. A number of democratic theorists reject the autonomy argument for democracy, assuming that it must take a Rousseauvian form. The Kelsenian argument is less strong but more sound. Voting, especially mass voting, is instrumentally rational only if one seeks to contribute to bringing about a public good with one’s vote. If that characterization of voting tends to be correct, then most voters are doing what Rousseau recommends, expressing a judgment on what is best for all. A democratic justification of democracy would recommend that we aggregate their judgments and select what most members think best for the collective. In legislatures, a general goal can be widely agreed upon, but it can be a matter of merely particular interest how the benefits and burdens of achieving that goal are distributed. If the distribution is a matter of particular interest, then each member can cast their equal vote resulting in a compromise on what most members most want. Whether aggregating post-​deliberative opinions on the common good or aggregating particularistic desires, a democratic voting rule will select a central outcome. Equal Participation, And Inclusion Of All Affected. Mansbridge et al. (2010, 85) are correct that voting is “in important ways . . . more inclusive and egalitarian than deliberation” (85). As mentioned earlier, unlike deliberation, where the less persuasive or the silent have less influence, idealized voting assigns an equal right to vote for all. In real settings that end in a vote, the more talkative in deliberation are constrained by the consideration that they have to win a majority of votes through their persuasion, and the silent are fully restored to equality by their possession of the vote. Deliberation and voting are equally challenged by the lack of direct inclusion of the unavoidably absent, such as future generations. If citizens do neglect the legitimate interests of the absent then deliberation, but not voting alone, can bring them into the decision process. Accountability To  Constituents. Public deliberation can constrain elected and unelected officials. Election of officials also powerfully constrains them by selecting the best in prospective voting and keeping them honest in recurrent elections (Madison, Federalist No. 57; Manin, Przeworski, and Stokes 1999). Publicity/​Transparency. Ideal deliberation is public, although departures from publicity can be justified in particular instances. It is not clear that the votes of individuals should be public unless justified otherwise. Generally, ideal deliberation would advise when voting should be public and when it should be private.

Deliberation and Voting Entwined    233 Sincerity In Important Matters. Under some voting rules, as we have seen, one better realizes one’s aim by not voting for one’s most favored candidate. This strategy is often called strategic voting, while voting one’s true preferences is called “sincere.” However, there is usually no reason to hide one’s strategic vote, and in the records of parliaments it is common to see members letting everyone know that their vote is a strategic one calculated to bring about the outcome that they sincerely value. Epistemic Value. Public deliberation over alternatives tends to improve the accuracy and fairness of people’s judgments. Aggregation of judgments by a democratic voting rule further tends to improve the accuracy and fairness of people’s judgments. Substantive Balance. Perhaps ideal deliberation should be required to take into consideration all sides of a question. Private voting might more reliably ensure that all sides of a question are included in the decision.

Conclusion In its early days deliberation tended to be portrayed as a substitute for voting, in part because voting had become so disparaged by economistic political science. Deflationary views of the value of voting, however, do not withstand scrutiny. Voting, as demonstrated, is not a substitute for deliberation but complements it. Voting shapes deliberation and deliberation shapes voting. Neither voting nor deliberation are decision-​rules; their effects on decision depend on prior constitutional determination. Voting is no more coercive than deliberation. Although some of the standards of deliberation do not apply to voting, most of them do.

Notes 1. The preceding section is adapted from Mackie (2011). 2. Warren acknowledges that some of his readers will choke on his functionalist language and I am one of them. Why not call them purposes, which more properly forefronts the role of human agency in the formation of institutions and practices? And why bring in system, which implies an automatic harmony that is often lacking in human affairs? 3. One weakness of majority voting is that an insular minority would be regularly outvoted and more urgently that its basic rights would be violated. A  supermajority rule privileges any numerical minority, however, not only unjustly disadvantaged minorities. John Calhoun in the nineteenth century promoted consensus rule for the United States so that a minority of slave owners could veto the abolition of slavery by the majority of Americans entitled to vote at the time. The goals of protecting the basic rights of insular minorities or of allowing a long enough time for proper deliberation of proposals can by realized by methods other than supermajority voting.

234   Gerry Mackie 4. The metaphor appears in political cartoons early in the nineteenth century in the US. In multiparty regimes, the election is more commonly portrayed by a semicircle or pie chart showing how the relative strengths of parties in the parliament would change. 5. Bargaining does not fall within the scope of this chapter. 6. As many have observed, this framework offers little solace to the outvoted minority, and doubtful justification if its basic interests or rights are seriously damaged.

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Chapter 15

Listenin g a nd Deliberat i on Michael E. Morrell

As should be clear from the diversity of contributions to this volume, there are many different theories of “deliberative democracy,” and yet, from its earliest development to today, among the ideas that distinguish deliberation from other theories of democracy is the necessity of citizens listening to one another. While other theories do not eschew exchanges among citizens, deliberation gives them a central place in our understanding of democracy. Absent interlocutors hearing and understanding those with whom they disagree, we simply do not have a deliberative democracy. Interestingly, many of the critics of deliberation focus on the ways in which various deliberative theories may restrict, or ignore the factors that limit, the kinds of mutual exchange upon which deliberation rests. Yet despite these criticisms, the history of deliberative theory reveals just how vital listening is to the development of the concept of deliberative democracy. In what follows, I begin by tracing this development, along with criticisms of deliberation and theories of listening from the broader field of democratic theory. Switching from the theoretical to the empirical, I then consider the possible factors that might affect listening in deliberation and various ways scholars have attempted to measure this important concept. Ultimately, what both these explorations reveal is that much theoretical and empirical work remains unfinished with regard to listening and deliberation.

Listening in Deliberative Theory Given its conceptual history, it is easy to claim that there is no one “theory,” but rather “theories,” of deliberative democracy. Deliberative theory developed along several trajectories, and subsequent theoretical elaborations have only multiplied these. Examining the conceptual development of deliberation, however, reveals the core connections among these theories. Giving reasons to fellow citizens when discussing issues

238   Michael E. Morrell of public concern is certainly one of these, although what counts as “giving reasons” can vary. Yet, giving reasons is not enough; another vital facet of a properly functioning deliberative democracy is that citizens also hear the reasons offered by others. Listening to the ideas and concerns of others runs throughout the varieties of deliberative theory. Among theorists I have described as “Madisonian” (Morrell 2010, 18–​21), Joseph Bessette (1980) argues that participants in deliberation must seriously consider the offerings of others, although in his theory such exchanges primarily occur among elected representatives (Bessette, 1994, 46). James Fishkin, in contrast, concentrates on exchanges among ordinary citizens through institutions such as deliberative polls (DP), but he also highlights the importance of listening to others with different points of view and paying attention to what they have to offer to the conversation (1991; 1995; 2009; 2010, 72). Other deliberative theories draw their primary influences from Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, but again, listening to others is vitally important. Habermas argues that in deliberation, contrary to a marketplace of ideas, “the paradigm is not the market, but dialogue” (1996, 23), in which citizens do not simply put ideas on display but actually have reciprocal discussion. Habermasian-​influenced theorists include John Dryzek (1990), who argues that “effective listening has to be central to any discursive democracy” (Dryzek 2000, 149), and Simone Chambers, who highlights that only by “trying to understand how the world looks to other people will participants be flexible and open enough to undertake a genuine evaluation of their opinions” (1996, 100). For John Rawls, being reasonable necessitates that citizens adhere to a criterion of reciprocity that requires citizens making proposals to “think it at least reasonable for others to accept them, as free and equal citizens, and not as dominated or manipulated, or under the pressure of inferior political or social position” (Rawls 1997, 770). Without listening to others and understanding their concerns, it would be impossible for citizens to demonstrate reciprocity. Rawlsians such as Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson argue that the value that “lies at the heart of reciprocity and deliberation in democracy” is mutual respect, which “requires a favorable attitude toward, and constructive interaction with, the persons with whom one disagrees” (Gutmann and Thompson 1996, 79). Other theorists draw upon both Habermas and Rawls. Joshua Cohen illustrates why participants must listen closely to others when he argues that in a deliberative democracy “the justification of the terms and conditions of association proceeds through public argument and reasoning among equal citizens” (1989, 21). James Bohman, following J. L. Austin, calls the process whereby citizens’ different perspectives affect others through open dialogue “securing uptake” (1996, 58–​66), and the ability of dialogue to secure this uptake compels a genuine openness on the part of citizens to hear their interlocutors. The commitment to listening to others remains a central idea even in more recent deliberative theories. Michael Rabinder James’s theory of plural democracy relies upon the concept of “political reciprocity,” which reflects citizens’ “motivation to exchange communication” and presupposes that “participants give to each other to the extent that others give to them” (2004, 77). Christian F. Rostbøll’s theory of deliberative freedom acknowledges that what “matters for success of deliberation is in the first phase that people

Listening and Deliberation    239 are willing to show up and communicate with each other, to speak their minds, and to listen to each other” (2008, 121). Jane Mansbridge et al. reformulate the deliberative democratic ideal, but still argue that participants in deliberation should “listen to one another and give reasons to one another that they think the others can comprehend and respect” (2010, 66). Even in the recently developed theories of deliberative systems, for all of the central functions of the system—​epistemic, ethical, and democratic—​listening to others plays a central role (Mansbridge et al. 2012, 10–​13). Given that listening is pivotal for deliberative theory, it is unsurprising that some of the most forceful critiques of deliberation raise concerns intimately connected with this issue. Lynn Sanders argues that deliberative democrats should ensure that “those who usually dominate learn to hear the perspectives of others” (1997, 372–​3). She is concerned, however, that insidious prejudices “may incline citizens to hear some arguments and not others” (Sanders 1997, 353), that focusing on what is common “increases the risks of outright denial of the perspectives of minorities,” and that honoring particularity will more likely arise by “acknowledging the need for democrats to listen as well as to talk in their deliberations” (Sanders 1997, 361). One possible antidote for this is allowing testimony in deliberation (Sanders 1997, 371). Others have echoed Sanders’s concerns (see, e.g., Young 1996; 2000) that deliberation might not achieve reciprocal listening and have defended the appropriateness of, not just testimony, but other forms of communication as well, such as greeting, rhetoric, and storytelling. Deliberative theorists have responded to these criticisms. Dryzek, for example, states that deliberation could include “argument, rhetoric, humour, emotion, testimony or storytelling, and gossip” (2000, 1). John Parkinson (2006) not only accepts alternative forms of communication as legitimate, but shows how they might function empirically in an approximation of deliberation in a real world setting, and Ian O’Flynn (2006) argues for the importance of storytelling in deliberation in deeply divided societies. Stephen Elstub elucidates how many “second generation” deliberative theorists have responded to the possible social and cultural bias of different forms of communication (2010, 296–​8). Bächtiger et al. (2010) posit that there is now an entire set of deliberative theories, christened “Type II deliberation,” that have adapted specifically, at least in part, to critics such as Sanders and Young. Thus, deliberative theorists have taken seriously the early critiques that communicative forms of deliberation might interfere with the ability of participants to listen to one another. Although the points I have made may seem obvious, I hope to demonstrate that from the earliest formulations of deliberative theory to today, the need for citizens to hear and understand one another is at the heart of deliberative theory. Listening closely to others is a sine qua non for deliberative democracy. Yet despite how important this concept is to deliberative theory, the fullest accounts of listening have occurred not within deliberative theory but in the broader field of democratic theory. Perhaps the earliest and fullest exploration of listening in democracy was put forward by Susan Bickford (1996), although she ends up rejecting the approaches offered by the deliberative theorists of the time. She contends that Rawls, as well as his communitarian critics, “provide us with too limited an understanding of human togetherness” because

240   Michael E. Morrell they do not see that politics “is constituted neither through consensus nor community, but by the practices through which citizens argue about interests and ends—​in other words, by communication” (1996, 11). She also criticizes Habermas because he treats strategic action as less normatively valid than communicative action, and in doing so, “obscures the difficult complexity of actual political interaction, in which strategic and communicative action are intertwined” (1996, 18). One difficulty in assessing Bickford’s relationship to deliberative theory is that she was writing during a time in which the early theories of deliberation were emerging, and when Rawls’s theory of justice and Habermas’s theory of communicative action represented what many knew of as deliberation. Yet it is not surprising that she criticizes these two since she relies primarily upon Aristotle, Arendt, Merleau-​Ponty, and feminist theorists in developing her theory of listening in a democracy. The role listening plays in a democracy, especially under conditions of an “inegalitarian social order,” is to sustain and extend “the possibility of actively making sense together” (1996, 173). The normative principle that can guide this understanding of listening is “something like continuation . . . the underlying guide of keeping the field of action open, to act in a way so that future action is possible, so the field of freedom is maintained or expanded” (1996, 170). Although Bickford has not responded to later iterations of deliberative theory, ultimately her theory of listening is more compatible with an agonistic, rather than deliberative, conception of democracy. Andrew Dobson (2014) delves into the relationship between his theory of dialogic democracy and deliberative democracy in more depth than Bickford, although this relationship is a bit unclear at times. On the one hand, similar to Sanders and Young, he criticizes deliberative theories, especially Habermas’s, because he believes that their focus on consensus could lead to the exclusion and marginalization of those without power (2014, 129). On the other hand, he writes, “One of deliberative democracy’s legitimacy criteria is that the institution, value, policy, decision, or practice in question be ‘accepted as proper by those to whom it is supposed to apply’. In its determination to ‘listen out for’, dialogic democracy can help make good this particular legitimacy criterion of its deliberative cousin” (2014, 132). In summarizing his position, he posits that he has “tried to show how deliberative democracy’s promise is more likely to be realized if the dialogic conditions for inclusivity and free deliberation are taken into account. . . . Dialogic democracy therefore has the potential to unsettle its deliberative cousin, especially when the latter takes the form in which the object of the process is to reach a consensus” (2014, 138). Despite these attempts to draw some fine distinctions between dialogic and deliberative democracy, we can see Dobson’s theory as contributing to deliberative democracy. Dobson’s theory is similar to Bickford’s in its focus on active listening and an attention to those without power, and although he cites her approvingly (2014, 41, 91, 98, 100), he never engages her theory in depth. Dobson does go further than Bickford in the positive substantive effects of listening. Dialogic democracy “stresses the reciprocal nature of democratic conversation in which speaking and listening are of equal value and importance and in which equal attention is paid to them both theoretically and in practice” (116–​17). In contrast to the alleged consensus of deliberation, “the role of

Listening and Deliberation    241 a dialogical approach to democracy is to produce difference, multiply voices, and ensure that ‘closure’ is not achieved at the expense of failing to question prevailing relations of power” (Dobson 2014, 130). The success of a democracy with regard to inclusion even becomes a criterion by which we can judge democratic legitimacy (Dobson 2014, 132). Dobson suggests two conditions that could help deliberative democracy achieve its promise: citizens following the rules of good listening (see 2014, ­chapter 2) and the need to “listen out for” new and excluded voices. This form of listening can contribute to several democratic goals beyond just continuation: legitimacy, trust, dealing with disagreement, improving representation, and improving deliberation (see Dobson 2014, ­chapter 3). Thus, although Dobson agrees with Bickford on many points, these goals place Dobson closer to deliberative theory than her more agonistic approach. His exhortations about the need to take listening seriously are important for deliberative theory, but at the same time, many deliberative theories have moved beyond the consensus model that he criticizes, even if they have not produced a complete and coherent theory of listening. Yet although it has not received a full treatment by deliberative democrats, at least some deliberative scholars are beginning to pay closer attention to deliberative listening. Using a case study of a contentious political issue in a local Australian community, Carolyn Hendriks and Selen A. Ercan (2017) explore what they call the “informal and horizontal modes” of listening that are important in a deliberative system. In addition to “deliberative listening,” which is necessary for decision makers to reach common ground, and “agonistic listening,” which allows marginalized groups to build enclaves and solidarity, they argue that citizens engage in democratic listening in everyday interactions and practices in order to make sense of important political issues. These “informal modes” of listening create opportunities to achieve recognition and acknowledgment of difference, echoing the calls of both Bickford and Dobson. Interestingly, they identify several possible important roles that listening could play: making citizens aware of what is going on, maintaining civil relationships or cohesive communities, and creating spaces for public interaction. This work is a very good step in the development of a theory of deliberative listening, but it remains true that deliberation needs to continue this development. While I clearly cannot attempt such an account here, scholars such as Bickford, Dobson, Hendriks, and Ercan can help us toward expounding a complete and coherent theory of listening for deliberative democracy.

Listening in Deliberative Practice Acknowledging the theoretical importance of listening in a deliberative democracy is only one side of the coin. We still must understand what might lead citizens to listen attentively to one another, because if they do not it would be difficult to say that we have a successful deliberative democracy. One of deliberative democracy’s strengths has been the interaction between theory and empirical research that has existed almost from its

242   Michael E. Morrell genesis. When we look at the empirical literature, however, we can see a lacuna in our attempts to study listening in deliberation. Much of the literature focuses on reason-​ giving and opinion change, while little has focused on how well citizens hear each other. What evidence we find tends to focus on indirect measures of this important concept, but the literature that exists reveals several factors that may potentially affect listening in deliberation:  facilitators and moderators, institutional structures, and individual dispositions.

Facilitators and Moderators Most deliberative mini-​publics rely upon facilitators or moderators to increase the probability that deliberation will include a process whereby participants hear their fellows’ arguments. Research on Deliberative Polls (DP), for example, focuses primarily on moderators as the locus of ensuring that citizens listen to one another. When addressing the possible problems of groupthink and polarization, Fishkin writes, “The small groups have trained moderators who try to ensure that everyone talks and no one dominates the discussions” (2009, 132). Despite this, however, there is a lack of a strong theoretical or empirical exploration of moderators’ roles in democratic deliberation. Facilitators or moderators exist to ensure that deliberation meets certain conditions, but this would also seem to place them in a position of great, and possibly undemocratic, power. We can see this dynamic from the limited empirical evidence on facilitators from published studies. The empirical evidence for the effects of moderators on listening is generally positive, but some studies have also raised concerns about their position. Reporting on the EuroPolis Poll, Pierangelo Isenria and Fishkin write: “A majority (72%) of participants felt that moderators ‘made sure that opposing arguments were considered’ and only 12% felt that moderators ‘sometimes tried to influence the group with their ideas’ ” (2014, 317). Katherine R. Knobloch et al. (2013) report that participants had generally positive evaluations of the moderators after the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) process in Oregon, with only a few participants reporting perceptions of moderator bias or disrespect. They conclude that “effective facilitation was essential for the CIR’s success” in preventing domination by a few participants (Knobloch et al. 2013, 116), and that “the presence of moderators fostered civil and respectful conversations” (Knobloch et  al. 2013, 122). A more indirect measure of the success of moderators to induce listening across difference, which Fishkin utilizes in trying to demonstrate a lack of domination in discussions, is the direction of opinion changes in the DP. He points out that socio-​ economic factors such as education, race, gender, and income cannot predict opinion changes, and that analyses of 354 DP small groups indicate no consistent movement in opinion changes toward the initial positions of those whom we might consider privileged: whites, males, the wealthy, or the more educated (2009, 130–​1). Despite their positive contributions, however, moderators may also pose challenges for deliberative democracy. For example, work by Arthur R. Edwards, although

Listening and Deliberation    243 limited to government-​initiated internet discussions, finds that “moderators fulfill an intermediary role, and in this role they contribute to the interactivity and openness of Internet discussions” (2002, 19). Yet he also points out that “independent moderators work within the strategic outline set by the initiators” and thus “they have to cooperate with public officials” (2002, 19). Scott Wright (2006) reaches similar conclusions in his own studies of government-​run online fora, arguing that it might be necessary to separate the functions of different facilitators. This problem is not necessarily limited to just government-​run discussions; deliberative mini-​public organizers can be subject to outside pressure as well (see, e.g., Gastil et al. 2017, 15). Thus moderators may both contribute to, and detract from, the kind of listening deliberation requires.

Institutional Structures In addition to facilitators and moderators, other structural factors might contribute to listening in deliberation. In mini-​publics, choosing a representative sample, randomly assigning discussants to small groups, and providing balanced briefing materials can help expose participants to a range of opinions and beliefs, including those with which they disagree. The predominant assumption of these structures’ positive effects, however, means that we do not have clear evidence testing whether they lead to more listening in deliberation. The one significant difference among deliberative mini-​publics is whether they require participants to reach a group decision. For example, the DPs specifically eschew this, while some CIRs and participatory budgeting forums require it. Yet I am unaware of any studies that experimentally vary this in order to study the effects it may have. We simply do not have studies comparing the effects of different institutional structures of mini-​public deliberation. For deliberation in legislatures, however, we have much better evidence about how different institutional structures affect factors we can characterize as related to listening to others. The Deliberative Quality Index (DQI) (see Steenbergen et al. 2003; Steiner et al. 2004), in its initial formulation, codes legislative deliberations on respect toward groups helped by policies, the demands of others, and counterarguments (see Steenbergen et al. 2003, 29–​30). The latter “two dimensions pertain to the treatment of other participants in the debate and are especially important for deliberation” (Steiner et al. 2004, 23), and although the index created from these items is not a perfect measure of listening in deliberation, it does approximate one. It also has the added dimension of being an objective measure, in contrast to the subjective measures found in mini-​public participant surveys. Data from early uses of the DQI provides evidence that the level of respect towards the demands of others and their counterarguments is higher: (a) in consensus, rather than competitive, systems (2004; 111–​19); (b) in systems with strong veto players (2004, 119–​22); (c) in presidential, rather than parliamentary, systems (2004, 122–​5); (d) in second chambers (2004, 125–​8); (e) in nonpublic deliberations (2004, 128–​31); and (f) on issues that are less polarized (2004, 131–​5). Three findings here are important to

244   Michael E. Morrell highlight. First, Steiner et al. provide evidence that institutional structures can have important effects on deliberative quality, including something reasonably related to listening to others. Disturbingly, however, respect tended to be highest under institutional structures that we might characterize as less democratic (e.g. strong veto players, presidential system, second chamber, and nonpublic). Second, the relative level of trust in legislatures is not high. The index has an overall range of 0 to 7 (2004, 58–​9), with the “neutral” score on the two measures being 1 and 2, respectively. Thus, a score of 3 would approximate a neutral treatment of one’s interlocutors, but Steiner et al report scores ranging from a low of 1.24 for a debate in the United Kingdom on the minimum wage (2004, 112) to a high of 2.91 for a series of low polarized debates (2004, 133). This demonstrates that in even the most “respectful” parliamentary debates, the speeches are at best neutral on average, while the worst debates are quite disrespectful. Steiner et al. report that 73.3% of all speeches in the United Kingdom debate were disrespectful (Steiner et al. 2004, 112), and similarly, 41.9% of speeches in open debates were disrespectful (Steiner et al. 2004, 130). Using this measure as an approximation, therefore, listening did not seem to characterize these legislative debates, regardless of institutional structures. The third important takeaway is that “discourse quality is not a uni-​dimensional phenomenon but a complex cluster of elements. If actors justify their arguments in the sense of the deliberative model in a sophisticated way, this does not always mean, for example, that they show respect for the arguments of other actors, another aspect of the deliberative model” (2004, 165). Listening is but one component of deliberation, albeit one that theorists have posited as necessary. In legislative debates, however, deliberation is not participants’ goal; when “playing for an audience of citizens, legislators in a competitive system know that there is much to gain by discrediting one’s opponents and little to gain from praising them” (Steiner et al. 2004, 130). Although developed to test the quality of legislative debates, Marlène Gerber et al. (2016) have adapted the DQI to examine citizens in mini-​public deliberation, utilizing two measures of respect: respect towards groups and respect towards other participants’ arguments (2016, 9). Since their study focuses on the EuroPolis DP discussions about immigration, they measure respect towards groups with regard to migrants; this closely mirrors the respect towards groups helped by a policy from the original DQI. Rather than two items, as in the original DQI, the second respect item is a single measure that tries to operationalize listening with respect and the uptake of others’ arguments (Gerber et al. 2016, 9), and, as such, is the closest to measuring listening. Interestingly, they also include a measure of “story-​telling,” which codes for whether participants use personal narratives or experiences during deliberation (Gerber et al. 2016, 9). Although they score each participant on all DQI indicators, including ones I have not reported here, Gerber et al. conclude that there is just one underlying latent dimension of deliberative quality (2016, 13–​15). Thus, this updated version of the DQI does not allow an assessment of listening as a distinct component of deliberation, although it does have this potential.

Listening and Deliberation    245

Individual Dispositions Another complication when studying listening in deliberation is that giving everyone a chance to speak is not the same as making sure that everyone listens to others. In discussing deliberation under difficult conditions, for example, Fishkin acknowledges that two of his criteria for quality deliberation—​conscientiousness and equal consideration—​depend upon the “dispositions of the participants in how they engage in dialogue” (2009, 160). Even with trained moderators and the right structures, the participants themselves are highly influential in determining whether reciprocal exchange occurs in deliberation; several studies provide evidence to support this. Examining both a deliberative forum and everyday discussion, Jason Barabas (2004) argues that the positive effects of deliberation and discussion occur primarily among participants who are open-​minded and have not already made up their minds. In their DQI analysis of EuroPolis cited earlier, Gerber et al. demonstrate that many citizens score high on both justification rationality and respectful listening, and that many important socio-​economic variables do not significantly affect this. Worryingly, however, lower-​class participants from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe scored significantly lower on “deliberative abilities” (Gerber et al. 2016, 16). As noted above, the measure of deliberative ability they utilize incorporates many aspects of deliberative quality other than listening, so we can only make tentative conclusions from the data, but still the fact that certain citizens demonstrate lower deliberative abilities is likely problematic for several reasons. Such citizens are much less likely to be successful in deliberation, and thus their fellows may not hear them; also, they themselves may not be predisposed to listen closely to the positions of others. This problem is especially important for deliberation under difficult conditions. Survey results from a DP in Northern Ireland, for example, indicate that “Catholics came to see Protestants as much more open to reason . . . and each community came to see the other as more trustworthy than they had before deliberating,” and yet, “each side saw the other’s attitudes as less positive than they actually were and, with one exception, did not change those perceptions much” (Luskin et al. 2014, 131). Fishkin recognizes that the very conditions for deliberation may not exist in deeply divided societies, but he is hopeful that a well-​ designed deliberation among members of the mass public might promote the dispositions he recognizes are necessary for successful dialogue. “It is an empirical question whether or not deliberation can operate so as to create its own preconditions—​whether or not deliberative dialogue can, in itself, create mutual trust and mutual respect at a high enough level that people can finish the process with such views of each other even if they did not start it with them” (Fishkin 2009, 168–​9). The evidence from the Northern Ireland DP is encouraging because of the changes in perceptions among Protestants and Catholics, but it would be remiss not to point out that, at the end of the deliberation, 48% of respondents believed that Protestants were not “open to reason,” and 44% said the same about Catholics (Fishkin 2009, 267). Additionally, over a third of respondents on both sides still did not view the other as trustworthy.

246   Michael E. Morrell Given the evidence that individual dispositions are an important aspect of promoting listening in deliberation, and if we assume that citizens vary across those dispositions, deliberative democrats must think of ways to move citizens toward having the right kinds of dispositions deliberation requires. One possibility is to encourage such dispositions explicitly among participants, and many mini-​public forums do so. Barabas reports that in referring to the procedural goals of the Americans Discuss Social Security forum, the organizer, Dr. Carol Lukensmeyer, described two principles: “ ‘One is that every person’s voice is heard who’s in this room. The second is that everyone is listened to and respected’ ” (Barabas 2004, 691). Knobloch et al. state that organizers of the CIR specifically “encouraged panelists to consider fully opposing viewpoints and remain respectful toward one another and toward advocates and witnesses” (2013, 15). Organizers give similar instructions to participants in DPs as well (Fishkin 1995; 2009). Such exhortations may have the desired effect of encouraging participants to display the kinds of dispositions that will lead them to listen to those with whom they disagree, although to my knowledge, there are no studies that have tested this effect. Another possibility for encouraging the right dispositions in citizens comes from research on empathy. Deliberative theorists have often noted the importance of empathy in deliberation. Chambers writes that deliberation requires “putting oneself in the position of the other and trying to see the situation from her perspective” (1996, 100), and Mansbridge et al. maintain that “the stance of mutual respect required for good deliberation almost always requires extending toward the other participants an empathy that attends to commonalities and differences” (2010, 67). Research in social psychology demonstrates that that inducing empathy through role-​taking instructions can decrease attribution bias (see, e.g., Regan and Totten 1975) and positively affect out-​group evaluations (see, e.g., Galinsky and Moskowitz 2000). Such instructions are similar to the exhortations I just discussed, but they more specifically aim at inducing people to consider how others think and feel. The difficulty with empathy is that it, too, often relies upon dispositions that people bring to deliberation. In one small experimental study, my colleague Adam Kanter and I found that high levels of group predispositions to empathy significantly affected perceptions of open-​mindedness and mutual respect (Morrell 2010, 118–​26). Similarly, Diana Mutz concludes that for “those high in perspective-​ taking ability, mean levels of tolerance were higher when subjects were exposed to rationales for dissonant views. However, among those low in perspective-​taking ability, tolerance levels were lower when subjects were exposed to dissonant views, although the higher variance among this group makes this a suggestive, though not significant difference” (2002, 121). Her data support the initial conclusion that people with higher predispositions for empathic perspective taking are, at the least, more consistently open to opinions that conflict with their own (see, also, Mutz 2006). If this is correct, then empathic predispositions are likely to have significant effects on listening in deliberation, but it remains an open question whether we can induce citizens with lower empathic predispositions to behave during deliberation in ways that mimic those with higher predispositions. If we cannot do so, then some participants may simply listen better than others, which may have detrimental effects on the quality of deliberation.

Listening and Deliberation    247 Given the explosion of the empirical literature on deliberation in the past two decades, it is certainly possible that there have been attempts to measure and explain listening in deliberation that I have missed. I have focused on some of the most widely known examples, but before concluding, I want to discuss several other efforts that may contribute to our understanding of this important concept. In addition to their adaptation of the DQI, Gerber et al. (2016) report a set of possible direct, yet subjective, measures of mutual listening. The EuroPolis participant survey asked “questions on whether the small group members participated equally, whether opposing arguments were considered, whether there were ample opportunities to express one’s view, whether participants were respectful towards each other, and whether people offered justifications to back their views” (2016, 19). These items could provide a more direct measure of listening in deliberation, but unfortunately, to my knowledge, they have at this point only appeared in one study that aggregated them, along with other items, into a single measure of deliberative quality (see Sanders 2012). There are also some small nuggets of data in the post-​poll questionnaire for the first DP in the United States in 1996 that also might provide direct, subjective measures of listening. According to the responses, 93.9% of participants agreed or agreed strongly that they “found the comments of other group members useful” in thinking about the issues, and 93.0% agreed or agreed strongly that they “discovered that people with views very different” from theirs “often had very good reasons for their views” (Fishkin 1995, 222–​3). These findings are suggestive that participants engaged in at least some level of listening during the deliberation, but as currently reported, they can be nothing more than evocative. Several studies by a variety of colleagues and myself aimed at examining the broader concept of reciprocity also contain measures that might allow us to understand listening in deliberation better. Adam Kanter and I utilized factor analysis to identify five indexes of reciprocity grounded in the theoretical literature: mutual respect, balanced deliberation, open-​mindedness, situation-​specific external efficacy, and re-​evaluation (Morrell 2010, 122–​3). These represent subjective measures of reciprocity that are all clearly related to listening. While such an approach is comprehensive, each index consisted of two to three items, for a total of sixteen items; given the limited space and variety of concepts that researchers interested in deliberation try to measure on surveys, committing to this many individual items is likely prohibitive. I have been working on further analysis of these data in order to develop a more efficient measure of reciprocity (see Morrell 2013), but this work reveals that the concepts underlying these measures probably do not load on a single factor; reciprocity is complex. Finally, work I  have been doing in conjunction with John Gastil and Katherine R. Knobloch has analyzed various measures related to mutual listening and reciprocity collected from participants in a series of CIRs (see Knobloch et al. 2013). The CIRs bring together approximately two dozen citizens each to discuss ballot measures in various U.S. states and localities. Five items on the participant survey relate to listening: (1) how important a role they played in discussions; (2) whether they had sufficient opportunity to express their views; (3) how carefully they considered views different from their own; (4) whether they felt that other participants treated them with respect; and (5) how often

248   Michael E. Morrell they felt pressure to agree with something that they were not sure about. What is especially promising about the CIR data is that researchers have collected it after each day of the four-​to five-​day deliberation. This allows us not only to compare pre-​and post-​test measures but also to track changes across different phases in the deliberation. While the small number of observations necessitates caution, initial factor analysis has revealed the complex nature of measuring reciprocal exchange in deliberation. While some items load together well on a factor analysis of just one day’s survey, across time not all measures load together consistently (see Morrell 2016). On a more positive note, the mean scores on these measures are quite strong—​usually well above 4 on a five-​point scale—​ providing evidence that participants in the CIRs, on average, perceive a high level of listening, openness, and reciprocity in the deliberative process.

Conclusion Despite the proliferation of a variety of theories of deliberative democracy, each with their own nuances and focuses, listening remains as a central component of any model we can label deliberative. While it is certainly a key element of deliberative democracy, we still lack a clear, complete and coherent theory of how listening should function in deliberation, although scholars have recently been trying to correct this. Beyond developing a clear theory, scholars must continue to explore the factors that might promote good deliberative listening. Given the paucity of consistent and high-quality measures of listening and reciprocity, it is difficult to make a convincing case regarding what these factors might be. Researchers need to continue to work on both the conceptualization and operationalization of listening if we are to understand fully this vital element in deliberative democracy.

References Bächtiger, A., Niemeyer, S., Neblo, M., Steenbergen, M. R., and Steiner, J. (2010). Disentangling Diversity in Deliberative Democracy:  Competing Theories, Their Blind Spots and Complementarities. Journal of Political Philosophy, 18: 32–​63. Barabas, J. (2004). How Deliberation Affects Policy Opinions. American Political Science Review, 98: 687–​701. Bessette, J. M. (1980). Deliberative Democracy:  The Majority Principle in Republican Government. In How Democratic Is the Constitution, ed. R. A. Goldwin and W. A. Schambra (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute), 102–​16. Bessette, J. M. (1994). The Mild Voice of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Bickford, S. (1996). The Dissonance of Democracy: Listening, Conflict, and Citizenzhip (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Bohman, J. (1996). Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

Listening and Deliberation    249 Chambers, S. (1996). Reasonable Democracy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Cohen, J. (1989). Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy. In The Good Polity:  Normative Analysis of the State, ed. A. Hamlin and P. Pettit (Oxford: Blackwell), 17–​34. Dobson, A. (2014). Listening for Democracy:  Recognition, Representation, Reconciliation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Dryzek, J. S. (1990). Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy and Political Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Dryzek, J. S. (2000). Deliberative Democracy and Beyond:  Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Edwards, A. R. (2002). The Moderator as an Emerging Democratic Intermediary:  The Role of the Moderator in Internet Discussions about Public Issues. Information Polity, 7: 3–​20. Elstub, S. (2010). The Third Generation of Deliberative Democracy. Political Studies Review, 8: 291–​307. Fishkin, J. S. (1991). Democracy and Deliberation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Fishkin, J. S. (1995). The Voice of the People (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Fishkin, J. S. (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fishkin, J. S. (2010). Response to Critics of When the People Speak: The Deliberative Deficit and What To Do About It. The Good Society, 19: 68–​76. Galinsky, A. D. and Moskowitz, G. B. (2000). Perspective-​Taking:  Decreasing Stereotype Expression, Stereotype Accessibility, and In-​Group Favoritism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78: 708–​24. Gastil, J., Reedy, J., Morrell, M. E., and Anderson, C. (2017). Assessment of the 2016 Arizona Citizens’ Initiative Review Pilot on Proposition 205 (State College, PA:  Pennsylvania State University). Gerber, M., Bächtiger, A., Shikano, S., Reber, S., and Rohr, S. (2016). Deliberative Abilities and Influence in a Transnational Deliberative Poll (EuroPolis). British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming. Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Habermas, J. (1996). Three Normative Models of Democracy. In Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Practical, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press), 21–​30. Hendriks, C. and Ercan, S. A. (2017). Listening in Public Deliberation: Beyond Receptivity. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (San Francisco). James, M. R. (2004). Deliberative Democracy and the Plural Polity (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas). Knobloch, K. R., Gastil, J., Reedy, J., and Cramer Walsh, K. (2013). Did They Deliberate? Applying an Evaluative Model of Democratic Deliberation to the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 41: 105–​25. Luskin, R. C., O’Flynn, I., Fishkin, J. S., and Russell, D. (2014). Deliberating across Deep Divides. Political Studies, 62: 116–​35. Mansbridge, J., with Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Estlund, D., Føllesdal, A., Fung, A., Lafont, C., Manin, B., and Martí, J. L. (2010). The Place of Self-​Interest and the Role of Power in Deliberative Democracy. Journal of Political Philosophy, 18: 64–​100.

250   Michael E. Morrell Mansbridge, J., Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Christiano, T., Fung, A., Parkinson, J., Thompson, D. F., and Warren, M. E. (2012). A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Systems:  Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–​26. Morrell, M. E. (2010). Empathy and Democracy: Feeling, Thinking and Deliberation (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Morrell, M. E. (2013). Deliberation and Voting:  The Effects of Winning and Losing and Empathy on Deliberative Reciprocity. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 2013, Chicago, IL. Morrell, M. E. (2016). Deliberation and Reciprocity: Participant Perceptions of the Citizens’ Initiative Review. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology, Warsaw, Poland. Mutz, D. C. (2002). Cross-​Cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice. American Political Science Review, 96: 111–​26. Mutz, D. C. (2006). Hearing the Other Side (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). O’Flynn, I. (2006). Deliberative Democracy and Divided Societies (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press). Parkinson, J. (2006). Deliberating in the Real World:  Problems of Legitimacy in Deliberative Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Rawls, J. (1997). The Idea of Public Reason Revisited. University of Chicago Law Review, 64: 765–​807. Regan, D. T. and Totten, J. (1975). Empathy and Attribution: Turning Observers Into Actors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32: 850–​56. Rostbøll, C. F. (2008). Deliberative Freedom: Deliberative Democracy as Critical Theory (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Sanders, D. (2012). The Effects of Deliberative Polling in an EU-​Wide Experiment:  Five Mechanisms in Search of an Explanation. British Journal of Political Science, 42: 617–​40. Sanders, L. M. (1997). Against deliberation. Political Theory, 25: 347–​76. Steenbergen, M. R., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M., and Steiner, J. (2003). Measuring Political Deliberation: A Discourse Quality Index. Comparative European Politics, 1: 21–​48. Steiner, J., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M., and Steenbergen, M. R. (2004). Deliberative Politics in Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wright, S. (2006). Government-​Run Online Discussion Forums: Moderation, Censorship and the Shadow of Control. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 8: 550–​68. Young, I. M. (1996). Communication and the Other:  Beyond Deliberative Democracy. In Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Practical, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 120–​35. Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Chapter 16

Deliberati on a nd L ong-​T erm De c i si ons Representing Future Generations Michael K. MacKenzie

Our decisions will affect both our future selves and future generations. Should we produce nuclear energy? How should nuclear waste be stored? Can carbon emissions be reduced? How much public debt should we pass on to the future? Intuitively, it is unjust to make decisions that ignore or violate the interests or rights of future generations (e.g. Barry 1978; Gosseries 2007; 2008; Mazor 2010; Rawls 1999). From a democratic perspective, it may be illegitimate to make decisions that do not adequately represent the (potential) interests of those affected, including future generations (e.g. Goodin 2007; Tännsjö 2007). But since future generations do not exist, they cannot be included in our decision-​ making processes today, and their potential interests must therefore be represented by us in one way or another. This poses a challenge: it is difficult to conceive forms of representation that would effectively achieve that aim (e.g. Dobson 1996; Ekeli 2005; 2007; 2009; Tonn 1991). Future generations cannot speak for themselves or authorize us to act on their behalf. It is difficult to know what their specific interests are or will be. And it is difficult to motivate people to think and act in ways that genuinely reflect the potential interests of the future, especially in cases where our interests are (or are thought to be) mutually exclusive with theirs. According to conventional wisdom, democracies are biased against the future. Short electoral cycles, shortsighted voters, and the influence of powerful groups with short-​ term interests (such as corporations) make governing for the long term difficult, even when decision-makers are committed to addressing long-​term problems. Despite these tendencies, there are features of democracy that can help balance our concerns with those of the future (see, e.g., MacKenzie 2016a). Indeed, democracies are not always bad at dealing with long-​term issues. We have done badly managing the natural environment in sustainable ways, but we have done

252   Michael K. Mckenzie comparatively well making investments in education, pension plans, other social programs, and public infrastructure. In fact, on these (and other) issues, some democracies do better than others, and this makes it possible to study factors that affect long-​ term thinking and action in democratic systems (e.g. Jacobs 2011). This chapter is part of a larger effort to rethink, in theoretical terms, the conventional wisdom about the short-​term tendencies of democracies (MacKenzie and O’Doherty 2011; MacKenzie and Warren 2012; MacKenzie and Caluwaerts 2015; Mackenzie 2016a, 2016b). If there are features of democracy that make it difficult to govern for the long term, what aspects of democracy might help counterbalance those short-​term tendencies? In this chapter, I will consider two aspects of the same democratic good: democratic deliberation and deliberative democracy.1 I argue that both types of deliberation can help us more effectively represent the potential interests of future generations. In doing so, I make three separate but related arguments. The first argument has to do with motivating longer-​term thinking. If our preferences are shaped by cognitive biases against the future, the demands of deliberation (listening and making public arguments that others might, in principle, accept) can encourage us to think more carefully about the future. In other words, deliberation may help us counterbalance the biases rooted in our intuitive System 1 brains, by encouraging us to more effectively employ our analytical System 2 brains (e.g. Heath 2014; Mercier and Landemore 2012). Additionally, deliberative dynamics can incentivize us to more actively defend the potential interests of the future. Those who can plausibly argue that they are on the side of the future have a potential advantage in genuinely deliberative environments because future generations are widely recognized as subjects of moral concern. Once those concerns have been articulated in a deliberative context, it it will be difficult for others to publicly maintain positions that favor the present in an explicit and self-​serving way. In this context, the potential interests of future generations may be given a fair hearing even when most political actors are not, initially, committed to thinking about the interests of the future. The second argument has do with coordinating contemporaries in ways that are both intentional at the collective level and goal-​oriented. If deliberative dynamics can help encourage longer-​term thinking, deliberative democracy (on the large scale) makes it possible for societies to talk to themselves about what they are doing and where they want to go. If individuals and groups are persuaded of the value (or necessity) of specific long-​term objectives, they are also likely to remain more committed to those objectives. Thus effective practices of deliberative democracy may help us both think and act in ways that respect the potential interests of the future (as we understand them). The third argument has do with coordinating different generations of political actors. Future generations will be free to make their own decisions about which policies, institutions, or ideals they wish to maintain, and this means that we cannot rely exclusively on authority, tradition, legal constraints, or force when it comes to coordinating actors who occupy different places in time. We have the power to increase or decrease the costs of certain future actions, but we will have no ongoing control over what the

Deliberation and Long-Term Decisions    253 future ultimately decides to do. We can, nevertheless, help shape their decisions if we can persuade them to do (or continue doing) what we think is most valuable or important. More specifically, communication between generations can help support intergenerational cooperation in at least three ways—​each of which is further supported by good deliberative practices.2 First, normative, political, or legal obligations requiring us to explain ourselves to the future would encourage us to think more carefully, regularly, and systematically about how our decisions will affect the future. Second, plans that require intergenerational cooperation (such as policies to mitigate climate change) are likely to be more viable over the long term if we justify our decisions in terms that future generations are likely to find persuasive. Third, we may be more willing to invest in long-​term plans if we think that future generations will help bring those plans to fruition. But much depends on the environment in which our claims about the future are articulated. If our claims are articulated in effective deliberative environments, any claims that misrepresent or disregard the potential interests of the future can be challenged on those grounds. If this happens, we may be compelled to think more carefully about how our actions will affect the future and this, in turn, should help support (more) viable options for intergenerational cooperation. In what follows, I outline, in more detail, the three arguments that I have summarized above. Although democratic systems do indeed have short-​term tendencies, this does not mean that democracy, broadly conceived, is structurally biased against the future. In theory, deliberative democracy can help us do a better job of representing (or not misrepresenting) the potential interests of the future in the decisions that we make today. The practical challenge is whether we can create effective deliberative environments within existing political systems. I will briefly discuss that question near the end of this chapter, but I will primarily focus on laying the groundwork for the following theoretical claim: deliberation can help both encourage and support long-​term thinking and action in democratic systems.

Motivating Longer-​Term Thinking Effective deliberative environments can help motivate us to think about, articulate, and represent the potential interests of future others. The twin requirements of deliberation—​that we both listen to others and articulate claims that others might plausibly accept—​have at least two consequences for how we may come to think about the future. First, deliberation can help discipline our thoughts and arguments; it can encourage us to think more carefully about our future interests and those of others. Second, deliberation can create pragmatic incentives for us to think about and articulate the potential interests of the future, even if we are not initially inclined to do so. A number of scholars have suggested that there may be a relationship between deliberation and long-​term thinking (e.g. Dietz, Stern, and Dan 2009; Elster 1986; Ekeli 2009; Goodin 2003; Gundersun 1995; MacKenzie 2016b; MacKenzie and Caluwaerts

254   Michael K. Mckenzie 2015; Smith 2003). Inclusive deliberations can help provide (or produce) information about how specific decisions are likely to affect different groups or individuals at different times (e.g., Dietz, Stern, and Dan 2009; Grönlund, Setälä, and Herne 2010). Deliberation can also help ensure that those with different time perspectives have opportunities to make their interests and concerns known when decisions are made (Ekeli 2009; Smith 2003). Deliberation can help ensure that decisions are made in information-​rich environments but this, alone, cannot explain the relationship between deliberation and long-​ term thinking. If information is needed, there are many other (perhaps easier) ways of obtaining it. If there is a relationship between deliberation and long-​term thinking, there must be something about deliberation itself that can help motivate us to think more carefully about the future. It may be that information is most valuable when we are required to actively process it publicly. Indeed, deliberation helps encourage analytical thinking by requiring us to publicly articulate claims that might be plausibly accepted by others. Psychologists have discovered that, although people are capable of careful, analytical thought, we are also cognitive misers. When allowed to do so, we are likely to think through problems in ways that are the least cognitively demanding. If this is the case, internal “deliberations”—​even when they are relatively well disciplined—​may be unable to counterbalance cognitive biases that are rooted in our automatic, intuitive (System 1) brains. If we are cognitive misers we are unlikely to overcome our own miserliness without some external incentive to do so. On these grounds, scholars have argued that careful, reflective, analytical thinking (that employs our System 2 brains) is linked with communication and the use of language (e.g. Heath 2014; Mercier and Landemore 2012). As Joseph Heath explains, Introspection is far, far less powerful than any of us would have imagined. And unfortunately, the limits of introspection cannot be ascertained through introspection. Thus the most powerful check that we have on our own tendency toward biased think is the willingness—​perhaps even the eagerness—​of other people to correct us (Heath 2014, 143).

When we are confronted with the demands of deliberation we must think about our arguments in a conscious, analytical, or even strategic fashion, because we must defend our claims against the questions and critiques of others. As such, the public demands of deliberation may help us counterbalance deeply rooted (and intuitive) cognitive biases. This observation is relevant in the current context because there are many reasons why we are, or may be, intuitively biased against the future. First, predicting the long-​term consequences of our actions is hard work. If we are cognitive misers, as Heath (2014) and others argue, we will be inclined to focus on whatever mental tasks are easiest. As a general rule, it is easier to make trustworthy claims about the near term because uncertainty normally increases as we look farther into the future. If it is easier to think more clearly about today, we are likely to neglect the difficult work of thinking about the future, as long as we can get away with doing so.

Deliberation and Long-Term Decisions    255 Second, we may be biased against the future because we are programed to respond to whatever is most dramatic in our immediate surroundings. Information about the future seems less dramatic simply because it is temporally distant and thus less present in our minds (Jacobs 2011, 46). Third, we are typically more inclined to give negative considerations more weight in our decisions than positive ones (e.g. Soroka 2006). This negativity bias has consequences for longer-​term thinking. It means that we typically favor decisions that involve near-​term benefits and longer-​term costs (such as borrowing money) over those that involve near-​term costs and longer-​term benefits (such as saving) (Jacobs 2011, 46). For our purposes, it is not necessary to provide an exhaustive list of biases against the future. Most of us are biased against the future, especially when we rely on our efficient, intuitive (System 1) brains. But we are capable of thinking about the future in less biased ways. Most of us have both near-​term interests (such as keeping our jobs) and longer-​term concerns (such as saving for retirement). Many of us also have what Janna Thompson (2009) calls “lifetime transcending interests.” We care about the future well-​being of our relatives, our social groups, our nation, or humanity as a whole. Many of us care about institutions (such as universities or churches), or cultural, religious, or linguistic groups that we want to see thrive in the future. Some of us care about ideas or principles (such as freedom or human rights) that we want to protect for our own benefit and for future generations. Indeed, studies show that our orientations to the future are affected by factors such as age, gender, cultural background, life experiences, personalities, moods, and even our perceived connections to our future selves (e.g. Aspinwall 2005; Du, Green, and Myerson 2002; Ersner-​Hershfield et al. 2009; Green, Fry, and Myerson 1994; Kirby and Marakovic 1995). People tend to discount future rewards more heavily when they are thought of as individual rewards and less heavily when they are thought of as social (or group-​level) rewards (Charlton et al. 2013). Those who trust government are more willing to support long-​term investments in social programs, such as public pension plans, when compared to those who do not trust the government to spend money wisely (Jacobs and Matthews 2012). People also tend to discount the future less when potential future benefits (or problems) are made more concrete or tangible than they would otherwise be (e.g. Förster, Friedman, and Liberman 2004; Kim, Schnall, and White 2013; Pahl et al. 2014; Schroth, Aleksandra, and Sheppard 2013). In short, while we may have cognitive biases against the future, our orientations to the future are both nuanced and, to some extent, adaptable. The context in which decisions are made, and the processes used to make them, can affect the extent to which we are biased against the future. Deliberation is of interest because it encourages us to make claims public and to rationalize them in ways that others might find persuasive. It also encourages us to think through the claims of others. In these ways, deliberation may be an effective way to encourage analytical thinking and thereby help counterbalance our intuitive (probably biased) responses to long-​term problems. Deliberation can also create pragmatic incentives that encourage participants to consider the potential interests of the future even if they would rather not do so. In inclusive

256   Michael K. Mckenzie deliberative environments, those who have short-​term objectives may be compelled to consider and publicly address the claims of those who have longer-​term perspectives on particular issues (and vice versa) (e.g. Goodin 2003; Gutmann and Thompson 1996; Smith 2003). Even if these dynamics initially encourage only disingenuous responses, they will nevertheless help ensure that the potential concerns of the future are articulated when long-​term decisions are made (e.g. Elster 1986). Once those concerns have been expressed they must be addressed as genuine concerns if (1) at least some participants genuinely care about the future; and (2) the environment in which decisions must be made is governed (at least in part) by the demands of genuine deliberation (i.e. argumentation and persuasion). But deliberation may encourage longer-​term thinking even if there are no participants who initially seek to genuinely represent the interests of the future. In effective deliberative environments, those who make persuasive claims are better able to influence decisions in ways that are consistent with their own interests, as long as their interests are not (wholly) inconsistent with those of others (e.g. Mansbridge et al. 2010). There is, then, a strategic advantage to framing claims in ways that draw on widely held beliefs or moral commitments. If children and future generations are widely regarded as (pre-​ political) subjects of moral concern (which I think they are), those who can make claims that are plausibly consistent with the potential interests of the future will have an advantage over those who cannot. If children and future generations are pre-​political subjects of moral concern, this strategy should be available to anyone on any side of a political debate. When collective decisions are (even partly) governed by the demands of deliberation, those who adopt short-​term positions that are (or might be) contrary to the interests of the future may have to reframe their positions to make them (or make them seem) more consistent with those interests. If they cannot do so, they may be forced to make concessions. There are at least three conditions that must prevail before these deliberative dynamics are likely to emerge. First, long-​term issues must be recognized as such. Second, there must be some disagreement about how different groups will (or should) be affected by our actions or inactions on long-​term issues. Third, collective decisions on those issues must be based, to some extent, on the demands of genuine deliberation. The first condition is necessary because the interests of the future will not be relevant in deliberations unless we recognize that our decisions will affect the future. The second condition is necessary because there will be no strategic advantage to evoking the interests of the future if all present period actors are likely to be affected in the same way (and to the same extent) when shortsighted decisions are made. The third condition is necessary because when decisions are made in an effective deliberative environment, disingenuous claims can be exposed as such and challenged on those grounds. When these conditions prevail, even those who are not initially concerned about the future may be incentivized to actively represent the future if they think it is in their (near-​term) interests to do so, or if they think that the claims of their political opponents are in some way inconsistent with the potential interests of the future. In summary, these deliberative dynamics are most likely to emerge in “normal” (i.e. conflictual) political environments

Deliberation and Long-Term Decisions    257 where opposing groups disagree about who should pay the costs of addressing short-​ and long-​term issues.

Coordinating Contemporaries Deliberation can motivate long-​term thinking by helping us counterbalance our biases against the future, and by incentivizing us to actively align (or try to align) our own interests with those of the future. Deliberation can also help coordinate our actions so that shared goals can be both identified and achieved. There are at least two challenges associated with this objective. The first has to do with coordinating the actions of contemporaries. The second has to do with coordinating different generations of political actors who are separated in time. In what follows, I argue that deliberation has a role to play in helping us address both types of challenges. When it comes to coordinating the actions of contemporaries, there are two separate but related tasks. The first involves identifying shared objectives. The second involves seeking to incentivize (or compel) individuals and groups to act in ways that will help achieve shared objectives. These tasks are, of course, the “regular stuff ” of politics. But when viewed in this way, it is clear that politics is fundamentally future-​oriented: it entails making and justifying collective decisions and coordinating actions to achieve shared objectives. As Hanna Pitkin (1981) explains, politics “is the activity through which relatively large and permanent groups of people determine what they will collectively do, settle how they will live together, and decide their future, to whatever extent that is within human power” (343). Unfortunately, many collective outcomes are not the result of intentionally coordinated decisions aimed at shaping our shared futures. As Pitkin observes, most collective outcomes are, instead, the result of either “drift” or “private power.” “Drift” occurs when social outcomes are the products of aggregated actions. The term “drift” describes a situation in which we are pushed in shifting directions without a rudder to guide us toward specific objectives. As such, Pitkin links “drift” to “inadvertence” (344). If we act on our own judgment without knowing what others are doing (or what they plan to do) there will be collective outcomes but they will not reflect collectively-​forged intentional decisions. The term “drift” is apropos but its negative connotations are misleading because aggregated outcomes may be collectively beneficial, neutral, or harmful. For Adam Smith (1776), millions of independent economic decisions can add up to either efficient production or market failures. Nevertheless, while aggregated outcomes may be good or bad (or neutral) they will not be collectively intentional. In order to act intentionally, a society must have the capacity to identify shared objectives and coordinate actions to achieve them. Unlike “drift,” private power is intentional. Individuals or groups exercise their influence to direct society toward specific objectives. But private power is not collectively intentional, even when it is directed toward socially beneficial goals. The objectives of the

258   Michael K. Mckenzie powerful may (or may not) be consistent with whatever goals would be chosen by society as a whole—​in either case they remain the objectives of the powerful. In contrast, as Pitkin (1981) explains, “the distinctive promise of political freedom remains the possibility of genuine collective action, an entire community consciously and jointly shaping its policy, its way of life” (344). If this is the distinctive promise of political freedom (and democratic politics), how can this promise be fulfilled? How can we shape our shared futures? How can we identify and achieve specific collective objectives? According to Pitkin (1981) we “cannot even begin to direct the drift of social forces unless we see those forces truly and deliberate about them in our public forums” (346). On this account, deliberation makes it possible for a polity (of any shape, size, or description) to talk to itself about what it is doing and where it wants to go. The distinctive promise of deliberative democracy is that it can empower us to identify social goals that really are shared objectives and not merely the products of aggregation or the application of private power. When viewed in this way, deliberative democracy (at the large scale) is a necessary component of future-​oriented collective action. As individuals we may “deliberate” internally to decide which objectives we wish to pursue; as a society we must communicate with others to identified share objectives—​there is no other way. Deliberation, as a form of communication, is necessary because it is more than simply an exchange of various (or differing) perspectives. At the best of times, deliberation requires us to publicly weigh our own preferences against those of others. In this way, only those objectives that are (or may be) valuable or acceptable to others will be sanctioned or adopted in (fair) deliberative processes. In may be possible to negotiate accommodations, such that the objectives of particular groups are not thwarted by others. Realistically, some negotiation is likely to occur even in relatively robust deliberative environments, and this fact does not (necessarily) undercut the deliberative goods associated with accommodative agreements (see e.g. Warren and Mansbridge 2013). But pure bargaining is not the same as identifying shared objectives, and accepting a trade-​off is not the same as being persuaded that shared objectives are indeed worth pursing (even at some cost to ourselves). It is difficult to imagine a society acting in future-​oriented ways without engaging in either deliberation or deliberative negotiation. In order to act in future-​oriented ways, we must be able to talk to ourselves about what we are doing and where we want to go. If democracies are too often shortsighted, this may have to do with the fact that we typically lack the institutional capacity to deliberate, identify, and pursue our shared objectives. If this is the case, our shortsighted politics may have less to do with the limits of democracy and more to do with our limited capacity to engage in productive public deliberation. Public deliberation can also help coordinate individuals and groups so that shared objectives can be achieved. In effective deliberative environments, we are accountable not only for what we say but also for whether our (subsequent) actions match what we say. In ongoing (or iterative) deliberations, if people make claims about what they will do that are different from the actions they subsequently take, they will be vulnerable to deliberative sanctions and critiques. Failing to match our words to our actions will make what we say in deliberative environments less credible and less influential. This, in turn,

Deliberation and Long-Term Decisions    259 should incentivize us to make our actions more consistent with our words. The strength of these incentives will depend on the degree to which collective decisions are made on the basis of genuine deliberation. Decision-​making processes that are more deliberative should create stronger incentives to match our words with our actions. This, then, is not an all-​or-​nothing proposition. Societies that are more deliberative will be in a better position to discursively sanction behavior that defects (or would defect) from collectively forged objectives. But effective deliberation also reduces the need for sanctions. Deliberation can help underwrite successful collective action by ensuring that we each have our own reasons to act in ways that are consistent with our shared objectives. In summary, deliberation makes it possible for a society to talk to itself about what it is doing and where it wants to go. Without (some) deliberative capacity, a society cannot identify shared objectives. Once shared objectives have been identified, deliberation can help ensure that what we say we will (or should) do is consistent with the actions that we take.

Coordinating Generations of Political Actors Another challenge involves coordinating the actions of generations who are separated in time. This is a distinct challenge because our political relations with the future are different from our relations with other contemporaries. On the one hand, we are in a dominant position vis-​à-​vis the future: we can affect their lives but they cannot affect ours. On the other hand, we have no power to make future generations do what we think they should. We can influence their decisions, but we have no way to make them comply with our demands or expectations. The nature of this relationship—​which, unlike other political relations, is characterized by both dominance and impotence on the part of the dominant—​is of considerable significance: it means that we cannot be confident that the future will cooperate with our long-​term plans and projects. In what follows, I argue that deliberation can help support intergenerational cooperation even though, or rather because, we cannot rely on other coordination mechanisms such as constitutions, authority, or force. Intergenerational cooperation is difficult. There is always a danger that our long-​ term plans will be undermined by future others who have objectives that are divergent from our own. This has been called the “dynamic inconsistency problem” (Kydland and Prescott 1977) or the “time inconsistency problem” (Hovi, Sprinz, and Underdal 2009; Jacobs 2011). Importantly, the degree of uncertainty associated with long-​term plans will affect how we assess the costs and benefits of those plans. If we are unsure whether long-​ term initiatives (such as efforts to mitigate climate change) will be maintained in the future, we may be less willing to invest in them, even if we believe that it would be the right thing to do.

260   Michael K. Mckenzie There are several ways to address the time inconsistency problem. Constitutions, for example, are designed to help ensure relative stability over time. They do this by increasing the (political) costs of certain future decisions and decreasing the costs of others. Some constitutions also seek to entrench substantive objectives such as balanced budgets or environmental protections (e.g. Tremmel 2006). Constitutions are more difficult to change than ordinary statutes because constitutional amendments typically require the support of supermajorities of voters, representatives, or governments. Nevertheless, future generations will be free to make their own decisions, except in cases where our actions (or inactions) have irreversible consequences. On the vast majority of political issues, future generations will be free to make their own decisions despite the costs imposed by the social, political, and institutional conditions that they inherit from us. Institutionally speaking, there is only so much we can do to mitigate the time inconsistency problem. Given the challenges of intergenerational cooperation, political theorists such as Edmund Burke (1790), Hannah Arendt (1961), and more recently Michael Mosher (2010) have emphasized the importance of authority and reverence as sources of political stability. In her essay “What is Authority?” Arendt argues that the concept of authority is an increasingly threatened but crucial source of stability in a world that “has begun to shift, to change and transform itself with ever-​increasing rapidity, from one shape into another.” For Arendt, forms of authority that are capable of enduring over time are necessary to provide the stability that is required for us to build, preserve, and care for “a world that can survive us and remain a place fit to live in for those who come after us” (Arendt 1961, 95). Importantly, Arendt distinguishes between authority (itself) and the use of force or persuasion to support claims to authority: Since authority always demands obedience it is commonly mistaken for some form of power or violence. Yet authority precludes the use of external means of coercion; where force is used, authority has failed. Authority, on the other hand, is incompatible with persuasion, which presupposes equality and works through a process of argumentation. Where arguments are used, authority is left in abeyance (Arendt 1961, 92).

When viewed in this way, authority may be particularly useful in an intergenerational context because, as explained above, we cannot force the future to obey our commands. But if future generations believe that our decisions carry the weight of legitimate authority, they may be less inclined to defect from our plans of action. Following Burke and Arendt, Mosher has made similar claims. He argues that political stability (or policy consistency) cannot be easily maintained over time without a source of authority that is supported by something other than pure reason. Breaking the fall into the future cannot come from rational efforts to anchor politics in contract, since any such efforts are always open to the equally rational

Deliberation and Long-Term Decisions    261 reinterpretive claims made in the future. On the historicist view, the future can undo every constitutional present. What is needed is a source of authority that cannot be easily undone, namely a structure for political action that is only quasi-​rational, a source for reverence as much as for rational argument (Mosher 2010, 8).

In Mosher’s view it is more difficult to reverse or undermine a sense of collective reverence than it is to challenge, on rational grounds, contractual or constitutional arrangements. As such, he argues that in order to maintain stability over time it is best if constitutional arrangements (and policy commitments) come to be viewed in reverential terms: If luck holds, the authority of a liberal or constitutional order may be sustained by transforming itself from being simply a logical argument, whose logic will endure forever, into a historical legacy. The latter is less rational, more ritualistic, but more likely to retain political actors and steer them away from being easy prey to time’s power to dissolve (Mosher 2010, 35).

The arguments that Arendt (1961) and Mosher (2010) make are consistent with the idea that we cannot force the future to do what we think they should. If authority and force are conceptually distinct, then authority may be an option when force cannot be used. But authority and reverence are nevertheless limited as sources of stability. If future generations can amend or abandon, on rational grounds, the political arrangements that they inherit from us, they can also question, on rational grounds, any sources of authority or reverence that help support those arrangements. Indeed, intergenerational arrangements that are based primarily on reverence may be especially vulnerable to the power of time to dissolve: once a source of reverential authority is challenged on rational grounds there will be nothing to hold it up in circumstances where force is also not an option. By contrast, when intergenerational arrangements are supported by articulated reasons, those reasons can help support them when challenges are made.3 Generally speaking, when force is not an option, persuasion becomes a more valuable (and potentially necessary) tool of coordination. This is the situation we find ourselves in vis-​à-​vis the future: we have the power to shape the context in which future decisions will be made, but we have no power to force the future to do as we say. We can support intergenerational cooperation with constitutional mechanisms that increase the political costs of some (future) actions and decrease the costs of others. We may rely, to some extent, on reverential sources of authority, but we should not underestimate the role of communication and persuasion in supporting intergenerational cooperation. What does communication between (non-​ overlapping) generations consist of? Properly speaking, it is not deliberation because it is unidirectional: we can talk to the future but they cannot talk to us. Nevertheless, communication between generations is supported by deliberative functions. First, it involves public reason-​giving and persuasion. Obligations to explain ourselves to the future—​whether they are legal, moral, or political—​compel us to explain our actions in ways that may be acceptable to the

262   Michael K. Mckenzie future. Second, intergenerational communications may be supported by deliberations between contemporaries. Claims about how our actions are likely to affect the future can be tested in deliberative arenas where contemporaries disagree about how we should weigh our interests against those of the future. In effective deliberative environments disingenuous claims can be exposed as such. By contrast, where sufficient deliberative opportunities do not exist, the interests of the future may be badly misrepresented precisely because the future cannot answer back to us. When there are disagreements about how our interests should be balanced against those of the future, deliberations between contemporaries can help create conditions in which the genuine interests of the future (as we interpret them) are less likely to be ignored or misrepresented. In summary, deliberation can help support intergenerational cooperation in several ways. First, moral, legal, or political obligations to articulate our views and justify our actions to the future should encourage us to think more carefully about how our actions are likely to affect the future. As a consequence, we may be more likely to act in ways that do not undermine or misrepresent the potential interests of the future, particularly if our claims must be tested in deliberative environments where disingenuous claims may be exposed as such. Second, obligations to justify our actions to the future may help enhance the long-​term viability of our collective objectives if those objectives are supported by justifications that future generations might plausibly accept. Third, today’s political actors may be more willing to invest in long-​term plans (such as efforts to mitigate climate change) if they think that those plans will be maintained long enough to do some good. In general, claims that have survived challenges in effective deliberative environments are also those that are likely to be most acceptable to both current and future generations of political actors.

Conclusion Governing for the long-​term is difficult, particularly in democratic systems. Many voters—​and other influential actors, such as corporations—​have short-​term objectives that loom larger than their longer-​term concerns. At the same time, short electoral cycles often make it difficult for elected politicians to solve longer-​term problems. Despite these structural tendencies, there are features of democratic systems that can help support long-​term thinking and action (e.g. MacKenzie 2016a). In this chapter I have focused on one democratic good: deliberation. I have argued that deliberation can help encourage longer-​term thinking by forcing us to publicly articulate and justify our claims in ways that others might plausibly accept. If our biases against the future are more intuitive than cognitive, deliberation may help counterbalance those biases by encouraging us to think in more analytical ways. In addition, deliberative dynamics can create pragmatic incentives for actors to consider the potential interests of the future, even when they are not initially committed to doing so.

Deliberation and Long-Term Decisions    263 Deliberation (on the large scale) also makes it possible for a society to talk to itself about what it is doing and where it wants to go. Without real opportunities for public deliberation, our collective actions will be shaped by unguided aggregations or dominated by those who are most powerful. Deliberation, by contrast, makes it possible for us to identify shared collective objectives. In turn, it can help support collective action if individuals and groups are genuinely persuaded that shared objectives are worth pursing. Lastly, deliberative practices can help support intergenerational cooperation. Legal, moral, or political obligations to explain ourselves to the future may encourage us to think more carefully about the future. Future generations will be free to make their own decisions, but they may be more likely to continue what we have started if they understand our thinking and find our reasons persuasive. We may be more willing to invest in long-​term initiatives if we think those initiatives are likely to be maintained long enough to do some good. I have argued that we need to think carefully about the prospects for deliberation in our existing political systems if we hope to achieve a better balance between our concerns and those of the future. Although a thorough discussion of deliberative institutions is beyond the scope of this chapter it is worth briefly discussing a few options that could, in principle, support the deliberative needs identified in each of the three arguments I have made. With respect to my first argument—​that deliberation can create practical incentives for longer-​term thinking—​we should consider institutions that help support democratic deliberation between empowered decision makers. In principle, legislative assemblies are designed to promote thoughtful deliberation but in practice they typically fail to do so. Legislative debates are normally too partisan to count as good deliberation, and individual members are rarely equal in terms of their influence, positions, or allotted speaking times. Nevertheless, some legislative assemblies are more deliberative than others (Steiner et al. 2004). Many scholars view mini-​publics, or small deliberative forums, as a more promising way to create effective deliberative environments (e.g. Goodin and Dryzek 2006; Fishkin 2009; MacKenzie and Warren 2012; Smith 2009; Warren and Pearce 2008; cf. Böker 2016; Lafont 2015). Mini-​publics are typically selected in nonpartisan ways—​ through, for example, random selection—​and participants are encouraged to view each other as equals. Information, expert advice, and facilitation can help ensure that each participant is sufficiently empowered to make claims and respond to the arguments of others (Moore 2012; Smith 2009). If mini-​publics can create relatively robust deliberative environments, they may be used (more or less effectively) to encourage some political actors to more seriously consider the potential interests of the future. The practical challenge is to prevent deliberatively formed opinions from getting lost or overruled in normal political, partisan (or non-​deliberative) processes. Indeed, mini-​publics have been used in a variety of ways to help inform policy decisions, but they have less often been empowered to directly affect policy (Goodin and Dryzek 2006). Even though the

264   Michael K. Mckenzie British Columbia and Ontario Citizens’ Assemblies were each empowered to initiate a referendum on electoral reform in their respective provinces, they were not empowered to negotiate policy options with other influential actors (Fournier et al. 2011). One way to more effectively leverage the deliberative potential of mini-​publics would be to integrate them into existing legislative processes. For example, a nonpartisan, randomly selected assembly with a rotating membership could be empowered to review, assess, stall, or veto law proposals initiated by an elected assembly (see, e.g., McCormick 2011; Zakaras 2010). According to this model, accountability would rest with the elected assembly, but its legislative agenda would (always) be examined and potentially challenged by an independent, representative, nonpartisan, deliberative assembly. If such an assembly were genuinely deliberative, it would be well positioned to assess whether specific law proposals are likely to promote the long-​term interests of society as a whole. Indeed, this objective—​to think about the future—​could be made part of the official mandate of the institution (MacKenzie 2016b). It is more difficult to enable whole societies to talk to themselves about what they are doing and where they want to go. It is difficult to do so because individuals and groups rarely converse in ways that are free of power dynamics in unregulated environments. Momentous events—​such as terrorist attacks or referendums on independence—​can, in some cases, initiate robust public discussions about a society’s collective future, but such events can also undermine genuine deliberation by framing complex questions in stark or simplistic terms and thereby encouraging people to pick winning or losing sides (Chambers 2009). Given these constraints, how can genuine, widespread, public deliberation be supported and sustained? One option is to create a large number of small, inclusive deliberative assemblies, and to aggregate the results of each assembly to convey a sense of the deliberative will of society as a whole. The idea of “scaling up” deliberation through aggregation is not entirely unfamiliar. Something like this is done in “caucus” states during presidential primaries in the United States. In states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, small groups meet to discuss candidates and select delegates to send to their party’s national convention. In principle, the results of these processes reflect not just the aggregated votes of individuals but the aggregated results of many deliberative forums. A similar approach was used by AmericaSpeaks, an organization dedicated to hosting large-​scale deliberations on specific issues by simultaneously coordinating smaller deliberative groups in different locations, using communications technologies such as video conferencing and electronic voting. The AmericaSpeaks approach to public engagement seeks to combine the democratic benefits of small-​scale deliberation with the democratic legitimacy of a large scale, inclusive, participatory event (Lukensmeyer, Goldman, and Brigham 2005). It is not impossible to imagine similar approaches being used to support public deliberations on a national or even international scale. This would be one way to enable whole societies to discuss their collective futures together in deliberative terms. If large-​scale public deliberation is difficult, it is comparatively easy to encourage communication between generations. Indeed, most societies already have ways to facilitate intergenerational communications. Constitutions, for example, while often seen

Deliberation and Long-Term Decisions    265 as imposing constraints on future generations, can also be viewed as communicative devices: they are “living” documents that seek to both guide and constrain (to some extent) the actions of future generations (e.g. Elster 2000). When we entrench practices and principles in our constitutions, these commitments are signals to the future about what we believe is most important and what is worth protecting or preserving. Tellingly, Montesquieu (1748) referred to constitutional clauses as rapports. When viewed in this way, constitutions help support intergenerational coordination by imposing constraints and by supporting those constraints with reasons aimed at persuading future generations. Obligations to communicate with the future can also be written into law. For example, corporations may be required to issue environmental impact statements before taking environmentally risky actions (e.g. Dayton 2002). Dennis Thompson (2010) has argued that governments should be required to issue “posterity impact statements” to justify “any adverse effects their actions might have on the democratic capacities of future citizens” (32). Conceptually, there is no reason to limit such obligations to specific issue areas. In principle, governments, and other entities such as corporations, could be compelled to publicly justify any actions that will (or might) have significant long-​term consequences. Such practices have found expression in some indigenous communities in the form of the “seventh generation rule.” According to this rule, those involved in making public decisions are obliged to consider the likely impacts of their actions on at least seven generations (e.g. O’Sullivan 2011). It is, however, worth emphasizing that such practices are likely to be most effective only when used in political environments in which disingenuous claims can be challenged by others in deliberative ways. What I  have argued in this chapter deals with deliberation in theory but it is not idealized theory. Deliberation is hard to do well but it is not an all-​or-​nothing proposition. Some of the (most important) benefits of deliberation may be obtained even when particular deliberative exchanges do not meet the standards of normative theory (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012). For example, although large-​scale policy discussions are rarely sufficiently deliberative, political actors often evoke the potential interests of the future—​when discussing, for example, budget deficits or climate change—​precisely because they recognize that there are pragmatic advantages to doing so, even when public decisions are not made on the basis of persuasion alone. In general, the potential interests of the future are likely to be better represented when political actors are compelled to publicly explain and justify their actions. Claims that are made in inclusive and effective deliberative environments are therefore less likely to badly misrepresent the potential interests of future generations.

Notes 1. Chambers (2003) makes a distinction between, on the one hand, democratic deliberation in which, usually small scale, deliberative forums properly adhere to deliberative

266   Michael K. Mckenzie norms; and, on the other hand, deliberative democracy, which refers to the deliberative capacity of societies as a whole. There is a potential trade-​off between democratic deliberation and deliberative democracy because as the size of a deliberative group increases it is likely to less adequately adhere to the regulative norms of deliberation (such as equality). 2. In this context, “intergenerational communication” refers to any means of conveying information to the future. This might be done through writings or through oral traditions. We may preserve our communications with the future in our cultures, principles, and literature, or in legal documents such as laws and constitutions. These communications are not, properly speaking, deliberation because they can only ever flow in one direction: from the present to the future. In what follows, I argue that forms of intergenerational communication—​especially those which aim to explain our actions to the future in terms that the future might, in principle, accept—​are likely to be most effective as a form of intergenerational coordination if they are also supported by productive deliberations between contemporaries in the present. 3. Efforts to coordinate actions over time may be more successful if they are based on forms of authority that are closer in substance to Warren’s (1996) theory of democratic authority. In Warren’s account, authority is constituted through questioning, challenging, and criticism. Legitimate forms of democratic authority can withstand these challenges and thereby gain the acceptance or approval of those who willingly and actively place themselves under its command. Thus in Warren’s account, legitimate authority rests as much on deliberative practices of persuasion as on the right to issue commands and be obeyed.

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Deliberation and Long-Term Decisions    269 Moore, A. (2012). Following from the Front:  Theorizing Deliberative Facilitation. Critical Policy Studies, 6: 146–​62. Mosher, M. (2010). Out of Time: A Typology of Political Action. Paper presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2–​5. O’Sullivan, J. (2011). Sustainability, Seventh Generation. In Green Ethics and Philosophy: An A-​ to-​Z Guide, ed. J. Newman (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications), 755–​61. Pahl, S., Sheppard, S., Boomsma, C., and Groves, C. (2014). Perceptions of Time in Relation to Climate Change. WIREs Climate Change, 5: 375–​88. Parkinson J. and Mansbridge, J. (2012). Deliberative Systems:  Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pitkin, H. F. (1981). Justice: On Relating Private and Public. Political Theory, 9: 327–​52. Rawls, J. (1999). A Theory of Justice (rev. edn, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Schroth, O., Aleksandra, D., and Sheppard, S. (2013). Visual Climate Change Communication:  From Iconography to Locally Framed 3D Visualization. Environmental Communication, 8: 413–​32. Smith, A. (1776). The Wealth of Nations. Smith, G. (2003). Deliberative Democracy and the Environment (London: Routledge). Smith, G. (2009). Democratic Innovations:  Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Soroka, S. N. (2006). Good News and Bad News:  Asymmetrical Responses to Economic Information. Journal of Politics, 68: 372–​85. Steiner, J., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M., and Steenbergen, M. R. (2004). Deliberative Politics in Action: Analyzing Parliamentary Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tännsjö, T. (2007). Future People, the All Affected Principle, and the Limits of the Aggregation Model of Democracy. Unpublished manuscript. Thompson, D. F. (2010). Representing Future Generations:  Political Presentism and Democratic Trusteeship. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 13: 17–​37. Thompson, J. (2009). Intergenerational Justice:  Rights and Responsibilities in an Intergenerational Polity (New York: Routledge). Tonn, B. E. (1991). The Court of Generations: A Proposed Amendment to the US Constitution. Futures, 23: 482–​98. Tremmel, J. C. (2006). Establishing Intergenerational Justice in National Constitutions. In Handbook of Intergenerational Justice, ed. J. C. Tremmel (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar), 187–​214. Warren, M. E. (1996). Deliberative Democracy and Authority. American Political Science Review, 90: 46–​60. Warren, M. E. and Mansbridge, J., with Bächtiger, A., Cameron, M.A., Chambers, S., Ferejohn, J., Jacobs, A., Knight, J., Naurin, D., Schwartzberg, M., Tamir, Y., Thompson, D., and Williams, M. (2013). Deliberative Negotiation. In Negotiating Agreement in Politics: Report of the Task Force on Negotiating Agreement in Politics, ed. J. Mansbridge and C. J. Martin (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association), 86–​120. Warren, M. E. and Pearse, H. (2008). Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Zakaras, A. (2010). Lot and Democratic Representation: A Modest Proposal. Constellations, 17: 455–​7 1.

P a r t   III

DE L I B E R AT ION I N  F ORUM S , P U B L IC S , A N D SYST E M S

Chapter 17

Institu ti ona l Deliberat i on Paul J. Quirk, William Bendix, and André Bächtiger

Deliberative democracy calls for innovative forums for policy deliberation by ordinary citizens to replace or supplement the institutions of representative government (Fishkin 2009; Warren and Pearse 2008). To ground such aspirations, advocates of deliberative democracy should understand the processes that they seek to replace—​what we will call, in general, institutional deliberation. The study of these processes, using the term deliberation, began in work on legislatures (Bessette 1994), but closely related concepts—​information processing, advisory systems, policy formulation, policy management, and decision-making—​have long been central in research on elected executives, administrative agencies, courts, and popular referendums. In this chapter, we examine a wide range of literatures that address deliberation in policymaking institutions, regardless of the terms employed. Taking one kind of institution at a time, we define the processes that accomplish deliberation and consider the features that shape deliberative performance. Because scholars have dedicated disproportionate attention to US institutions, our treatment is heavily US-​oriented—​although we use some work on other countries. In addition to providing insight into the deliberative status quo in representative democracies, we explore conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues that are relevant to work on deliberation in many contexts. Finally, we look at relevant cases and literature to ask whether and when regular policymaking institutions will sponsor and effectively collaborate with deliberative democratic forums.

General Issues We use the term deliberation to refer to the “intellectual process of identifying alternatives, gathering and evaluating information, weighing considerations, and

274    Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger making judgments” to reach policy decisions (Quirk 2005, 316). This bare-​bones definition does not stipulate the goals of deliberation or require that it be about common interests. An elected official might deliberate, for example, to determine whether a policy would benefit a powerful interest group, or improve his or her chances of re-​election. For purposes of performance assessment, however, we will assume that deliberation does or should focus on broad public-​interest considerations (Krehbiel 1991; Maass 1983)1 and we will analyze it from that perspective. Our definition also does not stipulate any particular social or institutional process of deliberation. In particular, it does not presume that deliberation is a group activity (cf. Mercier and Landemore 2012). The central concern in our analysis of institutional deliberation is the intelligence—​ the informational or epistemic quality (see Estlund and Landemore, this volume, Chapter 7)—​of the resulting policy decisions. In other words, our concern is with the extent to which decisions incorporate accurate, informed judgments about relevant conditions, the effects of policies, and other relevant factors. It is not fundamentally about how policymakers comport themselves in the social interaction of debate (e.g. whether with mutual respect), how broadly the eligible officials participate, or how participation affects their moral or intellectual development. The rationale for this focus on the intelligence of decisions is straightforward: it is the feature of institutional deliberation that directly affects the quality of policymaking and the lives of citizens. We recognize that the social elements of discourse ethics—​mutual respect, avoidance of ad hominem arguments, egalitarianism, and the like—​may be relevant instrumentally, affecting the ability of legislators to learn from each other and to improve proposals through fruitful deliberation and negotiation (Jamieson 1999; Matthews 1973). An empirical measure that incorporates several elements of discourse ethics, such as the Discourse Quality Index (DQI; Steenbergen et al. 2003), is thus relevant for our analysis of institutional deliberation both because some component measures, such as the use of logically structured arguments, relate directly to epistemic performance and because other components, such as mutual respect, may affect epistemic performance indirectly. How important these indirect features of social interaction are for intelligent performance is a matter for empirical investigation in each context. In some institutional settings, especially hierarchical organizations, some of the discourse-​ethics criteria require reformulation or do not pertain at all. We call a decision process deliberative if it is thorough and careful in evaluating the alternatives. Deliberativeness is an attribute of the intellectual process of making a decision, regardless of the social or institutional process in which it occurs (Quirk and Bendix 2011). We treat the breadth (inclusiveness) of participation and the character of the social interaction (such as egalitarianism or mutual respect) in the decision process as separate from its deliberativeness. Thus a decision by a legislature can be more deliberative than one by popular referendum, even though participation in the legislative decision is far less inclusive.

Institutional Deliberation   275

Measurement Challenges The intelligence or epistemic performance of deliberation is not easy to measure.2 What we will call the synoptic-​direct approach to measurement assesses, normatively, the considerations discussed and the eventual decision in light of the information available to the participants. In the extreme, this method would require reviewing all grounds for a decision—​an impossibly demanding requirement.3 Most actual studies in this vein therefore identify broad ranges of claims, arguments, and decisions as being either defensible or indefensible, making only gross distinctions between adequate and unsatisfactory epistemic performance. Given the information available before the Iraq War, for example, we could say that the George W. Bush administration’s firm conviction that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was epistemically not warranted (Pfiffner 2009; US Congress 2004). Although the synoptic approach is vulnerable to partisan bias on the observer’s part, used with discretion it has produced studies that document and explain a wide variety of clear-​cut deliberative failures, including the escalation of the Vietnam War (Burke and Greenstein 1989), the space shuttle Challenger disaster (Heimann 1993), the calamitous court-​ordered desegregation of Kansas City schools (Dunn 2008), and the imbalanced surveillance policies of the USA Patriot Act (Bendix and Quirk 2015; 2016). Because the synoptic approach requires extensive research to assess the information and arguments about a single decision, it is effectively limited to small-​N case studies. To overcome this limitation, research on institutional deliberation has also used indirect approaches—​employing a variety of quantitative proxies, correlates, or indicators for epistemic performance (Lascher 1996; Quirk and Bendix 2011; Milewicz and Goodin 2016). Such measures include the resources allocated to deliberation (for example, staff size or credentials);4 observable deliberative activity (length of floor debate, number of participants, number of amendments, occurrence of hearings, number and types of witnesses);5 and flows of messages (volume and direction).6 Several methods can measure the quality of legislative debate. Mucciaroni and Quirk (2006) assess the evidence and expert support for prominent “effect claims” as a direct indicator of epistemic performance. Esterling (2004; 2007) counts the number of substantive questions asked by congressional committee members at hearings to indicate their engagement in deliberation. Steenbergen et al. (2003) have developed the DQI, now the most common content analysis instrument for legislative deliberation, to measure, among other things, the frequency of overt logical reasoning from premises to conclusions (“justification rationality”). That measure, however, does not assess the credibility of the premises, making its validity with respect to epistemic performance a matter for speculation.7 Scholars have also identified measurable attributes of decision outcomes that can serve as indicators of epistemic performance in certain contexts. A large body of research on American states, for example, focuses on the timing and frequency of the adoption of policy innovations (e.g. Karch et al. 2016; Mintrom 1997; Walker 1969). Such

276    Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger studies use the eventual widespread adoption of certain innovations as evidence of their merit and then use state governments’ relatively early adoption of them as evidence of competence or deliberative capability. Another approach is to measure the accuracy of revenue and expenditure forecasts by state agencies as an indicator of their epistemic performance (Krause, Lewis, and Douglas 2006). In some areas of economic regulation, economic analysis offers well-​defined criteria for economic efficiency and welfare. In such cases, a regulatory agency’s observed deviations from welfare-​maximizing policy in directions that benefit regulated industries would indicate not only “regulatory capture” (Carpenter 2013) but also poor deliberative performance. Looking at Congress, Maltzman and Shipan (2008) measure the frequency of amendments to laws to indicate deliberative competence on the grounds that, other things equal, better deliberation should reduce demands for amendment. Bendix (2016b) uses the positive or negative assessments of new bills in newspaper editorials (with controls for the newspapers’ partisan tendencies) to indicate Congress’s deliberative performance in adopting those bills. To the extent that one can identify a correct policy decision, one can assess institutional deliberation by its approximation to that outcome.8

Theoretical Considerations Theoretical work on institutional deliberation has two prominent features that are generally absent, or less prominent, in work on popular deliberative forums. First, the analysis often focuses on relatively elaborate formal structures and procedures. Many legislatures, including the US Congress, begin with Robert’s Rules of Order (Robert et al. 2011) and add many of their own rules and precedents. Administrative agencies in the US are subject to the Administrative Procedures Act, the procedural provisions of their own statutes, and judicial precedents on procedural issues. Courts are subject to many procedural regulations, most of their own making, under rubrics such as civil procedure, criminal procedure, and evidence. To a great extent, these institutional structures and procedures are intended to enhance the quality of deliberation—​by ensuring fair opportunity for participation to opposing interests, directing attention toward valid information and away from misleading information, and providing sufficient time and resources for thorough consideration. The US Congress requires that proposed bills be “costed out” by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office; administrative procedures require agencies to solicit comments from the public; and courts permit cross-​examination of witnesses. Institutional procedures are sometimes sophisticated about human judgment. Judicial rules of evidence bar certain kinds of testimony, even if truthful, on the grounds that a jury might give it disproportionate weight. Many studies of institutional deliberation in the US seek to assess specific structures and procedures (e.g. re Congress: Cooper 1970; Maass 1983; Oleszek 2014; the presidency: Burke 2009; George 1972; 1980; Hult and Walcott 1995; 2004; Johnson 1974; Porter 1982; Salamon 1982; administrative agencies: Downs 1967; March and Simon 1958; and the judiciary: Posner 1990; 1999). Efforts

Institutional Deliberation   277 to design popular democratic forums in any context could benefit from reviewing such literature (see Baccaro, Bächtiger, and Deville 2016).9 Second, work on institutional deliberation frequently focuses on motivation and incentives, often in relation to constituency pressures, partisan interests, and other political forces. Policymakers have interests of their own in re-​election or budgetary growth and will sometimes serve those interests at the expense of the public or other principals (Mayhew 1974; Moe 1984; Niskanen 1971; Tullock, Brady, and Seldon 2002; Wood 1988). They will respond to narrow groups that can supply political rewards—​as occurs, for example, in “regulatory capture” (Carpenter and Moss 2013); emphasize short-​term benefits that voters will notice at election time (Arnold 1990; Bartels 2008); and adopt positions that reflect popular stereotypes, emotional responses, or misinformation (Grimmer, Westwood, and Messing 2015; King 1997; Kuklinski and Quirk 2000). Political parties have multiple effects on deliberation. On the positive side, parties often moderate the influence of narrow groups and promote accountability for policy decisions (Canes-​Wrone 2006; Fiorina 1980; Lee 2005). On the negative side, they may focus on divisive class-​based or ideological interests and reject compromise in order to maintain a party brand. In a formal analysis, Ganghof and Bräuniger (2006) argue that in parliamentary systems the government party will be more deliberative because it will be responsible for the ensuing policy; an opposition party can get away with reckless criticism. Consistent with this analysis, research on Germany and Switzerland shows that government and middle parties are more deliberative than opposition and ideologically extreme parties (Bächtiger and Hangartner 2010). Parties also have incentives to distort deliberation in order to appeal to their constituencies. Thus populist parties use a simplistic and minimally deliberative style of debating (Wyss, Beste, and Bächtiger 2015). In recent years, ideological polarization has become a debilitating barrier to responsible deliberation in the US Congress. Some analyses explore the incentives of legislators or legislative committees to gather information about policy decisions and to share it with other legislators, as required for effective deliberation.10 Krehbiel (1991) shows that, in the US, committee members in Congress will invest effort in learning about a policy primarily if they and their constituencies have distinctive preferences about it (as rural members have, for example, on agriculture policy), and if the rules of the legislature give the committee significant control over policy outcomes (for example, if the rules prevent or limit floor amendments). They will share information candidly, however, mainly when their preferences are representative, so that the full body will accept their recommendation. Generally, the conditions that induce a committee to gather information discourage it from sharing information in a frank, straightforward manner with the parent chamber. Given these constraints, the legislature faces a complex balancing act in appointing committee members and determining floor procedures to reliably inform legislative decisions. A recurring, although controversial, theme in the literature is that insulating policymaking in some degree from constituency pressures—​especially interest-​group demands, public opinion, and electoral competition—​often improves deliberative performance (Bessette 1994; Lascher 1999; Malecha and Reagan 2012; Nordlinger 1981). Of

278    Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger note, most developed democracies delegate control of monetary policy to a politically independent central bank. On highly contentious policy issues in the US—​such as how to reduce Social Security deficits—​Congress in the past has delegated policy development to ad hoc bipartisan commissions (Light 1985; Mayer 1995). Elected representatives often avoid dealing with issues that require “hard choices” in an election year. Some object to the arguably anti-​democratic assumptions of such strategies. Page and Bouton (2006), for example, propose that policymakers should be guided more by public opinion, even on foreign policy, the area in which most citizens are least interested. Landemore (2013) goes so far as to argue that mass publics, with their cognitive diversity, will make more informed and intelligent decisions than legislatures, administrative agencies, or panels of experts. In both cases, we believe that the authors misconstrue their purported evidence.11 Sheffer et al. (2017) show that in survey experiments conducted in three developed democracies, legislators and ordinary citizens, provided with the same information, make similar decision-​making errors. In our view, nevertheless, the evidence of severe distortions in real-​world mass opinion in many circumstances suggests that some insulation of policymaking from public opinion will often improve policy outcomes. We would expect more deliberative forms of public opinion to have more constructive effects. In assessing the impact of popular influence on deliberative quality, the conditions for opinion formation make all the difference.

Institutions and Deliberation We now develop the analysis of institutional deliberation by looking at the major kinds of policymaking institutions in a representative democracy—​legislatures, chief executives, bureaucracies, courts, and referendums.

Legislatures In his 1774 speech to the Electors at Bristol, Edmund Burke declared that “parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole” (Burke [1774] 2016, 149). In many countries, citizens still hold an ideal vision where all legislators meet in one large room to discuss and debate a bill, where each legislator makes up his or her own mind, and where the body arrives at a decision by voting. The reality is usually different in many ways. In the US Congress, during most of the twentieth century, substantive deliberation occurred mainly in committee. When bills moved from the committee to the full chamber, the other legislators usually deferred to the committee recommendations, although they sometimes produced major amendments or even rejected the committee’s bill. In truth, Congress members obtained most of their information in the privacy of their offices—​from

Institutional Deliberation   279 lobbyists, administration officials, internal congressional communications, media reports, and staff briefings. Floor debate, sparsely attended, largely put on record the information and arguments already available through other channels. Legislative decisions made this way could take into account a vast amount of information. The findings of a consultant’s study on a minor provision or an interest group’s complaint about some specific circumstance could lead to a carefully tailored amendment at the committee or the floor stage. Dozens of congressional staffers did much of the negotiating and refining of legislative provisions. On major bills, congressional deliberation could consider the equivalent of several thousand pages of testimony and research, resulting in a bill that often amounted to several hundred pages. This combination of divided labor and delegating to staff allowed Congress as an institution to process voluminous information, weigh diverse considerations, and refine the final bills. At the same time, the members of Congress have always encountered extremely powerful, motivation-​related barriers to deliberation—​including interest-​group demands, constituency interests and opinions, party pressures, and ideological conflicts, among others (see especially Drutman 2015; Lee 2016; Mann and Ornstein 2006; 2012). As a result, Congress’s epistemic performance has often varied dramatically from one piece of legislation to another. Some congressional scholars have tried to identify the sources of the variation in deliberative quality that produced these differences in outcomes. In a study of environmental policymaking, Landy, Roberts, and Thomas (1990) observed that Congress failed to produce cost-​effective measures for dealing with abandoned hazardous waste dumps because legislators responded reflexively to wildly exaggerated public fears. Bendix and Quirk (2015; 2016) examined surveillance policy after the 9/​11 attacks and found that Congress made questionable choices—​concealing statutory violations in counterterrorism programs—​again because of public fears. Beyond such case studies, scholars have conducted systematic analyses of floor debates. In a cross-​national investigation, Steiner, Bächtiger, and colleagues (2004) have used the DQI to assess multiple debates in the US Congress and the British, German, and Swiss parliaments. On balance, they found that Congress performed relatively poorly, especially with regard to the quality of justification (see Bächtiger et al. 2007). Mucciaroni and Quirk (2006) assessed the substantive information in House and Senate floor debates on three policy issues in the mid-​1990s, concluding that although legislators frequently peddled false or misleading claims, they conducted reasonably accurate debates under two conditions: when the parties were not sharply divided on an issue and when interest groups were actively engaged on both sides. To a great extent, however, these mixed or only moderately negative assessments of Congress have become outdated. While Congress became increasingly polarized and partisan over the last thirty years, most scholars initially dismissed dire assessments of its condition—​claiming that despite occasional gridlock, the institution usually managed to develop workable, responsive bills (e.g. Adler and Wilkerson 2012; Mayhew 2005; 2009; 2015; Sinclair 2009). Yet a growing number of scholars have recently become alarmed, acknowledging a steep decline in Congress’s capacity to deliberate.

280    Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger When in the majority, both Republican and Democratic leaders have set aside “regular-​ order” procedures that promote deliberation, have ignored committee expertise, and have sharply reduced budgets for the legislative staff responsible for much of Congress’s deliberative capacities. In the words of two observers, “Congress has given itself a lobotomy” (Baumgartner and Drutman 2016). To explain this declining capacity, scholars have detailed the ways in which majority-​ party leaders exclude potential legislative opponents from decisions. Committee hearings have become stage-​ managed, with witnesses handpicked to ensure that they support the majority position (Lewallen, Theriault, and Jones 2016). Committee “markups” (sessions for amending and approving bills) have been omitted altogether, with majority-​party leaders taking even complex and important legislation directly to the floor. When the leaders do permit markups, they exclude committees prone to bipartisan cooperation (Bendix 2016a). The party leaders have also drastically curtailed floor deliberations. The majority party in the House has increasingly used restrictive rules to bar amendments and reduce time for floor debate (Lynch, Madonna, and Roberts 2016; Moffett 2012; Monroe and Robinson 2008). Rather than engaging in substantive discussion, House members now use floor speeches primarily to stake out positions for electoral purposes (Taylor 2013, chap. 4) or to promote party messages (Lee 2016). Similar developments have occurred in the Senate, even though its leadership has less control over procedures. Senate majority leaders schedule superfluous cloture votes to disrupt floor debate and exploit procedural rules (such as “filling the amendment tree”) to prevent minority-​party members from proposing amendments (Smith 2014; Wallner 2013). Not only do majority-​party leaders write bills behind closed doors (Sinclair 1997; 2006), but they also contrive to keep most legislators uninformed about upcoming votes (Curry 2015). Majority members have little choice but to follow their leaders on bill decisions, while minority members have little opportunity to develop criticisms. For example, in pushing through a 2005 bill on national standards for identification cards, Republican leaders withheld the bill from rank-​and-​file representatives until shortly before the vote in order to hide controversial provisions that sharply sped up deportation procedures. In effect, they secured support from moderate members by deception (Curry 2015, chap. 6). In the Senate, because of the body’s implicit sixty-​vote supermajority requirement for most legislation, majority-​and minority-​party leaders still sometimes work together to design legislative packages.12 Often working in secret, they use the need for bipartisan compromise as an excuse to exclude members from bill development and to reject amendments that the leaders oppose (Wallner 2013, chap. 4; for the House, see Binder and Lee 2016; Curry and Lee 2016). Unlike for most of the twentieth century, today party leaders dominate the legislative process from beginning to end in both houses of Congress. As a consequence of this party-​controlled deliberation, party leaders now often set aside any real concern for policymaking and use legislative activity strictly for election-​ campaign purposes, offering “message bills” intended merely to score partisan points (Gelman 2017; Lee 2016). The resulting legislation demonstrates the new deficiencies in

Institutional Deliberation   281 deliberation. One study finds that the use of restrictive floor rules in the House to limit deliberation is associated with ideologically extreme legislation (Monroe and Robinson 2008), which is arguably inferior on normative grounds (Fung 2007, 448–​9). Another study shows that legislation drafted in the new leadership-dominated manner, with participation restricted to a handful of members behind closed doors, received much more frequent and broadly based criticism than legislation drafted in committees (Bendix 2016b). In short, Congress has lost significant deliberative capacity since Bessette (1994) argued that its processes of deliberation worked fairly well. In Westminster parliamentary systems with single member plurality elections, legislative deliberation is far less significant for decision-making than it is in the US or other parliamentary assemblies. In a Westminster system, governing parties must pass their major bills to avoid the dissolution of parliament, a requirement that encourages legislative parties to exhibit high levels of floor discipline. On important matters, the prime minister and the cabinet, deliberating in consultation with the permanent bureaucracy and relevant committees, make all substantive policy decisions. Party leaders then instruct their members on how to vote, and the rank and file complies (Kam 2009). Although the governing party’s parliamentary caucuses can sometimes make effective demands, the majority of the House of Commons essentially delegates the task of policy deliberation to these executives. With the votes and outcomes predetermined, the main function of parliamentary debate is to promote the parties’ views to the public. Indeed, evidence in Canada indicates that minority parties participate in floor debate mainly to delay action on the government’s agenda (McAndrews 2016). Comparative research suggests that the highest deliberative quality in legislatures tends to appear only under some special conditions, such as, in the Swiss case, when party discipline is relaxed and parties as well as individual members (MPs) have to engage in complex negotiations to realize policy goals (see Bächtiger 2014; Steiner et al. 2004). Yet, as with the US Congress, trends toward more party polarization in the last decade have also compromised the Swiss parliament’s deliberative performance.

Chief Executives: The US President Because the US presidency has been studied more extensively than any other chief-​executive office, we will take the US case as our primary example of institutional deliberation at that level. Although President George W. Bush pronounced himself “the decider” and that term probably captures most citizens’ perceptions of the presidency, major presidential decisions in the US typically involve the responsibilities of several departments or agencies. In making these decisions, the president and his advisers have access to all the analytic and data-​gathering resources of the intelligence community, the executive branch, and much more. Their ability to make effective use of this information is, however, often in doubt.

282    Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger Whatever the president’s authority in a given matter, the president’s decision results from what Aberbach and Peterson (2005) call “hierarchical deliberation.” Various subordinate individuals, groups, and organizations within the executive branch provide the chief executive advice and information. In the US, these include a White House chief of staff, various presidential advisers, the National Security Council, the Domestic Council, the Council of Economic Advisers, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Director of National Intelligence, among others. Interest groups, party leaders, and members of Congress are also often consulted. By comparison with other hierarchical-​ decision processes, presidential decision-​making presents exceptional challenges:  (1) the range of subject matter is vast; (2) the participants have sharply conflicting interests and ambitions, representing various agency missions and constituencies; (3) time pressure is often severe; (4) the organizational arrangements for providing the president with advice are only minimally institutionalized (Heclo 1977), with some structures and nearly all key personnel changing when a new president takes office (Burke 2000b); and (5) the president often assumes office with little or no prior experience in managing such processes or making such decisions.13 At least partly for these reasons, serious and costly errors in major presidential decisions, associated with dysfunctional performances of these advisory and deliberative arrangements, have been a regular feature of modern American history. Perhaps because in foreign policy there are fewer checks on the president, among the most notorious of these errors have been the invasion of the Bay of Pigs (1961), the escalation of the Vietnam War (1965), the Iran-​Contra arms-​for-​hostages deal (1985–​6), and the invasion of Iraq (2003). Given the challenges and the high stakes, scholars and practitioners have devoted considerable attention to presidential deliberation in the US, usually under the rubric of presidential advisory processes, decision-​making, or management (Burke and Greenstein 1989; Haney 1997; Heclo 1977; Ponder 2000). Studies have described and often speculated on the merits of the different approaches that presidents have used in the organization and management of the White House staff and their advisory processes (Burke 2000a; Hult 2000; Rudalevige 2005; Salamon 1982; Walcott and Hult 2005). Much research relies on in-​depth case studies of major presidential decisions, typically focusing on notable failures (Gelb and Betts 1979; Hacker 1997; Janis 1982; Kamarck 2016). Analysts have identified several general alternatives for organizing presidential advisory processes:  centralization versus decentralization; White House versus departmental coordinating roles; formality versus informality; and tighter versus looser control of access to the president (Salamon 1982). These alternatives entail trade-​offs. An advisory system that ensures substantively sound deliberation may fail to provide strong responsiveness to the president’s agenda; a system that produces well-​informed decisions on each program may produce less coordination across a range of programs. There is no single best way to organize advice for the president. Yet three findings and observations may be generalizable. First, presidential deliberations benefit from advisers and managers who have substantial experience in Washington, especially in the White House (Saunders 2017). The temptation for a

Institutional Deliberation   283 president to populate his administration with people from the campaign—​as Bill Clinton did in his first two years and Donald Trump did in his initial appointments—​ often leads to poor decision processes and costly errors. Second, deliberations are more reliable when a presidential decision manager—​the chief of staff, the national security adviser, or another official—​assumes the role of “honest broker” and thus refrains from advocating any personal views on the policy decision (Burke 2009). The manager’s neutrality helps to ensure his or her fair treatment of all contending interests and positions. In the gold-​standard multiple advocacy approach, the manager goes even further and actively recruits effective representatives for otherwise underrepresented points of view—​ensuring, for example, that a mid-​level bureaucrat is not the only spokesperson for a substantively important interest. Managers of presidential advisory processes who have actively maintained balanced representation and avoided premature closure—​such as President George H. W. Bush’s national security adviser Brent Scrowcroft—​have served their presidents well (Pfiffner 1986; 2011; Burke 2009). Finally, a crucial factor in presidential deliberation is the president’s own conduct (Greenstein 2009). Because senior administration officials compete for influence and support, any cues that presidents give about their own views will bias deliberations toward confirming those views. A  president who is self-​disciplined and sophisticated about decision-​making will resist making a final decision, or at least revealing it, until all the arguments have been aired. Most presidents do not routinely adopt this practice, partly because few have had highly relevant prior experience. The two most calamitous decisions in modern American foreign policy—​the escalation of the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq—​were both partly consequences of pressure and bullying by the respective presidents, Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush (along with Vice President Richard Cheney), in the intelligence-​gathering and advisory processes (Pfiffner 2009). In contrast, President Barack Obama in 2009 scrupulously listened to all sides of the White House debate about how quickly to withdraw troops from Afghanistan; he ended up accepting advice from the military, setting aside a campaign promise, and delaying the withdrawal (Pfiffner 2011). The combination of a poorly institutionalized advisory system and the unreliable skills and dispositions of the president make chief executive deliberation in the US notably vulnerable to serious error.

Bureaucracies Although in developed democracies the most important policy decisions are usually made by legislatures and chief executives, the largest number of important policy decisions are made by the departments and agencies charged with implementing the laws, executive orders, and other high-​level policy decisions. These institutions follow what is called “bureaucratic organization” (and are called “bureaucracies” or collectively “the bureaucracy”).14

284    Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger The decision processes in bureaucracies vary widely. In some cases, decisions are made by an individual operator, manager, or executive with authority to decide. At other times, especially when interests of individuals or firms are at stake, there may be elaborate procedures—​notice-​and-​comment periods, advisory committees, hearings, and judicial appeals. In some US agencies, a multi-​member commission makes decisions by voting (West 1985). With specialized training and large-​scale division of labor, any of these processes can bring to bear vast amounts of information. Recognizing their epistemic advantages, bureaucrats often seek to protect their independence from the public and even legislative overseers, whose judgments they tend to regard as superficial and uninformed (Brehm and Gates 1999; Niskanen 1971). Sunstein (2017) suggests that, with their reliance on substantive and technical debate among experts, bureaucracies are “the best place in government” to see deliberation in action. A vast literature deals with the informational or epistemic dimension of bureaucratic decisions and performance under the rubrics of bureaucratic or organizational information processing (March and Simon 1958; Simon 1947), communication (Downs 1967; Tullock 1965), intelligence (Downs 1967; Wilensky 1967), and decision-making (Etzioni 1967; 1986; Lindblom 1959). One major concern is the tendency for a multi-​level hierarchy to filter out important information as messages move from the operating level to the top-​level decision-makers (Downs 1967; Tullock 1965; Wilensky 1967). In particular, lower-​level officials avoid providing information that higher officials might interpret as evidence of failure, ineffectiveness, or resistance. Because subordinates tend to suppress “bad news,” senior officials often make decisions on the basis of incomplete and biased information. In a pair of well-​documented cases, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) ignored serious hazards that led to catastrophic failure of space-​shuttle missions on two occasions two decades apart (Boin and Schulman 2008; Heimann 1993). In both cases, mid-​level managers set aside engineers’ urgent warnings in deference to the budgetary concerns of top management. Research on bureaucracy also deals with a variety of other barriers to free and unbiased flows of information. Bureaucratic organizations develop distinct cultures, which define approved beliefs, values, and practices (Wilson 1989). These cultures help to motivate effort and coordinate activity, but they also create distortions in organizational communication and decision-making. In a famous case, the US Forest Service—​ committed by its culture to fighting forest fires—​long resisted compelling evidence for the long-​term benefits of allowing those fires to burn (Nelson 2000; see also Kaufman 1960). Organizational units that have overlapping functions may compete for influence or jurisdiction and their rivalry may discourage the sharing of information (Betts 2007). For example, an unwillingness to circulate critical reports across agencies contributed to the US intelligence community’s failure to prevent the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The most pervasive bureaucratic bias, however, is simply resistance to change (Kaufman 1971; Zegart 2007). Bureaucratic officials tend to discount any consideration that implies a need for major change in their structures, procedures, policies, or priorities.

Institutional Deliberation   285 The literature on bureaucracy, organizations, and management addresses, in large part, various means of overcoming these and other barriers to effective deliberation. Some of these means involve large-​scale structural features, such as specialized staff units, efficient grouping of functions, an appropriate “span of control,” and matrix organization (Galbraith 1977). Some are matters of leadership or management style. Several studies suggest that an egalitarian and participatory management style, de-​ emphasizing hierarchical deference, will reduce barriers to upward flows of information (e.g. Bainbridge 1996). Leaders can build organizational cultures that promote innovation or concern for results (such as client satisfaction) or facilitate collaboration between organizational subcultures or professional groups (see e.g. Tushman and Nadler 1986). Monitoring, auditing, and incentive systems can be designed to minimize distortion in organizational reporting and communications (Downs 1967; Laffont and Martimort 2009; Zeckhauser and Pratt 1985). Professionalization and independence can enhance deliberative bureaucratic performance. One study, for example, shows that US states with well-​funded agencies and a merit-​based, highly-​educated civil service adopt innovative policies earlier than other states (Huber, Shipan, and Pfahler 2001). In a related finding, another study concludes that the most accurate budget forecasts are made by state agencies that are insulated from political appointees (Krause, Lewis, and Douglas 2013), a condition that fosters relatively unimpeded deliberation.

Courts Courts are archetypically deliberative institutions, expected to reach decisions through the rigorous application of “legal reasoning” (Posner 2008; Rawls 1971). Serving either as single judges in charge of a case or as multi-​member courts or panels, judges read or listen to arguments and evidence, presented in highly regulated proceedings designed to promote thorough and balanced consideration of opposing claims. They then retire to their chambers and deliberate the decision—​alone, with highly trained clerks, or through discussion with the other judges on a panel. In some cases, they write formal opinions to explain the rationale for the outcome. Their findings and reasoning are subject to review and possible reversal by higher courts. Most court cases deal only with the rights and obligations of individuals or firms that are parties to a lawsuit. But especially in the US, with its strong version of judicial review, some court decisions overrule actions of elected legislatures or executives and, in landmark cases, set precedents that constitute important general policies (Kramer 2004). US federal courts, at various levels, have required restructuring of state school-​finance systems; controlled the budgets of state prison systems; ordered massive busing plans and the creation of innovative “magnet schools” to overcome racial imbalances in metropolitan school systems; and required specific environmental policy decisions, among other ambitious remedies for policy problems. Although the actual processes of judicial deliberation—​for example, the discussions among a panel of judges in their chambers when deciding a case—​are not available for

286    Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger direct observation, scholars have investigated the deliberation of courts from various perspectives. Some bodies of law and judicial doctrine—​jurisprudence, evidence, civil procedure, and criminal procedure—​are in effect prescriptive theories of judicial deliberation, the principles of which may suggest useful norms for other kinds of deliberation (for example, rules of evidence requiring that certain kinds of testimony, even if truthful, should be excluded as prejudicial). Some scholar have disputed whether judges actually use the methods of legal reasoning to make decisions, pointing out that the votes of individual judges can usually be predicted from their positions on a simple ideology scale.15 However, even the US Supreme Court decides many cases unanimously or by large margins—​indicating that despite a docket full of contentious cases, both liberal and conservative judges often accept the same arguments. Judicial decisions thus reflect both political attitudes and legal reasoning, suggesting that judicial deliberation combines political and conventional legal considerations. Scholars have pointed to deficiencies of courts when it comes to deliberating complex matters of public policy and administration (Horowitz 2010; Kagan 2001; Melnick 2010). In particular, judges are generalists, without specialized knowledge of the relevant policy areas; the adversary process lacks any representative of the general public, as opposed to the parties to a case; and the binding authority of prior precedent may constrain learning and adjustment (Dunn 2008). Court-​imposed policies have therefore often been unworkable, unduly costly, inefficient, or inequitable—​from making a state prison system unmanageable to causing the bankruptcy and near collapse of certain public-​school systems. To some degree, the concerns about judicial competence are complicated by ideological and policy disagreements—​as many of the courts’ more ambitious ventures into policymaking have sought to vindicate expansive views of civil rights (Dunn 2008). For reasons of space, we comment only briefly here on jury deliberations. Although jury verdicts can have far-​reaching consequences in some civil cases—​for example, on corporate negligence—​juries do not decide cases that overturn, revise, or compel legislative or administrative policies. As a broad characterization, however, we note that extensive research on jury decision-​making consistently finds significant biases, especially concerning race, gender, and class (Devine 2012; Devine et al. 2001; Vidmar and Hans 2007; but see York and Cornwell 2006; Hickerson and Gastil 2008 for the possible declining significance of gender). Advocates of deliberative democracy should explore this literature to draw out its lessons about the competence of small groups of citizens. In our view, however, the tasks of trial juries may be far more difficult than those of deliberative democratic forums. Juries are supposed to find correct answers to complex, contested, and critically important factual questions, as opposed to merely expressing their informed preferences, and they are supposed to resist the influence of emotional or affective responses—​often legitimate considerations in policy deliberations. In any case, the value of relying on juries for criminal trials is not controversial in Western democracies. One kind of benefit is that, as Gastil et al. (2010) find, serving on

Institutional Deliberation   287 a jury tends to increase an individual’s civic engagement. But the more straightforward, original rationale remains compelling: the right to trial by jury prevents government officials from locking people up of their own accord.

Direct Democracy Finally, many large representative democracies have an element of direct democracy—​ the referendum, often linked with the initiative—​as a regular feature of their institutional architecture. In these instances, policy decisions are presented to the citizenry as a result of citizen petitions (initiatives), legislative decisions, or constitutional requirements, and the citizens make the decisions with varying degrees of finality. The conditions for intelligent deliberation in referendums are, on their face, unfavorable. In contrast with the situation of deliberative mini-​publics (see Smith and Setälä, this volume, Chapter 18), ordinary voters have virtually no individual incentive to inform themselves thoroughly. Moreover, there are very slight institutionalized means for informing the public.16 Voters encounter roughly the same kinds of media-​ based public discourse that occurs in ordinary elections. Paid advertising by interested parties plays a major role. It is likely that referendums sometimes impose useful constraints on public officials’ excessive indulgence of their own interests or those of well organized groups. According to Tierney (2012, 27–​8), however, they fail to induce significant learning or active deliberation on the part of citizens and thus manifest a “deliberation deficit.” Much of the most illuminating evidence makes use of the variation in the constitutional status and actual use of referendums across American states. In fact, cross-​state comparative analyses show no positive effect of referendums on citizen knowledge (Achen and Bartels 2016, chap. 3; Magleby 1984; Matthews and Paul 2010). And two investigations find that the use of referendums leads to lower scores on an ideologically neutral index of state governmental performance (Dalton 2008; Lac and Lascher 2013). One study has documented differences in epistemic performance and policy outcomes between ordinary referendums and deliberative democratic forums. In Switzerland, Bächtiger et  al. (2011) conducted a deliberative field experiment in the context of an actual referendum campaign on the expulsion of immigrants with criminal records. Subjects in a deliberation group that received balanced information and participated in online discussions acquired more information, retained it longer, and expressed different preferences than a control group exposed only to the referendum campaign. The deliberation group was also more likely to support a moderate proposal that protected immigrants’ rights under Swiss and international law. The recent Brexit referendum in the UK puts an exclamation point on the grounds for concern about the deliberative performance of referendums. As we will discuss below, some jurisdictions have recently employed a deliberation-​enhanced model of referendums that may mitigate their deliberation deficit.

288    Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger

Institutional Support for Deliberative Democracy A final question about regular governmental institutions, central to the issues of this Handbook, concerns their capacity to enable deliberative democratic processes to shape public policy. In early optimistic moments, some advocates (Fishkin 1991) hoped that deliberative democratic forums sponsored by foundations, universities, or civic groups could influence elections and policymaking largely through media coverage of their findings and influence on public opinion, without need for governmental sponsorship. Most deliberative forums that operate outside established governmental processes, however, receive little media coverage and have limited or no effect on public opinion. Short of major constitutional change, the prospects for deliberative democracy to have genuine influence on public policy depend, therefore, on direct sponsorship by and collaboration with regular policymaking institutions. Such sponsorship has been infrequent thus far, nor is any rapid expansion apparent; nevertheless, the prospects for widespread governmental sponsorship of citizen deliberative forums may be favorable in the long run. The central obstacle to such support is that institutional policymakers generally seek to protect or expand their own influence. They have policy preferences of their own, face constituency demands for particular policies, and see few rewards in delegating more authority or inviting additional criticism and conflict (on the logic of delegation, see Moe 2012). At the same time, there has been no consensus among relevant elites that incorporating democratic deliberation is a workable and reliable means to improve policy choices. Nor has there been strong activist or public pressure for deliberative forums, except in some places with notably progressive or social-​democratic tendencies. As we would expect, governmental sponsorship has been mostly limited to certain special circumstances and favorable contexts. In some cases, the attraction of popular deliberative forums for policymakers apparently has been to moderate or better inform other, non-​deliberative forms of popular influence. The most widespread institutionalized use of deliberative forums has been in local government—​dealing primarily with issues of land use, planning, infrastructure projects, public health, and resource management. A deliberative process in a local-​government setting can provide significant representation of the most affected citizens (Goodin and Dryzek 2006; Sabel and Zeitlin 2008; Warren 2014). Moreover, local elites may hope that the deliberation will assuage fears and overcome NIMBY-​type resistance. Although far less common, citizen deliberations occur occasionally in national-​, state-​, and provincial-​level governmental processes. The Canadian province of Ontario has been using representative “citizen reference panels” in policy processes. The Danish Board of Technology used a highly-​developed set of deliberative processes to assess technology-​related policies. A variety of administrative agencies use citizen deliberative processes that have evolved from long-​standing legislative mandates for “community engagement,” “stakeholder engagement,” and the like (see in this volume Hendriks and Boswell (Chapter 25), Fischer and Boossabong (Chapter 36), and Forester (Chapter 37)).

Institutional Deliberation   289 These processes may promote effective problem solving or help agencies to predict the political responses to their decisions. As with legislative provisions for judicial review of administrative action, the additional procedures may enhance the ability of the legislature to monitor and control the agencies (Shipan 2000). In some cases, institutional policymakers have established citizen deliberations to provide informed advice for popular referendums that otherwise would proceed without it. The provincial government of British Columbia in Canada created a citizens’ assembly to deliberate a major reform of the electoral system (see Warren and Pearse 2008). The US state of Oregon has devised a regular “Citizens’ Initiative Review” (CIR) to better inform public debate about the most important or controversial ballot initiatives. An independent NGO randomly selects twenty to twenty-four citizens to spend five days learning, hearing from advocates, deliberating, and drafting a statement, including a recommended yes or no vote. The statements are then incorporated in the voter pamphlets that the state distributes to every household before each election. Evidence indicates that the CIR recommendations are beginning to have measurable effects on voting decisions (Warren and Gastil 2015). Although the opportunities for full implementation of the deliberative-​democracy vision have been limited, to date, they are already sufficient to begin accumulating wide-​ ranging, potentially compelling evidence of the consequences. Scholars of deliberative democracy need to gather and assess that evidence. In the long run, popular deliberative forums will become an integral part of democratic political systems only if they have demonstrable salutary effects on policy outcomes and citizens’ lives.

Concluding Observations Governmental institutions provide important lessons for advocates of deliberative democracy. First, although the structures and processes for deliberation differ by institution, in advanced democracies these institutions usually have highly-developed resources and capabilities for dealing with the complex issues of modern government. Under favorable circumstances, they can bring to bear pertinent forms of expertise, take into account a vast volume of information, and make large numbers of relatively well-​ founded judgments and decisions. Institutions that rely heavily on experts as opposed to political appointees, or that have better funded and more professional staff, usually enjoy an advantage in epistemic performance. Second, each kind of institutional deliberation is subject to its own deliberative disadvantages. Many failures in such deliberation, for example, stem from political pressures and perverse incentives, including demands from uninformed citizens or narrow groups. New mechanisms for adding deliberative citizen input to institutional deliberation may help compensate for these deficiencies, but these innovations and the research on them are still in early stages.

290    Quirk, Bendix, and Bächtiger Third, in comparing different kinds of deliberative processes on the dimension of institutional intelligence, the proof is in the pudding—​that is, the best evidence for epistemic quality derives from the decisions the institutions make and the consequences of those decisions. As yet we have no fully satisfactory way to measure the intelligence of deliberative processes by observing them. Conclusions about the epistemic quality of any particular decision will often be politically controversial. Yet with careful discrimination, scholars can make some distinctions between better and worse deliberative performance on the basis of policy outcomes and their observed or expected effects on citizens’ lives.

Notes 1. This assumption is implicit in nearly all the literature that explores institutional deliberation. 2. For an extensive discussion on measurement approaches, see Quirk and Bendix (2011). 3. Identifying the relevant normative criteria would require choosing a perspective—​that of the general public, some majority of the public, the decision-​makers themselves, a political party, or some other stakeholder—​and determining or attributing their normative views. A moral philosopher might seek to identify the most correct or warranted values and priorities in some pertinent sense. 4. Mills and Selin (2017) show that dramatic cuts in staff have pushed Congress to rely on executive-​branch personnel to help complete legislative and oversight duties. Huber, Shipan, and Pfahler (2001) similarly show that legislatures have difficulty controlling state agencies without well-​paid members and a professionalized staff. 5. The literature on the US Congress has explored the different procedural strategies in the House and Senate (Bendix 2016a; Curry 2015; Sinclair 1997; 2006). 6. One approach is to consider how policy information flows through the legislative process (see Baumgartner and Jones 2015; Bimber 1991; Sabatier and Whiteman 1985; Whiteman 1995); another is to trace the flow of policy ideas from bill to bill (Wilkerson, Smith, and Stramp 2015). 7. Other things equal, speakers who make explicit logical connections are probably also more likely to be accurate in their facts and assumptions. Preferably, however, research should assess those facts and assumptions directly. The DQI’s scores also include measures (especially respect) that have more to do, at least directly, with social aspects of deliberation than with epistemic performance. 8. Investigating the epistemic performance of institutional deliberation presumes that some judgments are more correct or warranted than others—​and not only in relation to some particular and limited perspective (see Landemore 2013, ­chapter 6 for the epistemological foundations of this presumption). Scholars cannot take at face value the purportedly objective or authoritative expert opinion that they encounter in a policy deliberation (Tetlock 2005). But a posture of pure skepticism precludes assessing the intelligence or epistemic performance of deliberations. 9. A  caveat:  much of the institutional literature focuses on explaining the choice of structures and procedures (a more easily-​studied subject) rather than their consequences for deliberation.

Institutional Deliberation   291 10. Some theoretical work on “committees” applies to any collective body that makes decisions by voting (Austen-​Smith 1990; 1992; Diermeier and Feddersen 2000; Park 2017). 11. To support their case, Page and Bouton use polling data to demonstrate certain attributes of aggregate public opinion that are, at best, loosely connected with intelligence or deliberative quality (Quirk 2007). Landemore points to a “body of social science evidence” that derives entirely from computer simulations with no evidence on any human behavior (Quirk 2014). 12. If voted on, a bill requires only a simple majority to pass the Senate; but because sixty votes are needed to overcome a filibuster for most measures, that number is often effectively required to pass legislation. The Senate majority can also use budget procedures, not subject to the filibuster, to pass some substantive bills by simple majority. 13. It is of course radically dangerous when, as with Donald Trump, a president not only lacks experience but also has personality disorders that prevent learning (Quirk 2018). 14. Broadly speaking, they reflect the organizing principles identified by Max Weber (1978, 956–​8), in his “ideal type” of bureaucracy—​specialization, hierarchy, technical qualifications, formal rules, impersonality, and career employment (see also Wilson 1989). 15. For a discussion of the contending views, see Baum (2009); for an example of a Court majority acting on political beliefs, see Tribe (2002) on Bush v. Gore—​in which the conservative justices evidently set aside conservative constitutional doctrine to elect a Republican president. 16. The government often publishes and distributes a voter booklet containing summaries of the proposals on a referendum ballot.

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Chapter 18

M ini-​P u bli c s a nd De l iberative De mo c rac y Maija Setälä and Graham Smith

A mini-​public is an unusual institution: one that creates a space within which a diverse body of citizens who would not otherwise interact is selected randomly to reason together about an issue of public concern. Given the amount of scholarship on mini-​ publics from a deliberative democratic perspective, one might be forgiven for thinking that their application is extensive within democratic polities. This is far from the case: they remain fairly marginal institutions. That said, there have been some exciting developments in recent years that have sparked the interest of deliberative democrats, although the role and function of mini-​publics remains contested. Mini-​publics are not new; they precede the “deliberative turn” in democratic theory. There are historical resemblances between the randomly selected institutions that were so critical to Athenian democracy and the relatively recent emergence of mini-​publics (Owen and Smith forthcoming). The contemporary history of mini-​publics begins in the 1970s, when Peter Dienel in Germany and Ned Crosby in the US independently pioneered planning cells and citizens’ juries respectively. The potential of such institutions was envisioned by Robert Dahl in his 1970 classic After the Revolution? where he proposes “restoring that ancient democratic device and use it for selecting advisory councils for every elected official of the giant polyarchy—​mayors of large cities, state governors, members of the US House and Senate, and even the president” (1970, 149). Crosby, Dienel, and Dahl prefigure the dynamic field of study that has emerged more recently. In this chapter, we initially explore the key design features of mini-​publics, recognizing the within-​type differences. We then turn to empirical evidence on the internal practice of mini-​publics: their capacity to enable and support high quality deliberation explains the growing interest in these institutions. The rest of the chapter focuses on a more contested area of practice: what should be the role of mini-​publics within the political process? In both practical and normative terms, mini-​publics tend to be perceived as consultative bodies. We draw out aspects of the contestation over the role of mini-​publics by reviewing arguments against their use in decision-​making processes,

Mini-Publics and Deliberative Democracy    301 evidence from their integration with forms of direct legislation and arguments for giving mini-​publics a more decisive role in the political process.

Key Design Features of Mini-​ Publics: Difference within Type The term mini-​public has been used to capture a multitude of types of participatory governance (Fung 2003), but in this essay we are using the concept to capture a very specific institutional form (Ryan and Smith 2014). The shared design features of mini-​publics are independent and facilitated group discussions among a (near) random sample of citizens who take evidence from experts and interested parties. Beyond these basic characteristics there are important differences between models of mini-​publics, in terms of selection and numbers of citizens, days spent together and output. We capture these differences between some well-​known mini-​public formats in Table 18.1.

Table 18.1 Types and characteristics of mini-​publics Number of participants

Time

Output

Example

Citizens’ jury /​ reference panels

12–​36

2–​5 days

Recommendation in a citizens’ report

Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review, US MASS-​LBP, Canada NewDemocracy, Australia

Planning cell

25 in each cell, but run in parallel or series to include 100s

2–​7 days

Citizen report collates findings from different cells

University of Wuppertal, Germany

Consensus conference

10–​24

3 days (plus preparatory weekends)

Recommendation in a citizens’ report

Danish Board of Technology

Citizens’ assembly

99–​150

Series of weekends

Recommendation

British Columbia/​ Ontario, Canada, Ireland

Deliberative poll

200+

Weekend

Post-​deliberation survey

Center for Deliberative Democracy, US

G1000

1000

1 day

Series of votes on proposals

Belgium

302    Maija Setälä and Graham Smith There is a heated debate among theorists and practitioners about the virtue of random selection as compared to stratification against certain socio-​demographic criteria. James Fishkin (2009), the inventor of deliberative polls, has argued consistently in support of random selection as the standard for “a deliberative microcosm” and as a defining feature of deliberative democracy. While random sampling ensures that every citizen is guaranteed an equal opportunity to be selected to participate, the use of quotas ensures the presence of different social groups and perspectives. Quotas are particularly important in smaller mini-​publics to oversample marginalized groups, not only to ensure their presence but also to increase the likelihood that their voice is heard (James 2008; Ryan and Smith 2014, 17). So, for example, the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (BCCA) initially used quota sampling across electoral district and gender, but then added two randomly selected citizens from Indigenous communities when they were not included in the original sample. The preference for pure random selection runs up against the practical difficulties of achieving such a sample, as well as the historical precedent of Athenian democracy, in which the Boule (or Council) was composed of a quota of randomly selected citizens from each of the demes (or districts)—​an early form of geographic stratification. There is also contestation about the degree of self-​selection involved in each design. Since there is no compulsion to participate (unlike legal juries), a degree of self-​ selection is unavoidable. While many mini-​publics follow the conventions of opinion polling, some mini-​publics advertise for interested participants and hold meetings to learn about the initiative. At this point a stratified sample is drawn from those who have volunteered to participate. This is the case with the Canadian citizens’ assemblies and Danish consensus conferences. The original G1000 in Belgium complemented its random selection strategy with targeted recruitment of citizens from social groups who had not taken up the invitation. The second varying characteristic is time. The longer the period that citizens are able to spend together learning and deliberating about an issue, the better the outcome can be expected to be from a deliberative perspective. There may well be a saturation point for deliberation (although this will likely be issue specific) and there are obvious costs to organizers and participants in longer mini-​publics. The Canadian citizens’ assemblies on electoral reform ran over ten (British Columbia) and twelve (Ontario) weekends, retaining impressive attendance levels (Warren and Pearse 2008). In comparison to these Canadian assemblies that focused on one issue (electoral reform), the Citizens’ Assembly established by the Irish government in 2016 sat for eleven weekends over a period of fourteen months, grappling with five different issues. These ranged from five weekends on the constitutional status of abortion through to one weekend on fixed-​ term parliaments. Unlike its Canadian counterparts, it proved necessary to replace over a third of its membership during its lifetime. It is no surprise that most mini-​publics run for between one and four days in recognition of costs and motivation of participants. Third, there are important differences in relation to outputs. Most mini-​publics aim for a collective recommendation from participants, usually involving the possibility of majority and minority perspectives. For the G1000 in Belgium, a smaller citizen panel

Mini-Publics and Deliberative Democracy    303 was drawn from participants to draw together recommendations; and in planning cells, organizers often lead the writing of reports that bring together the recommendations from across a number of cells. Deliberative polls take a different approach to most other mini-​publics, using pre-​and post-​deliberation surveys to capture changes in participants’ individual opinions, providing a representation of informed public opinion on the topics under discussion rather than crafting a collective decision. Finally, we are witnessing the emergence of a new set of institutions constituted by randomly selected citizens and other political actors. The two most high-​profile examples are the Convention on the Constitution in Ireland and the G1000s held in the Netherlands. The Constitutional Convention was made up of sixty-six randomly selected citizens and thirty-three politicians from across the political spectrum: politicians were included in the belief that they act as an important link with final decision-​making and bring significant knowledge of political practice into the deliberations (Suiter, Farrell, and Harris 2018). The G1000s in the Netherlands differ from the original Belgian design by combining randomly selected citizens with other stakeholders including employers, government officials, and what organizers term “free minds.” The aim here is to have the “whole system” in one room. The Dutch G1000s are much more open processes, with participants initially identifying issues in their localities and then developing collaborations to take forward change. The implications of including politicians and other actors as participants within the deliberations (instead of just witnesses as in traditional mini-​public practice) have not been analyzed in any depth, although there are indications that the presence of politicians can unduly influence deliberations (Flinders et al. 2016, 39–​40). While such “mixed” assemblies are an important development, their composition means that they fall outside the existing family resemblances of mini-​publics as understood in this chapter.

The Internal Face of Mini-​P ublics It is the internal practices of mini-​publics that have proved particularly attractive to deliberative democrats. To what extent do mini-​publics live up to the promise of “more perfect public spheres” (Fung 2003, 338)? As Cohen (1989, 30) argues: “The appropriate ordering of deliberative institutions depends on issues of political psychology and political behavior; it is not an immediate consequence of the deliberative ideal.” To what extent is the ordering (or design) of mini-​publics such that it shapes more deliberative dispositions and judgments amongst participants? The design of mini-​publics generates an inclusive and diverse group of participants who interact with experts and engage in facilitated small group discussions where they are expected to justify their views to others. In principle, such conditions can be expected to provide for reflective and deliberative political problem-​solving. Mini-​publics promise political judgments that reflect both relevant information and the variety of arguments and perspectives (Mercier and Landemore 2012).

304    Maija Setälä and Graham Smith Mini-​publics are subject to increasingly sophisticated empirical analysis based on both self-​reporting in surveys and observational studies. The quasi-​experimental character of formats like deliberative polls, including pre-​and post-​test design, random selection of participants, random allocation to small groups, and in some cases the use of quasi-​control groups, allows for reliable analysis of the effects of deliberation and has generated a range of impressive findings. The current weight of findings strongly supports the claims of those who see mini-​ publics as a site of democratic deliberation. Arguably the most cited evidence comes from Fishkin and his collaborators who have shown across a number of deliberative polls how preferences can change as a result of deliberation (and not just the provision of information) in an informed and reasoned direction (Fishkin 2009). While other studies have reinforced this evidence of preference change, broader findings suggest a positive impact on knowledge, internal and external efficacy, confidence and satisfaction in the deliberative process and civic engagement amongst participants (e.g. Esterling, Fung, and Lee. 2015; Fishkin 2009; Grönlund, Setälä, and Herne 2010; Knobloch and Gastil 2015). Such findings run counter to studies in political behavior that suggest that people are uncomfortable facing political disagreements and become politically passive as a result (Mutz 2006). Particularly important from a deliberative perspective is evidence that participants increase their understanding of arguments used by those with opposing viewpoints (Hansen and Andersen 2004; Andersen and Hansen 2007). Niemeyer has taken this further, providing evidence from citizens’ juries that through engagement, participants tend towards meta-​consensus: an inter-​subjective agreement on the dimensions of the dispute at hand (Niemeyer and Dryzek 2007, 500). Farrar et al. (2009) have also found evidence that deliberation leads to preference structuration—​more precisely, to increased proximity to single-​peakedness of participants’ preference profiles. Unlike studies in political psychology (e.g. Sunstein 2002), these results indicate that deliberation does not lead to group polarization—​movement towards and adoption of more extreme positions. Research evidence from mini-​publics suggests quite the opposite (Grönlund, Herne, and Setälä 2015), highlighting the critical function of the design of the space of interaction. How to explain these results? A striking development in the analysis of mini-​publics has been the increasing engagement with cognitive science and social psychology. The design of mini-​publics can be understood as a set of incentive structures that promote certain behaviors and dispositions amongst participants over others. For example, the requirement on participants to publicly justify their viewpoints is a particularly effective way to counteract biases in individual reasoning, in particular confirmation bias—​the tendency to interpret evidence in light of existing beliefs (Mercier and Landemore 2012). Similarly the use of sampling techniques to generate a diverse group of strangers minimizes the impact of group polarization. Such polarization tends to be common in homogenous groups and in groups where participants are connected through social bonds (Sunstein 2003, 27–​8; Solomon 2006, 35). The heterogeneity of participants, balanced information, and facilitation in mini-​ publics combine to undermine the mechanisms that lead to groupthink, such as conformism. Evidence from deliberative polls indicates that the institutional incentives

Mini-Publics and Deliberative Democracy    305 do not induce group composition effects. Pressure to conform is reduced and opinion change does not appear to be driven by normatively unattractive group dynamics (Farrar et  al. 2009; Luskin, Fishkin, and Jowell 2002). The experimental analysis of Grönlund et al. (2015) suggests that these group composition effects continue to be alleviated even when groups are less than heterogeneous: the norms and procedures of deliberation interfere with such effects. Moreover, the requirement of a collective recommendation within most mini-​publics (except deliberative polls) does not necessarily give rise to social pressures when minority views are allowed in the statement (Setälä, Grönlund, and Herne 2010). Not all the findings from studies of mini-​publics reinforce the claims of deliberative democrats. Even though carefully designed to promote inclusive deliberation, societal inequalities still have some effect. The selection processes include a degree of self-​selection (invitees do not have to accept invitations). As such, the well educated and politically interested and active tend to be over-​represented among participants (Neblo et al. 2010). Moreover, there is emerging evidence that women and less educated participants tend to make fewer contributions to small group discussions, even with active facilitation (Gerber 2015; Setälä, Grönlund, and Herne 2010) and that the skills and abilities associated with deliberation are not equally distributed, with participants with lower economic status tending to have lower capacities to contribute to high-quality deliberation (Gerber et al. 2016). There is also evidence that it is not necessarily the deliberative character of arguments that has an effect. Gerber et al.’s (2014) analysis of a European deliberative poll suggests that on one issue—​immigration—​opinion change was driven by “non-​deliberative persuasion”: the most frequently repeated position had more effect than the quality of argumentation. Kahane (2016) has also raised the question as to whether mini-​publics are able to bring all competing discourses to bear during deliberations. Diversity in participants and the inclusion of experts will not always ensure that discourses outside the mainstream are present or given due consideration. The emergence of these sympathetic critiques of mini-​publics is important in ensuring that the appraisal of their deliberative qualities is balanced and scientific: to guard against the dangers of a deliberative confirmation bias. Even taking these weaknesses into account, mini-​publics enact a form of inclusive deliberation that far surpasses the quality of political discourse of most other political institutions, be they legislatures and their committees or expert commissions or other forms of participatory governance (Smith 2009). The interest from among deliberative democrats appears well founded.

The External Face of Mini-​P ublics: Contested Perspectives If there is reason to believe that mini-​publics create a space within which democratic deliberation thrives, what should be their role in the political system? As we stated in the introduction, mini-​publics are unusual institutions, differing markedly in their

306    Maija Setälä and Graham Smith constitution from extant legislative, executive, judicial, and civil society organizations. While deliberative democrats generally accept that the internal practices of mini-​ publics realize a number of desirable qualities, there is some contestation about the role that they might play politically. How, in other words, ought mini-​publics to be coupled (or decoupled) with other institutions in the democratic system (Mansbridge et al. 2012; Owen and Smith 2015; Hendriks 2016; Setälä 2017)?

Mini-​Publics and Consultation Arguably the dominant perspective on mini-​publics is that their deliberative characteristics lend them a valuable role in enhancing the democratic legitimacy of the political decision-​making process. While there is good reason to integrate mini-​publics into the process, their role ought not to extend further than consultation. Understanding the deliberative opinions of the public—​rather than simply raw public opinion—​will aid decision-​makers in their judgments. Any further decisive power is limited by the lack of “legitimating bonds of authorization and accountability between participants and non‐ participants” (Parkinson 2006, 33). Mini-​publics are thus conceived as supplementary institutions to the existing institutional architecture. Not only is this the dominant normative perspective on the function of mini-​publics, but also the most common practice. Mini-​publics are typically an example of “governance driven democratization” (Warren 2009): “top-​down” exercises, commissioned by public authorities to provide recommendations or informed public opinion on particular pressing matters of policy. For example, while Fishkin offers an argument that mini-​publics (and more particularly deliberative polls) are an embodiment of deliberative democracy (Fishkin 2009, 81), he circumscribes their impact on political decision making to “recommending power” (Fishkin 1997, 162). The assumption here is that decision makers will be strongly influenced by the informed opinion of citizens that mini-​ publics represent and that the decision-making process will be more democratically legitimate through such integration. But the practice of mini-​publics suggests though that this consultative relationship with decision-​making is problematic. While there are a few important counterexamples, mini-​publics do not have an extensive record of effectively influencing decisions (Dryzek and Goodin 2006). Even where mini-​publics are an institutionalized part of the political decision-​making process—​a rare example being Danish consensus conferences (Joss 1998)—​it is hard to trace influence. The Achilles heel of the current practice of mini-​publics is the power that public authorities have to be selective (either strategically or inadvertently) in both establishing mini-​publics and adopting their recommendations (Hendriks 2016; Font et al. 2017; Papadopoulos 2012). There have been calls for more “open” mini-​publics where participants are empowered to set the task—​a more democratic process of agenda setting (Ward et al. 2003) akin to the practice of G1000s in the Netherlands. However, it is not clear why a public authority would sponsor or listen to a mini-​public that may not respond to the pressing issues it is facing. As Neblo

Mini-Publics and Deliberative Democracy    307 recognizes, “even as they try to remain democratically accountable, organizers must circumscribe the scope, form, content and procedures of deliberative forums to maintain the forum’s coherence and distinctive role in the larger political system” (Neblo 2015, 182). As a consequence, mini-​publics are in danger of “becoming assimilated to the broader political system” (Neblo, 2015, 182; see also Kahane 2016). “Loose coupling” with public authorities may “protect the independence and integrity of the citizens’ deliberations” (Hendriks 2016, 8), but this leaves space for extensive agenda setting and the strategic and selective adoption of recommendations. While not overcoming all the problems of potential strategic misuse, elements of more “designed coupling” have been established in some contexts in which an explicit contract is drawn up requiring sponsoring authorities to justify their response to a mini-​public’s recommendation within an agreed time period (Cooper and Smith 2012; Hendriks 2016).

Against Mini-​Publics There has been a reaction to the extensive focus on mini-​publics amongst deliberative democrats. For Chambers, too much attention is paid to “alternatives or supplements to mass democracy in the form of innovative small-​scale deliberative experiments, rather than ways of making mass democracy itself more deliberative” (Chambers 2009, 331). In the introduction to this chapter we highlighted that the energy devoted to the analysis of mini-​publics within the deliberative democracy literature far exceeds the extent to which they are utilized within democratic systems. In this sense, Chambers has a point in that other elements that might be constitutive of a more deliberative system—​be it broader public deliberation or the functioning of powerful democratic institutions—​are too often overlooked by theorists and political scientists for what is as yet no more than a marginal political innovation. A rare, more principled objection to the integration of mini-​publics within the political system has been offered recently by both Lafont (2015) and Böker (2017). They argue that mini-​publics diminish rather than increase the legitimacy of the system in the way that they bypass deliberation amongst the broader public. It is the lack of mechanisms of direct authorization by, or accountability to, the wider citizen body and the “blind deference” from the public that this generates which discounts mini-​publics for Lafont. Participants in a mini-​public have gone through a process that makes their views no longer representative of the broader public, and thus lacking in legitimacy. The only legitimate role for a mini-​public is to “shape decision-​making indirectly by inserting their recommendations into the citizenry’s public deliberations” (Lafont 2015, 56). Böker’s argument is more radical, reminding us of the heritage of deliberative democracy as a critical theory in which “the legitimacy of authority. . . must be based on argumentative justification through public reasoning to those subject to it” (2017, 23). Rather than a forum in which citizens are able to actively claim their right of justification against governing authorities, mini-​publics are typically an instrument of government and fail to exhibit emancipatory tendencies (28).

308    Maija Setälä and Graham Smith What these critiques suggest is a perspective on deliberative democracy that privileges deliberation within and across mass publics as the source of democratic legitimacy in a political system. Deliberative democrats have good reason to promote wider public deliberation—​and Chambers is arguably justified to wish greater attention be given to more traditional institutions that might support broader deliberation. However, we live in complex societies and it is unrealistic to expect broad public deliberation on the range of issues that we face. It is “romantic dogma” (Warren 1996, 243) to assume that most people will have the time or the inclination to engage in endless deliberations on public matters. Political divisions of labor are necessary within large-​scale complex democracies, beyond a simple realist distinction between citizens and elected decision makers—​and mini-​publics could offer one democratic institutional remedy to complexity. Most accounts of deliberative democracy—​especially following the systemic turn—​recognize that there are a variety of sites across the polity that are more or less deliberative and democratic and the important issue is how they are connected or coupled (Mansbridge et al. 2012; Owen and Smith 2015). Böker’s argument reminds us however that we should remain wary about who, how, and why mini-​publics are organized: if they are predominantly vehicles to legitimate government authority, then the critical impulse of deliberative democracy is lost.

Integrating Mini-​Publics with Direct Democracy An institutional development that overcomes the authorization challenge in a creative way and potentially links mini-​publics to broader public deliberation is the integration of mini-​publics with direct legislation. In this case mini-​publics provide recommendations direct to the public. The much-​discussed Citizens’ Assemblies on Electoral Reform that were established in British Columbia in 2004 and Ontario in 2005–​6 are one such example. These were path-​breaking developments on a number of fronts. First, they were charged by the provincial governments to make recommendations on a fundamental constitutional issue: the electoral system. Second, the scale of the operation was qualitatively different from earlier mini-​publics: these assemblies met over months, learning about electoral systems, taking evidence from interested parties, deliberating and coming to judgments. And third, their recommendations went straight to a popular ballot, bypassing the legislature (Warren and Pearse 2008). There have been criticisms of the agenda-​setting process, because the task was set and delimited by government, but the experience and impact of these citizens’ assemblies takes us beyond common mini-​ public practice. A second example is the Oregon Citizen Initiative Review (CIR) that is a method for improving voters’ judgments on ballot initiatives. A citizens’ jury is inserted between a successful initiative and a popular ballot. Established under state law in 2009, the panel takes evidence from proponents and opponents of a measure on the ballot and from other more impartial witnesses, deliberates and produces a one-​page statement for the

Mini-Publics and Deliberative Democracy    309 Oregon State Voters’ Pamphlet that is sent to all households prior to voting. This statement assesses the issues at stake providing majority and minority arguments for and against the proposition (Gastil, Richards, and Knobloch 2013). Not only do these two examples offer a way out of the authorization dilemma that haunts proponents and critics alike, but they also provide insight into another role that mini-​publics can play in democratic systems: they are a source of what Warren and Gastil (2015) term facilitative trust. This form of trust is particularly important in complex political systems in which citizens cannot come to considered judgments on the full gamut of current policy issues. Facilitative trust agents provide distilled information and other kinds of heuristics—​ functioning as information proxies—​that can ideally help citizens make good political judgments with limited cognitive effort. (Warren and Gastil 2015, 566)

As Warren and Gastil suggest, “examples of institutions that facilitate good judgments for broad publics are hard to find” (566) as most bodies in the political realm are pushing particular partial interests and perspectives. In comparison, mini-​publics exhibit a novel combination of characteristics: their composition and structure motivates participants to come to relatively impartial judgments, based on good evidence and collective deliberation. On these grounds mini-​publics can be regarded as good information proxies or even trusted decision proxies when they “offer a consensus (or supermajority) recommendation” (568). This theoretical claim is, importantly, backed by empirical evidence that begins to unpick Lafont’s principled critique of mini-​publics. Analysis of the BCCA exit poll survey shows that the majority of voters who were aware of the mini-​public, but not of the details of its specific recommendation (STV), were influenced by its judgments. What is particularly telling is that voters highlighted two characteristics of institutional design. Populist voters, who are skeptical of political elites, appreciated the “ordinariness” of the BCCA; that it was made up of citizens from all walks of life. Non-​populists were more concerned that assembly members had gained a level of expertise (Cutler et al. 2008). When a second vote on the same issue took place a few years later, the BCCA was no longer in the public’s consciousness and the vote was lost decisively (Carty, Blais, and Fournier 2008; Warren and Gastil 2015, 569). Similar evidence emerges from the CIR where the Statement has been shown to influence the judgments of voters (Warren and Gastil 2015, 570). When surveyed on the “quality of judgments,” Oregon voters viewed the CIR as the most credible body (alongside criminal juries), comparing favorably to the state legislature and Congress (571).

A More Decisive Role for Mini-​Publics? Given the combination of democratic and epistemic qualities of mini-​publics, it is surprisingly rare to find arguments that mini-​publics should be given decisive and binding

310    Maija Setälä and Graham Smith power over collective decisions. A counter-example comes from a non-​democratic context: deliberative polls have been used as decision-​making bodies on local budgets in China (Fishkin et al. 2010). It is the diversity that (near) random selection offers and the engagement of participants who do not have a strategic interest in the issue under consideration that distinguishes mini-​publics. But the selection mechanism that is an enabling condition for high-​quality deliberation amongst participants disbars mini-​publics from enacting decisive power for most deliberative democrats. Mini-​publics “sever” this bond “that is characteristic of elected representation and necessary for democratic legitimacy” (Lafont 2015, 52). It is striking that the fetish for electoral modes of authorization and accountability is so deeply engrained in deliberative democratic theory. This is against the plentiful evidence of the rather variable quality of deliberation in legislatures (Steiner et al 2004). In other words, elected bodies to a great extent fail to embody deliberative characteristics, with interest and power politics dominating. Historically, electoral representation within our political systems “was in no way initially perceived as a form of democracy or of democracy by the people” (Manin 1997, 1; Dunn 2005) and even with universal suffrage, it continues to generate a political class that is distant from the lives, experiences, and perspectives of most citizens. Ameliorating these tendencies and further democratizing our existing representative institutions is a preoccupation of many democratic theorists (Elster 1998; Vermeule 2007), but it is reasonable to ask whether electoral representation is the only means of securing democratic legitimacy. Recalling the role that sortition played in legitimating the Ancient Greek polis, mini-​publics may suggest an alternative formulation of deliberative democratic legitimacy that does not rest on an electoral moment, but rather on other characteristics of the institution. It seems therefore premature to write off the possibility that mini-​publics might play a more decisive role in a democratic system. After all, there are a number of democracies in which legal juries are given decisive power within the legal system. There is a small body of deliberative democrats who are willing to take this step, arguing that randomly selected bodies ought to be given more decisive power—​ importantly, in terms of both agenda-​setting and decision-making. Another possible target of reform is the idea of a second legislative chamber or, in the US, a fourth “popular branch” of government that would be constituted by random selection (Leib 2005; Gastil and Wright forthcoming). For advocates, such a chamber would counter some of the dysfunctionalities of democratic systems such as short-​ termism generated by electoral party-​political motives and the influence of vested interests (Thompson 2008; MacKenzie 2016). More radically Bohman has made the case that “mini-​demoi” be integrated into transnational forms of governance to increase their democratic legitimacy. A mini-​demos shares the representativeness of a mini-​public, but with the decisional authority of existing democratic institutions (Bohman 2012, 87).

Mini-Publics and Deliberative Democracy    311

Conclusion There are good reasons for deliberative democrats to be interested in mini-​publics. They are not the only sites of democratic deliberation and although their use is currently marginal and contested, they could have a more extensive role in realizing a more deliberative democratic system. If or when the application of mini-​publics is extended, we must recognize that this will create increasingly “powerful incentives for interest groups and partisan elites to try to manipulate [these] deliberative forums” (Neblo 2015, 181; Papadopoulos 2012). The challenge then for deliberative democrats is to pay as much attention to the coupling of mini-​publics with other institutions and practices as they have on their internal characteristics. Mini-​publics, with their use of (near) random selection and promotion of inclusive deliberation, are very different from most (or even all) other political institutions. Neither their constructive nor disruptive potential for democratic theory and practice should therefore be discounted.

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314    Maija Setälä and Graham Smith Parkinson, J. (2006). Deliberating in the Real World:  Problems of Legitimacy in Deliberative Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ryan, M. and Smith, G. (2014). Defining Mini-​Publics. In Deliberative Mini-​Publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process, ed. K. Grönlund, A. Bächtiger, and M. Setälä (Colchester: ECPR Press), 9–​26. Setälä, M., Grönlund, K., and Herne, K. (2010). Citizen Deliberation on Nuclear Power: A Comparison of Two Decision-​Making Methods. Political Studies, 58: 688–​7 14. Setälä, Maija (2017). Connecting Deliberative Mini-​ Publics to Representative Decision-​ Making. European Journal of Political Research 56, pp. 846–​863. Smith, G. (2009). Democratic Innovations:  Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Solomon, M. (2006). Groupthink versus The Wisdom of Crowds: The Social Epistemology of Deliberation and Dissent. Southern Journal of Philosophy, 44: 28–​42. Steiner, J. Bächtiger, A. Spörndli, M., and Steenbergen, M. R. (2004). Deliberative Politics in Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Suiter, J., Farrell, D. M., and Harris, C. (2018). Ireland's Evolving Constitution. In Constitutional Acceleration within the European Union and Beyond. ed. P. Blokker (London: Routledge), 142–​54. Sunstein, C. (2002). The Law of Group Polarization. Journal of Political Psychology, 10: 175–​95. Sunstein, C. (2003). Why Societies Need Dissent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Thompson, D. (2008). Who Should Govern Who Governs? The Role of Citizens in Reforming the Electoral System. In Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly, ed. M. E. Warren and H. Pearse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 20–​49. Vermeule, A. (2007). Mechanisms of Democracy:  Institutional Design Small Writ (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Ward, H., Norval, A., Landman, T., and Pretty, J. (2003). Open Citizens’ Juries and the Politics of Sustainability. Political Studies, 51: 282–​99. Warren, M. E. (1996). What Should We Expect From More Democracy? Radically Democratic Responses to Politics. Political Theory, 24: 241–​70. Warren, M. E. (2009). Governance-​Driven Democratization. Critical Policy Studies, 3: 3–​13. Warren, M. E. and Pearse, H. (eds) (2008). Designing Deliberative Democracy:  The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Warren, M. E. and Gastil, J. (2015). Can Deliberative Minipublics Address the Cognitive Challenges of Democratic Citizenship? Journal of Politics, 77: 562–​74.

Chapter 19

De liberative P ol l i ng James Fishkin

Deliberative Polling (DP)1 offers a practical answer to a philosophical question: what would the people think should be done if they could consider a problem of collective choice under good conditions? Why is that a philosophical question? How is it a practical answer? What might we mean by “good conditions”? What does this approach add to democracy as we know it in real political systems around the world? The question is a normatively relevant (or philosophical) question because it is an empirical exploration of hypothetical opinion under appropriately good conditions. Public opinion as we ordinarily find it has several limitations. The design of the DP is meant to respond to those limitations but in doing so, it provides a picture of opinion often sharply different from that offered by conventional polls. A premise of the effort is that democracy, by its very meaning, should have a discernible connection to the will of the people. But what institutions can best make that connection? The form of democracy that is dominant throughout the world, democracy based on party competition, serves many central values—​freedom of expression and association, rule of law, rotation in office, accountability. In serving those values it can be regarded as a major human achievement in the long history of democracy spanning more than 2,400 years. But where is the entry point for any meaningful version of the public will? As democratic theorists and practitioners have asked in some preceding generations, are there avenues of reform through which we can better live up to democratic ideals? As the late theorist of democracy Robert Dahl asked, can we envision institutions for an “advanced democratic country?” (Dahl 1989). Our concern here is not with utopian speculation. Rather, by experimenting with how to facilitate the public will and experimenting with venues and institutional designs where it can be brought to life and even made consequential, we can glimpse democratic possibilities. “Deliberative democracy” is not just a matter of armchair theorizing or thought experiments. It can be the subject of empirical work—​essentially pilots for a philosophical idea. Begin with the apparently simple problem of public consultation. If the problem is to connect the “will of the people” with policy choice, how might we know what the people

316   James Fishkin really want? We hear mobilized voices from interest groups and populist outcries. But these may often be unrepresentative. Often those who speak up are just the people who feel strongly. The whole public can be represented in good public opinion surveys with scientific samples, but often much of the public is uninformed or disengaged. Polls may represent little more than the public’s impression of sound bites and headlines. A large literature demonstrates that usually public information levels are low (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1997). In the classic phrase of Anthony Downs, most voters are “rationally ignorant” (Downs 1957). If I have one vote in millions why should I invest time and effort in attempting to become informed about complicated public policy or political issues? My individual vote or opinion will not make much difference. There are usually other areas of life (our families, our jobs, for example) where our efforts can make more of a discernible difference. Even voters who pay attention to public issues and discuss them are likely to talk mostly with people they agree with, consult web sites and publications they agree with, watch news sources they agree with. The like-​minded convince each other and may miss the other side of the issue entirely. Furthermore falsehoods spread virally via social media, and there is the persuasion industry which often intends to mislead (if not misinform) the public in order to serve the interests of clients whether they be candidates, parties, or interest groups. Lastly, some of the opinions people report in polls may actually be phantom opinions or “non-​attitudes.” Members of the public do not like to admit that they don’t know. Asked a question about which they really have no opinion they may, nevertheless offer a response. The public offered answers in the US to polls about the famous “Public Affairs Act of 1975.” But it was fictional. There was no act to have an opinion about. They even offered responses when the Washington Post decided to celebrate the twentieth un-​anniversary of the Public Affairs Act of 1975 and asked survey respondents about its repeal. They got phantom opinion responses to that question as well (Bishop 2004). DP is an attempt to study what views the public would have if it were effectively motivated to engage with public policy or political issues under good conditions. The DP offers a particular account of the good conditions. A carefully balanced briefing document vetted by an advisory committee provides the pros and cons of competing policy options. An initial questionnaire is used to recruit a sample, usually representative in attitudes and demographics. That sample deliberates for at least an entire day, sometimes two or three, in moderated small-​group discussions and in dialogue with competing experts who answer questions from the sample developed in the small groups. After this deliberation the sample takes the same questionnaire as on first contact. Usually the DPs are face-​to-​face but sometimes a sample deliberates with this process online with voice and/​or video. In some cases there are pre/​post control groups that do not deliberate (Fishkin, Luskin, and Siu 2014). Why should policymakers pay attention to this kind of “deliberative opinion” when it is often not the opinion most people actually have? One argument is that it provides a route to responsible advocacy—​it shows which difficult trade-​offs the public

Deliberative Polling   317 would accept and which they would not, and for what reasons, all on the basis of good information. What might this kind of deliberative democracy process add to the evaluation and possible reform of democratic practices? Obviously the performance of democratic institutions could be enhanced in ways that have nothing to do with deliberation. What is the advantage of the deliberative approach? It foregrounds issues that were always a part of democratic theory, but which bring into view the problem of public will formation. As noted, our premise is that democracies ought to make decisions that have some connection to “the will of the people.” But what is the condition of our public will when the public often has low levels of information (for the implications of low information levels among the mass public, see Delli Carpini and Keeter 1997 and Althaus 2003), limited attention spans, and is the target of so many millions spent by the persuasion industry—​on campaigns, elections, and issue advocacy? (For an account of the corrupting role of money throughout our political process, see Lessig 2011; for the impact of economic inequality on the political process, see Bartels 2008.) How different would public opinion—​and voting—​be if people weighed competing arguments on the basis of good information? If they considered different candidates, different parties, different ballot propositions, or different policies, all under good conditions for really thinking about the trade-​offs posed by those competing choices? The root of deliberation is weighing.2 And the root idea of deliberative democracy—​ admittedly a very simple and common sense notion—​is that the people should weigh the arguments, the competing reasons, offered by their fellow citizens under good conditions for expressing and listening to them and considering them on the merits. A democracy designed without successful attention to this kind of public will formation could easily be reduced to a democracy of manipulated sound bites and misled opinions. Even if the elections for candidates, parties, or ballot measures are competitive and the people have a choice, it may be no more thoughtful or authentic a choice than one between brands of soap or cigarettes. In the United States, our republic began with the aspirations of Madison, but our practices have moved closer to those of Madison Avenue. Most modern research on deliberative democracy has focused on deliberation by ordinary citizens rather than by representatives or office holders (for some exceptions see Uhr 1998 and Steiner et al. 2005). The ordinary citizens are usually recruited to participate in a mini-​public or microcosm of the population. DP should be situated within this category. It is one such microcosm and it has distinctive answers to several key questions: (a) Who deliberates? (b) What is the policy context? (c) What is the rationale for others (policymakers or the rest of the public) to pay attention to their conclusions? (d) By what criteria should the success of such processes be evaluated?

318   James Fishkin

Who Deliberates? Given low levels of information and public inattention on the part of the mass public on most issues most of the time, it is hard to attribute much active deliberation to the mass public in its ordinary environment in the normal course of events. There may be dramatic and exceptional periods of mass public engagement, what Bruce Ackerman calls “constitutional moments” when there was an enormous widespread and sustained public debate, but these episodes are rare. Ackerman identifies three, perhaps four such “moments” in American history—​the Founding, Reconstruction, the New Deal (Ackerman 1991), and perhaps the Civil Rights period (Ackerman 2014). Even for such cases, we must distinguish mobilization from deliberation. Many people can get engaged to vote or attend demonstrations but are they considering competing arguments? Are they really thinking about the issues? Data is sparse, especially for the earlier periods of the constitutional moments. One might envision an institutional design that would encourage everyone to deliberate, perhaps before a national election. One example is the “Deliberation Day” proposal (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004). The idea is to try and scale up the DP model to the whole population. On this approach, all voters are invited to sites around the country for a day of deliberation—​alternating small group discussions and plenary sessions with competing experts, as much as possible on the model of a Deliberative Poll. An incentive is paid for participation for the day’s work of citizenship. Ideally it would be held on a national holiday to save expense (perhaps supplanting President’s Day). If the method of the DP works with microcosms, random samples of the population, then the same process could work with the entire population. A deliberation with the whole population would be far more consequential because actual public opinion in the society would likely have changed. The considered judgments would no longer be counterfactual or hypothetical. In the absence of deliberation by the whole population, there are two main approaches for a deliberative sub-​group. It could be self-​selected or it could be arrived at via some form of scientific sampling. Participatory Budgeting, begun in Porto Alegre, Brazil, uses self-​selection for the local population to deliberate on the choice of projects for the city. This process has spread to many countries. It is sometimes lauded as deliberative democracy (Fung and Wright 2001); it is also often viewed as mobilization for specific benefits more than deliberation. In any case, any process based on self-​selection is likely to be unrepresentative. Only those who are especially interested volunteer themselves (World Bank 2008). From the standpoint of deliberative democracy, the principal approach over the last two decades has been to gather a representative microcosm and then to engage it in good conditions for considering the issue. The basic idea goes back to Ancient Athens. Several key institutions used random sampling implemented with a machine (the Kleroterion) that selected citizens from a list of those who had previously expressed willingness to engage in public service. The Council of 500 selected in this way determined the agenda

Deliberative Polling   319 for what could be voted on in the Assembly, the graphe paranomon was a randomly selected jury of 500 that could prosecute irresponsible participation in the Assembly, and the nomethetai was a final stage of deliberative decision. After a proposal passed the assembly it did not immediately become law. It could only do so if a random sample of 500 or more was convened to hear the case for and against the proposed law and then after a day of deliberation voted positively on the proposal. Hence the deliberating microcosms had a key role in Athenian democracy before, during and after the direct democracy of the Assembly. These ancient institutions exemplify a practical method for implementing a very different kind of democracy. It is distinct from direct participatory democracy (as in the Assembly or as in modern referenda), distinct from party competition democracy implemented through elections, and distinct from the kind of deliberation by representatives envisioned by the American founders (deliberation by representatives on the merits without regard to party interests or party discipline). A challenge for modern research is whether some of the positive attributes of this kind of democratic design for deliberation by a random sample can be adapted to modern conditions. In modern times deliberating microcosms chosen by lot have been used to make recommendations on policy in many countries around the world (Grönlund, Bächtiger, and Setala 2014). DP is only one such design, but one with distinctive characteristics. It has been applied at the time of this writing in twenty-seven countries.

What is the Policy Context? When a microcosm of the public is convened, should its decisions be binding or advisory to other decisions? While some theorists have argued that in order to count as deliberation, the conclusions ought to be “binding” (Gutmann and Thompson 1996; 2004) there have in fact been few if any such cases if binding is interpreted strictly as requiring the decision to conform to the conclusions of the citizens. Deliberative microcosms do not produce binding decisions in the way that, say, a referendum can (although of course some referenda are also only advisory). The definition of binding, when clarified, comes down to the intent of the deliberators. As Gutmann and Thompson describe their proposed requirement, participants “intend their discussion to influence a decision the government will make or a process that will affect how future decisions are made” (Gutmann and Thompson 2004). On this interpretation, many deliberating forums are binding. The deliberating microcosm typically will offer its conclusions as an input to other decision-​making. For example, between 1996 and 1998 there were eight Deliberative Polls convened in Texas by the electric utilities and the Public Utility Commission to provide input to the creation of “Integrated Resource Plans” that would chart how that portion of the state would satisfy future energy needs. Deliberators increased their level of support for renewable energy such as wind power, to the point that much higher

320   James Fishkin percentages of the respondents were willing to pay increased utility bills to support renewable energy. The Public Utility Commission reacted to the data and the eight events by supporting increases in wind power and, in several service territories, slightly increased fees to support the new energy. Texas dramatically increased its wind power. These consultations were part of a process by which Texas moved from having the least wind power among the fifty states to having the most, surpassing California in 2007 (Fishkin 2009; 2018). The context which made this successful was the requirement, implemented by the Public Utility Commission, that the utilities consult the public in some way. The Deliberative Poll was adopted for public consultation in all eight service territories of the regulated utilities because it offered a method to consult that was representative and evidence-​based. Large investments in different forms of energy were at stake and an unrepresentative process or one dominated by bad information could lead to costly and or bizarre outcomes. Other examples of advisory but near-​binding decisions can be found in the Deliberative Polls in China and Macau. When the government convenes a Deliberative Poll to consult its citizens about a policy issue, say which infrastructure projects to build (as in several projects in China sponsored by local government, see Fishkin et al. 2010), or the design of a press council (in Macau, see e-​ Research and Solutions 2012) there is a strong impetus to implement the result. After all, there is official sponsorship and government resources are being spent. It would seem odd to go to all the trouble of convening a random sample for intensive deliberation and then to ignore the result. Another route to impact is to set an agenda for decisions by the voters. The two Citizens’ Assemblies in British Columbia and Ontario proposed ballot measures for electoral reform that went directly on the ballot. While neither passed, they broke new ground in that a random sample of citizens deliberated for about a year and produced a proposal that the rest of the province voted on (Fournier et al. 2011). In a less explicit way, the 2011 Deliberative Poll in California (“What’s Next California”) produced recommendations both for what could go on the ballot and for decisions by the legislature. Proposition 31 included six elements from the citizen deliberations, but other elements as well. The proposition was defeated but recommendations for legislation about initiative reform did pass (Fishkin et al. 2015). Setting the agenda for voting by the entire electorate harks back to the role of the council of 500 in Ancient Athens. It is a very strong form of influence without final decision-​making power. A  lesser form of influence could occur through the deliberations producing a voter recommendation. The Citizens’ Initiative Review convenes small random samples to deliberate on the model of a citizens’ jury (Coote and Lenagan 1997) and make a recommendation about ballot propositions. Those recommendations go in the voter handbook. Deliberative Polls, which employ larger samples, were broadcast before national referendums in Australia (on a republic in 1999) and in Denmark (on the Euro in 2000). Of course a televised process of voter discussion with results of the citizen deliberations would have to compete with all the campaign sound bites in a referendum campaign to have influence. But the idea is that such deliberating

Deliberative Polling   321 microcosms express the informed views of ordinary citizens rather than just partisan campaign messages.

Why Should Others Pay Attention? The strategy of trying to implement deliberative democracy, at least on selected issues, through randomly chosen microcosms has the advantage that it offers a practical method to give voice to the public’s considered judgments. In that respect it offers a stark contrast to standard public opinion polls which, of course, also use random sampling. Because most voters in their ordinary environments do not have much occasion or incentive to deliberate, the opinions sampled in standard opinion polls often represent little more than the public’s impressions of sound bites and headlines. But when such poll results are reported, policymakers have, nevertheless, a reason to pay attention. If done well, those polls offer a snapshot of the actual state of public opinion at the time. This is what the people are actually thinking, even if they are not thinking a great deal about the issue in question. But the opinions offered by a deliberating microcosm are different in a key respect. They are not necessarily shared by those who have not deliberated. They offer a counterfactual representation of what the people would think, presumably under good conditions for thinking about it. Why should policymakers or other citizens (voters) respond to counterfactual opinion? The issue is ultimately normative. As we noted earlier, democracy presumes some connection between the public will and what is done. If actual conditions do not really permit the public to come to an informed judgment, why not find out what it would think under transparently good conditions, under conditions where it can really consider competing arguments and get its questions answered from different points of view? If the reasons for its considered judgments can then be identified, those reasons should resonate with other citizens. On the many issues to which the public is inattentive, why rely on conventional polls rather than a representative and informed judgment from the deliberations of a good sample? Of course one might take the position that public opinion, whether deliberative or not, is irrelevant. Policymaking should be a matter of expert judgment. But it is the people who have to live with the consequences of one policy choice or another. Surely there is room to take their views into account. And if one takes that step, why not take their informed and representative views? Hence the idea of the deliberating mini-​public or microcosm. The Texas utility cases mentioned earlier provide an illustration. The public was not very knowledgeable before deliberation about the attributes of various energy choices. In fact the original discovery of non-​attitudes or phantom opinions had come from a question about electric utilities in a panel study from the American National Election

322   James Fishkin Study (Converse 1964). So on some questions about electric utilities, the public could be expected not to have any real opinions at all. In Texas, the low salience and low information levels on these issues helped make the case for DP. The deliberating microcosm offered an alternative that was evidence-​ based, thoughtful and representative. To rely on conventional polling alone would have rendered very big expenditures vulnerable to conclusions from people who had little understanding, pre-​deliberation, of the trade-​offs at stake. Yet to leave the people out of the decision would, in effect, have substituted values of the experts for the values of the public. Hence the case for consulting those affected but in a representative and thoughtful way on the basis of the best information available.

By What Criteria Should Such Processes Be Evaluated? The claim of the deliberating microcosm for the attention of policymakers and fellow citizens rests upon a hypothetical inference—​these are the conclusions the population would come to if they could somehow consider the issue in depth under the same good conditions. Hence the conditions must be credible as good conditions (access to good information and relevant arguments, for example) and the sample must be representative. Consider some criteria for evaluation building on one or the other of these two basic points:

(1) Demographic representativeness (2) Attitudinal representativeness (3) Sample size (4) Opportunity to engage policy arguments for and against proposals for action (5) Knowledge gain (6) Avoiding distortions

Demographic Representativeness To support the hypothetical inference that the population as a whole would likely come to similar conclusions if it were to deliberate under comparably good conditions, the microcosm needs to be representative at the start. It needs to be a version of the whole country or the whole city (or whatever the relevant population may be) in miniature, usually in one place (although for virtual versions distributed in space but connected electronically, see Fishkin 2009; 2018). But representative in what ways? Demographics in all the standard categories, class, gender, education, income, ethnicity are usually among the most prominent. Some approaches to creating a deliberative microcosm

Deliberative Polling   323 view such representativeness in demographics as sufficient (Carson et al. 2013). Others require attitudinal representativeness as well. An argument for demographic representativeness is that people from different demographic backgrounds will likely have different views and interests. Furthermore, as they deliberate they may realize more about their views and interests. If significant portions of the population were excluded (say very few women or very few minorities) one could plausibly suspect that the deliberation might have turned out differently if the microcosm had been more representative.

Attitudinal Representativeness Attitudinal representativeness seems equally important. If the sample is a representative microcosm of the viewpoints in the population, then it is more plausible to argue that as participants weigh the arguments from these competing perspectives, their views would represent the hypothetical—​the conclusions the population would come to, if they could weigh the arguments with comparable engagement, seriousness, and high-​quality information. If the microcosm begins with different viewpoints than the population, then the hypothetical inference loses its plausibility. J.  S. Mill described the importance of attitudinal representativeness in famous comments on the idea of Parliament acting as a “Congress of Opinions” “where every person in the country may count upon finding somebody who speaks his mind, as well or better than he could speak it himself . . . where those whose opinion is overruled, feel satisfied that it is heard, and set aside not by a mere act of will, but for what are thought superior reasons” (Mill 1861). Mill’s account of the deliberative ideal probably applies to parliaments only rarely, but it does offer a clear picture of the advantages of ensuring that a deliberative microcosm is representative in attitudes. For samples of ordinary citizens, the recruitment of the microcosm should provide a basis for empirical assessment of how attitudes of participants compare to the attitudes of the rest of the public. One simple approach is to ask the questionnaire of potential participants before recruitment, allowing comparison of participants and non-​participants in attitudes as well as demographics. In addition, having another comparison group who are never asked to deliberate is useful and can also be used for matching in case there is any sampling bias. DP typically employs these methods but most attempts at recruiting deliberative microcosms do not (for a compendium see Gastil and Levine 2005).

Sample Size The microcosm needs to be large enough that its representativeness and the statistical significance of any opinion changes can be meaningfully evaluated. If it is not representative, then why should others pay attention? Its conclusions might have been determined by strong or idiosyncratic views at the start. If the changes are not statistically significant, then they might be mere random noise. We do not know how seriously to

324   James Fishkin take them. Some microcosms on the model of a modern jury face both of these difficulties. The Citizens’ Initiative Review in Oregon has the noble aspiration of engaging a microcosm of the state’s voters and offering recommendations about how the electorate as a whole should vote. The recommendations are printed in the voter handbook. But the sample size is so small that some of the recommendations are simply wiped out by sampling error. For example, the recommendation for Oregon Proposition 74 on medical marijuana in 2010 was 13 to 11 (Fishkin 2013).

Arguments for and Against The root notion of deliberation is “weighing,” the weighing of competing arguments or reasons for one course of action or another. So any deliberative microcosm needs an effective method of engaging the participants in these competing arguments. One method is to have a stakeholder advisory group prepare briefing materials that attempt to anticipate the arguments on either side current in the policy community of experts. Ordinary citizens are unlikely to be aware of all of these. But experts will usually not be able to anticipate all the concerns of the public. Hence the public will likely add further arguments, either pro or con. If the public in the deliberating microcosm has an opportunity to get its factual questions answered by experts and policymakers that further facilitates their coming to an informed judgment. The Deliberative Poll design uses all three of these methods: the balanced briefing materials, the small group discussions where people share their own reasons for support or opposition to the various proposals, and access to competing experts who can answer questions from the small group discussions. How can we know if participants have actually considered competing arguments? Both quantitative and qualitative data can be gathered, the former from before and after questionnaires and the latter from transcripts of the group discussions. These can be coded for balance and argumentation creating new variables that can be incorporated into the quantitative analyses (Siu 2009, Gerber et al. 2014). This is an important emerging trend in the study of deliberative democracy.

Knowledge Gain The DP process, if it works well, should effectively motivate the participants to become more informed. They have opportunities to do so with the vetted briefing documents, with the small group discussions, and with the answers from competing experts in the plenary sessions. The briefing materials are vetted by an advisory group and if the information is contested, then competing accounts should be included. If the information is well established then it is presented as factual. DPs always include knowledge questions, usually in multiple choice format to measure knowledge gain. These questions are used in an index to measure knowledge gain. In virtually every case, there

Deliberative Polling   325 is significant knowledge gain. Of course, due to questionnaire space, the number of knowledge questions is inevitably small. Still it is reassuring that there is almost always knowledge gain.

Avoiding Distortions There are two principal ways in which it has been alleged that deliberations may go wrong. First there is a long tradition of discussion, mostly in the jury literature, that deliberations will be dominated by the men, by the more educated, by those who are more advantaged. They will have preponderant influence, importing the socio-​economic inequalities in the wider world into the deliberating microcosm. Part of this is deference to the more advantaged, part of it is that the very skills required for deliberation are thought to be disproportionately distributed to the better advantaged. The more advantaged are better able to make arguments and because of their social positions, they are more likely to be listened to (Sanders 1997; Young 2000). Yet the actual empirical study of this problem has not confirmed these speculations. At least with DP, if one looks at the initial positions of the more advantaged (the more educated, the males, the rich, etc.) on policy indices on the issues deliberated about, there is no pattern of movement by the small groups in the direction of those positions. The more advantaged are not dominating the discussions by imposing their views (Siu 2009; Luskin et al. 2015). This is an area for further study but it seems likely that the design of the deliberative process, the role of moderators, balanced materials, and ample opportunities for everyone to discuss can all be important. Further, juries are likely to employ social pressure to reach a unanimous verdict. In the Deliberative Poll there is by design no pressure for consensus. Rather the participants’ final considered judgments are recorded in confidential questionnaires. A second major distortion is the pattern Cass Sunstein has identified as the “law of group polarization” (Sunstein 2002; 2009). For an issue where there is a midpoint and the group’s initial position is on one side of the midpoint, the hypothesis is that it will move further away from the midpoint to that side, in effect becoming more extreme. Two basic mechanisms are offered—​imbalance in the argument pool and a social comparison effect. If most people are on one side of an issue they are likely to offer more reasons for that side of the argument. As they see others moving in that direction they will feel pressures to conform. Sunstein and various collaborators have corroborated this pattern in some jury-​like studies (for an overview, see Sunstein 2009). However, in the DP design the pattern has not been found. In an aggregation of the small group patterns in twenty-two Deliberative Polls the tendency to move away from the mid point was less than 50% (Luskin et al. 2015; see also Siu 2009 and Fishkin et al. 2010). If the deliberative design has sufficient balance (briefing materials, moderation, balanced panels of experts) it can overcome any imbalance in the argument pool provided by participants. And if there are confidential questionnaires, the design can minimize the social comparison effects.

326   James Fishkin Why are these two distortions important? Either domination by the more advantaged or polarization (in Sunstein’s sense) regularly moving the participants to more extreme positions could plausibly bring into question whether the conclusions were the result of genuine deliberation on the merits. It cannot be the Habermasian “unforced force of the better argument” (Habermas 1996) if people are trapped in a pattern of group psychology or implicitly coerced by pressures of group conformity. The fact that the prevalence of these patterns seems to depend on the precise design of the deliberative process opens up an area for further empirical work. The study of multiple projects, aggregating the changes in the small group discussions to investigate whether or not these distorting patterns hold with various designs, is an important emerging trend in research on deliberative democracy. The whole empirical research program connected with deliberative democracy is designed to make it practical. The study of DP and other microcosms allows for an assessment of the degree to which a theoretical concept can actually be implemented in real democratic practices.

Notes 1. Deliberative Polling is a registered trade mark of James S. Fishkin. The trade mark is used to benefit research at the Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy. 2. See e.g. New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 459.

References Ackerman, B. (1991). We the People, vol. 1: Foundations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Ackerman, B. (2014). We the People, vol. 3:  The Civil Rights Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Ackerman, B. and Fishkin J. (2004). Deliberation Day (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Althaus, S. (2003). Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics: Opinion Surveys and the Will of the People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bartels, L. M. (2008). Unequal Democracy:  The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Bishop, G. (2004). The Illusion of Public Opinion (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Carson, L., Gastil, J., Hartz-​Karp, J., and Lubensky, R. (eds) (2013). The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of Deliberative Democracy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Converse, P. E. (1964). The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics. In Ideology and Its Discontents, ed. D. Apter (New York: Free Press of Glencoe), 279–​329. Coote, A. and Lenaghan, J. (1997). Citizens Juries: Theory into Practice (London: Institute for Public Policy Research). Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Delli Carpini, M. and Keeter, S. (1997). What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).

Deliberative Polling   327 Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row). e-​Research and Solutions (2012). Macao Deliberative Polling on the “Amendment of the Press Law and the Audio-​Visual Broadcasting Act.” Final Report. Fishkin, J. S. (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fishkin, J. S. (2018). Democracy When the People Are Thinking: Revitalizing Our Politics Through Public Deliberation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fishkin, J. S., He, B. Luskin, R. C., and Siu, A. (2010). Deliberative Democracy in an Unlikely Place: Deliberative Polling in China. British Journal of Political Science, 40: 435–​48. Fishkin, J. S. (2013). Deliberation by the People Themselves: Entry Points for the Public Voice. Election Law Journal, 12: 490–​507. Fishkin, J. S., Luskin, R. C., and Siu, A. (2014). Europolis and the European Public Sphere: Empirical Explorations of a Counterfactual Ideal. European Union Politics, 15: 1–​24. Fishkin, J. S., Kousser, T., Luskin, R. C., and Siu, A. (2015). Deliberative Agenda Setting: Piloting Reform of Direct Democracy in California. Perspectives on Politics, 13: 1030–​42. Fournier, P., van der Kolk, H., Carty, R. K., Blais, A., and Rose, J. (2011). When Citizens Decide:  Lessons from Citizen Assemblies on Electoral Reform (Oxford:  Oxford University Press). Fung, A. and Wright, E. O. (2001). Deepening Democracy:  Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance. Politics and Society, 29: 5–​41. Gastil, J. and Levine, P. (eds) (2005). The Deliberative Democracy Handbook (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-​Bass). Gerber, M., Bächtiger, A., Fiket, I., Steenbergen, M. R., and Steiner, J. (2014). Deliberative and Non-​Deliberative Persuasion:  Opinion Change in a Pan-​European Deliberative Poll (Europolis). European Union Politics, 15: 410–​29. Grönlund, K., Bächtiger, A., and Setala, M. (eds) (2014). Deliberative Mini-​Publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process (Colchester: ECPR Press). Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (2004). Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Lessig, L. (2011). Republic, Lost:  How Money Corrupts Congress—​and a Plan to Stop It (New York: Twelve). Luskin, R. C., Sood, G., Fishkin, J. S., and Hahn, K. (2015). Deliberative Distortions? Homogenization, Polarization, and Domination. Working paper, Center for Deliberative Democracy, Stanford University. Mill, J. S. (1861). Considerations on Representative Government (London:  Parker, Son and Bourn). Sanders, L. M. (1997). Against Deliberation. Political Theory, 25: 347–​76. Siu, A. (2009). Look Who’s Talking: Examining Social Influence, Opinion Change and Argument Quality in Deliberation. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University. Steiner, J., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M., and Steenbergen, M. R. (2005). Deliberative Politics in Action: Analyzing Parliamentary Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sunstein, C. R. (2002). The Law of Group Polarization. Journal of Political Philosophy, 10: 175–​95.

328   James Fishkin Sunstein, C. R. (2009). Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Uhr, J. (1998). Deliberative Democracy in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). World Bank. (2008). Brazil: Toward a More Inclusive and Effective Participatory Budget in Porto Alegre. Report No. 40144-​BR (Washington, DC: The World Bank). Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Chapter 20

Scaling U p De l i be rat i v e Effects—​A pplyi ng L essons of M ini - ​P u bl i c s Simon Niemeyer and Julia Jennstål

Deliberative democracy can be understood in systemic terms as the contestation of discourses (e.g. Stevenson and Dryzek 2012), but the mere fact of contestation does not ensure deliberation. Populists, for example, are contestatory without being deliberative: leveraging plausible and emotionally appealing claims to mobilize support for actions that would not withstand more dedicated scrutiny. Such non-​deliberative acts may ultimately (or, more likely, may not) have deliberative consequences. This is dependent on the capacity of the system to respond.1 At the micro-​level, achieving deliberation requires something recognizably deliberative in the capabilities of citizens—​that can result in a “deliberative stance” (Owen and Smith 2015)2—​inuring them against blandishment and motivated reasoning (Bagg, forthcoming). To the extent that such capacity can be inculcated and activated, the system as a whole holds greater deliberative capacity. Achieving gains in the deliberative capacity of citizens is hard-​won and rests upon shifting sands. This is evermore evident in the contemporary spectre of a “post-​truth” world in which populists harness disaffection and amplify otherwise legitimate concerns in ways that manipulate public will. Diagnosis of the underlying problem often focuses on informational and cognitive deficits, promoting the power of the “better argument” to win through. And while this plays a role, at the core is a dispositional and emotional dynamic that regulates the expression of the deliberative stance. Evidence from mini-​publics suggests that if deliberative conditions are achieved then there are individual benefits ranging from improved political efficacy, trust, and greater willingness to engage in political participation. And yet, despite these potential benefits, and the many roles mini-​publics can play (Goodin and Dryzek 2006; Fung 2003), debate has focused almost entirely on the issue of decisiveness—​those (rare) cases where mini-​public outcomes, in the form of recommendations or aggregated votes, constitute

330    Simon Niemeyer and Julia Jennstål the decision. Critics stress the non-​democratic, potentially elitist implications when mini-​publics act as decisive micropolitical events disconnected from the wider public (Chambers 2009; Lafont 2015; Parkinson 2006). In focusing on this dimension mini-​ publics are in danger of losing favor without anything close to their potential being realized. There is scope to promote a wider role for mini-​publics in deliberative capacity building (Curato and Böker 2016). A closer look at how the deliberative stance is induced in mini-​publics informs pathways to improving deliberation in the wider system via a “discursive” role—​where the focus is on arguments/​discourses that have been deliberatively scrutinized. The discursive role positively interacts with an exemplar role of deliberative behavior by “laundering” manipulatory discourses and reducing the effectiveness of non-​deliberative strategies such as populism. Under this guise, mini-​ publics inform the political process on a par with any other input, but with a special status to the extent that they project deliberative qualities into the public realm without bypassing it. Mini-​publics are not a magic bullet, nor are they intrinsic to deliberative democracy. But if used appropriately, with sufficient frequency and status and in conjunction with a range of democratizing measures, they offer a promising corrective intervention in times of growing populism and demagoguery that acts against popular reflection of the public interest. To the extent that this is successful, mini-​publics would ideally facilitate their own obsolescence as deliberative capacity develops. This chapter will highlight how it is possible to conceive of the kind of scaling up, or “spreading effect” that we propose—​avoiding overburdening mini-​publics with roles for which they are ill equipped, and leading to a more productive model for their use. The chapter proceeds by discussing the real and perceived roles of mini-​publics in deliberative democracy, before considering how these might be updated in light of the idea of the deliberative stance. We then turn to the specific benefits of mini-​publics in scaling up deliberativeness and buffering against non-​deliberative forces, before briefly considering the conditions under which this approach might succeed.

Misdiagnosis and Misuse of Mini-​P ublics Deliberative democracy as a whole has had an ambivalent relationship with mini-​ publics. Although their paths have collided, they trace their origins separately (Fung 2003, 338). But mini-​publics have since taken the role as exemplar of public deliberation in practice, as well as empirical test vehicle (Thompson 2008). Prior to the “systemic turn” their dominance had grown to the extent that many—​including Dahl (1997) and Pateman (2012)—​conflated mini-​publics with deliberative democracy, leading to concerns that the field had abandoned mass politics (Chambers 2009).

Lessons of Mini-Publics    331 A more specific concern involves the deployment of mini-​publics as a short cut to decision-​making, where the outcomes reflect what would occur if the system as a whole behaved in a deliberative manner. It is not clear exactly how much support there is for this “short cut” view. Lafont (2015, 41) identifies a series of “enthusiastic” advocates, but closer inspection yields few strong endorsements.3 It is also rarely the case in practice.4 Nevertheless, the legitimacy challenges associated with this short-​cut approach has been the focus of considerable critique (Lafont 2015; see also Parkinson 2006). So far as the arguments against the “short cut” view go, there is little to disagree with. Strong claims to representativeness in mini-​publics need to be viewed skeptically. 5 And, to the extent that deliberation has occurred, mini-​publics are likely to produce better (more epistemic) outcomes than would otherwise be the case, but, even though compared to the alternatives they may be better, it is too demanding to ascribe them a definitive role, and certainly this will do little to improve deliberation in the polity more widely (Lafont 2015).6

Re-​Imagining Micropolitics and Macropolitical Consequences What then, if anything, should mini-​publics do? Of the sources Lafont (2015) cites as favoring decisiveness, Buchstein (2010) is the only clear advocate. He does so on the basis that lack of decisiveness poses the potentially demotivating prospect of citizens’ efforts coming to naught. This is an intuitively appealing claim, but if we look at what little evidence is actually available it cannot be sustained (Lindell 2011). Consequentiality is certainly key, but there are other possibilities beyond decisiveness (Dryzek 2009). And these possibilities can best be informed by a closer look at what happens during authentic mini-​public deliberation.

Transformation of the Citizen versus Activation of Deliberative Stance Critics of decisiveness claim that participants in mini-​publics transform to become more akin to experts than their peers (Parkinson 2006, 82; Lafont 2015). The claim appears to rest on an “information deficit” view of deliberation—​where the effect is explained by knowledge gains. But it is difficult to imagine a process rarely exceeding a few days elevating participants to expert status. Improved knowledge is undoubtedly important to deliberative transformation (Althaus 1998), and marginal gains have been demonstrated (e.g. Setälä, Grönlund,

332    Simon Niemeyer and Julia Jennstål and Herne 2010; Setälä and Herne 2014).7 However, while very large changes in particular opinions and beliefs can be observed, mini-​public participants remain largely the same individuals in terms of their overall beliefs and values pertaining to the issue in question.8 However, while the underlying network of individual attitudes potentially takes time to transform (Mackie 2006), expressed policy preferences change more dramatically during mini-​public deliberation. To the extent that deliberation has taken place (Niemeyer 2016), this is a function of improved intersubjective mapping of these underlying values and beliefs onto the outcomes citizens come to prefer (Niemeyer 2011; cf. Jackman and Sniderman 2006). Thus, deliberation is not simply a function of what citizens know. Knowledge is merely the source material. Deliberation proper involves working out what to do “in light of [these underlying] reasons” (Cohen 2007, 222; cited in Chambers 2012, 57). To the extent that corrective transformation occurs, it equally involves the activation of a more deliberative approach to processing knowledge so as to arrive at conclusions about what should be done. Analogies include a switch from “fast” thinking, involving cognitive short cuts, to slower modes of reasoning (Niemeyer 2011); or a move away from motivated forms of reasoning (Redlawsk 2002) aimed at defending a pre-​existing position, in favor of suspending disbelief in the spirit of open-​mindedness while evaluating various claims.

The Deliberative Stance and Its Precursors The deliberative contestation of discourses thus requires a preparedness to take seriously alternative arguments and consider new information. This ideal cannot be divorced from a set of capabilities that are implicit in deliberative theory via the role of open-​ mindedness (the inverse of opinion strength, see Barabas 2004; and need for cognitive closure, see Kruglanski and Boyatzi 2012) that can be brought to bear in facilitating deliberative transformation.9 Owen and Smith have described something akin to the activation of these capabilities when they advance the idea of a “deliberative stance”: part of the political ideal of deliberative democracy is that its (normative) stability is generated by citizens being able intelligibly to conceive of (adopt a stance towards) themselves as equals engaged in a process of public reasoning oriented to a shared practical judgment, where such a process involves citizens reflectively taking up each other’s standpoints (Owen and Smith 2015, 219).

While the deliberative state and stance can be used interchangeably, the former is focused more specifically on the internal state of citizens engaging in political reasoning. At its core it reflects a disposition toward the behavioral features attributed to the deliberative stance, such as a predilection for “truth seeking” and contestation (Curato,

Lessons of Mini-Publics    333 Niemeyer, and Dryzek 2013; Bächtiger 2011), an openness to arguments and a capacity for empathy (Morrell 2010). The deliberative stance, by contrast, is more closely connected to observed behavior. It concerns the listening side of discursive exchanges (Dobson 2014)  and the processing of information, taking seriously alternative arguments while simultaneously treating them with judicious skepticism (Kruglanski and Boyatzi 2012). And while deliberative resources may be scarce, and definitive conclusions elusive, the deliberative stance improves the ability to deal with ambiguity and forestalls the need for cognitive closure—​characteristics that vary across individuals, but are also influenced by situation (Kruglanski and Webster 1996). The deliberative stance is an individual quality, which most individuals are inherently capable of, to varying degrees. It also exhibits a latent capacity, where a major factor determining its expression is context (e.g. Jennstål and Niemeyer 2017; Pedrini 2015). Group argumentation, for example, is a powerful deliberative context (Mercier and Landemore 2012), where such situations are more likely to induce deliberative behavior (Goodin and Niemeyer 2003). However, the mere fact of group context is not sufficient to induce deliberativeness, where “pathologies” are still possible (Stokes 1998). And while there is much focus on the effects of group composition on deliberation, this is but one situational factor in play. This includes the emotional context in which deliberation plays out, where deliberative ideals such as openness are more likely to predominate when the atmosphere is comparatively “calm and reasonable” (Thompson and Hoggett 2001, 352). Anxiety, by contrast, tends to lead to selection bias in the processing of information (Blanchette and Richards 2010). The benefits of taking seriously the conditions that induce a deliberative stance support what many practitioners already understand in respect to establishing deliberative norms (see Mansbridge et al. 2006). Such effects might simply involve engaging in a group-​building process prior to embarking on deliberation. A comparison of fourteen mini-​public case studies, of which eight involved some kind of pre-​deliberative group-​ building exercise, demonstrates the deliberative stance-​inducing effect (Jennstål and Niemeyer 2017). While there is no significant difference in the level of change in preference or attitude transformation between the studies, those where the deliberative event began with a group exercise10 experienced a much larger transformation in the way that these underlying beliefs mapped onto preferences, resulting in a much higher intersubjective consistency—​a measure of the extent to which deliberation has converged toward an “end” (Niemeyer and Dryzek 2007). A more focused study of the deliberative stance has been conducted by Jennstål and Niemeyer (2017) as part of a mini-​public design in Sweden involving two group treatments, in addition to a control group that did not participate in deliberation. Prior to the deliberation, one group were given activities intended to promote a deliberative stance, using techniques that sought to build deliberative norms, develop trust among participants, and encourage open-​mindedness. The second group did not engage in these activities but simply had deliberative ideals dictated to them. Each group then took part

334    Simon Niemeyer and Julia Jennstål in a three-​day deliberative process. Improvement in intersubjective consistency of reasoning was significantly greater for the “activate” than the “dictate” group, whereas there was no change for the control group. Such findings challenge the notion that deliberation is not (ever) possible because of the blocking role of emotions (Hibbing and Theiss-​Morse 2002) in favor of recognizing the role of “positive emotional engagement” in facilitating deliberation (Rosenberg 2007). However, while the mechanics of the deliberative stance can be demonstrated in micro-​political settings, the ultimate goal involves finding ways in which this can translate into transforming macro-​politics.

Mini-​P ublics and Scaling Up Deliberativeness Emotional dynamics can have both positive and negative consequences for deliberation in micro as for macro settings (Thompson and Hoggett 2001), such is the fragile nature of the deliberative stance (see also Owen and Smith 2015, 229). For example, growth in the use of populist language contributes to creating emotional dynamics that manipulate public will, amplifying a legitimacy crisis that divorces the political choices of citizens from their own interests (Manin 1987). The mechanism of manipulatory discourses is well described by Murray Edelman’s (1985) “symbolic politics,” where the deployment of symbolically loaded language by political elites nudges public opinion using mechanisms that reduce cognitive dissonance (and produce cognitive closure) by externalizing unresolved issues—​down-​ evaluating their importance for the sake of consistency (see e.g. Mackie 2006) where the salience of symbolically evoked attitudes crowds out other considerations. These dynamics only stand to intensify in an increasingly globalized world facing complex challenges, where short attention spans are stretched ever further, and those who perceive themselves as losers in the new order shut down their deliberative faculties in an increasingly corrupted public sphere. Anticipating the inability of ageing political institutions to meet modern challenges is among the reasons why Dahl (1989) originally proposed mini-​publics. Lafont (2015) is similarly concerned, but draws different conclusions. For her, inserting mini-​public decisions into a “highly defective deliberative context of a public sphere full of sound bites, demagoguery, and manipulative misinformation would hardly lead to the intended positive effects” (Lafont 2015, 19). But, for Dahl, as for Pettit (2004), it is precisely for the reason of the failure of politics that mini-​publics are necessary. How do we reconcile this impasse? Any solution should not lean too heavily on an epistemic dimension of mini-​public deliberation getting the “right” outcome. However, their deliberative qualities—​particularly those that resist manipulatory forces—​can be harnessed. That well constructed mini-​publics have a strong capacity to identify and displace symbolic and manipulatory

Lessons of Mini-Publics    335 discourses has been demonstrated by Niemeyer (2004). More important to this process than an information-​rich environment in which participants are plied with superior arguments, well-​constructed mini-​publics remedy the settings—​via the inducement of the deliberative stance—​in which information is acquired. In doing so they correct the effects of information selection bias (Stroud 2010), as well as the effects of cognitive short cuts and motivated reasoning (Redlawsk 2002), in translating that knowledge into intersubjectively well-​constructed preferences reflective of underlying will (Niemeyer 2011). In other words, they foster an environment where the operation of judgment is enhanced (i.e. a deliberative stance). The power of manipulatory discourses via the mechanism of symbolic politics and the corrective role of the deliberative stance challenges the notion that institutionalization needs to focus solely on the power of better argument (Warren 2007). Rather, it is at least as important to focus on the background conditions for deliberation. Harnessing mini-​publics as deliberative interventions as part of a wider democratic system, rather than as decision-​making mechanisms, stands to counter the forces that work against deliberation as a mass public process (contra Bagg, forthcoming).

Laundering Discourses: Discursive Regulation We identify two interlocking functions that work together to scale up the benefits of mini-​public deliberation: the discursive function contributing to the regulation of discourses and the exemplary function inculcating the deliberative stance (cf. Curato and Böker 2016). Regulation of manipulatory political discourse is supposed to occur in democratic systems via mechanisms such as investigative journalism (Bagg, forthcoming). But these functions are manifestly inadequate, particularly in light of the decline of traditional media into increasingly concentrated ownership cliques with partisan objectives, together with growing reliance on online sources that hyper-​facilitate motivated reasoning by making it ever easier to find information to reinforce one’s predetermined view (Sunstein 2007). The discursive—​or “deliberation making”—​function of mini-​publics (Curato and Böker 2016; Niemeyer 2014) provides a counter to manipulatory discourses through the filter of the public. Not unlike Goodin’s (1986) “laundering of preferences,” discourse regulation filters out manipulatory discourses that would otherwise potentially pervert preference formation (Niemeyer 2004). Discursive regulation also goes beyond the role of intercepting manipulatory discourses. A mini-​public dedicated to this role is also more likely to find integrative solutions to problems and, more importantly, more helpful forms of bridging rhetoric that promote dialogue and understanding across differences (Dryzek 2010).

336    Simon Niemeyer and Julia Jennstål Linking discursive regulation to the wider public sphere requires both clear lines of transmission and what MacKenzie and Warren (2012) refer to as “minipublic trust.”11 A potential problem occurs to the extent that the focus is on the outcome a mini-​public recommends, as opposed to the reasons for recommending it.12 Outcomes in the form of policy choices are easy to communicate, but lack deliberative power. Discursive regulation by mini-​publics can only operate to the extent that the underlying reasons are explicated—​and, in doing so, manipulative discourses identified. In other words, rather than dictate decisive outcomes, the mini-​public discursive function involves a form of discursive “signalling” (Ingham and Levin 2017) whereby citizens update their perspectives on basis of the information supplied by their peers in the form of arguments. This requires that participants accept that they need to persuade their peers of the merits of certain outcomes, (Curato and Böker 2016; Chambers 2009, 344) and the perils of others. Scaling up the effects of discursive regulation also requires a minimal level of deliberative capacity in the wider public—​which mini-​publics can facilitate via the exemplar function (see below). But the requisite deliberative resources are much reduced where the mini-​public has sorted the “wheat from the chaff ” in matching discourse to the public interest (Niemeyer 2014), providing helpful informational short cuts (e.g. Lupia 1994; Ingham and Levin 2017). But it goes beyond providing informational short cuts and cues based on straightforward endorsement of particular outcomes (e.g. Fishkin et al. 2015). The mechanism has a discursive quality, with endorsements communicated along with the underlying values and beliefs. Thus, having been sourced from the public, this approach goes beyond filling the regulatory gap created by the absence of other forms of public interest fact-​checking, by filtering discourse contestation through an ecology of public values, beliefs, and aspirations represented by a diverse set of citizen peers. The best exemplar of discursive regulation by mini-​public is that of the Citizens’ Initiative Review (Gastil and Richards 2013), which sifts through referendum proposals, producing a publicly available pamphlet that voters can use to inform their own deliberations.13 Preliminary evidence suggests that the mini-​public trust mechanism potentially works, but only to the extent that citizens take heed of it, which in practice has been limited (Gastil and Richards 2013). Moreover, much of this research has been based on mini-​public trust or informational cues based solely on the mini-​public recommendations, and not the arguments per se (Ingham and Levin 2017). Much more research needs to be done in this area.

Deliberative Norm Building: Inducing the Deliberative Stance Although discursive regulation is an important component of the role for mini-​publics, it is the strengthening of deliberative norms that is central (Bagg, forthcoming).

Lessons of Mini-Publics    337 Mini-​publics can contribute to creating deliberative conditions and thus building deliberative norms via three interrelated mechanisms. First, to the extent they perform discursive regulation, they clear the path for the deliberative stance by subverting reactive non-​deliberative emotional pathways. And, by “laundering” manipulatory discourses they reduce the chances of other relevant considerations being crowded out, thus inducing greater open-​mindedness. Second, discursive regulation builds trust within the deliberative system in ways that reinforce deliberative behavior—​similar to the confidence building/​constituency building role identified by Goodin and Dryzek (2006). A related effect has been observed where improving the quality of the political process positively impacts information gains (Clark 2017). To the extent that these gains reflect improved emotional dynamics, we anticipate that improved trust in public institutions, which are better discursively regulated, will have a positive scaling-​up effect in terms of public deliberation. Finally, mini-​publics provide an exemplar, or normative template, for ideal deliberative behavior of a kind that many putatively deliberative institutions fail to provide (Niemeyer 2014). A similar rationale led Crosby (Crosby, Kelly, and Schaefer 1986) to adopt the term “Citizens’ Jury” tag to his particular recipe, so as to draw on the exemplar of the jury as a behavioral ideal.14

Institutions for Deliberative Capacity Building Mini-​ publics are not a substitute for a well-​ functioning deliberative democracy (Chambers 2009). However, the extent to which its heady ideals are achievable, they represent a ladder for the construction of a deliberative polity—​one that could ideally be kicked away, although forces undermining a deliberative system may be persistent enough to subvert this ultimate goal. There are many forms that the basic mini-​public model can take. Fishkin (2014) speaks of deliberative polls impacting on mass politics, but through relatively specific mechanisms (agenda setting and candidate selection), or by directly scaling up participation in a very real sense as part of a national “deliberation day.” Less ambitiously, Gastil and Richards (2013)) consider the role of the citizens’ initiative review in much the same terms as discursive regulation, but as part of a chain of deliberative events at different stages of the policy process. However, despite undoubted merits of such prescriptions, we resist the temptation to advocate any particular “recipe” applicable to all circumstances. Any particular design needs be follow a problem-​based model (Warren 2017) that is sensitive to local democratic, institutional, and cultural conditions. Nevertheless, certain requisite conditions can be identified.

338    Simon Niemeyer and Julia Jennstål

Necessary conditions Achieving the scaling up effect of mini-publics requires a minimum set of parameters, not least to ensure that the internal conditions are deliberative—​avoiding the spectre of stretching the concept beyond meaningful boundaries (Steiner 2008)—​and to ensure that deliberateness extends beyond the minipublic. Drawing on the above findings, we tentatively sketch these boundaries in terms of internal deliberative practice and linkages to the wider deliberative system.

Internal Conditions Factors such as issue topic, issue stage, political settings, and nature or size of the affected public will each potentially impact on the specifics of mini-​public design. Most important of all is the integrity of mini-​publics, which can potentially be manipulated (Talbott 2010). This is mitigated to some extent by focusing on discursiveness over decisiveness, where the stakes of deliberation rest on convincing the wider public (Curato and Böker 2016), rather than (strategically) winning the internal argument within the mini-​public itself. It is also mitigated to the extent that a deliberative design is focused on achieving conditions in which authentic deliberation is possible. This includes activating a deliberative stance, which acts to inure participants against blandishment, having enhanced critical deliberative faculties (Niemeyer 2004). It is likely that these effects will require the physical presence of participants, but may not preclude a combination of in-​person and online deliberation once the deliberative stance is achieved—​although there remain important questions about the quality of using online methods (Strandberg and Grönlund 2014). In any case, the effort required to induce deliberation will differ between locations where compatibility of prevailing cultural and political practice, as well as the type of issue involved, can help or hinder success. Discursive regulation of mini-​publics can only operate to the extent that all relevant arguments are adequately represented (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008). It is thus essential that recruitment of participants goes beyond the standard approach aimed at achieving a demographically representative group (Bohman 2012). This includes taking into account the likelihood that it will be more challenging to recruit individuals whose views or predispositions would render them less likely to participate (Jennstål 2016). Permitting sufficient time for deliberation is also a likely to be a critical factor. Deliberation certainly appears to begin early on (Goodin and Niemeyer 2003), but the process of intersubjectively translating underlying values and beliefs into policy choices can take some time (Niemeyer 2016). However, there is a clear trade-​off between the level of commitment required and willingness to participate—​although this will vary

Lessons of Mini-Publics    339 according to context, including compensation and the perceived status of mini-​publics (Jennstål 2016).

Necessary External Conditions The necessary external conditions involve two dimensions pertaining to the nature of the linkages between mini-publics and the wider public and the broader institutional settings in which they are conducted.

Macropolitical Linkages: Influential, But not Decisive While mini-​public deliberation should still be oriented around making recommendations, these need to be constructed by participants as citizens in a form through which they can seek to convince their fellow citizens qua citizens—​which Curato and Böker (2016) refer to as the “legitimacy seeking” function. This approach does not necessarily preclude voting—​but only with extreme caution, otherwise the act of voting, or even anticipation of a vote, might shut down deliberation (Felicetti, Niemeyer, and Curato 2016); and in any case conveyance of poll outcomes should be subservient to the reasons why particular courses of action came to be preferred. Discursive regulation requires clear and consistent transmission mechanisms to convey the results of mini-​publics (in the form of reasons provided for particular findings)—​something that is difficult to do well. The success of this dimension depends in part on the institutional status of mini-​publics.

Institutional Settings The impact of mini-​publics (particularly the discursive function) is dependent on both the form of transmission (Olsen and Trens 2014) and the nature of the wider system (Felicetti, Niemeyer, and Curato 2016). The wider public can only digest the outcomes of mini-​publics to the extent that they themselves have some level of capacity to deliberate (Lafont 2015). Thus, if there is low deliberative capacity in the system—​low levels of trust, engagement, and deliberative stance—​then it is difficult for mini-​publics to gain purchase and effect change in the system (see e.g. Boswell, Niemeyer, and Hendriks 2013). There is thus a chicken and egg problem for the role of mini-​publics in building deliberative capacity. They need status (Curato and Niemeyer 2013) for which there are points of entry. But their productive exploitation requires a clear understanding of what they should do (Boswell, Niemeyer, and Hendriks 2013), how they work, and what are the mechanisms for transmitting their outcomes to macro-​politics. Certainly, scaling up deliberation requires that mini-​public best practice be far more widely spread. A rough estimate based on Participedia figures from the US suggests that the likelihood of having participated in a mini-​public since the mid 1990s is less than one in 2,500.15 To explain the emergence and entrenchment of democratic institutions, scholars studying the history of democratization (usually in the electoral form) deploy concepts such as “habituation” that routinizes certain practices (Rustow 1970) whereby

340    Simon Niemeyer and Julia Jennstål norms and procedures become internalized and accepted by political actors at all levels (Diamond 1999, 65). Obviously, routinization of deliberation as a democratic norm via the deployment of mini-​publics (among other mechanisms) requires a dramatic escalation in current practice.16 By contrast the prevailing signals in the contemporary democratic states work against the establishment of deliberative norms, particularly among citizens, who have been habituated into the idea that their democratic responsibility begins and ends with casting their vote (Reybrouck and Waters 2016). Little wonder, then, that research investigating the predilection for deliberative forms of political engagement produces sanguine results at best under these prevailing conditions (see e.g. Jennstål 2016).

Conclusions While skepticism about the potential of mini-​publics in democratic systems is well founded, with their impact on macro-​politics thus far very mixed, there is a strong risk of throwing out the democratic innovation baby with the move to deliberative systems. History is littered with early setbacks followed by major advances and there is a great deal of scope, if not need, for revisiting their potential. We argue that the recent history of mini-​publics represents in equal parts teething problems and a misstep, with their real potential for deliberative democratization waiting to be realised. To be sure, building deliberative capacity in the deliberative system relies on a multi-​pronged approach, including strategies such as media and campaign reform (Lafont 2015). Mini-​publics should not be advanced as a stand-​alone approach, and certainly not conflated with deliberative democracy; nor should they be decisive —​constituting the actual decision—​in most cases, but they have potential to be influential in important ways for building deliberative capacity. Mini-​publics have the potential to project deliberative qualities into the public sphere and provide a ladder for increasing the deliberative nature of the overall system. Understanding their scaling-​up potential requires looking closely at the role of context and deliberative stance in achieving deliberative transformation. The activation of the deliberative stance is influenced in part by situation, but also discursively—​or, more alarmingly, can be shut down by the deployment of symbolic discourses. And, although this manipulatory threat may always remain, the ultimate goal in the development of the deliberative system should be that of rendering the mini-​public obsolete in a self-​ sustaining deliberative system. Short of that, mini-​publics should play a role in discursive regulation, which identifies the manipulatory nature of certain discourses as well as providing a site for the synthesis of new discourses that build bridges across diverse communities. To the extent that their status confers an exemplary function, they also stand to contribute to building deliberative norms in the wider community.

Lessons of Mini-Publics    341 All this presumes that mini-​publics actually have status, are frequent, and that their design and role in politics are well conceived. To date success is mixed, and there remains much to learn. However, deliberative democrats would do well to re-​evaluate the potential of mini-​publics as a tool for democratization, and to refine their design and role in the democratic system rather than set them aside. We hope we have mapped out a more constructive way forward.

Notes 1. See for example, the example discussed by Dryzek (2009, 334). 2. The deliberative stance involves a more general, systems level feature in which there is “a willingness to engage in collective judgement as equals” (Owen and Smith 2015). 3. Of the sources Lafont cites, Goodin and Dryzek (2006) do not advocate binding decisions, simply listing this among a range of possible uses (see above) and noting the rarity of this particular approach; Levinson (2010); MacKenzie and Warren (2012) investigate the potential role of trust in mediating an indirect relationship between mini-​publics and decision making. In discussing the “gold standard” or Deliberative Polls, Mansbridge (2010, 55) lauds that they are “beginning to play a role in shaping public policy,” but only describes them as having “real links,” and an example where the design mandated decision to take “strong consideration of the poll results.” Pettit (2004) explicitly precludes mini-​publics producing binding decisions, advocating a “contestatory” role more consistent with that argued herein; and Talbott (2010) explores the consequences of election by Deliberative Poll, but ends up abandoning the idea on account of potential for the process to be corrupted—​a consideration that we return to later. 4. In surveying the different macro-​political relationships with mini-​publics in practice, Goodin and Dryzek (2006) identify nine separate uses, of which actually deciding policy is but one. The remainder include being taken up as another input in the regular policy process; informing wider public debates; market testing; legitimating policy; confidence/​constituency building; popular oversight; and resisting co-​option (Goodin and Dryzek 2006). 5. In terms of representative claims, even large mini-​publics, such as Deliberative Polls® (Fishkin, 1991)  and Citizens’ Assemblies, may fail to ensure representativeness beyond achieving a demographic mirror. Self-​selection along other dimensions, such as personality or issue attitude, is likely (O’Flynn and Sood 2014; Jennstål 2016). Adopting sampling frames such as “discursive representation” may address these issues (Jennstål 2016; Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008), but there remain challenges in respect to how finely the selection categories should be drawn and the relative numbers required to achieve representation for each group. Take for example the issue of climate change, where, in principle, a mini-​public should include representation by climate skeptics. However, closer inspection of this category reveals considerable diversity within the group, some of whom are likely to behave in ways that impede, rather than contribute to, deliberative quality (Hobson and Niemeyer 2013). 6. Mini-​publics are subjected to a built-​in bounded rationality (Curato and Böker 2016) and their results are often hostage to a range of contextual and design factors (Lindell 2011), including chance events (Niemeyer and Blamey 2005; Smith 2009). It is too much to expect even a very carefully designed mini-​public of short duration to produce definitive conclusions, given the limitations arising from limited duration and issue complexity.

342    Simon Niemeyer and Julia Jennstål 7. Setälä, Grönlund, and Herne (2010) report a 21% improvement in knowledge gains—​ from three to four correct answers out of six questions pertaining to the subject of nuclear power. Farrar et. al. (2010) report similar gains. However, knowledge does not always improve (e.g. Luskin, Fishkin, and Jowell 2002). 8. Pre-​and post-​correlations in responses to statements pertaining to beliefs and values range from 0.54 at one extreme, with most of the values falling closer toward the higher extreme of 0.75. (See Niemeyer 2004; 2008; Niemeyer, Ayirtman, and Hartz-​Karp 2013; Jennstål and Niemeyer 2014). 9. Deliberative theory also covers other capabilities, such as the need to be respectful, reciprocal and be willing to provide reasons. While such states are theoretically appealing, here we focus on capabilities that contribute to the kind of truth-​seeking behavior that can be observed contributing to deliberative transformation. 10. The specific nature of the group exercise varied. Some included a pre-​event session dedicated to building deliberative norms, including the group developing those norms themselves as part of group discussion—​in other words, the norms of deliberation were developed by the group rather than dictated to them. A small number of the case studies simply involved sessions where the group got to know each other, facilitating a more relaxed environment for deliberation to take place. 11. Lafont (2015, 55) does not reject the mini-​public trust approach proposed by MacKenzie and Warren (2012), but she suspects that it suffers from the same legitimacy problem associated with the short-​cut view, mainly because of the passive relationship with the broader public. 12. This could be addressed by coupling recommendations with a further citizens’ review process expressly geared to the task of evaluation (see Gastil and Richards 2013). 13. Although there may be limitations with linking deliberation explicitly to referenda, depending on the specifics of context (see e.g. Felicetti, Niemeyer, and Curato 2016). See also below. 14. However, although there are strong overlaps, this becomes problematic insofar as the jury decision is supposed to be based on technical assessment of evidence, whereas we would appeal to exemplary models that do not involve decisiveness, or suggest that the role of public values is subservient to the evaluation of facts, when indeed the two are discursively intermixed (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2006). 15. This very rough calculation is based on 128 case studies located in the US. A number of very conservative assumptions include an average of 100 participants per case and that the Participedia figure only represents 10% of the actual number of examples of a mini-​public. (See https://​www.participedia.net/​en/​browse/​cases, retrieved January 12, 2017.) 16. Although the precise level of this escalation is beyond the scope of what can be given adequate treatment here, the analogy of legal juries could be invoked as a practice common enough to be sufficiently routinized.

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Chapter 21

Deliberati v e  Me dia Rousiley C. M. Maia

In the recent vibrant debate on the deliberative system, scholars have called for a research agenda that deepens the understanding of deliberation as a societal-​wide process (Goodin 2005; Dryzek and Hendriks 2012; Mansbridge et al. 2012; Neblo 2015; Niemeyer 2014; Thompson 2008). In this chapter, I argue that the media—​and more specifically the media system, which encompasses traditional media, digital platforms, and social networking sites (SNSs)—​play an important role in deliberative systems; and broader communication across several discursive arenas could not exist without media practices in mass democracies. Deliberative scholars have acknowledged that the media have not received much attention within deliberative theory, despite their influence being prominent in any democracy (Chambers 2009, 342; Chambers and Costain 2006, xii; Mansbridge et al. 2012, 19; Mendonça 2016; Parkinson 2012, 164). Accounts of the mass media’s performances are more often based on idealizations or anecdotal illustrations, and scholars do not pursue implications of media-​based communication through systematic, well-​ grounded empirics. The Internet and SNSs—​including new conditions in term of scale, access, and time for private and public communication—​have attracted substantial attention. This literature rapidly proliferated in the last fifteen years and has promoted an increasingly more sophisticated and empirically grounded understanding of modes of online communication and deliberation (Coleman and Moss 2012; Davies and Chandler 2011; Strandberg and Grönlund 2014; Stromer-​Galley and Wichowski 2011). Yet, most research has been restricted to one forum, a type of institution or a single platform; and far-​reaching articulations within a systemic approach to deliberation still need to be elaborated. By bringing the literature on deliberation together with the hybrid media—​an approach that focuses on intertwining the “old” and “new” media—​I argue that making the right distinctions between different types of media—​with their own technologies and organizational forms (designs, behaviors, actors, publics, and contexts)—​helps advance an understanding of networked public spheres within the deliberative systems. I attempt to offer a glimpse into the complexities, opportunities, and obstacles present

Deliberative Media   349 in contemporary public communication. Whereas I can only indicate lines of thinking in the context of a more comprehensive discussion, this approach may help to counteract more utopian and skeptical views regarding the media’s potential to promote and enhance deliberation as a societal-​wide process. I contend that communication in all media environments is by no means immune to severe shortcomings and pathologies. Since most deliberative principles and expectations are counterfactual, an open question remains in regard to empirically examining whether deliberative virtues exist in practice in the concrete processes of media-​based communication in any particular setting. In this chapter, I begin by briefly examining some media-​related conditions for deliberation. While my analysis is attentive to an interconnected media environment, I distinguish between mass communication and digital media settings; and I survey empirical studies to examine gains and flaws within media practices for the purpose of promoting deliberation. The chapter concludes by noting the importance of thinking in terms of a deliberative system. I illustrate the evolving dynamics of political communication and interdependencies in Internet-​based forums hosted by government agencies, the mass media, and multi-​platform communication at everyday level.

An Interconnected and Hybrid Media System Contrary to the traditional view of a centralized model of mass communication, with the “elites” operating as gatekeepers to ensure a political communication system monopoly, on the one side, and the Internet and various SNSs on the other, I endorse the perspective of a hybrid and interconnected media environment (Chadwick 2013; Maia 2012; 2014; Papacharissi 2011). The mainstream organizations of newspapers, TV, radio, etc., as well as alternative, radical, or independent media continuously incorporate innovations from Internet-​based technologies and online forms of communication. These include videos, podcasts, blogs, debate rooms, and comment boards. The proliferation of multiple digital platforms has enabled several actors to operate in and across distinct settings of the political system—​political representatives, policymakers, political parties, unions, social movements, NGOs, and ordinary citizens—​to produce and engage in public communication. There is just cause for thinking that the contemporary “up-​and-​down and reciprocally round-​the-​houses” model of political communication, as Blumler and Coleman (2015, 111) have put it, increases the pool of perspectives, discourses, and reasons (Bächtiger et al. 2010; Bohman, 2007) available as inputs for deliberation within the deliberative system. Yet, it is important to maintain a healthy skepticism regarding traditional problems of hierarchical technologies and venues for communication, conditions for participation, inequalities, and relations of power in order to advance a public voice across political settings.

350   Rousiley C. M. Maia

Conditions For Deliberation in the Mass Communication Environment In large, complex, industrialized, and pluralist societies, political communication is chiefly derived from mass media organizations. These institutions provide much of the information that people use for their own reflection and for engaging in discussions, wherever they occur. In this section, I claim that the mass media, despite several flaws and perils, do not necessarily undermine deliberation. Under certain conditions, the news media can also operate as a forum for civic debates. Deliberative scholars are usually very critical of the mass media, and their assessment usually has at least three roots. First, deliberative theorists have long pointed out the threat that corporate power and commercially-​driven media organizations represent to the democratic ideal of free-​flowing ideas and arguments (Habermas 1989; 2009, 154; Neblo 2015, 24). As enterprises concerned with their financial health and advertisers’ needs, the mass media do not reflect a public-​interest orientation. Gutmann and Thompson (2004, 36) argue that “the media teach consumerism far more than deliberation.” The criticisms of antidemocratic trends in mass communication and difficulties in communicating through the mass media are relevant in our context; and they should be central to any critical assessment of the media’s performance. However, any analysis of the media system should start by decomposing the generic term the media, acknowledging a highly differentiated landscape with many types of organizations, legalities, and technological features. While there is a vast body of literature in the field of political communication concerned with the role of newspapers, TV news, documentaries, educational programs, and entertainment shows in the construction of the public sphere (Coleman 2013; Dahlgren 2009; Lunt and Stenner 2005). I will focus on the news media. In this respect, well-​established normative principles regarding the political functions of journalism in democratic societies produce expectations that the press should contribute to raising people’s awareness of issues that are of public concern, provide a platform for debate, serve as a watchdog, and preserve media independence and integrity in the face of outside powers (Esser and Strömbäck 2014; Gurevitch and Blumler 1990; Norris 2000). In addition to these normative guidelines, any assessment of news media performance must be based on a clear understanding of their practices set within an institutional, socio-​political, cultural, and economic environment. A  comparative analysis of the mainstream media and politics on a global level shows that, depending on the degree of autonomy achieved by news media organizations, there are considerable variations in the links with the state, political institutions, and political divisions in society; the patterns of the news market and their audience; and the development of professionalism and the relationship with civil society agents (Esser and Strömbäck 2014; Hallin and Mancini 2004; 2012; Pfetsch 2014). Detailed comparative research into media systems in Western Europe and North America as well as the non-​Western world, including processes of political transitions towards democracy, shows that varying constraints apply

Deliberative Media   351 to media professionals’ knowledge, schemes, filters, and judgments (Hallin and Mancini 2012; Pfetsch 2014). Thus, news media operations should be seen as the result of the interplay of an internalization of normative assumptions, the standardization of definitions of newsworthiness and political communication cultures for the surveillance of the political and social world, and the practical constraints on the news-​making process regarding time, space, expertise, cost, technology, and so on (Delli Carpini 2005, 24–​5; Gurevitch and Blumler 1990, 270). The second criticism addresses the fact that mass media communication restricts the epistemic potential of deliberation insofar as information gathering is selective; opinions of the elite are highlighted and viewpoints of wider publics or dissenters are frequently neglected. Bohman is concerned about the media’s political power in defining problems and selectively setting agendas, particularly when this process is a result of a “prepacking of information prepared by other media professionals of parties, lobbyists, and interest groups” (Bohman, 2000, 58). Similarly, Neblo says that the media can be “co-​opted by the various constituencies between whom they mediate” (Neblo 2015, 24). Political communication studies have shown that the role played by the mass media in public debates is more elusive and complicated than usually assumed. Media communication operations—​including decisions about what to cover, what frame to use, and how to hierarchically order certain issues with respect to others—​should not be presumed, but investigated. In order to shape public debates, mass media professionals frequently operate as active reason-​giving agents as well as mediators of the debate forum (Ettema 2007; Maia 2012; Norris 2000). Reporting on public policies is largely indexed by official agents and the traditional government beat (Bennett 1990; Esser and Strömbäck 2014; Gastil 2008), whereas civil society actors usually have to struggle to gain media attention, exert impact on public debates, or advance policy issues (Cammaerts, Mattoni, and McCurdy 2013; Dahlgren 2013; della Porta 2012). No doubt, the mass media can provide misinformation that elites use to manipulate the public; they may configure debates that give the impression of reflecting public reasoning, while ignoring or discrediting certain speakers; and they may serve other elite interests. However, in complex and pluralist societies most public controversies relate to diverse interests in varying ways, without establishing any cohesive common interest or any clear precedence of one value over others. Even if elite actors—​defined here as agents who dedicate many of their activities to politics or public affairs (such as politicians, government officials, interest group members, policy analysts, candidates, spokespersons of social movements and civic entities)—​face very unequal conditions, resources, and opportunities for encouraging journalists to prefer particular narratives, it is never clear how those elites seek to control the shape of public debates, in order to structure outcomes favorable to their interests. Thus, we should adopt an open-​ended perspective in our social and political analysis. Depending on the topic under discussion, and on institutional conditions and political circumstances, tensions can arise over which voices are included or excluded in the media arena. Journalist–sources relations and the gatekeeping process co-determine

352   Rousiley C. M. Maia whose standpoints count for the production of interpretations of different types of issues. Studies from five European countries about long-​term news coverage of military intervention found that government officials and politicians are the most prominent speakers and the main providers of frame cues, followed by journalists (Wessler et al. 2008); and this is also true for the US (Callaghan and Schnell 2005; Page 1996). However, studies of media debates about genetically modified food, which also looked at coverage in five European countries (Peters et al. 2008; Schneider 2008), found that activists and civic entities are crucial for shaping public discourse; and there are multiple voices and viewpoints informing the debate in the news media environment. Different standards of accessibility and standing among speakers are also seen in a national context in media debates on healthcare reform (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000; Pan and Kosicki 2003); abortion (Ferree et al. 2002); gun control (Callaghan and Schnell 2001; Maia 2009) and environmental issues (Lück et al. 2018). Furthermore, I align myself with scholars who argue that it is impossible to talk about an “unframed” narrative account of reality; and this operation does not necessarily affect the quality of public debates negatively (Callaghan and Schnell 2005; Chambers 2009; Delli Carpini 2005; Gurevitch and Blumler 1990; Schudson 2003). Framing is an intrinsic part of journalistic practice to make sense of “what exists, what happens and what matters” (Schudson 2003, 35). The question then is to understand when and under what conditions framing becomes problematic to deliberative processes—​for instance, when it became dominant, polarizing, and group-​based (Calvert and Warren 2014). Empirical research has been crafted in different ways to investigate whether the quality of media-​based debate achieves that of the standards of the deliberative standards process; and results are mixed. Differences in such studies regarding distinct methodologies for measuring deliberation, types of issue under scrutiny, and specific factors operating on a variety of scales, help explain these conflicting results. Whereas some scholars focus on deliberation processes of a particular media program, such as televised debates (Coleman 2013) or news media coverage of deliberative experiences (Rinke et al. 2013), others inquire into the development of a given controversy over time and investigate broader collective dynamics of a “reason exchange” (Habermas 1996; 2009)  or “contestation of discourses” (Dryzek 2000) in various mass media contents (Ferree et al. 2002; Gamson, Gerhards and Rucht 2002; Maia 2009, 2012; Page 1996; Peters et al. 2008; Schneider 2008; Wessler et al. 2008). Most promising approaches for assessing the constitution of public debates are those that shift attention away from media-​centered perspectives towards broader models of explanation that include national economic and political factors, civic cultures, and whether a country has active social movements dedicated to the issue. This helps create a sophisticated understanding of how individual speakers (with institutionally-​defined roles) express opinions and advance discourses in the mass media environment, while responding to and influencing others in public. The third source of criticism derives from the fact that mass media-​based communication presents information in a format that renders it simplistic and non-​contextual.

Deliberative Media   353 Journalists usually resort to stereotyping and exploiting personalities, sensationalism, drama, and conflict in stories, instead of posing nuanced comments on related larger social, economic, or political developments. This is true even when the media covers deliberative events, such as deliberative polls. Parkinson (2005; 2012, 165)  and also Bächtiger and Wegmann (2013) argue that the media usually do not promote reasoned and reflective discourse; and its logic pressures the political elite to engage in posturing and conflict. “To grab media attention, politicians will increasingly follow the precepts of media logic and will use polarization and simplification strategies as well” (Bächtiger and Wegmann 2013, 120; see also Esser and Strömbäck 2014). While scandalization, excessive dramatization, and an unreflective moralization of issues obviously reduce opportunities for argumentation and thus harm public deliberation, it does not follow that “powerful images,” “human dramas,” or rhetorical styles should necessarily be regarded as harmful per se (Chambers 2009; Neblo 2007). Scholars in the political communication field have found that more accessible formats and styles of presentation, such as soft news and talk shows, can help to engage people in political debates, especially those who are politically unengaged and unresponsive to more conventional coverage of political and social issues (Baum and Jamison 2006; Dahlgren 2009; Norris 2000). Some deliberative theorists have held that that emotion and personal stories are important to encouraging deliberation (Black 2008; Polletta 2008; Steiner 2012; Steiner et al. 2017). In line with these concepts, empirical studies have suggested that apparently trivial TV programs with emotionally laden contexts—​such as popular entertainment shows, soap operas, and talk shows—​have facilitated the inclusion of marginalized groups of people in public debates about class, ethnic, and homosexual issues, and have broadened communication across divisions within a society (Curato and Ong 2015; Dahlgren 2009; Lunt and Stenner 2005, Maia 2012; 2014). In the same vein, the use of strategic dramaturgy—​a mechanism widely employed by civic actors and social movement organizations to generate media coverage (Cammaerts, Mattoni, and McCurdy 2013; della Porta 2012)—​has contributed to bringing contentious issues from the periphery of the political system into public view. In situations where formal mechanisms of accountability fail in representative democracies, studies have contended that journalists’ presentations of facts in “compelling, artful, vivid, and powerful forms” (Neblo 2007) helped to open venues for collective debates during critical decision-​making moments in the legislature. Case studies include the civil rights movements in the US (McAdam 2000) and the police’s abusive use of force in Brazil (Maia 2012). The mass media arena, where debates are conducted in front of an abstract audience, is a complex and often contradictory setting. As I will argue in the last section, reappraising the link between media-​based communication and the systemic network of governance, institutions, and agents in society enables us to capture the interplay of different types of communication and reason-​giving in the mass media: trade-​offs between arguing and strategic manoeuvring; the contradictory effects of publicity; and the relationship between deliberative and non-​deliberative practices (such as strategic manipulation, conformity, and aggression) in different debate situations within a broader deliberative system.

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Conditions For Deliberation in the Digital Environment I argued earlier that an interdependent system of relationships is established between different types of media (TV, newspapers, magazines), and that digital platforms potentially integrate different forms of communication—​massive and interpersonal, synchronous and asynchronous. The Internet and SNSs have deeply changed the shape of daily life, since sociable encounters and political discussions occur through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and various digital platforms as much as in physical spaces. The rise of Web 2.0 technologies has added new complexities to self-​expression and digital interactivity, insofar as photographs, images, and videos are posted and broadcast to multiple audiences. Digital communication transverses institutions and forums in the center of the political system as well as the civic spheres in its periphery; and there are various venues for horizontal communication among citizens and vertical communication with their political representatives. Whereas studies about online deliberation focus on new affordances and opportunities offered by decentralized, low-​cost, Internet-​based communication, they also deal with traditional problems in the political communication field, such as media organizations’ concentration, inequality in participation, power relationship, and so forth (Coleman and Moss 2012; Davies and Chandler 2011; Kies and Nanz 2013; Strandberg and Grönlund 2014; Stromer-​Galley and Wichowski 2011). While there are scholars with both enthusiastic and critical approaches to whether networked communication has value for deliberative practices, several researchers are now more attentive to real-​ world opportunities and constraints; and they have presented ever more systematic empirical evidence to support their claims. Most scholars agree that the new opportunities for political representatives, citizens, and groups to express their voices in public spheres—​as well as the freedom and resources to produce and disseminate information and knowledge—​go hand in hand with the concentration of traditional and new media ownership, the growth of the digital advertising market, and the development of search engines that are designed to keep the public’s attention manipulable (Chadwick 2013; Kies and Nanz 2013; van Dijck 2013; Sunstein 2017). Scholars have developed an increasingly sophisticated conceptualization of digital divides in online public debates (Fuchs 2009; Norris 2001; Price 2009; Strandberg and Grönlund 2014). Whereas earlier studies were concerned about a simple division between “information-​haves” and “information have-​nots,” participation and inequalities in digital environments have been analyzed in terms of physical, financial, design, and content access. Studies include capabilities for usage, implying cognitive autonomy, experience, skills, and networks to encourage use and provide assistance; and benefits from computer-​based information as well as connections of applicative technologies and stratifications related to gender, education, income, occupation, ethnicity, and geography (Fuchs 2009; van Dijck 2013). Research in this field has found that digital divides replicate the essential inequalities in society, both within and between countries. There is strong correlation between online political engagement and offline participation; and general factors that restrict citizens’ motivations, political participation,

Deliberative Media   355 and deliberation, which also limit the chances of being heard, are reproduced in online communication (Coleman and Moss 2012; Kies and Nanz 2013; Maia 2014; Norris 2001; Strandberg and Grönlund 2014; Stromer-​Galley and Wichowski 2011). Recent research has helped unpack the conditions under which deliberation is more likely to succeed in distinct digital environments (Coleman and Moss 2012; Kies 2010; Strandberg and Grölund 2014; Stromer-​Galley and Wichowski 2011). Understanding variations in the online environment requires distinguishing between different platforms, regarding the levels of users’ identifiability, the role of moderation, the exposure or lack of exposure to political differences, and the purpose of the digital forum and its context. Since empirical research in this field is astonishingly broad, I cannot do justice to these studies, but only attempt a few generalizations. Earlier studies of online deliberation have shown that anonymity and an absence of social cues by participants—​such as in regard to gender, race, rank, and so forth—​ contributes to participants bringing hostility, vulgar words, and verbal attacks into a discussion (Papacharissi 2004; Hill and Hughes 1998; Kies 2010; Rowe 2014). A deeper examination of who is talking to whom complicates this argument in several ways. The culture and norms that are defined and followed in a particular online context are significant in shaping interactions. Empirical studies have found that the expectation towards both the conversation partner and type of audience at stake—​for instance, in a collaborative user-​generated online video platform (YouTube); a setting for discussing issues of common interest (blogs); and a social networking site in which users usually interact with individuals from their network of friends, relatives, co-​workers and so forth (Facebook)—​affects people’s motivation to employ profanity or either engage in or abstain from deliberative discussion in these settings (Kim 2011; Halpern and Gibbs 2013; Maia and Rezende 2016). For a long time, researchers in the political communication field have been concerned with the fact that Internet-​based communication facilitates the formation of “enclaved publics” as a crucial obstacle to proper societal deliberation (Dahlberg 2007; Sunstein 2001, 2017). Empirical research has shown that these publics, created by a like-​minded circle of people with partisan affinity, selective consumption of information, and an avoidance of interaction with those who think otherwise, are troubling for deliberative democracy. This is because they not only supress citizens’ motivations for “reasoning together” in order to process conflicts and moral disagreements, but also because they reinforce preconceived ideas and promote intolerance (Mutz 2006; Smith et al. 2014; Wojcieszak and Mutz 2009). Nevertheless, the Internet and SNSs also offer several mechanisms that facilitate networking with diverse others; and relations between interpersonal disagreement and political atittudes and behaviors should be assessed with caution. Studies in this field have become ever more attentive to investigating “inadvertent” exposure to divergent perspectives and opinions, even when users are not searching for new information (Brundidge 2010); variations in the nature of disagreement in distinct digital platforms, and types of issue being discussed (Hong and Rojas 2016; Klofstad, Sokhey, and McClurg 2013). Citizens who use social media more intensively have a greater likelihood of being exposed to more online political disagreement

356   Rousiley C. M. Maia than light users (Barnidge 2015; Halpern and Gibbs 2013; Kim 2011). Those interacting in larger networks with weaker ties and more diffuse connections have a greater chance of encountering challenging viewpoints and information from diverse sources than users interacting in smaller networks having “strong ties” of close, intimate, personal relationships (Barnidge 2015; Campbell and Kwak 2012). The effects of interpersonal political disagreement in SNSs are quite complex when associated to discursive behavior, information seeking, attitude change, and various types of civic practices and political participation (Hong and Rojas 2016; Klofstad, Sokhey and McClurg 2013). As studies about online deliberation have developed, they have also become internally more diversified. It is difficult to compare results, since there are different traditions underpinning online deliberation studies as well as coding schemes—​some are guided by procedural Habermasian norms, while others are more participatory-​oriented. As in other areas of deliberative research, scholars in the political communication field have different understandings of deliberative processes and normative principles; and there is an ongoing dispute on the meaning of everyday reasoning and more strict debates that closely follow deliberative criteria; the features of reason-​giving and justification, as well as other forms of communication such as personal stories on both politically and non-​ politically designated sites; and so forth. These developments may well be appropriate for understanding deliberativeness in a particular online environment. However, in order to assess deliberation on a large scale, the analysis should consider the complexity of connections within a political system and how the parts interact.

Deliberative System and Interconnected Media Most deliberative scholars accept that a deliberative system cannot be conceived without a picture of an enlarged public sphere, beyond governmentally shaped forums and mini-​publics (Bächtiger and Wegmann 2013; Dryzek and Hendriks 2012; Habermas 1996; 2009; Mansbridge, 1999; Mansbridge et al. 2012; Niemeyer 2014; Parkinson 2012; Warren 2007). In this concluding section, I wish to reappraise the model of a hybrid and interconnected media environment within a systemic approach to deliberation. In light of the aforementioned challenges, I adopt a strategy of briefly identifying media connections and surveying how political communication circulates across three levels (Habermas 2009, 159; see also Mansbridge et al. 2012): (a) formal political settings and digital forums hosted by government agencies and policymakers; (b) mass media-​based communication; (c) everyday networked discussions in the civil society. My argument is that the effort to deal with pathologies and shortcomings in media-​based communication pushes us to also critically examine deliberative strengths and weakness in other parts of the political system, while still considering the interdependencies of actors, practices, and contexts.

Deliberative Media   357 Governmental agents and policymakers have been increasingly motivated to create deliberative experiences and online forums intended to promote public deliberation (Coleman and Moss 2012; Kies and Nanz 2013; Margetts and Dunleavy 2013; Strandberg and Grönlund 2014; Stromer-​Galley, Webb, and Muhlberger 2012). E-​participation initiatives vary drastically in regard to their purpose, convener, discussion methodology, and connection to the policymaking process. Digital participatory innovations can either supplement or substitute for face-​to-​face meetings; and political discussion forums can occur at local, regional, national, or transnational levels. Citizens can be asked to submit suggestions to public authorities, participate in public consultations, or engage in discussions to form opinions and make recommendations. Studies have shown that discrete deliberative initiatives usually do not attract extensive mass media coverage. This is particularly true when no close work is conducted to make media agents sensitive to the newsworthy elements at stake (Rinke et al. 2013; Warren and Pearse 2008). Nevertheless, adopting the perspective of a wider networked media environment can entail an alternative picture of how the dynamics for scaling up deliberation can be achieved. Recent research has found evidence that participants in deliberative events can operate as “multipliers” of political discussion through their online social networks; and relatively small-​scale deliberative experiences can have a broader effect on the mass public (Lazer et al. 2015). At the mass media-​based communication level, digital technologies have considerably enlarged the spaces for discussion on current facts and issues. Individuals can not only add their views on various types of political disputes for others to see, but they can also disseminate news in a many-​to-​many format within SNSs. Thus, the cost of collecting, selecting, and analyzing news can be distributed among other participants; and SNSs’ users can evaluate available information and others’ opinions, even when they are not personally engaging in these conversations (Barnidge 2015; Coe, Kenski, and Raims, 2014; Garrett, Carnahan, and Lynch 2011). From a systemic approach, it is important to be aware of how far platforms of citizens’ self-​generated content, such as blogs, can act as “re-​framers” of issues on the public agenda, by interrogating, challenging, making public assertions, or taking public positions. Studies on agenda setting have emphasized the variety of conditions under which citizens circulate mass media coverage and information on a specific event from a diversity of sources through social media, blogging, and video sharing (Chadwick 2013; Esser and Strömbäck 2014; Papacharissi 2011). Thus, the interplay between information from mass-​mediated sources and interpersonal sources in many situations has compensated for shortcomings in the mass media environment (Dahlgren 2013; Hermida, Lewis, and Zamith 2014; Meraz and Papacharissi 2013). At the level of everyday life, multi-​platform communication enables ordinary citizens to personally shape their messages through a diversity of dynamics, such as establishing their own “newsroom” to disseminate news-​like materials, directly contacting political representatives, creating public events, starting a mobilization, and so forth (Bennett and Segerberg 2012; Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl 2012; Earl and Kimport 2011). Social movements and contentious actors are particularly active in using digital communication to carry out a wide range of tasks (Dahlgren 2013; della Porta 2012;

358   Rousiley C. M. Maia Cammaerts, Mattoni, and McCurdy 2013). These efforts include spreading messages across a variety of audiences and publics, running campaigns, promoting protests, providing political representation, sustaining public debates, and exerting pressure to create policy options or shape decision-​making in a desired direction. We should expect that attempts to transform problems into issues of public concern frequently go along with the government’s denial of the capacity for control, multilevel conflicts with other groups in society, and polarization or depoliticization (Fawcett et al. 2017). Again, examining how political discussions spread out through a hybrid media system has led to the conclusion that ordinary citizens and activists help to unleash debate in other settings of the political system, beyond individual-​level behavior and deliberative competencies (Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl 2012; Cammaerts, Mattoni, and McCurdy 2013; Campbell and Kwak 2012; Dahlgren 2013; della Porta 2012; Earl and Kimport 2011; Maia 2017). Clearly, we should keep in mind that deliberation, even if we define these norms in a more flexible way (Mansbridge 1999; Mansbridge et al. 2012; Parkinson 2012), is still a rare and demanding form of communication that requires the right motivation from participants, demands time, and has psychological costs (Habermas 1996; Karpowitz and Mendelberg 2014; Warren 2007). More dominant groups may produce an over-​ representation and exert more influence at the expense of disadvantaged groups across different parts and settings of a deliberative system. No “self-​correction mechanisms” (Bohman 2007, 352; Mansbridge et al. 2012) can be achieved for certain pathologies and threats to deliberation at the system level. Indeed, there will always be perils to deliberative practices in any setting of the political system; and keeping “deliberative ecologies” in mind helps one to see that the media may not be the correct target to blame. This indicates a deeper problem. For example, government agencies can only apply deliberatively shaped initiatives to peripheral issues and these experiences, even when the media helps to promote wider forms of citizens’ judgments and participation, may become a mere formality without affecting policy-​making. In situations when well-​considered mini-​public online experiences are created to enable meaningful participation and creative deliberation, these initiatives, as is well known, may not be effective due to difficulties in attracting the attention of a larger number of citizens and engaging them in the discussion. Participants can fail to produce high-​quality debates and a few participants may monopolize outcomes (Kies and Nanz 2013; Margetts and Dunleavy 2013; Stromer-​Galley, Webb, and Muhlberger 2012). Even if citizens intensively produce and share information, this neither means that they bypass professional journalism filters nor that they create different standards for defining issues of common interest. Calling for more attention to be paid to the hybrid and interconnected media environment, in order to understand the diversified, complex, and usually contradictory processes at stake, by no means implies that deliberation is to be found in either formal or informal, or small-​scale or large-​scale media-​based communication. Nevertheless, examining such interactions more closely can help scholars duly understand the pros and cons in the ecology of media practices for broader purposes of deliberative

Deliberative Media   359 democracy. More theory-​building and empirical research can also provide insights for thinking of practical measures, incentives, and mechanisms to improve imperfect media-​based communication. This would help compensate for less than ideal media conditions, thus enabling and sustaining deliberation in other parts of the political system.

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Chapter 22

Online Delibe rat i on Kim Strandberg and Kimmo Grönlund

In his overview of the central currents within the scholarly and public debate on digital democracy, Dahlberg (2011) identifies deliberative democracy as one of four pillars of online democracy. Chadwick (2009) states that deliberative democracy is one of the most central concepts in the contemporary discussion on democracy and information and communications technology (ICT). Others (e.g. Baek, Wojcieszak, and Delli Carpini 2012; Davies and Chandler 2011)  have made claims that citizen deliberation would be especially feasible to realize online. The major advantages are flexibility and low costs:  specifically, logistical benefits such as the removal of physical constraints, including geographical distance, access, and time, are often cited (Fishkin 2009, 29; Manosevitch 2010; Price 2009; Strandberg 2015). This chapter provides an overview of the latest research and discussions pursuant to online deliberation, while focusing on the following key questions (cf. Friess and Eilders 2015; Jonsson and Åström 2014): (1) What are the central aspects concerning the preconditions of online deliberation? (2) What is known about the communicative process in online deliberations? (3) What are the central outcomes of online deliberation found in studies to date?

Defining Online Deliberation The main theoretical foundation for online deliberation resides in public sphere theory (Habermas 1989, Friess and Eilders 2015; Jonsson and Åström 2014). Accordingly, theorists largely look for a correspondence between the benefits of online deliberation and the expectations associated with offline deliberation. The term “online deliberation” is, however, often used loosely and can refer to all kinds of discussion online (see Friess and Eilders 2015, 321). In the more systematic overviews of the field (e.g. Friess and Eilders 2015; Jonsson and Åström 2014; Manosevitch 2010; Strandberg and Grönlund 2014), scholars appear to agree on a common definition

366    Kim Strandberg and Kimmo Grönlund of online deliberation when following certain criteria. Thus, it appears that the communicative rules—​and the design of the communicative environment supporting them (see Hamlett and Cobb 2006; Wright and Street 2007)—​are central to achieving online deliberative-​type communication. While there is some disagreement on the exact nature of such rules (see Friess and Eilders 2015, 322), the general consensus appears to be that the communication should be conceptually linkable to deliberative theory and four core pillars: that discussions must be inclusive, rational-​critical, reciprocal, and respectful. This is the definition we have in mind when referring to online deliberation in this chapter. If a first-​generation view of online deliberation were to be adopted, what would it comprise? According to Jonsson and Åström (2014, 4), research on online deliberation to date has focused on three arenas: the non-​institutional, the institutional, and the experimental. The non-​institutional arena—​comprising all forms of online discussion platforms and social media—​will not be placed under scrutiny in this chapter. This is because the arena seldom hosts discussions meeting the criteria mentioned above (e.g. Jankowski and van Os 2004; Strandberg 2008; Strandberg and Berg 2013). Instead, focus will be placed on the institutional (i.e. on platforms where politicians, civil servants, and citizens can meet) and experimental arenas (i.e. for scholars studying online deliberation).

The Preconditions of Online Deliberation Two types of preconditions regarding online deliberation can be distinguished in the research field (see e.g. Friess and Eilders 2015; Jonsson and Åström 2014; Strandberg and Grönlund 2014). First, there are the preconditions pertaining to the characteristics and capacity of the citizens taking part in the deliberation and, secondly, the institutional design of the actual deliberation venues.

Preconditions Regarding Participants in Online Deliberations Although the Internet has matured and its user base is large and varied, “digital divides” (Norris 2001) are still relevant within online deliberation. Even though the previously existing divides in terms of Internet access are no longer very relevant in developed countries, the type and ease of this access is still an important factor for online deliberation (Delborne et  al. 2011, 367–​8). Moreover, as Stromer-​Galley (2002) has demonstrated, there are also divides between offline and online talk, and a large group of citizens who only ever engage in one of these forms of political discussion. Certain

Online Deliberation   367 discrepancies in computer skills or media habits in general also impact on how likely various citizens are to engage in an online deliberation (Albrecht 2006; Rhee and Kim 2009; Smith et al. 2009; Stromer-​Galley 2002). Some scholars (Smith et al. 2009) have thus suggested that there is a risk that “computer-​savvy” citizens could dominate online deliberations, violating the normative ideal of communicative inclusion (Dahlberg 2001). However, in light of our own research in online deliberation (see Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Strandberg 2015; Strandberg and Berg 2013; Strandberg and Grönlund 2012), a more pressing issue than computer literacy appears to be the public’s lack of motivation to take part in organized online deliberations. As Smith et al. (2009, 7) remark, “most citizens are typically unaware (and generally uninterested in) these new opportunities to participate.” In the Finnish online experiments with simple random sampling, the share of volunteers has been low, ranging between 2 and 4%, which clearly supports this notion. Perhaps a more worrisome aspect is that this self-​selection could restrain the ability of online deliberations to function as “mini-​publics”—​adequately representative samples of the population from which generalizations can be made. Judging from some of the online deliberation studies thus far, there appear to be several countermeasures in place to alleviate these issues regarding recruitment. For instance, inequalities in Internet access have been addressed by providing participants with technical equipment. In an experiment in 2008 (Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Strandberg and Grönlund 2012), participants were provided with free webcams and headsets (see also Luskin, Fishkin, and Iyengar 2006; Min 2007; Muhlberger and Weber 2006). In order to overcome the lack of interest for online deliberation, some studies (e.g. Delborne et al. 2011; Price and Capella 2002; Smith et al. 2009) have drawn their sample of participants from existing online panels. This has served to increase volunteer rates and representativeness. Variations in sampling techniques—​where both non-​random and random sampling have been tested—​have also been implemented within our own studies (e.g. Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Strandberg 2015). Non-​probability recruitment methods are generally more vulnerable to volunteering than probability-​based methods and are less likely to achieve representativeness of the general population. This is due to the fact that certain types of citizens—​e.g. those with a relatively high education or political interest—​are more likely to volunteer than others (e.g. Baker et al. 2010; Vehovar, Manfreda, and Koren 2008). This is probably true for online deliberations too (Hartz-​Karp and Sullivan 2014), where one might also expect computer literacy—​which is often found among younger citizens—​to be an especially salient factor affecting volunteering. Nonetheless, no differences have been observed between the different sampling strategies in the demographic representativeness of the participants in our experiments, which might suggest that the method through which the sampling frame is generated is not a crucial factor in determining the demographic profile of the actual participants. We should, on the other hand, note that even though random sampling is used, it too involves a high level of self-​selection bias, since over 95% of the people addressed tend not to participate. Another strategy for dealing with lack of motivation to take part in online deliberations

368    Kim Strandberg and Kimmo Grönlund is the use of incentives. To attract as wide a segment of citizens as possible—​broader than only those highly interested in political engagement and interest—​scholars have promised technical equipment or cash incentives (e.g. Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Luskin, Fishkin, and Iyengar 2006; Muhlberger 2005; Strandberg and Grönlund 2012).

Preconditions Regarding the Design of the Deliberative Setting Turning to the second type of preconditions relating to online deliberations, we first note that more or less the same specific aspects are discussed and emphasized in most overviews of online deliberation. Friess and Eilders (2015) call these preconditions “the institutional input” level of online deliberation, and they list, as the main aspects, the mode of communication (asynchronous or synchronous), anonymity versus identification, moderation (i.e. facilitation), and supply of information (see also Jonsson and Åström 2014; Strandberg and Grönlund 2014). Synchronous and asynchronous discussions are found evenly when reviewing the research field (see Strandberg and Grönlund 2014). One discernible pattern, albeit a quite tentative one, is that one-​off synchronous deliberation has mostly been used when scholars have looked for good internal validation of an experiment, isolating a key variable and maximizing its variation while keeping other variables constant (e.g. Delborne et al. 2011; Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Min 2007; Smith et al. 2009; Strandberg, Himmelroos, and Grönlund 2017). Conversely, scholars seeking a stronger external validation—​in the sense that the experiment is closer to real-​life online discussions—​have hosted deliberations with longer durations (e.g. Albrecht 2006; Luskin, Fishkin, and Iyengar 2006; Price and Capella 2002). Both of these forms of online deliberation have their potential benefits: synchronous deliberation is closer to the ideals of the “ideal speech situation” and more conducive to reciprocity, whereas asynchronous discussions may allow more time for reflection, looking up relevant information and formulating fact-​based rational argumentation (Coleman and Moss 2012, 8; Janssen and Kies 2005, 321; Strandberg and Berg 2015, 165–​6). In one of our own studies (Strandberg and Berg 2015), we empirically tested the impact of temporality—​using asynchronous vs synchronous as a factor in an experimental setting—​on discussion quality in deliberations. Our findings indicate that online deliberation is more likely to be of a higher discussion quality when conducted in an asynchronous way. Given the prevalence of citizens that discuss anonymously or under pseudonyms online (Samuel 2004)—​and how a lot of people regard this as having an adverse effect on discussion quality within online forums (Santana 2014)—​the identifiability of discussants has received surprisingly little attention in studies of online deliberation (Rhee and Kim 2009; Strandberg and Berg 2015). Scholars (e.g. Towne and Herbsleb 2012, 108) have regarded the decision on whether or not to allow anonymous deliberation as a trade-​off

Online Deliberation   369 between discussion quantity and quality. Being anonymous in an online deliberation might lower the threshold for participation (Stromer-​Galley 2002, 35–​8), and should shift focus onto what is being said rather than on who is saying it (Strandberg and Berg 2015, 167). Some have also contemplated whether the anonymous nature of the Internet could have another positive impact: it might lessen the often dominating influence of a citizen’s social status in the deliberative situation (Dahlberg 2001, 14; Witschge 2004, 116). Nevertheless, anonymity does make deliberators less accountable for their words and is thus likely to increase disrespectful behavior. The identification of participants in online deliberation is hence often seen as crucial for achieving deliberative-​type discussions (Friess and Eilders 2015, 326). In an online deliberation experiment (Strandberg and Berg 2015), we explicitly tested the influence of anonymity on discussion quality and actually found no adverse impact. This, we argued, could be due to the nature of the online “realm,” where anonymous communication is more or less the norm. Naturally, though, more online deliberations which allow for anonymous participants would help to shed light on how the identifiability of participants works in the online setting. Another observation pertaining to the design of online deliberations, is the use of moderation/​facilitators in the deliberation sessions. This is a means to ensure that the discussion quality of the actual deliberations stays closer to the theoretical ideals. It has been suggested that online discussion can only become truly deliberative when applying norms and facilitation from deliberative democracy theory (e.g. Wright and Street 2007). This has been one of the main aspects of process design highlighted in the theoretical literature on online deliberation (see Coleman and Gøtze 2001; Coleman and Moss 2012, 8); it is also widespread within the empirical research within the field. Mostly, facilitators have had a dual role in online deliberations:  they provide assistance to participants (e.g. Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Rhee and Kim 2009)  and ensure that the discussions follow discussion guidelines (e.g. Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Luskin, Fishkin, and Iyengar 2006; Min 2007; Rhee and Kim 2009; Price and Capella 2002; Smith et al. 2009). Some of our own experiments (Strandberg 2015; Strandberg, Himmelroos, and Grönlund 2017) tested the impact of facilitation in enclave discussions on the outcomes of deliberation, including the effect on group polarization tendencies—​the phenomenon where a like-​minded group becomes more extreme after discussing an issue on which they share similar views to start with (Sunstein 2009, 3–​5). Our empirical evidence clearly suggests that facilitation (in conjunction with rules for discussion) is beneficial in the context of online deliberation: facilitated discussions alleviate opinion polarization in enclave discussions—​whereas a lack of facilitation results in rather severe opinion polarization (Grönlund, Herne, and Setälä 2015, Strandberg, Himmelroos, and Grönlund 2017). Corresponding to the theoretical ideal of “informed and rational reasoning” (see Friess and Eilders 2015, 327–​8), the role of information as the basis for discussion is an important aspect of online deliberation too. Since deliberation is often conducted in order to deal with complex issues, having sufficient information on the topic of deliberation is crucial (Towne and Herbsleb 2012). As Friess and Eilders also highlight (2015, 328), online discussion “in the wild” is always liveliest when based on some form of

370    Kim Strandberg and Kimmo Grönlund external information. The use of information on the discussion topic is often employed in online deliberations (e.g. Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Luskin, Fishkin, and Iyengar 2006; Min 2007; Muhlberger 2005; Rhee and Kim 2009; Smith et al. 2009; Strandberg and Grönlund 2012) and some have even provided the opportunity for participants to watch experts debate the topic of deliberation (e.g. Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Strandberg and Grönlund 2012) or to submit questions to an expert panel (Delborne et al. 2011, 369; Luskin, Fishkin, and Iyengar 2006). Albeit that an increased knowledge among participants is often found to result from online deliberation (See Strandberg and Grönlund 2014, 106), it has seldom been studied as a factor influencing the participants per se. However, to the extent that information has been explicitly studied as an independent factor, it appears that it is linked to an increased knowledge on the issue of discussion among participants (Muhlberger 2005; Strandberg and Grönlund 2012). Nonetheless, Smith et al. (2009, 18) did not find any impact on opinion shifts due just to reading information, which suggests that the embeddedness of the information in the online deliberative context is important.

The communicative process of online deliberation As mentioned earlier, the communicative process of online deliberation has received little empirical attention from scholars—​in terms of measuring either discussion quality or searching for similar characteristics within any actual discussions. Thus, we still have no idea as to whether deliberative-​type discussion actually occurs within online deliberation events, only that the prerequisites for it occurring are usually in place—​at least in the institutional and experimental arenas. However, the lack of research measuring discussion quality is only true when considering online deliberation in these same arenas. In the non-​institutional arena, as Jonsson and Åström summarize (2014, 6-​7), there are a plethora of studies applying content analysis schemes derived more-​or-​less from the core principles of deliberative theory which measure the deliberativeness of everyday internet discussions (e.g. Jensen 2003; Graham 2012; Strandberg 2008; Stromer-​Galley 2007). In one of our own experimental studies of online deliberation, we succeeded to measure discussion quality per se (Strandberg and Berg 2015) and found it to increase when deliberating in an asynchronous discussion, even when there was a lack of other deliberative design aspects, such as facilitation. Some other studies have also gauged this by asking deliberators about their experiences of the discussion—​for instance whether they felt the discussion stayed on topic, or whether someone dominated the discussion (Delborne et al. 2011). In addition, Muhlberger (2005) has provided annotation-​based evidence from his observations of online deliberations. While many studies of online deliberation have not addressed the communicative process empirically, i.e. outside of non-​institutional online deliberation, there still

Online Deliberation   371 appears to be a general normative consensus on what such a process should ideally look like among those studies which have been conducted concerning online discussions in general (Friess and Eilders 2015, 328–​31). Often, the Habermasian notion (1989) of the ideal speech situation—​in which free and equal citizens engage in fact-​based argumentation and discussion—​has served as the basis for most coding schemes. Similar normative expectations are thus placed on the communicative process in online deliberation as have been placed on off-​line deliberations. Where scholars of online deliberation disagree though (Strandberg and Berg 2015, 168, see also Davies and Chandler 2011, 9; Friess and Eilders 2015, 328) concerns which indicators, exactly, best gauge the deliberative quality of online deliberations. However, we note that some common denominators do appear to exist. For instance, rationality, equality, reciprocity, reasoned justifications, civility are often used (Friess and Eilders 2015; Graham 2012; Trenél 2004; Strandberg and Berg 2015; Stromer-​Galley 2007). Hence, emphasis is placed on the discussion’s content, the flow of discussion as well as the conduct of the participants. Nonetheless, it would be of the utmost importance that these indicators are more often measured in institutional and experimental online deliberations, too. This is especially so, since scholars have argued that it is unrealistic to apply such rigid measures to online discussions “in the wild” which have not been designed with deliberation of the Habermasian type in mind (e.g. Hamlett and Cobb 2006; Strandberg 2015; Wright and Street 2007).

The Outcomes of Online Deliberation With regard to the outcomes of online deliberation, a distinction can be made between external and internal outcomes. The former concern the analysis on whether deliberation influences—​or at least has some form of connection to—​real policies, whereas the latter relate to individual-​level effects among those who participate—​for instance, opinion changes, knowledge gains, or changes in internal efficacy or trust. Since having any real impact on policy is even rarer among online deliberations than it is offline (Coleman and Moss 2012, 11; Hartz-​Karp and Sullivan 2014), it has seldom been addressed in existing studies (see Jonsson and Åström 2014, for an overview of some studies). So far, organized online deliberations seem to have had clear policy connections only to urban and municipal planning (Jonsson and Åström 2014, 8). For instance, in a deliberative event in Hamburg, the best suggestion brought up in the deliberations was included in the city’s strategy for the future (see Albrecht 2006). In a British study (Smith et al. 2009), the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government “committed herself to consider the issues raised by participants.” Nonetheless, there is room for more efforts seeking to tie online deliberation to actual policies. Concerning such efforts, Hartz-​Karp and Sullivan (2014) suggest that there might even be a need to rethink the goals of online deliberations if policy influence is to be achieved. Thus, they argue, that

372    Kim Strandberg and Kimmo Grönlund it might be wiser to set aside the notion of creating a statistically representative mini-​ public of the population, and shift focus to creating well-​functioning and deliberative spaces for those citizens who are interested in deliberating online. Turning to internal outcomes of online deliberation, it should firstly be noted that the main focus has been on opinion changes and knowledge gains, both of which are also often considered as the “main” outcomes of deliberation offline. In the context of online deliberation, Deliberative Polls (Luskin, Fishkin, and Iyengar 2006) demonstrate how participants changed their attitudes; they also show that deliberation reduced variance in opinions—​that is, that participants’ opinions were more in agreement after deliberation than before (see also Muhlberger 2005; Price and Capella 2002; Smith et al. 2009; Triantafillidou et al. 2015). Opinion changes have also consistently been found in our own research on online deliberations (Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Strandberg and Grönlund 2012; Strandberg 2015). Participants in all deliberation, including online, tend to learn a lot about the issue at hand. These knowledge gains can, of course, partially be due to the information packages often provided to participants and not solely due to deliberation per se (see Muhlberger 2005). Price and Capella (2002, 317–​18) found that taking part in group discussions increased the participants’ knowledge on certain areas of discussion. Similarly, Luskin, Fishkin, and Iyengar (2006) report small but nonetheless statistically significant knowledge increases due to deliberation. We have also found increased knowledge among our participants in online deliberation experiments (Grönlund, Strandberg, and Himmelroos 2009; Strandberg and Grönlund 2012). Min (2007) also shows that there was a significant difference in knowledge found between participants and a control group, indicating that deliberation brought about knowledge gains. Beyond the two main internal outcomes of online deliberations, there is also an array of other effects which are often considered as “side-​effects” of deliberation (Grönlund et al. 2010) and entail aspects such as efficacy and interpersonal trust; others cite aspects regarding changing attitudes and an increased tendency to societal activity and engagement (Friess and Eilders 2015). Albeit, as Jonsson and Åström (2014, 8) note, that these are less often studied in online deliberations, we highlight some of the findings here. Min (2007), for instance, found evidence that taking part in an online deliberation signficantly increased both the participants’ efficacy and willingness to participate in politics. Price and Capella (2002, 319–​21) also report that participants had become significantly more willing to engage in politics and other civic activities after taking part in their long-​term deliberation project. They also show that discussion attendance was positively linked with an increased generalized trust. However, our first experiment (Strandberg and Grönlund 2012) merely resulted in weak side-​ effects (cf. Rhee and Kim 2009). In fact, participants in that first experiment became slightly less eager to participate in politics. Some of this, though, might have been due to technical difficulties which our online platform experienced over the course of the deliberation. Nevertheless, in one of the latter experiments we conducted (Strandberg 2015), deliberating online was found to positively affect the participants’ efficacy and trust for political institutions.

Online Deliberation   373

Conclusions—​the Ways Forward for Online Deliberation Taking a broader view on the research field and its evolution over time, we first note that the theoretical basis for online deliberation has remained more or less intact. Still, some conceptual confusion remains. Most importantly, the concept should be more strictly defined to make clearer whether “online deliberation” refers to all kinds of online discussion or specifically to the communication process of systematically weighing rational arguments (see Bächtiger et al. 2010, 33). Second, the designs for online deliberation have been rather stable which, on a positive note, could indicate that the optimal solutions for fruitful online deliberation are already at hand. We, however, maintain that there are still many possible designs of online deliberation which have never been tested and studied. All too often, templates from offline deliberation are moved online, even though some research has shown that this might not be the optimal way to deliberate online (e.g. Strandberg and Berg 2015). Third, there is still a general lack of studies looking empirically at discussion quality in organized online deliberations. This concerns both policy-​related events and experiments. Most studies still seem to seek deliberation in the non-​institutional online arena where—​as has been argued earlier (Hamlett and Cobb 2006; Wright and Street 2007)—​finding results might prove to be futile. This is due to the normative nature of deliberative democracy theory and the strictness of indicators of deliberative discussion. Nonetheless, this area of research has served to improve the coding schemes by which online deliberation can be measured. Fourth, in the focus of the outcomes of online deliberation, there is still a general dearth of studies or experiments in which online deliberation has been linked to societal decision-​making. Still, some studies do test the influence that online deliberation has on city or municipal planning, though they are still very few and far between (see Jonsson and Åström 2014, 8). If one accepts the core of deliberative democracy theory as being a communicative democratic system with the ultimate goal of increasing the function and legitimacy of the political system (e.g. Fishkin 2009), then the fourth path for future research, listed above, would appear as the most central. At the same time, as indicated by Hartz-​Karp and Sullivan (2014), it might also be the most challenging. Thus, if online deliberation on the institutional arena remains as scarce in the future as it is today, and most research is still conducted as isolated experiments without connection to real-​life society, an integrated online deliberative system at the societal level (see Hendricks 2006) seems to reside in a very distant future. However, until then, deliberation will surely remain one of the pillars of the theoretical debate on ICTs and democracy (Dahlberg 2011), while the diffusion of ICTs into citizens’ lives continues to grow rapidly. Currently, online discussions are abundant, although they often consist of discussions in enclaves among like-​ minded citizens, which can have negative effects, for instance in the form of opinion

374    Kim Strandberg and Kimmo Grönlund polarization and radicalization (Sunstein 2009). In our latest experiments (Grönlund, Herne, and Setälä 2015; Strandberg, Himmelroos, and Grönlund 2017), we have explicitly tested opinion polarization (Sunstein 2009) among groups of like-​minded citizens and find that deliberative rules and facilitation seem to alleviate group polarization. However, if we as scholars within the research field keep “growing” and testing new paths for online deliberation, both the quality of online deliberation and its further integration into societies might take large steps forward in a shorter amount of time than can currently be expected.

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Chapter 23

Taking Ev e ryday P ol itical Tal k Se ri ou sly Pamela Johnston Conover and Patrick R. Miller

From Aristotle to Habermas, political theorists and commentators have long advised that political talk among citizens contributes to a healthy democracy. Most recently, the deliberative turn in democratic theory has shaped efforts to determine the role of “everyday political talk” in the “deliberative system” described by Jane Mansbridge (1999) and others. As we will explain, it is a paradoxical role. Everyday political talk seldom lives up to deliberative standards like publicity, equality, and non-​tyranny (see Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002; Conover and Searing 2005; Walsh 2004). Nonetheless, it plays a critical part in the success of a deliberative democracy. In this chapter, we review current empirical research establishing the importance of everyday political talk and explore key questions that warrant attention in the future from both political theorists and empirical researchers.

What We Know About “Everyday Political Talk” Over the years, researchers have disagreed over what exactly constitutes “political talk” between citizens. For example, Michael Schudson (1997) declared that “conversation is not the soul of democracy,” in part because he drew a sharp distinction between spontaneous “social” conversations and civil, rule-​governed “political” talk that is purposely oriented toward problem solving. While Schudson may have been the most provocative in arguing that citizens’ political talk should not be confused with their ordinary casual conversations, the distinction has been implied in a variety of theoretical and empirical research on political talk. In reviewing this work, Song et al. (2016) identify two

Taking Everyday Political Talk Seriously    379 models: the “purposeful” model depicts political talk as planned, motivated by political goals, with discussion partners selected based on their political views, while the “incidental” model describes political talk as spontaneous, casual, motivated by multiple goals, and engaged in with conversation partners chosen based more on demographic similarity than political homophily. Recent empirical research indicates that the “incidental” model is likely the more accurate description of actual of everyday political talk (e.g. Eveland, Morey, and Hutchens 2011; Eveland and Kleinman 2013; Small 2013; Song 2015; Song et al. 2016; Walsh 2004; Wyatt, Katz, and Kim 2000). Contrary to Schudson’s (1997) argument, there is no clear divide between “social” and “political” talk; rather political talk is seamlessly woven into social conversations that are typically unplanned and sometimes uncivil, and only occasionally motivated by political concerns. Conceptually, then, “everyday political talk” is best described as spontaneous, unstructured face-​to-​face conversation between citizens that deals with political matters (Conover and Searing 2005; Eveland, Morey, and Hutchens 2011; Kim and Kim 2008; Walsh 2004; Wyatt, Katz, and Kim 2000). While it is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is also worth noting that everyday political talk differs in important ways from online discussions, which tend to be written and can be anonymous and asynchronous (see Valenzuela, Kim, and de Zúñiga 2012; Miller et al. 2015). As Mansbridge (1999) argues, everyday political talk anchors the least deliberative end of the spectrum within the “deliberative system.” Indeed, there is considerable distance between everyday political talk and mini-​publics—​citizen juries, consensus conferences, deliberative polls, etc.—​that give ordinary citizens the opportunity to deliberate together. Usually, mini-​publics bring together strangers for a planned deliberative activity with a predetermined agenda that focuses participants on specific issues with a particular goal in mind. Conversely, everyday political talk is naturally intertwined into the conversations of family and friends; social dynamics—​not political agendas—​are more likely to influence political talk (Eveland, Morey, and Hutchens 2011). Described in this fashion, political talk occurs relatively often among citizens in the United States (Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002; Jacobs, Cook, and Delli Carpini 2009; Wyatt, Katz, and Kim 2000) and other Western European democracies (Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002; Pattie and Johnston 2008). But the frequency of everyday political talk is lower in other regions of the world, especially the Middle East and Africa (see Schmitt-​Beck and Lup 2013). Given the unintentional nature of political talk, it is not surprising that numerous studies find that more political talk goes on between family members and close friends. And the most frequent contexts for this talk are home and social gatherings, and less frequently at work (Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002; Johnston and Pattie 2006; Morey, Eveland, and Hutchens 2012; Mutz 2006; Wyatt, Katz, and Kim 2000). So, everyday political talk occurs more often in private rather than public settings. Therefore, future research would benefit from focusing more on the social dynamics governing political talk (Eveland, Morey, and Hutchens 2011). Likewise, despite the sharp decline in the study of political socialization, the family warrants a closer look. For example, Jennings,

380    Pamela Johnston Conover and Patrick R. Miller Stoker, and Bowers (2009, 795–​6) found that, if parents are politically engaged and frequently discuss politics, they can have a tremendous impact on the early political learning of their children, and that learning will persist in adulthood. Beyond gauging its frequency and context, in assessing everyday political talk, researchers have devoted the most effort to determining whether it encompasses disagreement. As Mutz (2006) has put it, “hearing the other side” is a critical component of deliberative democracy; citizens must be able to communicate about their differences. More formally, having contested talk contributes to meeting a standard of “non-​ tyranny” in that discussions do not exclude different viewpoints (see Bohman 1996, 35–​6). Because political talk is a social act, evaluating the extent to which talk involves disagreement has focused on whether social networks, which supply conversational partners, are heterogeneous and thus potentially expose a citizen to contrary perspectives (Klofstad, Sokhey, and McClurg 2013; Scheufele et al. 2006). In this regard, recognizing the nature of political talk provides basic insight into how disagreement enters—​or fails to enter—​into political conversations. Specifically, the unintentional nature of political talk means that citizens do not deliberately construct discussion networks of politically similar others so much as they happen to have social relations with people who are politically similar or dissimilar (Song et al. 2016; also see Lazer et al. 2010; Song 2015). The question for empirical research, then, is whether citizens are more open to political disagreement if it happens to arise because they have not purposively selected their discussion partners for political reasons? Yet, empirical research has been troubled by different definitions and measures of what actually constitutes “disagreement” between citizens, resulting in inconsistent findings (Klofstad, Sokhey, and McClurg 2013; Scheufele et al. 2006; Wojcieszak and Price 2012). For example, some (Huckfeldt, Mendez, and Osborn 2004) have concluded that disagreement is common in the discussion networks of Americans; but others (Mutz 2006) reach the opposite conclusion, arguing that disagreement is low. Klofstad, Sokhey, and McClurg (2013)—​attempting to provide some resolution to the debate—​ find moderate levels of disagreement. But other measurement problems remain:  exposure to dissimilar others is sometimes taken as an indicator of actual disagreement in discussion. Yet, as Morey, Eveland, and Hutchens (2012) demonstrate, similar others—​ like families and close friends—​may actually be “safer” partners for contested political talk than weaker “ties” who are more dissimilar. The evidence is clearer on the effects of political talk: simply put, political talk matters substantially for how citizens think and act (for a review see Schmitt-​Beck and Lup 2013). Political talk results in citizens having more political knowledge (Bennett, Flickinger, and Rhine 2000; Eveland 2004; Eveland and Thomson 2006; Holbert et al. 2002; Kwak et al. 2005; Pattie and Johnston 2009; Searing et al. 2007). Similarly, political talk can help citizens clarify their thoughts and reduce uncertainty, especially when their networks contain political “experts” (McClurg 2006; Pattie and Johnston 2008). In terms of behavior, how people vote is influenced when they discuss candidates with others (e.g. Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995; Johnston and Pattie 2006; Sinclair 2012; Zuckerman, Dasović, and Fitzgerald 2007). Beyond voting, citizens tend to participate more when

Taking Everyday Political Talk Seriously    381 they engage in everyday political talk (McClurg 2003; Klofstad 2011; Kwak et al. 2005; Searing et al. 2007). Likewise, political talk makes better citizens by encouraging tolerance (Mutz 2006; Pattie and Johnston 2008; Ikeda and Ritchie 2009), civic engagement (Shah et al. 2005), and civic mindedness (Searing et al. 2007). So, the positive effects of everyday political talk for the practice of citizenship are substantial. It matters, then, why some citizens talk more than others, and whether some types of citizens are discouraged from participating in political talk. In explaining political talk, much of the focus has been on its social and political determinants. The size and expertise of social networks both constrain and create the opportunities for citizens to discuss politics: larger, more politicized networks tend to provide more new information and promote greater political involvement (Lake and Huckfeldt 1998; McClurg 2006). Yet, social networks, which are individually constructed, are constrained by both social contexts and broader structural forces (Scheufele et al. 2006; Sokhey and Djupe 2011). So, for example, contexts like workplaces and volunteer groups encourage greater network heterogeneity than families or churches (see Scheufele et al. 2006; Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995; Mutz 2006; Mutz and Mondak 2006; Perrin 2005). Likewise, different cultural contexts vary in how much they encourage everyday political talk (Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002). Structural factors also play an important role in shaping the nature of individual social networks (e.g. Blau 1977). Still, we know relatively little about how this impacts political discussion, though most recently Scheufele et  al. (2006) found that county-​level racial and partisan heterogeneity encourages heterogeneous discussion networks, which then fosters greater political participation. Finally, cross-​ national research shows that political talk varies across different institutional settings. For example, in more competitive electoral systems, everyday political talk tends to be higher and less biased based on individual education and occupation (Nir 2012). Despite these various constraints, there are still significant individual-​level factors that influence everyday political talk. Education and sex are consistently related to political talk, with the better educated and men typically more likely to engage in political talk (Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002; Jacobs, Cook, and Delli Carpini 2009; Nir 2012). Beyond background characteristics, personality traits—​especially extraversion and emotional stability—​are important in predicting the frequency of discussion and the type of discussion partners (Gerber et al. 2012; Hibbing, Ritchie, and Anderson 2011). Likewise, individuals who engage in political talk are likely to be higher in a “willingness to argue” (Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999; on “argumentativeness” see Eveland, Morey, and Hutchens 2011). Finally, it is important to recognize that citizens have multiple motives for engaging in—​and avoiding—​political talk (Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002; Duchesne and Haegel 2007; Eliasoph 1998; Walsh 2004). Because of the casual nature of political talk, political motives—​gathering political information, forming opinions, and influencing others—​are often less important than social motives such as listening to others, avoiding conflict, and appearing competent in front of friends and family (Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002; Duchesne and Haegel 2007; Eveland, Morey, and Hutchens 2011; Walsh 2004).

382    Pamela Johnston Conover and Patrick R. Miller In sum, everyday political talk falls short of many of the ideals of deliberative democracy. It occurs more frequently in private among close friends and family. Though estimates vary, while some political talk is contested, much is not. And the ability to engage in political talk is influenced by individual, contextual, and structural factors; consequently, political talk is much easier for some citizens than for others. Nonetheless, despite being far from deliberative in its nature, everyday political talk positively impacts the practice of citizenship in ways that are essential to the functioning of deliberative democracies. Yet, our understanding of political talk itself—​as opposed to its determinants and consequences—​is relatively thin (Eveland, Morey, and Hutchens 2011; Sokhey and Djupe 2011). We elaborate now on some of the key features of political talk and questions that they pose for future research.

The Psychology of Political Talk To explain why everyday political talk is so effective in producing such a wide range of desirable political effects, we need a better understanding of the psychology of political talk. In essence, how do casual exchanges about political matters cumulatively work to produce such positive effects? To begin, one characteristic of a political conversation is that it can involve the exchange of information. It should not be surprising, then, that some of the clearest direct effects of political talk are cognitive in nature: gains in political knowledge (Bennett, Flickinger, and Rhine 2000; Eveland and Thomson 2006; Eveland et al. 2005; Holbert et al. 2002; Searing et al. 2007), opinion quality (Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999; Kim and Kim 2008; Wyatt, Katz, and Kim 2000), and attitude certainty (Pattie and Johnston 2008). In explaining these effects, communication theorists have focused on how political talk—​or the anticipation of it—​motivates citizens to engage in “cognitive elaboration”: processing information, like news reports, more elaborately, thus facilitating both learning and connecting the information to personal experiences and prior knowledge (Eveland 2004; Eveland and Thomson 2006; Scheufele 2002). Likewise, conversation partners can encourage citizens to engage in cognitive elaboration by triggering new links between their existing ideas (Eveland 2004; Gastil and Dillard 1999), and explaining how information is relevant to their underlying predispositions (McClurg 2006). These effects should be especially strong when conversation partners are well informed (Eveland 2004; McClurg 2006). Thus, in the context of political talk, cognitive elaboration promotes learning. When combined with the give and take of conversational dynamics, cognitive elaboration is also likely to influence how citizens reason, helping them to clarify their ideas. Simply put, political talk refines opinions (Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999). Through everyday conversational questions, citizens become accustomed to offering and asking for reasons for political positions (Habermas 2006). Inconsistencies in opinions become more easily resolved when they are revealed and discussed (Eliasoph 1998, 231; Kim and Kim 2008; Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999). Consequently, political talk produces

Taking Everyday Political Talk Seriously    383 not only greater attitude certainty (Pattie and Johnston 2008), but also more considered and consistent opinions (Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999). For example, Harris-​Lacewell (2004, 12) describes how everyday talk in Bible study groups and barbershops encourages African Americans to develop more coherent ideas that gradually evolve into a shared ideology: although none of the individuals engaging in the conversation will be instantly convinced by the arguments of others, all will be affected by their participation in this conversation. Each person who has shared in this interaction will adjust his or her political attitudes to the extent that he or she is convinced by the various arguments being made.

Thus, even political talk with like-​minded others is likely to lead to back-​and-​forth exchanges that are essential to sharpen how people think on issues. But critically, the impact of political talk goes beyond its cognitive effects on information processing and reasoning. And these effects cannot be understood by focusing on the individual alone. Some of the best evidence concerning the psychological dynamics of everyday political talk comes from in depth ethnographic studies (e.g. Eliasoph 1998; Harris-​Lacewell 2004; Walsh 2004) and focus groups (Gamson 1992; Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002) that probe how citizens together practice everyday talk. From these studies, it becomes clear that political talk is a means for citizens to work out together, over time, shared perspectives on politics that are based not so much on the common good as they are on shared social identities (Harris-​Lacewell 2004; Walsh 2004; Perrin 2005). Through repeated political conversations with mostly friends and family, people simultaneously come to understand both their social identities and how they relate to politics. As Walsh (2004) explains, everyday political talk enables people to make sense of the world by defining politics from the perspective of who “we” are; specific issues come to be viewed through the lens of group identities. Thus, political talk collectively generates a “perspective” on politics using an identity-​based language that links the individual citizen to political issues. So, everyday political conversations teach citizens how to think and talk collectively about politics in a meaningful fashion; over time, through practice they develop a language of politics. Without political talk, citizens find it difficult to make the connections between their own lives and politics. Psychologically, cognitive elaboration is less likely without the motivation and input provided by conversation partners. And more broadly, generating an understanding of politics—​a perspective—​becomes much harder without conversation partners to exchange ideas with. In Eliasoph’s ethnographic study of a variety of civic groups, she found that citizens struggled to relate to the political world in the absence of political talk. As she explained, They experienced the world of politics . . . as an inert, distant, impersonal realm, a boring and scary jumble of facts that did not really touch life . . . they had no framework for sorting through the facts or finding patterns, no one upon whom they could

384    Pamela Johnston Conover and Patrick R. Miller rely in thinking through their own opinions, no place to figure out how all the facts fitted together. . . . Without political conversation, analysis was impossible, and the world of politics seemed to be a collection of spare parts that did not fit together and was probably best avoided altogether. (Eliasoph 1998, 131–​2)

So, without regular everyday political talk, citizens must learn the language of politics on their own, and are alone in seeking a connection to the political world. Some will succeed, but likely more will fail and remain disengaged and apolitical. Probing the psychology of political talk provides a better understanding of why political talk is an important precursor to political knowledge, higher quality attitudes, and political action itself. Talking with other citizens motivates people to process information more elaborately, and encourages the development of shared political perspectives. Critically, then, the practice of political talk develops in citizens the “language of politics” that they need to relate to the political world. Quite simply, a habit of political talk is essential to prepare citizens for more formal deliberations. But more than that, it provides them with the language necessary for a politically active life. Understanding how everyday political talk teaches citizens the language of politics is a core challenge for future research.

What Counts As Political Talk? Part of citizens learning the “language of politics” is their becoming accustomed to thinking and talking about what is “political.” Thus, the disparities in levels of political talk, and its implications for how people understand the political world, lead to more fundamental questions about how the public comprehends the very meaning of political when they are engaged in conversation. To this point, we have not broached the subject of what counts as “political” in defining everyday political talk. But, it is important to do so because it suggests that the gulf separating those who talk about politics and those who do not is even greater than we have described heretofore. In one of the foundational theoretical works on everyday political talk, Mansbridge (1999, 214) argued that we should define “political” talk as concerning “that which the public ought to discuss,” which, she goes on to argue, should be a matter ultimately determined by the public. Pursuing this logic in empirical research is difficult, and seldom adhered to (but see Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002; Fitzgerald 2013). Indeed, most contemporary empirical studies of everyday political talk are survey-​based and employ general, close-​ended items to assess the frequency of talk, which leave the definition of “political” unspecified (but see Wyatt, Katz, and Kim 2000). Typical is an American National Election Study question that asks respondents, “How many days in the past week did you talk about politics with your family or friends?” (ANES Time Series Cumulative Data File, 1948–​2014, italics added; for variations see Morey and Eveland 2016). But because “politics” is undefined, the measure may be unreliable if individuals vary in their notions of what topics

Taking Everyday Political Talk Seriously    385 are political in nature: one person who is party to a conversation might define it as political, and the other might not (Morey and Eveland 2016). But, how citizens understand what “political” means is more than just a measurement issue. Citizens differ significantly in how broadly they define the term “political” (Fitzgerald 2013; Morey and Eveland 2016). These variations matter for how they think and talk about politics. Narrow definitions of the political make it harder for people to relate to the political world. For example, Taft (2006, 343) found that when teenage girls narrowly defined “politics” and described themselves as “not politics people,” many simply disengaged from political activity. Conversely, citizens with broader understandings of the term “political” have higher political interest, attention, and larger discussion networks (Fitzgerald 2013). Most relevant, citizens with more “expansive” definitions of “political” engage in more political talk (Morey and Eveland 2016). The relationship is likely reciprocal. As Perrin suggests (2006, 43), the more citizens engage in political conversations, the more their “democratic imagination”—​ways of thinking and arguing about social issues—​is likely to enlarge. So talk defines the “political.” But what prompts citizens to engage in conversations that will lead them to see issues and events as “political,” thus increasing the likelihood of their taking political action?

Bringing The Public In—​The Role of The Media Certainly, as discussed earlier, individual characteristics and social environments encourage people to engage in everyday political talk. But beyond these factors, the news media also prompt political conversations, shaping opinions and political action. In theorizing this chain of relations, Habermas (1989) has played a prominent role. But predating Habermas, James Bryce, a nineteenth-​century British political theorist, also described the tight links between newspaper reading, political conversation, opinion formation, and political action (for a discussion see Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999). And, the simplicity of Gabriel Tarde’s (1969) similar model (originally published in 1898) has made it a touchstone for recent empirical research. A nineteenth-​century sociologist, Tarde famously debated Durkheim over the nature of sociology. He lost when he chose to emphasize the importance of interpersonal relations, but his ideas are for good reason having a revival (Katz 2006). Among communication theorists and sociologists, Tarde is popular for anticipating the “two-​step flow of communication” (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955)—​exposure to the news prompts talk about it—​and for his ideas on the emergence of the public (see Katz 2006). Simply put, Tarde argues that the press sets the agenda for conversations where opinions are formed, which then lead citizens to take action (Tarde 1969). As Katz (1992; 2006) explains, Tarde sees conversations as purposeless; so, political talk is unplanned, and likewise, reason and problem solving are incidental consequences rather than prerequisites or goals for

386    Pamela Johnston Conover and Patrick R. Miller talk. Still, conversation acts to clarify and crystallize opinions based on the information gleaned from the press. So, Habermas and Tarde are similar in that they see the media, conversation, and opinion being tightly connected (Katz 2006); but Tarde’s view of political conversation is more casual and arguably more realistic, even for modern times. Empirical research confirms the pivotal role of political talk that Tarde and other theorists envisioned in linking the news media to the formation of public opinion and the fomenting of political action. First, both the amount and content of media usage effect political talk. Specifically, reading newspapers and watching television news prompts people to engage in everyday political talk (Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999; Koch 1994), and the news sets the agenda for everyday talk (Walsh 2004). Second, people understand media messages better when they talk about them with others, in part because it helps to connect the news to personal experiences and prior knowledge (Eveland and Scheufele 2000; Eveland and Thomson 2006). This in turn facilitates political talk refining and clarifying opinions (Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999). Finally, the relationship between news media use and political participation is moderated by political talk. Specifically, frequent news users who engage in political talk are significantly more likely to take political action than frequent news users who do not talk (Scheufele 2002, 58; also see Kwak et al. 2005). However, much remains to be learned about how political talk shapes citizens’ understanding of the news, and how that transforms their opinions, identities, and conceptions of the political. In this regard, a booming cottage industry has emerged around “framing theory,” which addresses the crafting and reception of media messages (Borah 2011; Chong and Druckman 2007). Most of this research is experimental, with all the participants receiving the “news” or frame, which unfortunately eliminates the distinction between the supply and the processing of the news (Kinder 2007). Thus, experiments operate as if there were no social dynamics involved in the supply of information, when actually conversation plays an important role in transmitting information about the news. But beyond this problem, the vast majority of framing research also ignores the role of everyday political talk in the processing of news frames. In two key exceptions (Druckman and Nelson 2003; Druckman 2004), when experimental study participants did briefly discuss a news frame with a group of heterogeneous strangers, it resulted in the frame’s rejection, demonstrating that even conversations that bear little resemblance to actual everyday political talk do impact the reception of media frames. But again, in-​depth studies provide greater insight on the rich and varied ways in which everyday political talk shapes how citizens understand the news and react to the frames that political elites and the media present to them. Gamson’s (1992) classic Talking Politics uses focus groups to explore how citizens react to different issue frames. Building on Gamson’s work, Walsh (2004) combined content analyses of real news frames with observations of actual everyday talk. Together, these two studies make clear that through political talk citizens reinterpret news frames of issues—​bringing in their personal experiences and identities—​to arrive at their own opinions, which may or may not reflect original elite frames (Walsh 2004; Gamson 1992). Thus, as theorists from

Taking Everyday Political Talk Seriously    387 Tarde to Habermas have suggested, by talking together citizens make sense of the news and refine their opinions.

Conclusions Everyday political talk is a casual byproduct of social interaction that incidentally serves political functions. Not surprisingly, then, it often fails to meet deliberative standards (see Conover, Searing, and Crewe 2002). Most political talk goes on privately among family and close friends, and is only sometimes contested. Moreover, citizens are not equal in the extent to which they engage in political talk. Nonetheless, we argue that everyday political talk is vital to a deliberative democracy. To understand the effects of political talk, it is important to imagine the cumulative effect of everyday talk when practiced regularly on a daily basis. In political conversations—​ often prompted by the news—​citizens gain information and exchange ideas, ask and answer questions, offer opinions, express emotions, and recount personal experiences. In doing so, they clarify their preferences and sharpen their thinking. Over time, they develop perspectives on politics that reflect their identities and interests. But, they also come to understand the political world and develop a language for talking about it and relating to it. By developing in citizens both a broad understanding of politics and a language to discuss it, everyday political talk prepares them for political action, including deliberation in more formal settings. However, despite its ubiquity and its importance, everyday political talk is an under-​ appreciated feature in the deliberative system. Theoretically, it does not fit easily into discussions of deliberation. Likewise, it is difficult to study in a meaningful fashion. While survey research has been most plentiful, ethnographic sorts of studies have provided the deepest insights. Still, if we are to make progress we must continue to explore political talk using a variety of methods in different settings. Only then will we come to understand and value it fully.

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Chapter 24

De l iberation i n Prot e sts an d So cial Mov e me nts Donatella della Porta and Nicole Doerr

Social movements are important for deliberative democracy, and vice versa. Social movements are loose networks of organizations and individuals, with common identifying values that mainly use unconventional forms of political participation in order to reach their political aims (della Porta and Diani 2006). They experiment with deliberative models of democracy both in their internal structure and in their interactions with political institutions. Internally, social movements have—​with a greater or lesser degree of success—​attempted to develop an organizational structure based on participation (rather than delegation), consensus building (rather than a majority vote), and horizontal networks (rather than centralized hierarchies). Underlying their practices is a general normative definition of participatory deliberation; it states that we have deliberative democracy when “under conditions of equality, inclusiveness and transparency, a communicative process based on reason (the strength of the good argument) is able to transform individual preferences and reach decisions oriented to the public good” (della Porta 2005, 340). In addition to the transformative aspect of deliberation, social movements contribute to the clarification of preferences, an aspect that has received a new degree of attention among theorists working on distinguishing different normative standards of deliberation (Knight and Johnson 2014; Thompson 2008). Although social movement theorists have emphasized the instrumental side of protest, successful movement groups live from reflective dialogue: conversation and joint reasoning that takes place in meetings, street publics, and online spaces created by activist groups. Several social and political theorists have pointed at the importance of social movements and their critical public spaces as arenas for the formulation of dissent and scrutinizing of representative democratic institutions. Habermas (1996) has postulated a double-​track process, with an “informal” deliberation taking place outside institutions and then, as public opinion, affecting institutional deliberation. Dryzek (2000) has indicated social movements as best placed to build deliberative spaces, keeping a

Protests and Social Movements    393 critical watch upon institutions. Fraser (1990) has argued that alternative political ideas and collective identities are born in a multiplicity of “counter publics” created by social movements and civic groups at the periphery of mainstream publics and political institutions. According to Mansbridge (1996), deliberation should take place in a number of enclaves, free from institutional power—​social movements being among them a key site for imagining democratic innovations. As Claus Offe (1997, 102–​3) has underlined, deliberative democracy requires citizens “embedded” in associative networks that are able to build democratic skills among their adherents. According to Young, discourse does not exclude protest: “processes of engaged and responsible democratic participation include street demonstrations and sit-​ins, musical works and cartoons, as much as parliamentary speeches and letters to the editor” (2003, 119; see also Polletta 2015). Despite the overlap, activists and deliberative democrats alike have addressed a number of tensions between deliberative democracy and protest. Deliberative theorists have voiced concerns about activists’ lack of openness to ideas advanced by other political actors in the context of democratic deliberation, and about their use of deliberative arenas to promote particular political goals (Talisse 2005). From an activist perspective, deliberative arenas risk both marginalizing the perspective of already disenfranchised groups and also potentially contributing to co-​opting and delegitimizing protest (Young 2003). The reasons for this are in part cultural: the deliberative ideal presupposes reasonable, consensus-​oriented debate governed by the norms of universalism, rationality, and neutrality (Polletta 2015). Empirical research, however, indicates that deliberative norms themselves may reflect and continuously recreate a culturally distinct discursive habitus, namely that of social and political elites (Young 1996). Because deliberation is not taking place in a culturally neutral space, the ideal norms governing deliberative discourse make it harder for traditionally disadvantaged groups to voice their demands and convince others, although it is not impossible (Guttman and Thompson 2004). An interesting perspective, then, is advanced by those concerned with the social inequalities frequent in many deliberative situations who have pointed to the need for deliberative democrats to include social movements, and to the potential usefulness of deliberation from the perspective of protesters. Activists bring to deliberative forums a critical awareness that counterbalances the subtle or less subtle influences and pressures exercised on public decision-​makers by economic and political interests (Polletta 2015). To bring social inequality to public attention, activists intervene in official public deliberation through the use of disruption and direct action. In order to extend the dominant cultural codes of public debate, activists explicitly invite members of disadvantaged groups to express emotion, including culturally repressed emotions such as anger and shame (Goodwin, Jasper, and Polletta 2001). Protest is necessary if deliberation fails to be inclusive, if it is biased or unfair, and if it does little but reproduce a perceived illegitimate elite discourse (Smith 2004; Habermas 1985). Moreover, even if they will not be able to influence decision-​making, members of disadvantaged groups may have a stake in the public visibility and attention that deliberative arenas provide them with (Fraser 1990; Polletta 2015; Guttman and Thompson 2004). However, activists’ inclusion of contentious tactics and their strategic use of emotion is at odds with deliberative ideals of

394    Donatella Della Porta and Nicole Doerr polite, emotionally detached, and persuasive dialogue oriented toward the common good. The more the institutional arenas for citizen empowerment and political deliberation created by national or supranational institutions are “closed,” the more social movements are important in order to nurture committed, critical attitudes towards authorities in power, providing a counter discourse for democratic opposition (della Porta 2005; see also Nanz and Steffek 2004; Doerr 2011; Deitelhoff 2012). Democratic deliberation is in fact so central to the processes of democratic participation in social movement groups that scholars have defined social movements as public spaces for societal deliberation and civic learning, political dialogue and alternative knowledge production (della Porta 2009a). Moreover, reflections on models of democracy have assumed a central role in the theoretical elaboration and practices of social movements. From this point of view, it was noted already long ago that “the struggle of left-​libertarian movements recalls an ancient element of democratic theory, which calls for an organization of collective decision processes variedly defined as classical democracy, populist, communitarian, strong, grassroots or direct, against democratic praxis in contemporary democracies defined as realist, liberal, elitist, republican or representative democracy” (Kitschelt, 1993, 15). From generation to generation, social movements’ deliberative and participatory democratic innovations complement and criticize failed processes of political representation in institutions (della Porta 2012). Even before the “new” social movement emerged, the labor movements as well as the first waves of women’s movement had struggled for alternative models of democracy—​associational, direct, participatory—​to the dominant liberal democratic (“minimalist”) one that had developed at institutional level (della Porta 2013a, ­chapter 2). In more recent times, deliberative democracy came to the fore also in social movements’ practices. However, while classical normative theorists of deliberation favor dispassionate, rationalist ideals of discourse, activists’ normative conceptions stress the importance of narrative and emotion within deliberation as well as the informal relationships on which decision-​making and democracy in social movement groups are built (Polletta 2006; 2002). Moreover, in the context of the World Social Forum, activists set up multilingual and culturally diverse spaces for deliberation under conditions of extreme resource inequality and ideological heterogeneity (Doerr 2008). The respect for differences thus confers a key function to inclusive deliberation in the context of transnational social movements, which Donatella della Porta, citing Young (1996) defines as follows: “Deliberation (or even communication) is based upon the belief that, while not giving up my perspective, I might learn if I listen to the other” (della Porta 2005, 340–​1). Based on the respecting of differences, the World Social Forum process has made possible the biggest ongoing face-​to-​face experiment of grassroots democracy and deliberation started “from below” (Smith et al. 2007). As with other forms of “applied” democracy, however, the practical functioning of deliberation in social movements’ internal life is much less than perfect, given the tensions between different aims as well as the difficulties of finding a fit between theory and practice. A main dilemma for social movements has to do with the balance between participation and representation. Social movement organizations, traditionally

Protests and Social Movements    395 poor in material resources, have to rely upon the voluntary work of their members—​ thus developing a “membership logic.” Participatory models enhance the distribution of identity incentives; in particular, the assembly represents the place par excellence of an open and (in principle) egalitarian space; the small “affinity” groups stimulate the development of solidarity among equals. But unstructured assemblies tend to be dominated by small minorities that often strategically exploit the weaknesses of direct democracy with open manipulation; “speech” resources are far from equally distributed; the most committed, or better organized, control the floor; solidarity links tend to exclude newcomers. Consensual models, developed to contrast the “tyranny” of organized minorities, have their own problems, mainly bound up with extremely long (and sometimes “blocked”) decisional processes. Although they have not developed satisfactory solutions for the many implementation problems of direct democracy, the recent history of social movements testifies to the relevance of their search for alternative forms of political participation. Empirical research indicates that over the course of the past century, activists in different generations and regions have developed and combined different practices of participatory, deliberative, and radical democracy that have consensus-​oriented decision-​making, inclusivity, equality, and transparency at their heart. Since the turn of the millennium, social movements claiming global justice have developed a model of grassroots democracy infused by participatory and deliberative approaches fostering the inclusion of dissent and societal consensus where representative democracy is in a deep crisis (della Porta 2013a; 2015). New developments of protest and activist encounters in the World Social Forum process and the more recent mobilizations in the Occupy and Indignados movements show that several core values of deliberative democracy are shared across the world (della Porta 2013a; 2015). As unions and other historical institutions of the developmental state were targeted by neoliberal reforms as jeopardizing the free market, new organizational forms gradually developed, promoting and practicing alternative models of democracy. The ideas of democracy developed from the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Sem Terra1 in Brazil, the picqueteros in Argentina, the indigenous communities in Bolivia, Peru, or Ecuador, traveled all around the world, challenging the representative and majoritarian models dominating in the West. In their development of alternative norms of deliberation, these social movements had to address some structural trends as well as the constraining effects of the policing of protest (della Porta 2013a). The traditional forms of legitimation of liberal democracies are in fact challenged by trends such as a shift in the axis of power from politics to the market, with neoliberal economic policies increasing the power of multinational corporations and reducing the capacity of traditional state structures to control them; a shift in the locus of power from the national to both the supranational and the regional levels, with the increasing power of some international institutions, especially economic ones (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization), and of some regional ones (first of all the European Union); a shift in power from the parliament to the executive, and, within the executive, to the bureaucracy and to quasi-​independent agencies; a shift in power from mass parties to “baseless” parties and therefore

396    Donatella Della Porta and Nicole Doerr from activists to the new party professionals (especially the “party in the institutions”). Moving decisions away from the nation state, globalization also challenges the principles and institutions of representative democracy that are built around that level.

Global Diffusion of Democratic Innovations in Social Movements The global diffusion of deliberative norms, practices, and experiences of democracy in social movements can be usefully discussed in the light of the growing literature on deliberative democracy; moreover, reflections on social movements might help in specifying some conceptualization of deliberative politics. First and foremost, all these experiences promoted participatory and deliberative formulas, with an emphasis on the equal role of all citizens, of consensus building though argumentation, in recognition of differences but also of the common aim of constructing the commons. So, the importance of differences and ways to accommodate them was addressed by the Zapatistas in Mexico who then influenced activists within the global justice movement worldwide (Starr, Martinez-​Torres, and Rosset 2011, 105). The emphasis on the inclusion of citizens as equal is visible in the open, participatory format as well as in the rotation of tasks. Participation in a governmental role is considered as a school of democracy for the citizens as it teaches how to hold governmental actors and institutional elites accountable. Another case that shows the powerful societal connection created through deliberation is that of the Argentinean picqueteros, who emerged in 1996 calling for full employment and the social inclusion of the poor (Svampa and Pereyra 2003; Rossi 2013). Claims for “cleaner government, greater transparency, and improved accountability” were also reflected in internal forms of democracy that relied upon transparent, open, and inclusive processes. The multisectoral mobilization was organized through “an assembly style of decision making, which later became generalized as popular assemblies. Popular assemblies were a new brokerage instrument because they were open-​ air, freewheeling gatherings” with a progressive shift of power from organizational leaders to rank-​and-​file activists (Silva 2009, 74). On the tradition of the popular protests in Argentina, olla popular (soup kitchens) were organized, “creating a space where people congregated, exchanged experiences, recognized their common plight, and took courage” (Silva 2009, 84). In the long occupation of the Sem Terra in Brazil, activists created encampments run by landless peasants, putting a similar emphasis on the inclusion of all members in decision-​making processes, including key decisions about management of the occupied land. In fact, “immediately, everyone is participating in governance and building trust and community” (Starr, Martinez-​Torres, and Rosset 2011, 109). Rotation of people in the main positions ensured broad involvement. These self-​governing communities

Protests and Social Movements    397 aimed at constructing a different conception of politics. The indigenous conceptions of democracy as involving the whole community in discursive interactions spread to other movements. This type of evolution has been described in particular in the case of Bolivia, where anti-​neoliberal contestation grew up during three waves of protest before Evo Morales’ election as president in 2005 (Silva 2009). In each of these experiences of different movements, activists’ grassroots innovations in democratic thinking addressed citizens’ claims for social justice and the desire for transparent, inclusive, and democratic government. While reforms towards the deepening of democracy have been developed and even constitutionalized, new forms of protest addressed the often limited involvement of the population in some contested decisions (such as the construction of a highway inside a national park in Bolivia). With all their limitations, which testify to how difficult it is to implement an ideal vision of participation and deliberation, these experiences influenced both the Global Justice Movement at the beginning of the millennium and the anti-​austerity protests that developed about ten years later.

Deliberation and Political Translation in the Global Justice Movement Good communication—​including the capacity to listen—​and effective mediation were particularly important in the context of the World Social Forum, where activists from the Global North and the South tried to cooperate in a global setting by acknowledging their disagreements and inequalities. As co-​founders of the World Social Forum, movements of feminists and women of color from the Global South have been an important force pressing for a more inclusive consensus within global social movement deliberations involving unionists and institutional leftists in direct dialogue with grassroots activists and resource-​poor groups (Smith et al. 2007). Also at the national level, in the context of the US Social Forum, global justice activists have recently strengthened efforts to strengthen the voices of transgender, lesbian, and gay groups in deliberation, overcoming the marginalization of these groups and of people of color in previous left movements (Doerr 2018). Another tool for acknowledging difference more democratically within transnational social movements is “political translating,” aimed at addressing inequality and informal marginalization within the setting of consensus-​based democracy (Doerr 2018). Developed by activists in the context of Social Forum meetings, political translation is best described as a set of practices initiated by members of marginalized populations in order to increase their stake within arenas for discourse and decision-​making, including those set within social movements. Just as linguistic translation extends our vocabulary toward recognizing new terms and ideas, political translation similarly extends the format and content of deliberation with the aim of including the voices and perspectives of marginalized groups. In the context of the European Social Forum, for example, the political translators were interpreters who, by putting pressure on Forum

398    Donatella Della Porta and Nicole Doerr organizers and contributing translations voluntarily during meetings, ensured that the Forum was organized in a more multilingual, inclusive format. Political translation helps the voices of marginalized groups to be heard within consensus-​based deliberation (Young 1996). So, when in a European Social Forum assembly German and French unionists dominated consensus-​based decision-​making through their affiliated facilitators, activists from a number of other countries were able to intervene as political translators, stopping that process. Unlike other facilitators, these political translators were uniquely placed to challenge informal domination, from their indispensible position as linguistic translators and cultural intermediaries connecting those in privileged positions in the Forum with the many who were experiencing marginalization. The multilingual European assemblies they organized included not only official Western European languages but also languages spoken by migrants and Central and Eastern European participants, such as Turkish, Arabic, Hungarian, and Russian (Doerr 2012). Practices such as political translation show how activist practices of disruption and collective action can combine in ways that enhance the effective inclusion and stakes of members of disadvantaged groups within power-​asymmetric deliberative settings (cf. Polletta 2015). In a traditionally more monolingual national political context, American global justice activists and immigrants’ rights organizers have developed practices of political translating making it possible for traditionally disadvantaged groups and linguistic minorities to impact deliberation (Doerr 2018). As an example, US global justice activists have used practices of political translation focusing on race-​, gender-​, and class-​based differences, learning from grassroots community organizers, many of them bilingual and/​or coming from diverse ethnic backgrounds. In 2003, misunderstandings related to issues of race hindered the first attempt to organize a Social Forum in the United States, a political crisis which ended cooperation between locally-​based grassroots global justice groups, who mobilized immigrants, minorities, and poor people, and professionalized national NGOs and movement organizations. However, this crisis inspired a critical movement of political translation. In an exceptional move, (minority) linguistic translators and cultural intermediaries who had tried to reconnect the divided factions came together from across the United States to accomplish something the existing parties had been unable to do—​the creation of a nationwide social movement coalition, the US Social Forum. Those activists who had volunteered to politically translate deliberation between divided USSF fractions were able to empower a new and dramatically diverse national coalition movement following deliberation crises, with leadership by women, Latinos/​as, indigenous activists, LGBTQ, and local leaders. In mainstream deliberative arenas, less research has focused on the dynamics of how marginalized groups within a movement achieve this goal. Contemporary mobilizations in many parts of the world increasingly face this issue as they strive to encompass more diverse coalitions. This case reveals how the practices of political translation provide the key to unlocking successes in movement and other diverse forums of deliberative democracy.

Protests and Social Movements    399

Adapting Participatory and Deliberative Democracy: From the Global Justice Movement to the 2011 Movements Those who protested in Tahrir, Kasbah, Sol, Syntagma, or Zuccotti in 2011, but also in Gezi Park in 2013 (Atak and della Porta 2016), have not just criticized existing representative democracy as deeply corrupted, but also experimented with different models of democracy. In part, conceptions and practices of democracy were inspired by the participatory and deliberative models of previous citizens’ mobilizations. In all of these most recent protest waves, the acampada (the camp)—​at the same time repertoire of protest and organizational form—​represented a major democratic experiment, adopted and adapted from one local or domestic context to the next. If the social forums had been the democratic invention of the global justice movement of the previous decade, the acampadas represented in part an updating of those, but in part also a development oriented to overcome their perceived failures. These most recent changes in the design of grassroots deliberative models deserve special attention as they reflect activists’ special attention to taking up some of the principal criticisms of the ever-​decreasing quality of liberal democracies, but also some proposals inspired by democratic qualities other than representation. These proposals resonate with (more traditional) participatory visions, but also with new deliberative conceptions that underline the importance of creating multiple public spaces, egalitarian but plural. To a certain extent, the acampada can in fact be seen in continuity with the social forum model, although with increased emphasis on some democratic qualities of participation and deliberation. There are many similarities but also some differences in the way current protesters have been using deliberation at first in the social forums and later in the camps (Juris 2012). Camps are the product of learning processes, after a perceived decline in the innovative capacity of the social forum process. However, they also reflect adaptation to a context characterized by a legitimacy crisis of late neoliberalism, and by its social and political consequences, but also to national opportunities and constraints. In the following, we give an overview of the converging values and different interpretations that the two movements gave to each of the norms in the process of deliberation. Transparency, equality, and inclusivity are values cherished by both movements, with, however, some important differences. The camps are set in open-​air space in order to enforce the public and transparent nature of the process. Meeting in public spaces also stresses the inclusiveness of the process, and the refusal of delegates represents a further emphasis upon equality. Developed a decade earlier, the social forums have been the most well known innovative experiment in deliberation promoted by the global justice movement. Distinct from a counter-​summit, which is mainly oriented towards public

400    Donatella Della Porta and Nicole Doerr protest, the social forum is a space of debate, reflection, and mutual learning among activists. The charter of the WSF defines it as an “open meeting place,” as participation is open to all civil society groups, with the exception of those advocating racist ideas and those using terrorist means, as well as political parties. Its functioning involves the organization of hundreds of workshops and dozens of conferences (with invited experts) during a very short span of time, and testifies to the importance given (at least in principle) to the production and exchange of knowledge. The development of inclusive arenas for the creation of knowledge emerged as a main aspiration in the social forum process. Diversity and transparency were highly valued, but difficult to practice. For example, the organizers of the World Social Forum wanted to keep their deliberative organizing process open, including their International Council meetings. However, in practice, at least at the global level, some main associations, as mentioned, tended to dominate decision-​making. In Europe, the preparatory assemblies of the European Social Forum were open to all participants, but still held in closed places. By transcending the still somewhat closed nature of social forum meetings, the Indignados movements explicitly occupied public squares, stressing even more the open and transparent nature of their democratic model, as the very essence of parks and squares is public. Not only are Tahrir, Kasba, Puerta del Sol, and Syntagma open air spaces, but they were also the most important points of encounters for citizens—​ allowing activists to open up the inner core of their movements and include newcomers. At the same time, those who organized the deliberative character of these publics self-​ consciously protected civic voices from co-​optation through institutionalized forces: not only parties and unions but also associations of different types were unwelcome. The camps, in open air, respond to a reclaiming of public spaces by the citizens. With the creation of a protest camp, Tahrir Square became the heart of the mobilization in Egypt; the heterogeneity of the participants was mentioned with pride—​“people of different backgrounds, of different classes, just sitting together talking” (Gerbaudo 2012, 69). In Europe also, the acampadas were to reconstruct a public sphere in which problems could be discussed and solutions looked for. In the experiment of the social forums, associational and participatory conceptions sometimes had clashed on issues of representativity and accountability. In the new experience created in the camps, direct, unmediated democracy was often called for. In Spain, as it organized assemblies in the streets and the squares, the 15M introduced a political logic in these spaces thus allowing people to learn new skills—​protesting being one of them. The assemblies in the encampments were described by activists as “primarily a massive, transparent exercise in direct democracy” (Gerbaudo 2012, 122–​3). Previous organizers had referred to forums as spaces for “the movement of movements,” welcoming associations of different types (della Porta 2009a and 2009b). Conversely, the camps are presented as spaces for “the people,” or the “citizens.” In the social forum process, the assemblies were important but somehow separated from the forum itself through the formula of the “social movement assemblies,” usually held after the forums.

Protests and Social Movements    401 In the acampadas, the assemblies took a central role in the elaboration of strategic and tactical decisions for the movement: from the creation of a general program, either specific claims or at least statements of intent, but even more for the everyday management of the camps. In fact, “the aim is to promote in all movement assemblies a transparent and horizontal way of functioning that would allow to each person to participate on an equal foot” (Nez 2011). General assemblies often broke down into committees, which then reconvened within it, the spokes of the various commissions referred to the general assemblies. Commissions on topics such as communication, mutual respect, infrastructure, laws, and action coordinated working groups that worked through consensus. Thousands of propositions were thus put forward and in part approved by consensus: on politics, economy, ecology, education. On the model of the one in Puerta del Sol, all general assemblies in Madrid neighborhoods worked as spaces that had to be “transparent, horizontal, where all persons can participate in an equal way” (Nez 2012, 84). In the US as in Spain, “each camp quickly developed a few core institutions: if it was any size, at least there would be a free kitchen, medical tent, library, media/​communication, center where activists would cluster together with laptops, and information center for visitors and new arrivals” (Graeber 2012, 240). The more or less permanent occupations of squares were thus seen as creating a new agora in publicly owned spaces. Another main democratic formula, coming from the global justice movement but further elaborated in the anti-​austerity protests, is the consensual method. Methods for consensus-​based decision-​making in the global justice movement prioritize the inclusion and persistence of different perspectives so as to avoid attempts of domination and hegemonic take-​over (della Porta 2005; Young 1996). Drawing on critical and feminist models of consensus, activists’ practices do not presuppose that all members must agree to consensus-​based decisions based on the same universal shared reason (see, critically, Mansbridge 2007). Consensual methods were adopted by several (but not all) organizations of the forum process in their internal decision-making, but they were actually practiced in different ways by different groups: in some cases pragmatically aiming at reaching agreements, in others in the ambition of creating a community (della Porta 2009b). In the camps, through inclusivity and respect for the opinions of all, a collective view was expected to emerge. In Spain, consensual deliberative methods were proposed by young autonomous activists. While in previous movements direct democracy through consensus had been experimented within spokes-​councils, during the acampadas it was applied to the general assemblies, involving often hundreds of thousands of people. Consensual methods were similarly elaborated in the Occupy movement in the US. A consensual, horizontal decision-​making process developed based on the continuous formation of small groups, which then reconvened in the larger assembly. Deliberation through consensus is in fact seen as an instrument against bureaucratization, but also against the routinization of the assembly and a way to build a community. While the global justice movement developed upon parties, with puppets and a carnival-​like atmosphere, it was noted that “OWS, in contrast, is not a party, it’s a community” (Graeber 2012, 240).

402    Donatella Della Porta and Nicole Doerr The Indignados and Occupy movements in part derived consensual decision-​making from the processes devised by the horizontals in the global justice movement (della Porta 2009a), and further developing those rules that had to implement equality and inclusivity. In Spain, regulations for the assemblies included limits on times for talking, hand gestures, rotating speakers, and the preparation of compte rendus (read at the next assembly meeting). Organizers also developed special techniques for assemblies; for example, participants were arranged in semicircles with corridors that allowed them to move around, with mediators, and so on. In the US, instead of voting up or down on a controversial proposal, groups that made decisions by consensus worked to refine them until everyone found them acceptable. Similarly to the social forum, the acampadas have been sites of contention, but also of exchanges of information, reciprocal learning, individual socialization, and knowledge building, in which, however, emotions and prefiguration were give a larger role in the construction of the commons. Cognitive mechanisms of frame bridging were very important in the social forum process. During the forums themselves, but also during their long preparation, a most important aim was the sharing of knowledge by activists from different countries, groups, ages, and so on. In this process, alternative visions were built about globalization, Europeanization, and the development of capitalism. In the acampadas, the cognitive function was central, but its production extended—​ so to speak—​from the activists to the citizens. The aim was often stated as building a community. While the forums had been described as sorts of universities, where abstract knowledge was embedded in specific contexts, the acampadas privileged the personal knowledge of the individual participants and their direct experiences. While the forums privileged reason, emotions were more openly emphasized in the camps. So, Postill (2012) vividly recalls, “the strong sense of connection to the strangers I spoke to during that fleeting moment. . . . The 15-​M movement had brought us together, and the sense of ‘contextual fellowship’ . . . cutting across divides of age, class and race was very powerful.” Emotional charge was mentioned in relation to the camps in Tahrir, whose establishment on January 28, 2011 was said to represent an acceleration of history, with a cognitive shift from a language of demonstration to a language of revolution (El Chazli 2012). Camps were places of talking and listening, where, however, the building of collective identities was sustained through the development of strong emotions. While the social forum process was also fed by the intense moments of transnational encounters, the stationary nature of the camps helped in building longer-​lasting relations. In Spain, as elsewhere, activists talked of the joy of being together, developing a narrative of becoming (Perugorría and Tejerina 2013, 437). When Occupy Wall Street started in the United States, quickly spreading in thousands of American cities, the occupations represented not only occasions to protest but also experimentations with participatory and deliberative forms of democracy in the everyday life of the occupation (Min 2015). Differently than for the movements of the previous decades, which had used a varied and plural repertoire, the acampadas became entrenched with the very identity of the movement, not just (as in occupations for other social movements) one form of action

Protests and Social Movements    403 among others. Beyond the prefiguration of a different society, which the activists already imagined, these spaces, as Razsa and Kurnik (2012) noted, were also important in the invention of alternative, but not yet imagined, futures, through what has been called a “politics of becoming.” In the Occupy movement they studied in Slovenia, the encounters of diverse minorities transformed their respective visions. Occupied spaces have been seen as “vibrant sites of human interaction that modelled alternative communities and generated intense feelings of solidarity” (Juris 2012, 268). With more emphasis than in the social forums, what is considered as important is the process. In the US, “the encampments were consistently unwilling to make the effort to coalesce around what would conventionally be called demands and programs. Instead, what they seemed to relish most was themselves: their community and esprit, their direct democracy, the joy of becoming transformed into a movement, a presence, a phenomenon that was known to strangers, and discovering with delight just how much energy they had liberated. For indeed, in a matter of days, their sparks had ignited a fire” (Gitlin 2012, 29).

Conclusion Progressive social movements nurture conceptions of deliberative democracy. Already the labor movement as well as new social movements had promoted direct forms of participation. Facing a deep crisis of representative democracy and liberal political institutions, recent social movements have developed deliberative democracy and participation “from below.” By creating open public spaces, social forums, and camps they provided citizens with voices for participation and democracy at the local, national, and transnational levels. In several waves of mobilization inspired by activists in the periphery of the world-​system, activists have taken back and occupied the public square for deliberations to address common solutions to the tremendous inequalities and decision-​making challenges societies are facing now, involving actual citizens and people both globally and on the ground. If external challenges fostered this global spreading of the deliberative method among others in the worldwide social forum process, activists’ deliberative processes in the global justice movement and in the movements against austerity also internally face the challenge to learn how to work together across differences. Indeed, the deliberative practices developed within forums and camps have often been criticized by the very same activists who participated in them as falling short of the ideal models: even if criticized, hierarchies tended to re-​ emerge over and over again, based on unequally distributed skills and resources; the availability to listen was limited by power dynamics (della Porta 2015; della Porta and Rucht 2013). Especially, when mobilization declined, ideological disputes tended to re-​ emerge. This notwithstanding, social movements’ democratic innovations, the Forum and the Camp, represent important experiments in cooperation in settings of deep diversity and inequality.

404    Donatella Della Porta and Nicole Doerr

Acknowledgments Donatella della Porta acknowledges the support of an Advanced Scholars’ grant of the European Research Center on Mobilizing for Democracy.

Note 1. The Landless Workers Movement (Portuguese: Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, MST) is a social movement in Brazil.

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406    Donatella Della Porta and Nicole Doerr Perugorría, I. and Tejerina, B. (2013). Politics of the Encounter:  Cognition, Emotions, and Networks in the Spanish 15M. Current Sociology, 61: 424–​42. Polletta, F. (2002). Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Polletta, F. (2006). It was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Polletta, F. (2015). Public Deliberation and Political Contention. In Democratizing Inequalities: Dilemmas of the New Public Participation, ed. C. W. Lee, M. McQuarrie, and E. T. Walker (New York: New York University Press), 222–​47. Postill, J. (2012). New Protest Movements and Viral Media. Media/​anthropology, March 26. Ratza, M. and Kurnik, A. (2012). The Occupy Movement in Žižek’s Hometown:  Direct Democracy and a Politics of Becoming. American Ethnologist, 39: 238–​58. Rossi, F. (2013). Picketeros. In The Wiley–​ Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, ed. D. Snow, D. della Porta, B. Klandermans, and D. McAdam (Oxford: Wiley–​Blackwell). Silva, E. (2009). Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press). Smith, W. (2004). Democracy, Deliberation and Disobedience. Res Publica, 10: 353–​77. Smith, J., Karides, M., Chase-​Dunn, C., della Porta, D., Becker, M., Brunelle, D., Garza, R. I., Juris, J., Mosca, L., Reese, E., Smith, P. J., and Vazquez, R. (2007). Global Democracy and the World Social Forums (Boulder CO: Paradigm). Starr, A., Martinez-​ Torres, M. E., and Rosset, P. (2011). Participatory Democracy in Action:  Practices of the Zapatistas and the Movimento Sem Terra. Latin American Perspectives, 30: 102–​19. Svampa, M. and Pereyra, S. (2003). Entre la ruta y el barrio : La experiencia de las organizaciones piqueteras (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblios). Talisse, R. B. (2005). Deliberative Responses to Activist Challenges: A Continuation of Young’s Dialectic. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 31: 423–​44. Thompson, D. F. (2008). Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 497–​520. Young, I. M. (1996). Communication and the Other:  Beyond Deliberative Democracy. In Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 120–​35. Young, I. M. (2003). Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy. In Debating Deliberative Democracy, ed. J. S. Fishkin and P. Laslett (Oxford: Blackwell), 102–​20.

Chapter 25

Governance Net work s Carolyn M. Hendriks and John Boswell

Introduction The last few decades have seen the decline of hierarchical government and the rise of horizontal governance. The stylized, Weberian image of a single, authoritative state has given way to a much more complex account of contemporary politics both within and between nations. An important concept for understanding this more horizontal mode of governing is “governance networks”—​which refers to constellations of interdependent but autonomous actors from public, private, and societal sectors that come together to develop and implement public policy (Rhodes 1997; Kickert, Klijn, and Koppenjan 1997; Kooiman 1993). Governance networks come in many diverse forms including local development schemes, public–​ private partnerships, collaborative arrangements, and stakeholder co-​production, as well as transnational partnerships between international agencies and non-​government organizations (NGOs) (Fung and Wright 2003; Kübler and Schwab 2007; Sørensen and Torfing 2007). Such networks might develop informally to work collectively on an emerging problem or policy failing (Hajer 2003), or they might be established and even steered by the state (Bell and Hindmoor 2009; Innes and Booher 2003). Regardless of their form and function, the rise of networks makes governing today a more complex and interactive process in which the state is just one of many players (Benz and Papadopoulous 2006). Governance networks represent a complicating and confounding trend for democratic theory (Sørensen and Torfing 2007), and deliberative democracy no less. On the one hand, the diffusion of authority opens up considerable space for communicative action among the actors involved. After all, what ties governance networks together is a web of interactions and activities built around shared policy problems, and common understandings (Bogason and Zølner 2007). These network interactions are typically built on trust, reciprocity, and loyalty rather than resource exchange (Blanco, Lowndes, and Prachett 2011), and thus it is conceivable that networks reach decisions more through compromise and deliberation than via majority decisions or bargaining

408    Carolyn M. Hendriks and John Boswell (Papodopoulous and Warrin 2007; Kübler and Schwab 2007). On the other hand, the horizontal mode of governing central to governance networks challenges the stylized vision of a unitary authority running through classical accounts of deliberative democracy (Elster 1997; Bessette 1994). Networks also appear to threaten some key deliberative norms, such as openness and publicity, democratic legitimacy, and accountability (Papodopoulous and Warrin 2007). In this chapter we build on important conceptual and empirical work on the possibilities and tensions that governance networks present to deliberative democracy (e.g. Bevir 2006; Dryzek 2010; Papodopoulous and Warrin 2007). We push these debates further by considering the implications of governance networks for deliberative systems. Overall we argue that networks can make important contributions to deliberative systems, but their exclusive tendencies mean that they should not be understood as entire systems of public deliberation. We explore a number of risks that governance networks pose to deliberative systems and suggest some strategies to minimize their effect. Where possible we draw on relevant empirical examples throughout to illustrate the challenges and opportunities that governance networks present for deliberative systems in practice.

Governance Networks as Deliberative Help, or Hindrance? The relationship between governance networks and deliberative democracy is not straightforward. Intuitively, networks seem to enable certain deliberative norms, but threaten others. Empirical research throws both sets of assumptions into question. From one angle it would seem that there is a natural connection between governance networks and deliberative democracy (see Hajer and Wagenaar 2003). The key logic underpinning this perspective is that governance networks emerge because actors connect and coordinate actions; and language, persuasion, and deliberation are important mediums through which this coordination occurs (Stevenson and Dryzek 2014). Yet it is questionable whether many participants in governance networks can deliberate in the classical sense of being willing to listen with open preferences and engage in respectful, non-​coercive communication involving mutual justification and reflection. Empirical research suggests in some contexts, and for some issues, networks display poor deliberative and participatory qualities, often because their participants are elites with strong agendas. For example, research on Dutch energy reforms found that governance networks were dominated by powerful corporate actors, who tried to limit the scope of policy deliberations to protect their interests (Hendriks 2008). Networks can also be viewed as a potential source of democratic legitimacy, renewal and empowerment because they can engage affected “stakeholders” and citizens in the governing process, and thereby secure democratic legitimacy for policy procedures and outputs (Fung and Wright 2003). However, realizing this in practice may prove

Governance Networks   409 challenging:  actors vary in their capacity and willingness to participate in networks (Papodopoulous and Warrin 2007); and those publics most affected by the activities and decisions of governance networks may be difficult to determine and engage. A common scenario in practice is that many so-​called bottom-​up governance networks are elite and exclusive. For example, Thuesen (2010) studied the composition of fifty-five local action boards involved in rural development in Denmark and found they were mostly composed of well-​educated older men with little or no involvement of local populations. More problematically still, it is not always clear how stakeholder representatives are connected and accountable to those affected by their decisions and governance activities, particularly where issues or activities cross jurisdictional and national boundaries (see Dryzek 2007). Governance networks also appear to violate the deliberative norm of publicity. They typically operate in “non-​public arenas” behind closed doors and in ways that prevent outside scrutiny of decision-​making processes. Their involvement in the more mundane aspects of policy formulation and delivery also mean that many of their activities go unnoticed by social movements and the media. The inherent secrecy of governance networks would seem to be a recipe for the kind of naked interest politics against which deliberative democracy has historically been defined (e.g. Elster 1997). Yet evidence shows that secrecy can help to promote effective deliberation among actors who would be unwilling to reach for common ground under the bright lights of publicity (Naurin 2007). While this is in line with what some theorists have argued (Chambers 2004; Warren and Mansbridge 2013), recent normative thinking on the kind of closed-​ door negotiations that takes place in networks suggests that the deliberative benefits of secrecy need to be balanced with other democratic considerations, such as ensuring adequate representation of affected publics and making decision rationales transparent (Warren and Mansbridge 2013). Attaining these ideals for openness does not appear to be easy in governance networks (Sintomer and De Maillard 2007; Stevensen and Dryzek 2014). An extreme example is the secretive work on counter-​terrorism undertaken by various horizontal governance arrangements operating within and between nations (Boer, Hilldebrand, and Nölke 2008). The picture emerging is that the prospects of democratic deliberation within governance networks are mixed and complex. But recent thinking about deliberative systems (see Parkinson, this volume, Chapter 27) provides an opportunity to think more broadly about the place of governance networks in public deliberation.

What Can Governance Networks Contribute to Deliberative Systems? To be clear on this point, we see governance networks as just one (albeit important) part of broader deliberative systems. A deliberative system is conceptualized here as

410    Carolyn M. Hendriks and John Boswell a series of overlapping communicative spaces that range from informal public spaces of opinion formation through to more formal empowered sites of decision-​making (Mansbridge et  al. 2012). Deliberative systems form around public issues, and they are sustained by the activities and practices of relevant actors and institutions, some of which include governance networks. To understand networks as deliberative systems unto themselves (see Dryzek 2010, 126), would be to bypass many excluded publics, as well as relevant decision-​making institutions that can lie outside network arrangements. Of course, there may be instances where there is little public deliberation beyond networks, for example in a highly technical or obscure policy debate, or in transnational negotiations. However, we contend that such enclosed systems of network governance lack the diversity and openness of a healthy deliberative system—​a theme we return to further below. That governance networks are less than perfect spheres of deliberative democracy does nothing to diminish the idea that they may be vital components of well-​functioning deliberative systems. Given the variety of governance networks, from local collaborations to transnational partnerships, their function in deliberative systems can be understood in different ways. In some circumstances networks might be largely public spaces with few empowered components; in other cases they might operate as empowered centers of authority (Stevenson and Dryzek 2014, ­chapter 5). But wherever they fall along this spectrum, governance networks seem uniquely placed to perform a number of key functions in deliberative systems. First, governance networks can represent important sites where new ideas and programs are generated, promoted, and implemented. They can provide creative and innovative spaces around which actors coalesce to develop ideas and push new concepts. In some networks, actors come together in enclaves to develop and implement concrete solutions to address a mutually agreed upon “problem” (e.g. Kübler and Schwab 2007). Other networks might be more porous and aimed at generating a new public conversation on a pressing public issue (e.g. Hendriks and Grin 2007). While this agenda setting function overlaps with the activities of social movements, the distinct aspect of governance networks is that they are also actively involved in developing and implementing policy solutions. In other words, networks involve actors with not only ideas and agendas, but they can also include those with the resources and authority for them to be implemented. Related to this is the second strength of governance networks: they inform, channel, and focus deliberation on complex issues. One of the key strengths of governance networks is the knowledge, resources, and experience they bring to resolving political problems (Kickert, Klijn, and Koppenjan 1997; Kooiman 1993). According to some scholars these attributes are why networks often deliver more effective and efficient solutions to contemporary policy issues than hierarchical modes of governing (Koppenjan and Klijn, 2004). In terms of public deliberation, networks provide important epistemic value to deliberative systems (Estlund and Landemore, this volume, Chapter 7). Network members can inform the debate with their insider knowledge, data, and

Governance Networks   411 experience. They also provide necessary skills, technology, and capital to enable experimentation and innovation. Third, and most significantly for deliberative systems, governance networks provide opportunities for discursive connectivity. Networks aid the coupling process connecting crucial communicative spaces and discursive spheres involved in resolving a particular policy issue, by bringing together key actors who can represent the claims and concerns expressed among citizens, industry actors, professionals, scientific experts, and so on (Hendriks 2016; Mansbridge et al. 2012). They enable diverse actors to reason with each other in pursuit of shared goals (see Ansell and Nash 2008; Innes and Booher 2003). This is not to say they are typically harmonious—​simply that they tend to be able to deal with or channel contestation more constructively than traditional political institutions (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003). The hope is that in trying to “make sense together” of some of the most complex, uncertain, and contested issues that governments face, actors in networks seek common ground and engage in mutual inquiry and mutual discourse (Hoppe 2010; Hajer and Wagenaar 2003). Finally, in many contexts (though not necessarily in the international arena: see Dryzek 2010, 129) governance networks can help push public deliberation beyond opinion formation into will formation. After all, the actors engaged in networks are typically those tasked with implementing decisions, and thus they are able to move debates from talk into action. The capacity for network actors to produce concrete policy outcomes helps bring legitimacy to public deliberation. One of the criticisms of discrete deliberative forums, such as mini-​publics, is that though they might be highly deliberative they struggle to influence policy outcomes, and this inaction undermines the broader legitimacy of deliberative systems (Parkinson 2006). Governance networks on the other hand are well-​placed to turn political talk into policy action (Dryzek 2010). The reverse can also be true; networks can emerge as a political response to failed policymaking or political inaction (Hajer 2003). Thus, governance networks provide important conduits in deliberative systems both for translating public opinion into will formation and for generating broader public debate when political will fails.

The Risks of Governance Networks for Deliberative Systems It would be naive to think that the democratic fruits of governance networks are always borne in practice. Indeed empirical research reveals that networks suffer from a number of pathologies that pose democratic risks for deliberative systems. Above we discussed how networks can lack deliberative capacity, public legitimacy, and publicity. Below we discuss three particular pathologies that these characteristics of governance networks can pose to deliberative systems more broadly.

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Elitism and Exclusion Governance networks can be elitist and technocratic. In practice many horizontal forms of governing are dominated by various elites from state, non-​state, and sometimes international organizations (e.g. Wätli, Kübler, and Papadopoulos 2004; Hendriks 2008; Stevenson and Dryzek 2014). Typically actors come to participate in governance networks because of their connections and resources, as well as their expertise and skills (Häikiö 2007). For example, in the case of Dutch energy networks, elites overwhelmingly treated the issue of energy as something technical rather than political, and consequently they created networks with those displaying particular expertise, knowledge, and status (Hendriks 2008). As a result, the communication and coordination that occurs among actors in networks typically entails exclusionary norms. They tend to privilege scientific evidence and professional expertise over other sources of knowledge, such as local or cultural custom, or personal experience (see Fischer 2009). In some networks it is the market that binds their collectivity, and this privileges those oriented to profit (Stevenson and Dryzek 2014). This elitist tendency works directly against the democratic hope that networks might “function as public spheres in themselves” (Esmark 2007, 284). But more broadly it provides a veneer of stakeholder representation while excluding the affected interests from meaningful participation in wider debate (Boswell 2014). It raises the prospect that marginalized groups and affected citizens unable to participate, or at least participate effectively, in network arrangements might experience de facto exclusion from the deliberative system—​again something noticeable in the above-​mentioned Dutch example.

Disconnections In addition to excluding the public, networks can also experience difficulties in connecting to empowered spaces. Empirical studies reveal that in practice linking the informal, horizontal world of networks to the hierarchical world of representative democracy is challenging, and full of tensions (e.g. Aars and Fimreite 2005; De Rynck and Voets 2006; Sørensen and Torfing 2003). There are good theoretical reasons for such tensions:  networks confuse the classical separation between state, market, and civil society, and their autonomy can challenge the sovereign power of elected bodies (Sørensen 2006). In practice, governance networks develop alternative ways of deriving representation and legitimacy that may conflict with the traditions and expectations of representative democracy. For example, Chapman and Lowndes (2014) show how “faith representatives” in English urban governance networks sought to legitimate their role by making claims to authenticity (as opposed to authorization and accountability). In this sense governance networks have the potential to disrupt and even fracture deliberative systems because they challenge well-​established democratic norms and practices. In the process of disrupting conventional democratic meanings many network

Governance Networks   413 participants can find themselves in a “democratic soup” in which they experience tensions and contradictions posed by their roles within and outside network arrangements (see Hendriks 2009). To reconcile these tensions networks often have to work hard to legitimate their involvement in the governing processes. For example, in the case of regional governance in the Netherlands, networks needed to show they were credible, competent, and trustworthy (Levelt and Metze 2014).

Co-​Option and Domination There is also a threat that governance networks can become dominated by particular interests. On the one hand, contra the concerns raised above about disconnection between networks and empowered spaces, there is a danger that governance networks can become tools of state domination (Dryzek 2010). A recent study of social policy implementation in the US, for instance, demonstrates how government actors can have a fractured, competitive network of private contractors implement policies of neoliberal paternalism (Schram and Silverman 2012). On the other hand, perhaps a larger and more common danger is that networks become captured by powerful interests outside the state. Since networks remain susceptible to a host of collective action problems, they can be dominated by issue-​specific groups that promote their own agendas, or groups can capture issues from broader public debate (Sørensen 2006). Indeed, in practice network arrangements often serve to further the interests of powerful actors and marginalize the concerns of those most vulnerable (see O’Toole and Meier 2004; Stevenson and Dryzek 2014). A particular concern in private and public–​private partnerships is the privileging of market agency (Stevenson and Dryzek 2014). Either way, co-​option and domination, enabled and reinforced by the clouded accountability and secrecy associated with governance networks (see above), can threaten the broader legitimacy of the deliberative system in which they operate. We turn now to look at strategies by which the potential benefits that governance networks bring to deliberative systems might be enhanced and the risks mitigated.

Making Governance Networks Work in Deliberative Systems Though the idea of the deliberative systems is by no means settled (see Owen and Smith 2015), the essence of the systemic account is that the whole, rather than the constituent parts, ought to take priority when assessing deliberative systems or intervening to enhance them. As such, we argue that ensuring governance networks contribute positively to deliberative systems will, for the most part, mean improving the deliberative and democratic credentials of networks and their arrangements for coordination. We

414    Carolyn M. Hendriks and John Boswell outline some key strategies by which this might be achieved. Having done that, however, we then look at strategies aimed at helping deliberative systems better accommodate, and potentially rectify, the democratic shortcomings of networks.

Strategies to Improve Governance Networks In response to the elitist and exclusive tendencies of governance networks, four main strategies have been proposed to boost their democratic and deliberative prospects. Regulate Networks: A number of proposals have been put forward on how to regulate or meta-​govern networks, but most are aimed at improving efficiency (see Jessop 1998; Kooiman 1993). It is also possible to think about forms of meta-​governance that promote the democratic capacity of networks (see Bevir 2006; Sørensen 2006). The best-​known proposal of this kind is perhaps anchorage, where networks are regulated and actively coordinated by elected representatives (Sørensen and Torfing 2005). The success of this proposal hinges on the degree to which networks and politicians are connected. Empirical research finds that in many contexts elected officials have little contact with networks, either because they intentionally distance themselves (Hendriks 2008) or because they are marginalized in some way (Sørensen 2006; Skelcher et al. 2011). Context also affects the capacity of networks to be anchored in conventional democratic institutions: comparative research finds that consensual democracies are better placed to facilitate linkages between networks and elected representatives than majoritarian democracies (Skelcher et al. 2011). Yet a significant limitation of regulating networks (particularly by the state) is that it could reduce their capacity to independently critique dominant ideas (Dryzek 2010, 127). Make Networks More Plural: Another democratizing proposal that has been put forward is to ensure that networks feature a plurality of voices (Bevir 2006). The greater the plurality of perspectives and experiences, the greater the rationality and legitimacy of networked governance (Dryzek 2010, 133). Practical ways to bring more plurality into networks could involve supporting the affirmative action of under-​represented or marginalized groups, for example of women, ethnic minorities, or youth (Phillips 1995). This strategy poses some risks: participation may be limited to “robust” civil society groups only, or it may co-​opt critical groups, or eventually the network might evolve into an exclusive corporatist arrangement (Warren 2009). Ideally networks avoid these dangers by facilitating the participation of under-​represented groups, and affected publics (Sørensen 2006; Hendriks 2008), in a process of collective problem-​solving through dialogue and deliberation (Dryzek 2010, ­chapter 6). Make Networks More Public: A more radical proposal suggests connecting network structures to more direct forms of citizens’ engagement (Bevir 2006; Hendriks 2009). This proposal seeks to not only empower and broaden the participation of citizens in network arrangements but it would also deepen participation, for example by ensuring that preferences influence outcomes (Fung and Wright 2003). One proposal

Governance Networks   415 here is to use democratic innovations, such as mini-​publics, to formally connect citizens to governance networks (Hendriks 2008; Papadopoulos 2012). Others, such as Dryzek (2010, 133), argue that we need to ensure that public spaces in networks are well-​differentiated from activities in empowered spaces—​a theme we return to below. Make Networks More Deliberative: It is also possible to adjust networks to enhance their contribution to public deliberation. This could involve improving the deliberative skills of network actors, which could thereby enhance their epistemic rigor and capacity for peer review. So, for example, Hajer and Wagenar (2003) suggest developing the problem-​solving and analytic capacity of actors to undertake mutual inquiry, and engage in “deliberative judgment.” The danger here is that this potentially makes networks more technocratic and insular.

Strategies for Adjusting Deliberative Systems for Networks There are likely to be limits to how much we can tinker with governance networks to make them “more democratic and deliberative.” For this reason we need strategies aimed at building the capacity of the entire deliberative system so that it can better mitigate the democratic shortcomings of networks. Direct Publics Towards Networks: One way to accommodate the lack of publicity in networks is to ensure that relevant publics scrutinize their activities and decisions. So, for example, we need to encourage actors in public spaces, such as social movements, and activists to direct their messages and protests to governance networks and not only to traditional decision-​making institutions (Stevensen and Dryzek 2014). Hold Networks To Account: Much of the discussion on democratic anchorage has been about meta-​governing networks through elected representatives. However, from a deliberative systems perspective elected officials represent just one of a number of ways that networks could be held to account. Legislative committees, for example, could become a more active space where network actors have to account publicly for their actions and inactions. This proposal would enable internal network deliberations to remain secretive, but they would have to justify the rationale for their decisions externally to stay accountable and remain under a democratic mandate (Warren and Mansbridge 2013). The problem with this more formal accountability mechanism is that network actors are held to account by elites, but not by the public. For this reason Stevenson and Dryzek (2014) propose establishing accountability chains to ensure that networks demonstrate accountability in empowered spaces as well as in public spaces. In many contexts there is a disconnect between these two spaces when it comes to accountability: elites may speak to elites, and civil society to the public. To bridge these perspectives accountability chains need to be established, for example by the media, think tanks, and academia, so that governance networks are held to account for their collective decisions and for the public outcomes (both good and bad) of their activities.

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Conclusion Policy actors in contemporary governance are increasingly networked, horizontal, and connected. The recognition of mutual problems and interdependence has given rise to networked modes of governing, where diverse state and non-​state actors from businesses, banks, NGOs, churches, interest groups, and international agencies come together to develop and implement policy solutions. While governance networks may violate many classic deliberative norms, from a deliberative systems perspective they perform a number of important roles. They help generate, push, and implement policy agendas, inform deliberation on complex issues, and translate deliberation into policy action. More significantly, networks represent spaces of connection and interdependence: they provide opportunities for linking diverse actors, practices, and institutions within deliberative systems. The capacity of networks to perform these functions is limited by a number of pathologies inherent in the way networks work in contemporary politics, most notably that they can be elite, exclusive, and secretive. Given such tendencies, strategies have been discussed for how to improve the deliberative and democratic capacity of networks, and how to adjust other parts of the deliberative system to better accommodate networks. Finally, it is important to recognize that there is much more to healthy deliberative systems than governance networks. Networks do not contain much of the informal talk and contestatory activities so vital to public deliberation, nor do they always encompass the empowered (decision-​making) spaces of democracies, such as political parties and parliaments. For this reason it is important to ensure that governance networks are connected, and open to, relevant informal and formal spaces of public deliberation.

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418    Carolyn M. Hendriks and John Boswell Jessop, B. (1998). The Rise of Governance and the Risks of Failure:  The Case of Economic Development. International Social Science Journal, 50: 29–​45. Kickert, W. J.  M., Klijn, E.-​ H., and Koppenjan, J. F.  M. (1997). Managing Complex Networks: Strategies for the Public Sector (London: SAGE Publications). Kooiman, J. (1993). Modern Governance: New Government–​Society Interactions (London: SAGE Publications). Koppenjan, J. and Klijn, E.-​H. (2004). Managing Uncertainties in Networks:  A Network Approach to Public Solving and Decision Making (London: Routledge). Kübler, D. and Schwab, B. (2007). New Regionalism in Five Swiss Metropolitan Areas:  An Assessment of Inclusiveness, Deliberation and Democratic Accountability. European Journal of Political Research, 46: 473–​502. Levelt, M. and Metze, T. (2014). The Legitimacy of Regional Governance Networks: Gaining Credibility in the Shadow of Hierarchy. Urban Studies, 51: 2371–​86. Mansbridge, J., Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Christiano, T., Fung, A., Parkinson, J., Thompson, D. F., and Warren, M. E. (2012). A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Systems:  Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–​26. Naurin, D. (2007). Backstage Behavior? Lobbyists in Public and Private Settings in Sweden and the European Union. Comparative Politics, 39: 209–​28. O’Toole, L. and Meier, K. (2004). Desperately Seeking Selznick: Cooptation and the Dark Side of Public Management in Networks. Public Administration Review, 64: 681–​93. Owen, D. and Smith, G. (2015). Survey Article: Deliberation, Democracy, and the Systemic Turn. Journal of Political Philosophy, 23: 213–​34. Papadopoulos, Y. (2012). On the Embeddedness of Deliberative Systems:  Why Elistist Innovations Matter More. In Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 125–​50. Papadopoulos, Y. and Warrin, P. (2007). Are Innovative, Participatory and Deliberative Procedures in Policy Meaking More Democratic and Effective? European Journal of Political Research, 46: 445–​72. Parkinson, J. (2006). Deliberating in the Real World:  Problems of Legitimacy in Deliberative Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Phillips, A. (1995). The Politics of Presence (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Rhodes, R. A. W. (1997). Understanding Governance: Policy Networks, Governance, Reflexivity, and Accountability (Buckingham: Open University Press). Schram, S. and Silverman, B. (2012). The End of Social Work: Neoliberalising Social Policy Implementation. Critical Policy Studies, 6: 128–​45. Sintomer, Y. and De Maillard, J. (2007). The Limits to Local Participation and Deliberation in the French “politique de la ville.” European Journal of Political Research, 46: 503–​29. Skelcher, C., Klijn, E.-​H., Kübler, D., Sørensen, E., and Sullivan, H. (2011). Explaining the Democratic Anchorage of Governance Networks: Evidence from Four European Countries. Administrative Theory and Praxis, 33: 7–​38. Sørensen, E. (2006). Metagovernance:  The Changing Role of Politicians in Processes of Democratic Governance. American Review of Public Administration, 36: 98–​114. Sørensen, E. and Torfing, J. (2003). Network Politics, Political Capital and Democracy. International Journal of Public Administration, 26: 609–​34. Sørensen, E., and Torfing, J. (2005). The Democratic Anchorage of Network Governance. Scandinavian Political Studies, 28: 195–​218.

Governance Networks   419 Sørensen, E. and Torfing, J. (eds) (2007). Theories of Democratic Network Governance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Stevenson, H., and Dryzek, J. S. (2014). Democratizing Global Climate Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Thuesen, A. A. (2010). Is LEADER Elitist or Inclusive? Composition of Danish LAG Boards in the 2007–​2013 Rural Development and Fisheries Programmes. Sociologia Ruralis, 50: 31–​45. Warren, M. E. (2009). Governance-​Driven Democratization. Critical Policy Studies, 3: 3–​13. Warren, M. E. and Mansbridge, J. (2013). Deliberative Negotiation. In Report on the Taskforce on Negotiating Agreement in Politics, ed. J. Mansbridge and C. J. Martin (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association), 86–​120. Wätli, S., Kübler, D., and Papadopoulos, Y. (2004). How Democratic is “Governance”? Lessons from Swiss Drug Policy. Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, 17: 83–​113.

Chapter 26

Deliberati on a nd Citizen Int e re sts John Ferejohn

A deliberative conception of democracy rests on two major values. First, on the input side, it requires equal respect, meaning that every citizen has the right to be heard and, as deliberation moves to a second stage of aggregation, that every citizen’s vote has the same value. Equal respect is a free standing and non-​negotiable political value. Second, on the output side, it requires equal concern. Equal concern is a moral value which requires that each person’s interests are considered equally. In the following, I argue that a good democratic theory will take seriously both of these political and moral values by requiring that political actions (and non-​actions) are taken deliberatively within political institutions.

Folk Democracy: Practice and Theory What I will call the “folk” democratic tradition in the United States is the rough understanding that in my experience most Americans have of democracy. My experience of that understanding may be contested and rebuttable, but it serves here as a starting point for reflection. That folk tradition sees citizens not only as the unique source of political authorization but also as competent to effectively pursue and protect their interests at the ballot box. In this sense, it regards majority decisions taken in elections as the core of legitimate democratic rule. From that perspective, the right to vote is the fundamental democratic right. The assumption is that that the people are competent—​indeed, each person is competent—​to make choices among candidates or choose among policies where popular referenda are available, and that those choices are to be accorded full and equal respect by officials and other citizens, independently of their content. In effect, folk democracy assumes that we will get equal concern for our interests if we can fully implement the requirement of equal respect for our votes.

Deliberation and Citizen Interests    421 Folk democracy insists that representatives remain close to the “people” by exposing themselves and their records in frequent and fairly conducted elections. Elected representatives are expected to act on behalf of their constituents and to explain and justify their plans and actions to them when running for election. The reasons elected representatives offer are directed primarily to their voters, in support of the claim to treat their interests equally and to act faithfully on their behalf. Yet elected representatives cannot do everything in a complicated society: they need to delegate many tasks to specialized administrative agencies. Agencies too are required to give reasons for their most important actions, not in an election but in detailed rulemaking proceedings, a congressional hearing, or in response to an irate letter or phone call from a congressperson or ordinary citizen. These reasons are addressed not only to the people but also to their elected representatives and to intermediate institutions in civil society. The most important justifications appear in written records of policymaking, which then form a record that can be examined and contested in courts. The actual rules or adjudications issued by an agency are supposed to be closely related to the written records of its proceedings, in which the reasons for those rules and adjudications appear. Finally, in the courts, individual judges, who are generally highly insulated from political accountability, are also required to give reasons for what they do or fail to do. This reason-​giving process is regulated internally throughout the court system by other judges, either in higher courts or in lower or parallel courts, which may pay greater or lesser deference to other judicial rulings. It is also regulated externally by individuals and legislatures, who do or do not comply fully with judicial orders or judicially interpreted law, or who vote out the judges or rewrite the laws. As with agencies, the justifications offered by courts in their rulings are supposed to be closely tied to the deliberative proceedings leading to the decision. In court cases, however, higher courts will on appeal look extremely carefully at the reasons given. In this respect, the justificatory burden on courts is higher than that on administrative agencies. Because folk democracy, as I have sketched it, rests on the supposition that political authority ultimately rests with the people, if power is to be exercised other than directly it must be understood as delegated by “the people” in some sense. Folk democracy makes no claim about how much delegation can be justified; it says only that, when authority is delegated to elected or unelected officials, there is an expectation of justification or reason giving in return. It demands that exercises of delegated powers be justified to those subject to them. This demand for reasons is an expression of democratic respect: to be required to give reasons for a decision is to recognize the political claims of citizens to respect as autonomous agents. At the same time, folk democracy also insists on reserving a vital kernel of authority to the people: the power to remove officials from office, directly or indirectly, without any explanation given or required. What kinds of reasons are required from those exercising delegated powers? We may distinguish between reasons directed upwards (or sideways) toward other agents wielding delegated power and reasons directed downward toward those whose powers have been delegated. Folk democracy is especially concerned with reasons directed at

422   John Ferejohn the people themselves. Downwardly directed reasons must explain to citizens why they ought to respect a decision and support the political actor that produced it. Typically, such reasons are directed to showing that the people have conferred the authority to take the action, that the action was reasonable in some weak or strong sense, and that the action did not needlessly trample on individual interests. Reasons of this kind are grounded in the recognition that the people retain ultimate authority and that delegations of authority are limited and conditional. According to the “folk” democratic understanding, then, there is an increasing democratic “deficit” as one moves up the chain of delegation toward courts and away from the people. At the same time, on my account, folk democratic theory also recognizes a kind of deliberative deficit that increases as one moves downward, toward the people. It sees in the exercise of delegated authority a requirement of accountability or justification which, in turn, requires that institutions exercising deliberative powers have adequate deliberative capacities to come justifiably close to discovering the genuine interests of those for whom they are acting, to seek to balance those interests justifiably, and to present public justifications for their actions.1 Folk democracy has, in this respect, an implicit deliberative component:  officials exercising state authority are required to present justifications for their actions in order to compensate for their deficits in direct democratic legitimacy. Responding to these justifications, the citizens have the opportunity to vote out the elected officials or protest to their elected officials regarding the actions of the appointed officials. The requirement of justification from officials is a weak deliberative requirement in at least two senses. First, folk democracy assumes that as long as each person is assured of the right to speak and assemble, they have sufficient voice, in response to these justifications, to assure that their interests are taken into account. Yet because opportunities to speak are in fact unequally distributed, the reason-​giving requirement will tend to justify public actions reflecting that inequality. The literature on deliberation is rife with examples of potential deliberative inequalities. Second, in folk democratic theory deliberation is implicitly mostly externally directed: it concerns justifications offered by decision-​makers to citizens, showing them why they should continue to vote for the decision-​maker or respect their decisions. It is less concerned with deliberation among those involved in making a decision, which I  call internal deliberation. In internal deliberation, members of a decision-​making group present reasons and listen to the reasons given by others in that group. Each should be willing to alter their views when presented with persuasive arguments. This Habermasian idea does not appear significantly in folk democratic theory. In principle, internal and external deliberation should be closely connected. Internally directed deliberation—​giving reasons for prospective actions to co-​deciders—​ought normally to produce reasons that can be given externally as justifications ex post. As part of the apparatus of democratic accountability we expect the reasons for decisions to be transparent to those outside, so that others can offer advice and argument. But I do not think that folk democratic deliberation, by itself, provides that connection.

Deliberation and Citizen Interests    423

Citizen Sovereignty A procedural majoritarian is committed to the idea that some proposition is a law if and only if it is agreed to in a duly constituted majority-​based procedure for making laws. There is no requirement that the lawmakers (or citizens) engage in any kind of deliberation that might lead them to reconsider or revise their initial preferences. On this account decisions reached in this way ought to be respected because citizens are authoritative as to their interests as they interpret them, or at least should be treated as though they are. A second argument for hewing closely to citizen preferences is that because officials are always in a position to abuse their powers, one may want to prevent their too frequently yielding to temptation by insisting that officials return frequently to the citizens to explain their actions and ask for a renewed mandate. Kenneth Arrow (1963) appeared to take the first path. His early and cogent statement of what he called “citizens’ sovereignty” has been followed by many others. He presented citizens’ sovereignty as a natural extension of the idea of consumer sovereignty.2 When he wrote his doctoral dissertation first laying out this idea, he may have thought that consumer sovereignty was uncontroversial as a norm: the individual is in the best position to make choices that affect only their own welfare. Their choices therefore should not be interfered with; they should be sovereign. Even if some individuals are wrong about their interests, it is hard to think of any other actor who would be a more reliable repository of the authority to make their consumption choices. Consumers have to bear the costs of their mistakes. It seems plausible that transferring their right to make consumption choices to experts would lead to worse outcomes. Yet, even in choices that affect only them, it may not be true that individuals are in fact the best judge of what is in their interests. We might be willing to believe this as an empirical claim when it concerns choosing toothpastes or cereals, although even here the claim seems dubiously overbroad. For all the consumer knows, toothpastes could contain carcinogens or harmful nanoparticles. Some brands of toothpaste may also be more effective in cleaning or whitening, no matter which brand you “prefer.” As for preferences over durable goods such as houses or insurance policies, which people purchase rarely and about which they have little relevant experience in choosing, most people cannot be expected to be able to compare options well. So too with life choices that might be expected to shape preferences or identities, such as the choice of profession or college. We assume, therefore, that consumers will be highly motivated to seek out information about the consequences of their choices and to use that information to revise their preferences. Consumers will often seek out intermediaries to remedy informational inadequacies. Sometimes they can turn to government agencies or other authorities to help them learn, if they have fixed interests, what their interests actually are. Some may believe television accounts or exposés of fast food or GMOs. Others may read Consumer Reports or other publications or consult their wiser friends before making a big purchase. Choosing what is actually best for you is hard for anyone; it requires deliberation.

424   John Ferejohn In collective decisions, however, the issue becomes much more troubling. Equal respect requires that society be organized to permit people to make their own self-​ affecting choices. But voting in elections necessarily affects others and often infringes on their interests. If equal respect demands merely that citizens must be free to vote as they think best, then equal respect can lead to very illiberal results. Citizens’ sovereignty is thus a more contestable norm than consumer sovereignty. No one can really think that untutored individuals can reliably make good judgments on arcane matters of state policy. As Schumpeter argued, many of the objects of choice in politics are complex and remote from everyday experience. Moreover, in any polity other than the smallest town, each individual’s vote counts for almost nothing. With so little individual effect over the outcome, it makes little sense for each individual to invest in learning about all the policies that their vote might affect. You don’t get sued, arrested, or even criticized for casting a malevolent or stupid vote. Arrow, no doubt, recognized some of these issues. Accordingly, the citizens’ sovereignty axiom, as he originally formulated it, applied only to the “people” as a whole rather than to individuals. Citizens’ sovereignty, as it was originally formulated in the first edition of his work, required only that the social decision not be “imposed” (either by tradition or by some actor outside the community). Citizens’ sovereignty required only that for each possible decision, x, there must be some preference configuration, or distribution of ballots, that would produce x as the collective decision. In other words, the “people,” collectively, could somehow bring about x by arranging their preferences (or ballots) in a suitable pattern. In the revised edition of his work, Arrow showed that citizens’ sovereignty, together with his other axioms, implies the Pareto principle:  if the people are unanimous in preferring x to y, the social choice must reflect that unanimous preference by placing x over y.3 Unlike citizens’ sovereignty, the Pareto principle has an individualist interpretation: if everyone but me votes for x over y, then the unanimity implicit in the Pareto principle means that I may, with my own vote, be able to influence whether or not x is the social choice.4 That is true for each person. Many have found this feature attractive. The Pareto principle, however, does not seem normatively compelling without further assumptions about the content of individual preferences. First, its implicit unanimity rule favors the status quo. Second, it requires nothing about the content of the preferences. If everyone mistakenly prefers x to y, is that a good reason for society to choose x? The Pareto principle therefore implies nothing about the quality of the decision outcome itself. From a normative viewpoint, any version of citizens’ sovereignty is open to the question of why social choice should be determined by preferences rather interests. Equal respect seems to require that preferences ought to be taken seriously as a subject for deliberation. It does not require that those preferences determine the final decision. Whether x is to be preferred to y by society must depend in some way on whether x or y best furthers some genuine social good (such as equal concern). We expect that, absent structural biases, deliberation will to some noticeable degree lead people to reconsider their preferences and possibly correct those that seem mistaken. This is not a guarantee of course but at least in many settings, collective

Deliberation and Citizen Interests    425 decision-​making appears to have this effect. Thus, although we might not be able to know that x is actually better than y, we might be able to say that one good reason for a society to choose x would be given by the quality of the deliberation preceding the choice of x over alternatives, at least insofar as deliberation tends to correct mistaken preferences.

Democracy and Deliberation Some democratic theorists have argued that elections may (mechanically) tend to produce good public policies. To the extent that their jobs depend on elections, officials will be motivated to learn about which policies will help them win elections, and to coordinate their activities to bring these about. Leaving aside the difficulties of coordination, at best this would only prove that officials will implement popular policies. Whether popular policies tend to be substantively good (satisfying equal concern) depends on something more: something that will produce a tendency for good policies to be or become popular. In theory, and in good practice, deliberation would help move public opinion in the direction of substantively good results. Deliberative theory suggests that we understand preferences cognitively, as opinions or beliefs about our interests, as suggested in the earlier discussion of consumer and citizens’ sovereignty.5 This view—​that preferences are opinions about interests—​fits well with Aristotle’s notion of practical reasoning.6 Aristotle distinguished deliberative speech—​practical reasoning—​from other forms of discourse, identifying it as concerned with choosing which act or policy is best.7 On an Aristotelian account there are two objects of deliberation: ends and means. These two inquiries interact: part of deciding which ends are worthwhile requires a contemplation of the means and, conversely, the choice of means is regulated by the value of the ends.8 Neither task is so simple that citizens (or representatives) can make much progress by themselves on complex issues without some help, especially of organizations specializing in the production of analysis, advice or collective actions (including political parties, the press, voluntary associations, governmental organizations, the Internet and social media). Groups as well as individuals may well have incompatible or incommensurable ends.9 In groups, discussion and argument should be regulated in ways that exhibit equal respect and are also likely to further equal concern. The idea that preferences are opinions about interests does not give us reason to think that deliberation will necessarily lead to agreement or consensus. Whether it does or not depends on the underlying structure of preferences and interests as well as on the nature of the deliberative process itself.10 This idea does not require embracing Condorcet’s theory that, given a greater likelihood than random of each person’s being correct, the more individuals in the decision process the more likely they will be to get the correct answer. From an epistemic point of view elections may not, in fact, be very effective in determining the best candidates or in guiding

426   John Ferejohn us to good laws, because preferences may remain only coarse indications of interests even after deliberation. For that reason, when underlying interests are in conflict, elections may be very inefficient epistemically. Some alternative methods might be better either in determining genuine interests or in finding ways to fulfill them. There is no reason to be optimistic about how well deliberation will work in any absolute sense.11 Yet it may be true that interests tend to be less heterogeneous and more stable than preferences.12 If that is so, it seems reasonable to hope that deliberation will reduce the extent of preference heterogeneity in an electorate or legislature and allow voting to reach better results.13 Preference conflicts may not be eliminated as people learn better what they “really” prefer. Real underlying interests might simply conflict and beliefs about means might polarize as well. In these cases, deliberation might lead to sharper and better-​organized conflicts. Still, if we are to hope that a democracy will produce good laws and policies, encouraging more and better deliberation seems to be the only non-​coercive alternative.

Institutions: Distributed Deliberation Even if we accept that an attractive conception of democracy must be deliberative, the core demand of folk democracy—​that the people retain an essential role in forming, altering, and removing governments—​must nevertheless retain its central place. This demand represents a constraint on the exercise of practical reason to further equal concern for the interests of all when equal concern conflicts with equal respect as embodied in the right to vote. Folk theory insists that the people have the right to fire their officials even if the voters are (as they will be) inadequately informed and often use their votes foolishly. Folk theory also insists that there be frequent elections, that officials pay full attention and respect to electoral expressions by the people (officials who lose elections leave office), and that representative institutions have ample authority to legislate and delegate authority even if their decisions are bad. Finally, it insists that, beyond elections, the people retain the “constituent power”: the power to alter or abolish the whole regime and not merely the government. But, as I argued above, folk theory also has a deliberative component in the idea that delegated authority needs to be justified to the people and to other officials. It recognizes that the pursuit of policies effectively reflecting equal concern may require some amount of expertise or coordination or may need to take place quickly or even, under special circumstances, in secret. Seeing folk democracy as a constraint in pursuing good government does not require that we forgo the advantages of representation. It suggests that we should be reluctant to limit the deliberative capacity of representative institutions, especially if such extensions would jeopardize the prospect of realizing the moral value of equal concern. Constitutions and informal practices ought to encourage the development of deliberative capacities, both inside and outside of government, and regulate those capacities to assure that they are capable of promoting equal concern.

Deliberation and Citizen Interests    427 Parties in the US, for example, are highly regulated compared with those in other advanced democracies, and much of this regulation has been aimed at making them more internally “democratic.” The leaders and active members of parties have, in this way, increasingly lost the power to choose candidates and to control campaigns, while individual candidates, donors, and private associations have tended to supplant political parties as primary sites of political organization and campaigns (Pildes 2014). The libertarian approach to campaign finance adopted in recent Supreme Court decisions has had a great effect on this displacement of parties. Increasingly, relatively small numbers of often anonymous large donors have the capacity to guide the conduct of elections—​ recruiting candidates, supplying them with agendas, and funding their campaigns. One effect of these reforms has been to limit the possibility that the political parties could act as deliberative mechanisms capable of developing a coherent agenda as a basis for political campaigning and getting their candidates to commit to that agenda. If the political party as an intermediary works partly by formulating and articulating a vision of the common interest, then disabling parties as deliberative institutions removes an important mechanism of democratic accountability. Party competition among responsible parties was never as fully available in the United States as it has been in western Europe; other factors (such as federalism and geographic diversity) may continue to prevent it from developing fully. Still, “democratic” reforms have amplified the push toward open and penetrable parties that can be readily captured by various narrow interest groups, cannot get their candidates to commit to a specific common agenda, and fail to structure both internal party deliberation and the external deliberation of the voting public in productive ways. One consequence of undermining the parties’ role in elections in the US has been to weaken them as well in the Congress. The parties have become penetrated by subgroups and caucuses that often have special and inflexible agendas. The result is a Congress that spasmodically responds to special or sectarian interests, or cannot act at all, so that it is increasingly unable to play a constructive role in government. Congress ought to be a deliberative venue in which the value of equal concern is at least part of the coin of discussion. It has instead become a place where members pander to potential donors or their activist constituencies in order to nurse career hopes of ascending to an executive office where they might have a better chance to move their policies forward. One result of neutering Congress has been that effective policymaking has drifted increasingly toward the executive, the courts, or state governments, where it is formulated in less open ways. The general thrust of democratic law ought to be to orient our institutions and practices to vindicate the democratic promise of equal concern while, at the same time respecting citizens equally. This requires that individuals and civil society be able to play a substantial role in deliberating over and advancing equal concern in order to influence elected representatives and appointed officials and to act when their representatives fall short. The existing law of democracy has not weighed such considerations adequately. I believe that the best way to do that is to recognize that our complex democracies are already (and must be) deliberative in important ways. Folk democracy, as I have sketched

428   John Ferejohn it, already (partly) recognizes this fact in the reason-​giving requirements it imposes on courts and agencies. The reform agenda of laws constituting and regulating electoral democracy has been mostly to vindicate equal voting rights and to enhance transparency of policymaking institutions. But it seems that as these worthy goals have been advanced, the deliberative capacities of many institutions, especially the legislature, have eroded. Perhaps this is simply coincidence. But perhaps the effect of making institutions more democratic in the majoritarian sense, and more transparent, has been to produce a contentious politics in which politicians become more unwilling or unable to compromise. In the US, Congress has become so transparent to outside groups—​both highly organized and ideological groups, and narrow economic interest groups—​that career politicians must constantly be aware of having their every move watched and evaluated by those who could challenge them in a primary. On my account, deliberation ought to be distributed and exercised both inside and outside of government. On important decisions affecting many lives, the public needs to argue and discuss matters for some time. This goal may require courts in particular to move gradually in interpreting and helping to specify majority judgments as to what ends should be pursued. For example, the comments of several justices suggest that the U.S. Supreme Court was long disposed to refrain from issuing a general ruling on whether or not gay marriage should be a right available everywhere. The Court seems to have decided instead to let public argument and contestation occur in various states and localities, at least for a time (Hollingsworth v. Perry 2013). They achieved this result by denying the petitioners standing to challenge the ruling of the appellate court, although eventually a majority of the justices concluded that a fundamental injustice needed to be ended (Obergefell v. Hodges 2015). This posture, in which the Court plays a role in fostering deliberation, is similar to the stance it took after the Roe decision on abortion and still takes with respect to state euthanasia laws. Congress has also sometimes taken a similarly restrained stance with respect to deliberations occurring in other institutional and social settings. It has often not been willing (or able) to produce laws on many controversial social issues.14 Administrative agencies too have been building into their structures more venues for citizen deliberation over means and ends, with projects not being implemented until many stakeholders have had the chance to discuss together their common and conflicting goals.15 Distributed deliberation that extends to include a significant cross-​section of the citizenry over time honors both the value of equal respect and that of equal concern.

Notes 1. In some ways folk democratic theory resembles consent theories, for example, which see delegation as unjustified unless grounded on some kind of popular consent, real or hypothetical. Consent theories have in common that they see delegated authority as defective relative to authority directly exercised by the people, and therefore as needing further

Deliberation and Citizen Interests    429 justification. This justification can be provided legalistically, where the authorities show that their actions are justified under the terms of the consent. Or justification may be provided by showing how official actions tend to be in the public interest by, for example, taking advantage of specialized knowledge. Although such delegations may be necessary or advantageous in some ways, the rulers might depart from what was consented to and pursue their own projects instead. Agency problems are as endemic to consent theory as they are to folk theory. The most rigorous consent theory (Rousseau) regards the agency problem as so severe that no delegation of legislative power is admissible. 2. Citizens’ sovereignty, according to Arrow’s (1963) formulation, requires that every feasible outcome can be achieved by a suitable arrangement of citizen preferences. This amounts to saying that arrangements of preferences, by themselves, are sufficient for achieving any possible collective decision. Arrow noted in the second edition of his book that, to establish his theorem, he only needed the axiom to apply to a set of three alternatives. But even though the axiom played a technical role in the theorem, his intuition was broader: social choices should depend only on desires or preferences held by citizens. 3. The Condorcet Jury theorem can be seen a statistical version of this condition: if society is very large and if there is a majority for x over y, then society will choose x almost certainly. 4. I do not have the power, by the Pareto principle alone, to veto the selection of x. Rather, by placing y over x I can weaken the effect of the Pareto condition in situations where, had I placed x above y, it would have forced the social choice of x over y. 5. The idea that preferences are opinions about one’s interests has a diverse pedigree. Rousseau took such a view in the Social Contract when he argued that the general will is a part of each person’s private will (in a political community), noting that each individual had a much more vivid sense of their private will (interest) than of the general will. This led Rousseau to take what is now called an “epistemic” view of voting in elections—​where the point of voting is to sort out a “signal” of the general will from the interfering “noise” of private interests. A similar view may be found in Michael and Becker’s (1973) idea of hedonic consumption, in which consumers are thought to have interests with respect to basic goods which are, to varying extents satisfied by actual commodities (over which they form induced preferences—​which were beliefs or opinions). From the hedonic viewpoint, induced preferences are corrigible. Rational consumers would know this and be willing to revise their preferences as they learn more about how actual commodities map onto basic goods. Or, we could consider Rawls’s idea that there are primary goods over which each of us has genuine interests and which are only contingently related to the commodities or courses of action in the actual phenomenal world. That preferences are opinions about one’s interests is not a new idea. 6. Aristotle’s account of deliberation is complex and connected to his theories of moral education and value. I will not take up these questions here. See Brady, Ferejohn, and Pope 2005 and Ferejohn 1993. 7. By contrast, what Aristotle called forensic speech looks backwards to identify moral harms in need of rectification (and would be guided by norms of theoretical reason). 8. Here I  follow work by Wiggins 1975–​6 and Richardson 1997. I  believe their views track Aristotle’s complex views of ethics on moral education and, in particular, show that practical reasoning is not confined to instrumentalist choices among means to given ends but concerns the specification of ends as well. 9. A  longer paper would explore practical reasoning from the viewpoint of an individual holding incommensurable ends (see Richardson 1997).

430   John Ferejohn 10. Modern deliberative theories are concerned with these issues (see e.g. Cohen 1989). 11. The policy prescriptions of behavioral economists have been relatively successful in part because they are based on rectifying some predictable “mistakes” that consumers make. To my knowledge no parallel application to politics has caught on. One could imagine such an application: suppose it is the case that people are “too likely” (on some believable measure) to support incumbent officials when they know little about the office. One could perhaps conceive of “nudge” strategies that would make the default behavior likely to be in the chooser’s interests. One example might be term limits. I am not endorsing this approach but simply drawing a potential parallel between strategies to improve consumer choice and those to improve citizen choices. 12. What a person’s interests are is controversial among philosophers and, as importantly, politically. Rawls suggested that we have fundamental interests in securing fair shares of liberty and primary goods and in being able to live together with others. In my analysis, each of us has an interest in an adequate level of wellbeing, sufficient to ground our capacities as an effective person and an interest in maintaining the capacity as a moral agent to play a role in shaping our life. In a world of scarcity, however, not everyone’s interests can be completely fulfilled. There may be quite severe and unavoidable trade-​offs among individual and collective interests. In such circumstances, rational people should be open to reconsidering their preferences in light of persuasive arguments as to what is in their interest, including their shared interests. But it is not so clear that they can be as accommodating with respect to their fundamental interests. Because we ought not to expect that interest conflicts can be fully resolved, we will need to resort to some authoritative way of making decisions that accords equal concern and respect to everyone. This implies that, though we may rightly reject aggregating preferences to make these hard decisions, for reasons given above, I do not think that we can reject an aggregative view with regard to conflicts among post-​deliberative interests. 13. Perhaps interests can be represented in a lower dimensional (e.g. single-​peaked) space than preferences. One reading of the historical roll call scaling results of Poole and Rosenthal (2007) suggests this possibility. For some experimental evidence see List et al. 2013. 14. I may depart here somewhat from the views expressed by Richardson, who favors, as I do, what he calls “deep compromise” in controversial areas where people hold incompatible ends. Such compromises, however, seem exceedingly rare and often cannot be counted on when most needed. Shallow compromises of the kind defended by Sunstein (1995) are the usually the best that can be hoped for, at least in the short run. 15. See e.g. Susskind, Gordon, and Zaerpoor, this volume, Chapter 45.

References Arrow, K. (1963). Social Choice and Individual Values (2nd edn, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Brady, D., Ferejohn, J., and Pope, J. (2005). Congress and Civil Rights Policy: An Examination of Endogenous Preferences. In Preferences and Situations:  Points of Intersection Between Historical and Rational Choice Institutionalism, ed. I. Katznelson and B. Weingast (New York: Russell Sage Foundation), 62–​87. Cohen, J. (1989). Deliberative Democracy and Democratic Legitimacy. In The Good Polity: Normative Analysis of the State, ed. A. Hamlin and P. Pettit (Oxford: Blackwell), 17–​34.

Deliberation and Citizen Interests    431 Ferejohn, J. (1993). Must Preferences be Respected in a Democracy? In The Idea of Democracy, ed. D. Copp, J. Hampton, and J. E. Roemer (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press), 231–​44. List, C., Luskin, R., Fishkin, J., and McLean, I. (2013). Deliberation, Single-​Peakedness, and the Possibility of Meaningful Democracy: Evidence from Deliberative Polls. Journal of Politics, 75: 80–​95. Michael, R. T. and Becker, G. S. (1973). On the New Theory of Consumer Behavior. Swedish Journal of Economics, 75: 378–​96. Pildes, R. H. (2014). Romanticizing Democracy, Political Fragmentation, and the Decline of American Government. Yale Law Journal, 124: 804–​52. Poole, K. T. and Rosenthal, H. (2007). Ideology and Congress (2nd edn, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers). Richardson, H. (1997). Practical Reasoning about Final Ends (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press). Sunstein, C. R. (1995). Incompletely Theorized Agreements. Harvard Law Review, 108: 1733–​72. Wiggins, D. (1975–​6). Deliberation and Practical Reason. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 76: 29–​52.

Chapter 27

Deliberativ e Syst e ms John Parkinson

The deliberative systems approach emphasizes a simple point: a single event can feature deliberation of one kind or another, but at anything above the very small scale, democracy can only be a multiple act, multiple stage, and multiple actor drama, no matter what adjective precedes it. Just as life emerges from the complex interplay of non-​living units, or as a song is made up of elements which are not themselves “song,” so deliberative democracy is a complex and dynamic pattern of human practices which are not themselves deliberative democracy. And the deliberative elements are only one, salient part of a deliberative democracy; it requires much else besides. How democracy takes on a specifically deliberative quality, and how that is distinguished from democracies which emphasize other qualities, is one of the main questions currently facing deliberative theorists and empirical researchers alike. It might be that “deliberativeness” is injected into a system by very specific kinds of institution, or it might be that it is a distributed quality that emerges from the complex interplay of various parts. But deliberative systems scholars study “deliberative” as an adjective, and not just “deliberation” as a noun. The systems account has so far been set out most clearly in Parkinson and Mansbridge (2012), but there are antecedents, competing models, cogent criticisms, and new developments. There are some major restatements emerging too, including Bächtiger and Parkinson (forthcoming). Rather than simply review the literature, however, and in the spirit of this handbook, what this chapter does is set out what I see as the major puzzles and choices that face deliberative scholars following the systemic turn. It is structured in terms of a linked, logical progression of questions. The questions start with “What is deliberation?” from a systemic point of view, and the answer pushes back against the tendency to react to critics of deliberation by inflating the concept, something I consider to have been unnecessary and counterproductive. The next question is, “What makes a deliberative system democratic?” and the chapter specifies that a response needs to consider how a system is both “plugged in” to the source of legitimate authority, the demos, and to the outlet of binding collective decisions and executive power. Next,

Deliberative Systems   433 “How should we visualize a deliberative democratic system?” because important analytic and practical consequences arise from different visual images, different underlying metaphorical choices. The final question is, “What produces the deliberative quality?” and the chapter considers two possible answers: that deliberativeness is an additive or summative quality, one “injected” into a process or a system, by designed institutions or common practices; the other an emergent quality which results from the complex interactions of the system as a whole. A preferred approach emerges in the course of answering these four major questions, one which defines deliberation fairly strictly, but which sees it is as one mode of communication among many in a democracy, modes whose value depends on the exigencies of the moment and the context in which they are performed. While there is not space to do more than gesture at a selection of them, the chapter raises a number of more detailed puzzles that arise in systems theory and the answers that my preferred, performative, dynamic, and context-​sensitive approach suggests. They concern the nature of the communicative “stuff ” of deliberation, the centrality of democratic and communicative agency in any given process, the tensions between faithful transmission of entities from site to site and the “transformation” norm; and how all this relates to representation. In sum, the chapter is a call to resist an already-​emerging tendency to think of deliberative systems in rather simple, static, institutional terms; or even as nothing more than a couple of linked micro-​institutions; or a mini-​public set in context. It is also a call to look up from the obsessions of our own subfield: to see deliberative values as just one set of values to be realized in a democracy, and sometimes not the most important ones. And it is a call to reconnect deliberative democracy with expressly political visions, against the tendency to turn it into a manual for technocratic tinkering.

What Is Deliberation? Deliberation is commonly defined as “justification through public argument and reasoning among . . . citizens” (Cohen 1989, 21), or as “changing . . . judgements, preferences and views [through] . . . persuasion rather than coercion, manipulation, or deception” (Dryzek 2000, 1). Deliberative systems theorists claim that deliberation can be, and often is, a distributed feature of democracies—​indeed, that deliberative democracies (as opposed to deliberation, the noun) necessarily feature a division of labor in which different democratic goods and capacities are activated by different institutions. That is, on a systems account, it is impossible for everyone—​or representatives of everyone—​to gather together in a single room to hear all the proposals for action and inaction and reason together to reach a joint conclusion; nonetheless, it is possible to think of deliberative systems in which claims that are generated in one part of a society are heard,

434   John Parkinson connected with evidence, reasons and experiences, and processed into policy choices in other parts. To be more specific, a deliberative system (a) connects claims on public agendas and resources with reasons, which can take a number of forms—​narratives of experience of collective life, evidence gathered by scholarship, claims about practicality, syllogistic argument, and so on—​turning merely symbolic perspectives into more firmly-​held, evidence-​or value-​based positions; (b) involves agents and institutions which systematically listen to these reasons and claims (Dobson 2012) and weigh them against competing ones; and (c) does so visibly (Rummens 2016), with systematic reflection back to claim makers and citizens more generally, in terms they themselves use. That is still somewhat abstract, but the abstraction is deliberate. The systems account is meant to be applicable to a wide variety of contexts and not just the familiar institutions of one or other Western state. It is meant to be applicable to both state-​focused, sub-​state, and trans-​national settings and to highly-​institutionalized as well as ad hoc, transient, issue-​based systems. But it is also meant to have both descriptive and normative bite, alerting analysts to look for elements of deliberation throughout a democratic society rather than ticking off every item of the checklist in a single institution or set of institutions; and providing a standard against which allegedly-​democratic systems can be measured. That “distributed” claim can be distinguished from an argument that deliberation can only be created in particular kinds of institution, and can then be injected into the system by those institutions. I will return to that distinction later, but for the moment I want to problematize the claim that we know what this thing called deliberation is, before we can talk about creation and injection. Consider the relationship between the goals of deliberation and the form it takes. If we think that deliberation should satisfy epistemic goals, then deliberation requires extensive argumentative links, allowing participants to understand the rationales for various claims and positions and to detect potential flaws (Eriksen 2007). But if we think that deliberation should aim at the rapprochement of polarized opinions (Gutmann and Thompson 1996), then such an “argumentative” approach may be counterproductive. In such contexts deliberation needs to be a more creative, collective enterprise, beating paths out of intractable controversies (Mercier and Landemore 2012). Context, too, can alter the meaning of deliberative acts. For example, when there is relatively little separating different perspectives, a respectful remark might indicate considered agreement with another’s claim, but in a highly polarized political setting it can be a signal of willingness to talk with no implication of substantive agreement at all. So, deliberation can either be or mean something different depending on goals and context; or, we are actually talking about two different modes of communication. We can push the latter suspicion even further. For instance, difference democrats following Sanders (1997) and agonists following Mouffe (1999) have long complained that

Deliberative Systems   435 deliberative democrats privilege reason-​giving and respectful listening above all other modes of communication, and have successfully shown that doing so can often be oppressive to those in relatively powerless positions. But the response from many deliberative democrats has been peculiar. Instead of defending their conception, and showing how it relates to other modes of democratic (and undemocratic) communication, they have inflated the concept of deliberation to incorporate the criticisms (for details, see Bächtiger et al. 2010). So, now we get definitions of deliberation which include storytelling, or protest, or rituals of greeting and acknowledgment, and so forth—​I myself have made related claims (Parkinson 2006, 139–​40). Now, in one sense, this conceptual inflation was helpful, even admirable, because it was connected with one of the great strengths of deliberative scholarship: that it has gone out from behind safe, normative walls and looked at how real-​world communication operates, and modified the theory in light of criticism and empirical findings. But concept-​stretching in these particular ways was probably unnecessary, and unhelpful to deliberative democrats’ own cause. If one takes a systemic stance and thinks that different modes of communication have a time and place, then it does not diminish the value of deliberative modes to say that sometimes getting angry and shouting in the face of power is the right thing to do; or to say that demonstrating respect might mean sometimes-​elaborate processes of welcoming and acknowledgment which are not themselves deliberation but a necessary precondition for it—​just as, by the way, we see deliberation as “not itself democracy,” but a necessary element (a point made in different terms by Warren 2017). It does diminish deliberation to claim that these acts are, in themselves, deliberative in some way, because if we stretch the concept this far it encompasses potentially any communicative act, and thus offers nothing distinctive that is not already offered by other approaches. This, to some critics (e.g. Walter 2016), smacks of normative narrow-​mindedness rather than openness to empirics and real-​ world creativity. If we grant that deliberation is one or more “communicative modes” whose precise form and appropriateness depends on goals and context, then one can certainly theorize and analyze the fit between modes, goals, and contexts. Indeed, this is one of the major research opportunities facing deliberative democrats right now, both in theory and in empirical work. One such opportunity is to look at democratic communication as a set of human practices of meaning-​making, persuasion, goal-​clarification, identification and classification, and so on, using a variety of qualitative and quantitative tools borrowed from a wide variety of disciplines (Bächtiger and Parkinson forthcoming; see also Corbett and Boswell 2017). Doing so may allow us to solve what is still a great puzzle for empirical deliberative democrats, and that is the mechanisms by which minds are changed (Dryzek 2017). I suspect that the “minds are changed” framing is misleading: that what actually happens in any political setting, mini-​publics included, is a social, discursive, and symbolic process, not simply a psychological one (e.g. Mercier and Landemore 2012, 247), in which groups attempt to make sense of a situation through the deployment, exchange, testing, and creative reframing of already-​available scripts and symbols. Indeed, democratic practices are symbols in their own right, which

436   John Parkinson have value far beyond the arguments made and recommendations issued (cf. Hajer 2009). The success of these moves will, I think, depend on treating deliberation as a very specific phenomenon, and neither expanding the definition past all recognition, nor denigrating other values and other modes (e.g. Smith 2009).

What Makes a Deliberative System Democratic? Maintaining a more strict, limited definition of deliberation that focuses on mutual reasoning, listening, and justification helps with another important analytic task. While frequently bundled together, it is important to keep the democratic and deliberative qualities of a system separate, otherwise it is too easy to claim, as the Chinese Communist Party does, that a system is democratic simply because it is deliberative: because it processes policy options in a way that connects proposals with argument and evidence in public (e.g. Zhang 2013). The obvious things missing from the Chinese setting are mechanisms by which local democratic decisions can be enforced when real decision power lies elsewhere; and a lack of effective, non-​dominated means for people to make claims, express dissent, or hold representative claim makers accountable (He and Warren 2011). So, adding a set of democratic requirements to the list of three deliberative ones in the previous section produces three further criteria: (d) the listening and reflection functions include the full “pool of perspectives” on an issue (Bohman 2012); (e) agreements reached are decisive in the sense that policy, implemented on the ground, actually changes, and resources are allocated to address the needs; (f) and binding collective agreements, no matter how “working” (Dryzek 2000) or “societal” (Mansbridge et al. 2012) their origins, are subject to formal legitimation either by representatives under a regime of authorization and accountability or directly through referendums (Parkinson 2012). These requirements can be described as “plugging deliberation in at both ends.” To be democratic, a deliberative system needs to be both plugged into the experiences, narratives, deliberations, claims, even the symbols and language, of the relevant demoi at one end; and plugged into the “power socket” at the other, by being decisive in some way. The connection between demoi and deliberation can be achieved in numerous ways that address Owen and Smith’s (2015) criticism that the deliberative systems approach, at least in its “manifesto” incarnation (Mansbridge et al. 2012), appears to have left out citizens. While those means might include the usual deliberative suspects, they may also include mass mobilization through social media or new social movements; the rules of

Deliberative Systems   437 parliamentary committee scrutiny and revision (Uhr 1998); community cabinets and taking parliament on the road (Reddell and Woolcock 2004); rules of media ownership and plurality; constitutional conventions and mass referendums (Suiter, Farrell, and Harris 2016); and so much more. These can be backed by audit and scrutiny institutions like Thompson’s (2010) idea of a citizens’ tribune, or rules like New Zealand’s various constitutional duties to consult with Māori, and a common law requirement that consultation must be “meaningful,” demonstrably prior to any decision having been taken (Cheyne 1999, 214). It is also important to remember the two-​way, relationship-​based representation celebrated by Young (2000) and the related endorsement constraint imposed on unelected representative claim makers by Saward (2010), the thought that some ability to endorse the claims made by representatives is necessary to legitimate the representations. These representative elements should be integral to a systems account. But let us not forget that many small-​scale democratic innovations have inclusion problems too. They involve some, quota-​sampled or stratified, randomly selected citizens; in an event not of their choosing; to answer questions posed to them by others; and while some formats give those few citizens some ability to challenge the agenda, make disruptive recommendations, and some effective voice outside the room, they are all, at the end of the day, tools in the hands of their commissioners, even academic commissioners, set in a context of wider interests and power relations. Indeed, some scholars have read the history of the implementation of deliberative designs in public management contexts as the widespread appropriation of the citizen by bureaucracies for their own ends (see, for example, Fuji Johnson 2015; Mort, Harrison, and Wistow 1996; Parkinson 2004). To paraphrase Gaventa (2006), a democracy must include not only invited spaces, in which the power of invitation rests solely with the already-​powerful; but claimed spaces too, spaces in which all citizens have an absolute right to participate and need not wait for the roll of the random selection dice. The deliberative systems approach is in large measure a response to that appropriation, an attempt to repoliticize deliberation and not allow it to be reduced to an expensive set of tools in an administrative toolkit. The decisiveness issue continues to be a vexed question in deliberative democracy. On the one hand there are those like myself (Parkinson 2012) and Thompson (2008), who argue that a deliberative system must have direct policy consequences, backed by resources and enforcement, if it is to merit the label “democratic.” There are others, notably Goodin and Dryzek (2006) and Niemeyer (2014), who argue that “consequentiality” takes a great many forms, not all of which can be reduced to a decision-​moment with direct impacts. Somewhere in between is Chambers (2012), who says that deliberation must at least be “decision-​oriented.” But notice that there really is less disagreement here than meets the eye, because we are talking about different things: it is not inconsistent to say that a deliberative system must be directly decisive while at the same time arguing that some individual moments within it need not be; indeed, should not be. We can imagine small-​scale forums which should have decision-​making power precisely because they are plugged into the public sphere in a demonstrably inclusive, representative and challengeable way; we can imagine forums which should not be decisive because they

438   John Parkinson lack those features, but whose outputs should nonetheless be taken seriously because they generate well-​deliberated claims based on narratives that are not dominated by the powerful—​and here I am thinking of just about any of the activist-​generated processes celebrated by Stevenson and Dryzek (2014). Note that none of this depends on taking an expansive view of what counts as deliberation or denying the value of non-​deliberative modes of engagement: indeed, in a context of unequal power relations, just opening up the public agenda to get something discussed will almost certainly require a wide variety of communicative modes, and deliberation can be used to shut down debate if used before an issue has become widely salient (Parkinson 2006). To repeat, on the systems view the point is not whether each individual venue in a democracy is itself fully deliberative or fully democratic: it is the contribution to the deliberative and democratic (and other desirable!) qualities of the whole.

How Should We Visualize Deliberative Systems? This brings us to a crucial yet rarely recognized issue: how to visualize a deliberative system. As a discipline which privileges words, political studies generally has been remarkably resistant to thinking about the implicit mental images and metaphors which underlie our models, as if our visual representations of ideas and data do not shape our understandings in important ways (Tufte 1983; see also Black 1962). This is important in the deliberative systems context because one metaphor and its associated visual imagery is already dominating: spatial metaphors represented by network maps (e.g. Cinalli and O´Flynn 2014). Network maps present deliberative systems as venues—​ nodes—​ connected by . . . well, connected by what? The deliberative literature is unclear on this point, even that which attempts to address the question directly (e.g. Ercan, Hendriks, and Boswell 2017), and yet there is a rich literature in computer science debating questions of what nodes and their relative size, proximity, and connections can be used to represent (e.g. Correa and Ma 2011; Freeman 2000). For example, the distance between nodes could represent the degree of shared keywords, or keyword clusters, or discourses; but it could also represent assumptions about communicative power and influence (e.g. Pedrini et al. 2012). There are decisions to be made about what counts as a connection and not a node: for example, are the news media simply channels which pump out whatever is pumped into them, or a set of venues, institutions with their own imperatives, which select, frame, and systematically structure outputs in various ways (Dahlgren 2005)? If they are the latter—​and I think they are—​then what are the connections between nodes meant to be representing? Furthermore, network models are static: they better represent formal or well-​institutionalized relationships, or moments in time of what is otherwise a dynamic and

Deliberative Systems   439 evolving set of relationships. And because they fail to capture dynamics, they tend not to be very good for representing things like critical junctures in a process: moments of collective decision, or an agenda-​setting moment. They assume that such things are functions of institutional roles and powers rather than rich, contested processes in which a number of actors compete. What network diagrams are good at is modeling patterns of communicative inclusion and exclusion, including the theoretically-​important concept of deliberative enclaves (Fraser 1992); they are relatively easy to produce using computerized network analysis tools, especially in social media contexts; and because they can be produced using either organizational linkages (through common memberships or hyperlinks in online networks) or keyword linkages, such analysis can identify the kinds of formal, institutional networks that became so important in public administration following Marsh and Rhodes (1992), as well as the discourse coalitions of Hajer (1993) in which members need not know each other personally or have formal institutional links yet nonetheless share common interests, norms, and storylines. However, there are important competitors to network models in deliberative systems, just as there are important competitors to network models more generally in social science. My own stated preference (Bächtiger and Parkinson forthcoming; Parkinson 2006) is for sequenced models which, instead of modeling formal relationships between venues in a static fashion, start with stages in a decision-​making process, and thus model the dynamics as an idea or claim (or set of claims) passes—​ideally—​ from the informal public sphere into formal processes in which policy options are generated, linked with evidence and arguments, weighed, and tested, before a binding collective decision is made and executive powers coerced into action. Sequential, or rather time-​sensitive, analysis need not be so dependent on an ideal policy sequence, of which there are many, well-​known criticisms. Sequential, dynamic representations have applications to micro research as well (e.g. Mendelberg 2002; Niemeyer 2011)—​although again it might be fruitful to apply a wider range of micro-​dynamic concepts and tools developed in public policy (John 2003), psychology and applied linguistics (Fairhurst 2007), and cultural studies (Swidler 1986). Small-​scale institutions are processes not just venues. The major weakness of sequenced models is that they can often miss peripheral players that network analysis reveals, and so some sort of multi-​dimensional analysis is always going to be required for something as complex as a deliberative system. A more performative analysis would look at the dynamics of symbolic and substantive political engagement over time, as in the groundbreaking work of Hajer (2009). And there are still other alternatives: “sphere” metaphors tend to lead to discourse analyses, but they tend to generate static, slice-​of-​time analyses, when there are superb discourse studies that look at the roles of agents and contextual dynamics in the creation and promotion of discourses, of which, again, Stevenson and Dryzek (2014) stands out as one of the great exemplars. The point is that one’s choice of visual representation has important consequences, and yet deliberative systems work is galloping off in a “network” direction without considering those consequences.

440   John Parkinson

What Produces the Deliberative Quality? There is a movie that will be familiar to just about any student of Australian constitutional law (Irving 2004, 10). The movie is The Castle, about a battle between Everyman, Darryl Kerrigan, and the lawyers for the Melbourne airport company who want his and his neighbors’ homes for expansion purposes. Darryl presses his lawyer, Dennis Denuto, to argue his case in the state Supreme Court, a venue in which Dennis is hopelessly out of his depth. When pressed by the justices to show on which clause of the constitution his case rests, Dennis famously flounders, confused by Roman numerals and unable to point to a single section. Instead, he appeals to the whole thing: “It’s the vibe,” he says. And, with the serendipitous intervention of a senior lawyer and a federal High Court appeal, wins. I raise this not only because it illustrates an important point of constitutional law—​as Irving (2004) points out, the “vibe” of the document can be as important, and indeed more important, than the words on the page—​but also because it neatly parallels what will become a major debate in deliberative democratic scholarship, a debate between what I  have called the “additive” and “summative” views of deliberative democracy (Bächtiger and Parkinson forthcoming; Parkinson 2016). Deliberation in the additive sense is produced by specific methods or institutions which then add it—​inject it, if you will—​into the system more broadly. Many writers like Niemeyer (2014; see also Niemeyer and Jennstål, this volume, Chapter 20) see mini-​publics as the way of adding deliberativeness to a democracy, not just one option among many, not least because of the special conditions they create to “cue” deliberative behavior among ordinary citizens, something of a good in itself, but also because of other qualities like fairness and competence (Renn, Webler, and Wiedemann 1995) that such processes add at the same time. Rawls (1997) famously thought that courts were the venues in which public reason was injected into the public sphere. The systems view expressed by Mansbridge et al. (2012) expresses a more open stance on the kinds of processes and institutions that inject the deliberative quality; but also recognizes that deliberativeness is just one of the qualities we want in a democracy. But there is a second way of thinking about this, and that is to think of the deliberative quality as summative, a quality that is produced by the scale and complexity of a given system, and not simply an ingredient which goes into a system. There is no prior empirical work and precious little theoretical work to go on here,1 and so further analogies help. In music, no one part of a song is itself the song; no part of a symphony is itself “symphony”—​the very word means the growing together of disparate elements to make a harmonious new thing. Dawkins (1986) shows how life emerges from the complex interactions of organic but not “living” material; or how consciousness as we recognize it emerges from the interactions of living cells which are not themselves conscious. Reasoning by analogy, we can think of a deliberative democracy in which none of its

Deliberative Systems   441 component parts meet all the criteria for deliberativeness but which expresses the deliberative quality given particular configurations of its constituent parts. This, by the way, might address Owen and Smith’s (2015) incredulity at the thought of a deliberative system whose parts feature no deliberation as such, although that is to put the claim somewhat differently than I would. What systems theory claims is that a deliberative system can be made up of parts that do not meet all the deliberative criteria at once, not “feature no deliberation.” That is an entirely more plausible proposition and one worth proper empirical investigation. Indeed, I  think that is precisely how deliberative systems scholars ought to think about deliberative democracy. It may be that the highest-​quality moments of micro deliberation are best associated with relatively elite or management-​controlled processes (Lindell et al. 2017), although I think that does a disservice both to everyday deliberation and the internal deliberations of activist networks. But, to some extent, a focus on such deliberative capacities and quality seems to me to miss the point because there is a great deal more to democratic political agency than deliberative capacities. What matters at the large scale is the generation of broad coalitions of differently situated people who come to align around a reasonably well defended (connected with evidence and experience) solution to a commonly felt condition, in the face of powerful interests. That is, a deliberative democracy may well depend on some people sitting and talking carefully among themselves, but also on going out and sharing, building, listening, engaging, cajoling, performing, representing, jockeying for positions, attacking, accusing, scrutinizing, creating, seizing moments, and muddling along, . . . deploying all the political skills to build coalitions of people who eventually say “yes.” Such a system is deliberative to the extent that it connects claims with reasons, and listens and reflects in a visible way; it is democratic to the extent that it includes, decides, and endorses; but this is a system-​level judgment, not one to be made at the level of individuals or venues. It’s the vibe; fed by moments of respect, representation, and co-​creation; and motivated by complex, shape-​shifting (Saward 2014), role-​playing agents.

Conclusion There is so much more that could be said, but in the confines of this chapter I focused on what I see as the major conceptual choices facing deliberative scholars right now, choices which will have many knock-​on effects. To take just one example, the argument that a deliberative system is a more dynamic thing than is suggested by network maps has an impact on whether it makes sense at all to talk about “transmission” in a deliberative system (Boswell, Hendriks, and Ercan 2016). It might be more appropriate to borrow more organic concepts of political ideas and transformation, perhaps from ideational approaches in public policy (John 2003)  or interpretivism more generally (Corbett and Boswell 2017). Doing so might help square two conflicting deliberative requirements: the expectation that a system faithfully transmits ideas, yet also transforms

442   John Parkinson them. Instead of focusing on ideas as fixed entities in the minds of participants, a more cultural focus, perhaps, would look at the processes by which ideas are created, shared, transformed, adapted, combined, and so forth, by agents, in contexts, for purposes. Part of the problem is the “deliberative system” label itself. The term was used because it was already in print (Mansbridge 1999) and reasonably familiar, although the conference in York in 2009 that led to the systems manifesto was called The Deliberative Society, specifically to challenge overly mechanistic interpretations. Dryzek (2011) addressed this issue head-​on in a paper which was originally given at the 2009 conference. Still, just because the label has stuck does not mean that scholars are absolved of responsibility for making conceptual choices and thinking about the metaphors and visual images that go with them. There is a great deal of exciting work to be done, but doing it is going to require deliberative democrats to think about their enterprise anew.

Acknowledgments This chapter owes an enormous debt to André Bächtiger, with whom I developed many of these ideas in Mapping and Measuring Deliberation (Oxford, forthcoming). The substance differs in several respects, however, and so André can take credit for all that makes sense, and is entirely blameless of all that does not. A similar debt and exculpation applies to Marit Hammond with whom I am developing a new understanding of deliberative culture, and numberless but much valued critics who have engaged with these ideas over the last several years.

Note 1. No one has discussed deliberative democracy in such terms, although Pettit (2012) sets out a republican theory of democracy in which he argues that the widespread institutionalization of citizen forums would disperse deliberative norms throughout a polity to the extent that those norms become ingrained in everyday ways of working together. Compare, for example, Bohman (2012, 83) who writes of inclusion via representation as being a “distributed property” of a deliberative system rather than something that is concentrated (imperfectly) in a few institutions.

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Deliberative Systems   443 Bohman, J. (2012). Representation in the Deliberative System. In Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 72–​94. Boswell, J., Hendriks, C., and Ercan, S. (2016). Message Received? Examining Transmission in Deliberative Systems. Critical Policy Studies, 10: 263–​83. Chambers, S. (2012). Deliberation and Mass Democracy. In Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 52–​7 1. Cheyne, C. (1999). After Consultation:  The Challenge Facing Democratic Governance. Political Science, 50: 209–​24. Cinalli, M. and O´Flynn, I. (2014). Public Deliberation, Network Analysis and the Political Integration of Muslims in Britain. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 16: 428–​51. Cohen, J. (1989). Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy. In The Good Polity:  Normative Analysis of the State, ed. A. Hamlin and P. Pettit (Oxford: Blackwell), 17–​34. Corbett, J. and Boswell, J. (2017). Why and How to Compare Deliberative Systems. European Journal of Political Research, 56: 801–​19. Correa, C. and Ma, K.-​L. (2011). Visualizing Social Networks. In Social Network Data Analytics, ed. C. C. Aggarwal (New York: Springer), 307–​26. Dahlgren, P. (2005). The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation. Political Communication, 22: 147–​62. Dawkins, R. (1986). The Blind Watchmaker (Harlow: Longman). Dobson, A. (2012). Listening: The New Democratic Deficit. Political Studies, 60: 843–​59. Dryzek, J. (2000). Deliberative Democracy and Beyond:  Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Dryzek, J. (2011). Global Democratization: Soup, Society, or System? Ethics and International Affairs, 25: 211–​34. Dryzek, J. (2017). The Forum, the System, and the Polity: Three Varieties of Democratic Theory. Political Theory, 45: 610–​36. Ercan, S. A, Hendriks, C. M., and Boswell, J. (2017). Studying Public Deliberation after the Systemic Turn: The Crucial Role for Interpretive Research. Policy and Politics, 45: 195–​212. Eriksen, E. O. (2007). Conceptualising European Public Spheres:  General, Segmented and Strong Publics. In The European Union and the Public Sphere: A Communicative Space in the Making?, ed. J. E. Fossum and P. Schlesinger (London: Routledge), 23–​43. Fairhurst, G. T. (2007). Discursive Leadership: In Conversation with Leadership Psychology (Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications). Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. In Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. C. Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 109–​42. Freeman, L. (2000). Visualizing Social Networks. Journal of Social Structure, 1: Article 1. Fuji Johnson, G. (2015). Democratic Illusion: Deliberative Democracy in Canadian Public Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Gaventa, J. (2006). Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis. IDS Bulletin, 37: 23–​33. Goodin, R. and Dryzek, J. (2006). Deliberative Impacts: The Macro-​Political Uptake of Mini-​ Publics. Politics and Society, 34: 219–​44.

444   John Parkinson Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Hajer, M. (1993). Discourse Coalitions and the Institutionalization of Practice:  The Case of Acid Rain in Britain. In The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning, ed. F. Fischer and J. Forester (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 43–​76. Hajer, M. (2009). Authoritative Governance:  Policy-​ Making in the Age of Mediatization (Oxford: Oxford University Press). He, B. and Warren, M. E. (2011). Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development. Perspectives on Politics, 9: 269–​89. Irving, H. (2004). Five Things to Know about the Australian Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). John, P. (2003). Is there Life after Policy Streams, Advocacy Coalitions, and Punctuations: Using Evolutionary Theory to Explain Policy Change? Policy Studies Journal, 31: 481–​98. Lindell, M., Bächtiger, A., Grönlund, K., Herne, K., Setälä, M., and Wyss, D. (2017). What Drives the Polarization and Moderation of Opinions? Evidence from a Finnish Citizen Deliberation Experiment on Immigration. European Journal of Political Research, 56: 23–​45. Mansbridge, J. (1999). Everyday Talk in the Deliberative System. In Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement, ed. S. Macedo (New  York:  Oxford University Press), 211–​39. Mansbridge, J., Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Christiano, T., Fung, A., Parkinson, J., Thompson, D., and Warren, M. (2012). A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Systems:  Deliberative Deemocracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–​26. Marsh, D. and Rhodes, R. (1992). Policy Networks in British Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Mendelberg, T. (2002). The Deliberative Citizen: Theory and Evidence. In Political Decision Making, Deliberation and Participation (Research in Micropolitics, vol. 6), ed. M. X. Delli Carpini, L. Huddy, and R. Y. Shapiro (Bingley: Emerald), 151–​93. Mercier, H. and Landemore, H. (2012). Reasoning is for Arguing: Understanding the Success and Failures of Deliberation. Political Psychology, 33: 243–​58. Mort, M., Harrison, S., and Wistow, G. (1996). The User Card:  Picking through the Organisational Undergrowth in Health and Social Care. Contemporary Political Studies, 2: 1133–​40. Mouffe, C. (1999). Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism? Social Research, 66: 745–​58. Niemeyer, S. (2011). The Emancipatory Effect of Deliberation: Empirical Lessons from Mini-​ Publics. Politics and Society, 39: 103–​40. Niemeyer, S. (2014). Scaling Up Deliberation to Mass Publics: Harnessing Mini-​Publics in a Deliberative System. In Deliberative Mini-​Publics:  Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process, ed. K. Grönlund, A. Bächtiger, and M. Setälä (Colchester: ECPR Press), 177–​202. Owen, D. and Smith, G. (2015). Survey Article: Deliberation, Democracy, and the Systemic Turn. Journal of Political Philosophy, 23: 213–​34. Parkinson, J. (2004). Why Deliberate? The Encounter between Deliberation and New Public Managers. Public Administration, 82: 377–​95. Parkinson, J. (2006). Deliberating in the Real World:  Problems of Legitimacy in Deliberative Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Deliberative Systems   445 Parkinson, J. (2012). Democratizing Deliberative Systems. In Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 151–​72. Parkinson, J. (2016). Ideas of Constitutions and Deliberative Democracy:  A Conceptual Conclusion. In Constitutional Deliberative Democracy in Europe, ed. M. Reuchamps and J. Suiter (Colchester: ECPR Press), 147–​68. Parkinson, J. and Mansbridge, J. (eds) (2012). Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pedrini, S., Bächtiger, A., and Steenbergen, M. (2012). Deliberative Inclusion of Minorities:  Patterns of Reciprocity among Linguistic Groups in Switzerland. European Political Science Review, 5: 483–​512. Pettit, P. (2012). On the People’s Terms:  A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rawls, J. (1997). The Idea of Public Reason Revisited. University of Chicago Law Review, 94: 765–​807. Reddell, T. and Woolcock, G. (2004). From Consultation to Participatory Governance? A Critical Review of Citizen Engagement Strategies in Queensland. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 63: 75–​87. Renn, O., Webler, T., and Wiedemann, P. M. (1995). Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation:  Evaluating Models for Environmental Discourse (Dordrecht:  Kluwer Academic). Rummens, S. (2016). Legitimacy without Visibility? On the Role of Mini-​Publics in the Democratic System. In Constitutional Deliberative Democracy in Europe, ed. M. Reuchamps and J. Suiter (Colchester: ECPR Press), 129–​46. Sanders, L. (1997). Against Deliberation. Political Theory, 25: 347–​76. Saward, M. (2010). The Representative Claim (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Saward, M. (2014). Shape-​ Shifting Representation. American Political Science Review, 108: 723–​36. Smith, G. (2009). Democratic Innovations:  Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Stevenson, H. and Dryzek, J. (2014). Democratizing Global Climate Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Suiter, J., Farrell, D. and Harris, C. (2016). The Irish Constitutional Convention: A Case of “High Legitimacy”? In Constitutional Deliberative Democracy in Europe, ed. M. Reuchamps and J. Suiter (Colchester: ECPR Press), 33–​52. Swidler, A. (1986). Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies. American Sociological Review, 51: 273–​86. Thompson, D. F. (2008). Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 497–​520. Thompson, D. F. (2010). Representing Future Generations:  Political Presentism and Democratic Trusteeship. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 13: 17–​37. Tufte, E. (1983). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Cheshire,CT: Graphics Press). Uhr, J. (1998). Deliberative Democracy in Australia:  The Changing Place of Parliament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Walter, R. (2016). Rhetoric or Deliberation? The Case for Rhetorical Political Analysis. Political Studies, 65: 300–​15.

446   John Parkinson Warren, M. (2017). When, Where and Why Do We Need Deliberation, Voting, and Other Means of Organizing Democracy? A  Problem-​Based Approach to Democratic Systems. American Political Science Review, 111: 39–​53. Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Zhang, Y. (2013). A Discussion on the Socialist Deliberative Democracy with Chinese Characteristics. Studies in Asian Social Science, 1: 1–​5.

Chapter 28

P olitics in Tra nsl at i on Communication Between Sites of the Deliberative System Michael A. Neblo and Avery White

Over the past decade or so scholars have broadened and revived deliberative democracy’s research agenda by developing its “systemic” interpretation (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012; Neblo 2005). Conceiving of deliberation as a set of institutions and practices distributed throughout society, with different sites playing functionally differentiated roles simultaneously, brings the theory closer to political practice and opens up new normative potentials (Neblo 2015). However, the general turn towards a systemic interpretation of deliberation has also, at least implicitly, issued a substantial theoretical promissory note. Deliberative theorists now owe a detailed specification of what the key sites of deliberation are, how they relate to each other, and how those relations can yield emergent legitimacy, sometimes from practices and institutions that are not obviously deliberative on their face (Owen and Smith 2015). Without such a specific account, deliberative theory becomes problematically protean, leaving its attendant empirical research program unmoored as well as its claims to normative authority unwarranted (Bächtiger et. al. 2010; Neblo 2007). Below we attempt to pay off a substantial portion of this theoretical debt by identifying the key connections between sites in the deliberative system, we elaborate on the conditions that must obtain for the core of the system to function successfully. In doing so, we start with (but amend) Habermas’s notion of the circulation of communicative power in society (Habermas, 1996, 358). Habermas’s two-​track model of the state and civil society insists that the proper circulation of communicative power must both originate from and return to the normative resources of communicative practices in civil society. We do not disagree with this view exactly, in that we agree that ultimately “all government rests on opinion” (Arendt 1970). But we do think that this picture is in need of emendation to account for the fact that the deliberations (and political conflicts) within and among the formal institutions of

448    Michael A. Neblo and Avery White government “stage” the political choices that average citizens can consent to or withhold consent from (Disch 2011). That is, the state and civil society, as well as sub-​sites within them, must remain mutually permeable to each other in the right way. They must be able to receive, interpret, and translate inputs from another site into their own terms, as well as to re-​present such transformations outwardly to further sites in the system. For example, mini-​publics can only serve their legitimating function if they accurately represent the considered beliefs and opinions of the public at large, and can translate those beliefs into some manner of public report that is accessible to both the public at large and the state. Indeed, it may not be too much to say that such translations and representations just are deliberative politics on the systemic conception (Lazer, Neblo, and Esterling 2011). So we seek to clarify how one site in the deliberative system opens itself to influence by another site, translates (or re-​presents) the former’s communicative power on its own terms, and in turn hands off the baton (so to speak), to a further site within the system. We do not have the space to elaborate on every case of such connections, so we focus on what we take to be the key sites of deliberation as well as their key modes and conditions of interaction.

Conditions for Deliberative Influence across the System One issue to note at the outset is that the role a given site plays in a deliberative system is different from whether or to what degree a site is internally democratic or deliberative. Indeed, one of the main points of systemic analysis is that facially non-​deliberative or non-​democratic practices may contribute to a larger system that is more deliberative or democratic than the sum of its parts (Hendriks 2006; Dryzek 2012; Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012). A deliberative system will operate most effectively to produce legitimate, high-​quality decisions when it has a high ratio of signal to noise. Note that this goal can be undermined by either the under-​provision of the signal or the over-​ provision of noise. We analyze the interaction between various sites in a deliberative system using the following general criteria: awareness, translatability, receptivity, and flexibility. These criteria are not exhaustive, but do seem necessary for a deliberative system to achieve “mutual communication that involves weighing and reflecting on preferences, values and interests regarding matters of common concern” (see Introduction, this volume, Chapter 1). Without awareness of other sites in the system, a given site will be unable to interact with other sites. Without translatability, the information that can move between sites without distortion will be limited. Without receptivity, a site is unlikely to take seriously the information it acquires from another site. And without flexibility, it is unlikely that a site can do anything with new information.

Communication Between Sites   449 Once we have established the general characteristics of concern, we can then examine differential applications for particular sites as components of a deliberative system. Awareness: This characteristic refers to the need for sites in a deliberative system to be genuinely aware of each other’s activities in order to circulate communicative power between them. The ideal here would presumably be total knowledge of all other sites in the deliberative system. However, a system could approximate such an ideal in practice through a combination of redundancy and communicative chains. Redundancy would simply entail having multiple sites that fulfill similar purposes, so that the likelihood of being aware of at least one site that fulfills a given function increases. Communicative chains entail the existence of something like a “communication game”; just as a language game consists of a network of concepts that may share a particular meaning without all sharing any given component of that meaning, so too, a deliberative system might operate well without any site being connected to all other sites. Instead, each site would have some connections to other sites, and communicative power could be passed along this chain of connections until it arrived at the proper end point. Awareness seems likely to track closely with publicity—​the more public a given site makes its outputs, the more likely it is that other sites are “aware” of it in the relevant sense. The news media is the pre-​eminent example of this, as their entire function is to increase public awareness of issues of note. Translatability: This characteristic refers to the need for deliberative sites to both understand the products of other sites and to produce understandable products themselves. The ideal here would entail easy and accurate translation from one site to the next. It would also require that outputs be resistant to miscommunication, so as to survive travel through a communicative chain involving multiple sites. There is always the worry that the movement of information through a deliberative system will undergo the kind of mistranslation endemic to a “telephone game,” even if all actors are doing their best to serve as unbiased conduits. So, for example, it is not clear that public desires are translated well by the interest groups who represent the public to the legislature. Easy translation would require not only general simplicity but also the ability to translate across different nomenclatures. Resistance to mistranslation suggests a need for a level of specificity rather than abstraction in outputs. There is thus a tension within translatability between producing simple output while also making sure that the core meaning of the initial input has been maintained. Both require the existence of rules of translations that are shared across sites, or, if there are multiple such rules, the ability for these different language games to communicate with one another. It seems reasonable to suggest, as a general matter, that translation will improve with practice; therefore, the frequency of interaction between sites is likely of great importance. Thus, interest groups might make up some of their translation deficit through their frequent interactions with the state; that is, the information from the public that makes it through the wringer of interest group uptake is more likely to go on to reach the state itself because of the frequency of interest group–​state interaction.

450    Michael A. Neblo and Avery White Receptivity: This characteristic refers to the need for deliberative sites to engage with the products of other sites rather than rejecting them out of hand, and to produce outputs that are likely to be accepted as worth engaging with by other sites. Receptivity obviously falls between the poles of excessive insularity and excessive openness. On the one hand, to ignore the products of other sites in a deliberative system obviously undermines the functioning of that system—​communicative power cannot circulate if a given site becomes a choke point. On the other hand, not all products from one site will be either appropriate or adequate to the needs of another site. As we will explore in the applications below, discernment is therefore necessary for effective receptivity. As a general matter, discernment requires specific knowledge of what the purpose of one’s own site is, as well as enough imagination to conceive of what information might be relevant. Discernment is therefore also likely to improve with practice, though of a different sort than the kind that improves translatability. Instead of practice in interacting with other sites, the necessary practice is in pursuing the site’s own functions under a variety of circumstances, so the full range of relevant (and irrelevant) input becomes more apparent. Flexibility: This characteristic refers to the need for deliberative sites to be able to do something with input from other sites, and to produce outputs that are easy to do things with once they reach other sites. Much like receptivity, the ideal level of flexibility will fall between total rigidity, where there is no room to incorporate new inputs, and total amorphousness, where there is not even the framework necessary to support fitting in new information. Productive flexibility is therefore the product of something like “democratic experimentalism”—​general rules and oversight with local flexibility (Dorf and Sabel 1998). This suggests an important role for creativity in deliberative systems—​ for example, in the interpretation of legislation by the judiciary and administrative bodies when the legislation in question lacks clear guidance.

Key Transfer Sites in the Deliberative System To make the four general characteristics of awareness, translatability, receptivity, and flexibility more operationally concrete, we here sketch their application to a reduced set of core sites within the deliberative system. We develop this account at a level of abstraction that should make translation to particular contexts relatively simple. We directly link the sites within this system sketch with one another, rather than positing more specific intermediary sites that might muddy the waters (Chambers 2003). The deliberative system discussed here forms a loop, moving from citizens through to executive and administrative functions and back again. Clearly, the simplicity of this model does not reflect the real complexities of an actual deliberative system; but it

Communication Between Sites   451 should provide a helpful example that can then be used in considering yet more concrete examples. The point is not to precisely describe the operations of each site in any particular system, or to identify all possible or even important deliberative sites, but to show briefly how the four characteristics discussed in the previous section can be applied to sites as they are described in the model. Each site (Media, Citizens, Parties and Interest Groups, Mini-​Publics, Legislatures, Courts, and the Executive/​Administrate State) will be accompanied by a short description of that site’s “ideal type,” followed by an application of the four characteristics discussed above for the site in question.

The Media In its traditional form, the media serves a unique function within most Western deliberative systems, which is to disseminate information between all other sites. In particular, however, the media serves to inform citizens of the operations of more formal sites of deliberation. Thus, the media takes in the informational components of the outputs of other formal sites of deliberation, repackages that information so as to be legible to citizens, and then disseminates these translations through various channels like the internet, television, radio, and print (Habermas 2006). Awareness: The media needs to be aware both of sites in need of coverage and of possible audiences for a given piece of information. The former task will become more difficult as the sites in need of coverage become less public and less formal—​it is unlikely that even local media will report on neighborhood meetings, for example, even though the results of neighborhood associations might be of interest to other groups. Awareness of audiences will be more or less difficult depending upon the resources of the given media. Translatability: The ability of the media to translate information is its core function, but this does not make the task a simple one. Effective translation will preserve the core informative content of a given input while rendering the message understandable to its eventual audience. This is simplified somewhat in the media’s case by inputs and outputs both being informational rather than requiring translating information into action, which is necessary at many other sites in the deliberative system. Receptivity: For the media, receptivity will refer to whether or not it finds a given source of information credible, and whether or to what degree it caters its offerings to the sensibilities of particular audiences. Media should not, presumably, simply accept any and all information as factual, nor should it cater so much to audiences’ pre-​existing beliefs that even new or surprising information is made to appear less so. Flexibility: Since the core function of the media is translation, flexibility will entail the ability to effectively translate different (fewer or more) kinds of input into (fewer or more) kinds of output. Here, larger media sites will likely have an advantage, as they will have more employees and therefore more chance of having expertise in a variety of areas.

452    Michael A. Neblo and Avery White

Citizens Citizens serve as the beginning and end point of the simple model presented here. At the beginning of the cycle of communicative power, citizens’ public concerns and beliefs serve as inputs for parties, interest groups, and mini-​publics, as well as for courts and legislatures. At the end of the cycle, the executive and administrative aspects of the state produce regulations that are then inputs for citizens’ future behavior—​their “yes/​no” attitudes, producing the opinion on which Madison and Arendt thought that all government rested (Conover and Searing 2005). Awareness: In the present model, citizens need to be aware of the opportunities they have for expressing their various beliefs and desires, and also the various regulations propagated by the administrative state. Both are likely to be difficult given how many different regulations most modern states issue, and how many different opportunities are often available for expressing needs. It is likely that ceteris paribus, citizens will be aware of a few sources of regulation (those that affect them the most) and opportunities for expression (those that deal with especially pressing needs). That said, given the bleak picture painted by political science, it is easy to underestimate citizens’ potential to become aware, engaged, and informed (Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer 2011). Translatability: At the level of input, citizens need to be able to translate the regulations of the administrative state into individual behaviors. At the level of output, citizens must be capable of expressing their beliefs and desires to other sites, especially mini-​publics, parties and interest groups. Furthermore, citizens must be able to turn the former into the latter, that is, to translate the effects of the administrative state into desires and beliefs that can be expressed as outputs. This will likely be the most difficult task, at least if citizens wish to express anything beyond yes/​no position taking. More complex needs will require greater imagination and expertise; these attributes are produced via formal education and work experience in most modern states. Receptivity: The bodies that citizens bring their beliefs and desires to are not themselves simple translation devices, but have their own worldviews that will make them more or less receptive to certain kinds of inputs. Citizens need to be able to tailor their presentations to other sites; this is probably a matter of the frequency of interaction promoting more or less learning. Citizens themselves can also be more or less receptive to the particular regulations propagated by the administrative state—​here, the issue is whether and to what degree administrative bodies can receive actionable feedback from their audiences. Flexibility: For citizens, flexibility refers to the ability to incorporate new regulations into daily behavior, as well as the ability to move between different sites for presenting their beliefs and desires. In addition to mental acuity, flexibility with regard to regulation is likely to improve as a citizen’s access to material and social resources increases; a generally inegalitarian society might therefore witness a great deal of inequality with respect to flexibility as well. Moving between different sites, assuming a citizen is aware of them, will depend on the ability to effectively navigate different cultural milieus.

Communication Between Sites   453

Parties and Interest Groups In the present model, parties and interest groups serve a similar role, which is to take in the concerns and desires of citizens and translate them into platforms that serve as inputs for legislatures. This reflects White and Ypi’s (2011) arguments that (at its best) “Partisanship, unlike factionalism, involves efforts to harness political power not for the benefit of one social group among several but for that of the association as a whole, as this benefit is identified through a particular interpretation of the common good.” Public interest groups can be taken to serve a similar function, at least in the simplified model presented here, whereas general interest groups again try to render citizen desires operationally ready for legislatures, but in a way that is more openly factional (2011, 383). Awareness: On the one hand, parties and interest groups need to be aware of the groups of citizens who require their beliefs and desires to be translated before being presented to the state. These citizens may or may not be aware that their desires and beliefs require such translation, or even exist in the first place. Parties and interest groups thus may be called upon to serve as sites of desire and belief formation, as well as translation. On the other hand, parties and interest groups must have an awareness of which state organs are available and relevant to the citizens who are being represented. Overlooking relevant opportunities or competing for irrelevant ones will reduce parties and interest groups’ efficiency. Translatability: The chief difficulty here is to effectively translate individual beliefs and desires into an aggregate form that can be presented as a unified whole to state agencies. This is made all the more difficult if the parties and interest groups in question take their representative role seriously, rather than cynically building coalitions on false or misleading premises. One means of effective translation in such circumstances, typically employed by interest groups, is to only attempt to represent citizens’ desires and beliefs on a narrow set of issues, thereby decreasing the probability of internecine conflict that comes with attempts at more comprehensive representation. For parties which typically aim at reflecting more comprehensive worldviews, the solution would seem to lie in internal decision procedures that render the party line acceptable to even dissenting members (Invernizzi-​Accetti and Wolkenstein 2017). Receptivity: Parties and interest groups must balance receptivity to the needs of a wide variety of citizens with the need to not expand so much that an unmanageable coalition is created. Furthermore, the outputs of parties and interest groups will need to take forms that legislatures and courts are themselves receptive to, without thereby losing the ability to properly represent constituents. Both tasks will be rendered possible by the parties and interest groups in question having a clear set of foundational principles that set the boundaries within which receptivity can be modified without undermining representativeness. Flexibility: While remaining true to their core mission, parties and interest groups still require enough flexibility to incorporate new concerns from their constituents and new opportunities for advancing those constituents’ interests in the legislature and the

454    Michael A. Neblo and Avery White courts. Just as with receptivity, too much or too little flexibility will undermine parties and interest groups’ representative function. The solution is also similar—​a core set of clearly established practices, with procedures in place to ensure that changes are approved by constituents.

Mini-​P ublics On our account, mini-​publics are bodies that allow citizens to develop their public beliefs and desires in a deliberative setting, which is not typically provided by parties or interest groups. The outputs of mini-​publics then often go on to serve as inputs for legislatures. As Fung (2003) notes, there are a variety of possible forms that mini-​publics might take; what unites them is their emphasis on internal deliberation (see also Fishkin 2011; Minozzi et al. 2015; Neblo et. al. 2010). Awareness: Mini-​publics, insofar as they attempt to reflect general rather than particular interests, must be aware of the composition of the public(s) in need of representation. Furthermore, insofar as mini-​publics tend to aim at adjudication rather than mobilization, awareness of opportunities to access legislatures and courts will likely require more effort than for parties and interest groups. One solution is to utilize mini-​ publics to generate relative consensus on issues that parties and interest groups have already brought to public attention. Another is to employ mini-​publics when legislatures are already aware of an issue and require further information. Translatability: Insofar as deliberation entails the modification of pre-​existing desires and beliefs in light of reason, translatability will entail ensuring that such modification is procedurally legitimate for those involved in the mini-​public and externally valid for those citizens who are being represented. External validity is the less obvious issue, as mini-​publics are explicitly designed to provide procedural legitimacy (Lazer et al. 2015; cf. Lafont 2015; Neblo 2011). But in a deliberative system, if the products of mini-​publics do not translate into external recognition by represented citizens, those products will be legitimate but not recognized as such by large swathes of the population. This will produce tension between parties, interest groups, and mini-​publics as to which group’s translation is the “real” one (Parkinson 2006). Receptivity: Because mini-​publics instantiate relatively idealized circumstances, the issue of receptivity is especially fraught. Regarding inputs, mini-​publics do not recognize pre-​existing desires, but rather desires and beliefs that are the outcome of a deliberative process. It will be of great concern to the wider deliberative system that this process not render mini-​publics too restrictive (Chambers 2002). Regarding outputs, because the product of a well-​run mini-​public makes special claims on legislative attention (cf. Lafont 2015), rendering that product more palatable has the appearance of illegitimacy even if doing so improves uptake. A possible solution is to involve the participants of the mini-​public itself in such strategic considerations.

Communication Between Sites   455 Flexibility: It is important, given concerns regarding translatability and receptivity, that mini-​publics possess adequate flexibility regarding the outcomes of deliberation, whatever they may be. However, too much flexibility might actually serve to exacerbate the problem, as the outcomes of a mini-​public could become too far removed from everyday desires and beliefs. One remedy is to set boundaries for mini-​publics that allow them a great deal of flexibility as long as they remain within the arena of public acceptability.

Legislative The legislature takes input from citizens directly, and from interest groups, parties, and mini-​publics. These inputs inform the process of creating legislation, which legislatures output to the executive and administrative aspects of the state. Of course legislation affects more than simply the administrative state, but it is through administration that most law is translated into effects on citizens’ lives (Bessette 1994). Awareness: As an aspect of the state, the relations of the legislature will likely be more formal than for citizens and institutions of civil society. However, for the legislature to serve its purpose within a deliberative system it is necessary for it to be aware of all the audiences in need of representation, much as mini-​publics must be (Burden et. al. 2007). There will likely be a tension here between representing those citizens who actually voted for a given candidate and those citizens who did not. Furthermore, insofar as the legislature puts laws into action via communication with the executive and administrative functions of the state, awareness of the full range of what are often quite large bureaucracies will also be necessary. This suggests a need for expert support for legislators. Translatability: The legislature has one of the more difficult translation jobs in a deliberative system, as it must translate judgments and desires into laws. This requires translating from informational content into bases for action. It will also often be difficult to write law that is both publicly legible (i.e. simple and written in a vernacular) and specific enough to provide guidance to the administrative state. The solution here would seem to be to write laws that contain both broad and binding provisions and also more specific but more changeable guidance for regulators. Receptivity: The receptivity of the legislature to the demands of various other sites will likely lead to tensions as those different sites present different, perhaps conflicting, proposals. The answer is not to simply respond only to the entreaties of citizens directly; there is no a priori reason why citizens’ perceptions of their needs before they have been translated through mini-​publics, parties, or interest groups should be binding (Esterling, Lazer, and Neblo 2013). The legislature must therefore do its best to balance different sources of information, keeping in mind both these other sites’ strengths and weaknesses and the need to render expressed desire into law in a way that is legitimate and fair. One solution, which many states employ, is to split the legislature into multiple bodies, with each body representing a different subset of the population as a whole.

456    Michael A. Neblo and Avery White Flexibility: For the legislature, flexibility will largely consist of the ability to creatively implement the desires of citizens, parties, interest groups, and mini-​publics. The scope of this creativity will be limited by the available resources of the administrative state, at least in the short term. The general requirement will be for the legislature to take an open mind towards how to achieve different goals. However, maintaining flexibility may require undermining short term possibilities for the sake of the long term—​employing a single agency, like the military, for a variety of goals might lead to a situation in which that agency is the only effectual option, even for tasks quite outside of its ambit.

Judiciary Much like legislatures, courts taken inputs from citizens, as well as interest groups, political parties, and mini-​publics. Citizens, either directly or in groups, serve as the actual parties to court cases; parties, interest groups, and mini-​publics have input via processes like amicus briefs. Also like legislatures, courts produce decisions that then serve as inputs for the administrative state (Nino 1996; Sunstein 1998; Goodin 2008; Hübner Mendes 2013). Awareness: Even more than legislatures, courts are typically accessed through formal means. This formality leads to the concern that the courts will be aware neither of all the relevant problems that they should be solving to live up to their functional role, nor of all the data relevant to resolving the problems of which they are aware. Regarding access to courts, it is notable that the entire responsibility for bringing claims is usually placed upon citizens; that is, they are not encouraged to bring claims by the judiciary. This could lead to systematically overlooking the complaints of those citizens who lack the requisite resources to consistently access courts. There is also the more general issue that courts in the modern era tend to only recognize specific bases of action, rather than the more generally formulated problems that the legislature recognizes. On the side of output, it seems reasonable to require the provision of some expert aid for judges, whose role is not necessarily to be familiar with the entire apparatus of the administrative state. Translatability: Like the legislature, courts are faced with the difficult task of turning the ultimate desires of citizens into law. This task is rendered both more and less difficult by the restrictions that are typically placed upon courts. Further complicating the issue is that there is usually a large role for judicial discretion within these boundaries, which then places the onus of responsibility on the judge to effectively translate citizens’ desires (Mansbridge 2003). It is also the case that the citizens whose desires must be translated are not usually limited to the particular citizens appearing in the courtroom—​the courts are meant to speak for the people at large, at least in some sense, and therefore must consider the wider public. The need to represent the public generally suggests a need for some sort of democratic process to appoint judges, though too frequent or too infrequent democratic inputs could undermine the legitimacy of the judiciary.

Communication Between Sites   457 Receptivity: Courts are quite selective about the information they are receptive to, and intentionally so—​to allow too much discretion would promote capriciousness. However, the need for fair standards should not be the only goal in setting rules of evidence—​the court also needs enough information to fulfill its problem-​solving function. Balancing these two concerns will also be rendered more difficult by newly developed technologies, which tend to constitute sources of both new problems and new information. Flexibility: Courts are inflexible by design. But this lack of flexibility must be balanced against the need for decisions to fit the cases, or more generally for the cure not to be either inadequate or worse than the disease. Just as with the issue of translatability, concerns about unfairness will likely limit the scope of individual judge’s ability to experiment. For the sake of fairness, it seems reasonable to suggest that experiments be carried out at the national level, so that the location of courts does not affect verdicts.

Executive and Administrative In the simple model presented here, the administrative bodies of the state are the final step in the journey of communicative power, at which point the outputs of the legislature and courts are translated into everyday governance that affects the lives of citizens. Awareness: The administrative state will, in the present model, receive its marching orders from the legislature and, to a greater or lesser extent in different systems, the courts. Awareness will be of greater interest when it comes to the output of the administrative state—​regulations, standards, funding, etc.—​which affect the everyday lives of citizens. This kind of awareness will be developed by creating connections between the administrative state and citizens above and beyond regulations themselves, which are the object in need of evaluation. If the administrative state does not develop such connections, it will neither know what are the target populations that must be regulated to put a given law into effect nor receive feedback on how regulations are actually put into practice. Translatability: The administrative state faces translation difficulties regarding both inputs and outputs. With regard to inputs, most laws and court orders will not be written at a level of specificity that leaves no room for interpretation, which must then be conducted by regulatory bodies in a way that comports with the spirit of the initial input. With regard to outputs, regulations must be implemented in such a way that they are sensible to citizens. This will require a level of simplicity so that the regulations are legible, as well as a concern with ensuring that they link up to the perceived needs and desires of citizens. Receptivity: On the one hand, regulation agencies must avoid too little receptivity to either inputs from the courts and the legislature or outputs that regulate citizens—​a lack of receptivity can lead to accusations of the administrative state forming a “deep state.” On the other hand, the administrative state is likely to be the greatest source of expertise

458    Michael A. Neblo and Avery White in the actual conduct of governance within a given deliberative system (Fischer 2009). This means that it would also be problematic if the administrative state is too receptive to inputs or works too hard to make regulations palatable to citizens. Both goals can be achieved through providing feedback—​first, from the administrative state to courts and the legislature, perhaps via the appointment of experts to assist in lawmaking, and second, from citizens to the administrative state (Kahane 2003). Flexibility: The administrative state must retain a high level of flexibility in its ability to accept new directives from the courts and legislature, as otherwise regulations will be ineffective. As mentioned in the section on the legislature, part of the efficacy of the administrative state will depend upon its effective management and funding by the legislature—​an excessive concentration or diffusion of power will undermine regulatory efficacy.

Conclusion The systemic conception of deliberative democracy offers a flexible yet powerful interpretation of the more general family of deliberative theories. Yet that power and flexibility also pose a problem in that the theory threatens to stretch the concept of deliberation beyond its recognizable and distinctive usage. Without a much more concrete and specific elaboration of how the different elements of the deliberative system can, should, and do influence each other in ways that are congruent with our normative aspirations, the approach remains partly notional. We have only been able to sketch the outlines of such an account, but hope to have provided the elements for a larger research agenda to further specify the normative entanglements of the various sites of deliberation, as well the empirical preconditions for enhancing deliberative legitimacy. The promise of deliberative politics resides in the ability of different actors cooperatively translating and representing each other as power circulates through the political system.

References Arendt, H. (1970). On Violence (Orlando, FL: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Bächtiger, A., Niemeyer, S., Neblo, M., Steenbergen, M.R., and Steiner, J. (2010). Disentangling Diversity in Deliberative Democracy:  Competing Theories, Their Blind Spots and Complementarities. Journal of Political Philosophy, 18: 32–​63. Bessette, J. M. (1994). The Mild Voice of Reason: Deliberative Democracy and American National Government (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Burden, C., Hysom, T., Esterling, K. M., Lazer, D., and Neblo, M. (2007). 2007 Gold Mouse Report: Lessons from the Best Web Sites on Capitol Hill (Washington, DC: Congressional Management Foundation).

Communication Between Sites   459 Chambers, S. (2002). Can Procedural Democracy be Radical? In Studies in Contemporary Continental Political Philosophy, ed. D. Ingram (Oxford: Blackwell), 168–​88. Chambers, S. (2003). Deliberative Democratic Theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 6: 307–​26. Conover, P. J. and Searing, D. D. (2005). Studying ‘Everyday Political Talk’ in the Deliberative System. Acta Politica, 40: 269–​83. Disch, L. (2011). Toward a Mobilization Conception of Democratic Representation. American Political Science Review, 105: 100–​14. Dorf, M. C. and Sabel, C. F. (1998). A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism. Columbia Law Review, 98: 267–​473. Dryzek, J. S. (2012). Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Esterling, K. M., Neblo, M. A., and Lazer, D. M. (2011). Means, Motive, and Opportunity in Becoming Informed About Politics:  A Deliberative Field Experiment with Members of Congress and Their Constituents. Public Opinion Quarterly, 75: 483–​503. Esterling, K. M., Lazer, D. M., and Neblo, M. A. (2013). Connecting to Constituents:  The Diffusion of Representation Practices among Congressional Websites. Political Research Quarterly, 66: 102–​14. Fischer, F. (2009). Democracy and Expertise:  Reorienting Policy Inquiry (Oxford:  Oxford University Press). Fishkin, J. S. (2011). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fung, A. (2003). Recipes for Public Spheres:  Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences. Journal of Political Philosophy, 11: 338–​67. Goodin, R. E. (2008). Innovating Democracy:  Democratic Theory and Practice after the Deliberative Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Habermas, J. (2006). Political Communication in Media Society:  Does Democracy Still Enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research. Communication Theory, 16: 411–​26. Hendriks, C. M. (2006). Integrated Deliberation:  Reconciling Civil Society’s Dual Role in Deliberative Democracy. Political Studies, 54: 486–​508. Hübner Mendes, C. (2013). Constitutional Courts and Deliberative Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Invernizzi-​Accetti, C. and Wolkenstein, F. (2017). The Crisis of Party Democracy, Cognitive Mobilization, and the Case for Making Parties More Deliberative. American Political Science Review, 111: 97–​109. Kahane D. (2003). Dispute Resolution and the Politics of Cultural Generalization. Negotiation Journal, 19: 5–​27. Lafont, C. (2015). Deliberation, Participation, and Democratic Legitimacy: Should Deliberative Mini‐Publics Shape Public Policy? Journal of Political Philosophy, 23: 40–​63. Lazer, D., Neblo, M., and Esterling, K. (2011). The Internet and the Madisonian Cycle:  Possibilities and Prospects for Consultative Representation. In Connecting Democracy: Online Consultation and the Flow of Political Communication, ed. S. Coleman and P. M. Shane (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 265–​85.

460    Michael A. Neblo and Avery White Lazer, D. M., Sokhey, A. E., Neblo, M. A., Esterling, K. M., and Kennedy, R. (2015). Expanding the Conversation:  Multiplier Effects from a Deliberative Field Experiment. Political Communication, 32: 552–​73. Mansbridge, J. (2003). Rethinking Representation. American Political Science Review, 97: 515–​28. Minozzi, W., Neblo, M. A., Esterling, K. M., and Lazer, D. M.  J. (2015). Field Experiment Evidence of Substantive, Attributional, and Behavioral Persuasion by Members of Congress in Online Town Halls. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112: 3937–​42. Neblo, M. (2005). Thinking through Democracy:  Between the Theory and Practice of Deliberative Politics. Acta Politica, 40: 169–​81. Neblo, M. A. (2007). Family Disputes: Diversity in Defining and Measuring Deliberation. Swiss Political Science Review, 13: 527–​57. Neblo, M. A. (2011). Deliberation’s Legitimation Crisis:  Reply to Gleason. Critical Review, 23: 405–​19. Neblo, M. A. (2015). Deliberative Democracy Between Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Neblo, M. A., Esterling, K. M., Kennedy, R. P., Lazer, D. M., and Sokhey, A. E. (2010). Who Wants to Deliberate—​and Why? American Political Science Review, 104: 566–​83. Nino, C. S. (1996). The Constitution of Deliberative Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Owen, D. and Smith, G. (2015). Survey Article: Deliberation, Democracy, and the Systemic Turn. Journal of Political Philosophy, 23: 213–​34. Parkinson, J. (2006). Deliberating in the Real World:  Problems of Legitimacy in Deliberative Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Parkinson, J. and Mansbridge, J. (eds) (2012). Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sunstein, C. R. (1993). The Partial Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). White, J. and Ypi, L. (2011). On Partisan Political Justification. American Political Science Review, 105: 281–​96.

P a r t   IV

DE L I B E R AT I V E A P P ROAC H E S W I T H I N DI S C I P L I N E S A N D  F I E L D S

Chapter 29

De mo cratic Del i be rat i on a nd So cial C h oi c e A Review Christian List

In normative political theory, it is widely accepted that democratic decision-​making cannot be reduced to voting alone, but that it requires reasoned and well-​informed discussion by those involved in and/​or subject to the decisions in question, under conditions of equality and respect. In short, democracy requires deliberation (e.g. Cohen 1989; Gutmann and Thompson 1996; Dryzek 2000; Fishkin 2009; Mansbridge et al. 2010). In formal political theory, by contrast, the study of democracy has focused less on deliberation, and more on the aggregation of individual preferences or opinions into collective decisions—​social choices—​typically through voting (e.g. Arrow 1951; Riker 1982; Austen-​Smith and Banks 2000; 2005; Mueller 2003). While the literature on deliberation has an optimistic flavor, the literature on social choice is more mixed. It is centered around several paradoxes and impossibility results showing that collective decision-​ making cannot generally satisfy certain plausible desiderata. Any democratic aggregation rule that we use in practice seems, at best, a compromise. Initially, the two literatures were largely disconnected from each other. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a growing dialogue between them (e.g. Miller 1992; Knight and Johnson 1994; van Mill 1996; Dryzek and List 2003; Landa and Meirowitz 2009). This chapter reviews the connections between the two. Deliberative democratic theory is relevant to social choice theory in that deliberation can complement aggregation and open up an escape route from some of its negative results. Social choice theory is relevant to deliberative democratic theory in that its formal models can shed light on some aspects of deliberation, such as the nature of deliberation-​induced opinion change. The chapter is structured as follows. First I introduce the notions of social choice and deliberation. Then I  discuss several hypotheses on the effects of deliberation on preferences and assess their implications for social choice. Next I  review some

464   Christian List social-​ choice-​ theoretic models of deliberation and consider the mechanisms of deliberation-​induced opinion change. Finally, I address deliberation from the perspective of judgment-​aggregation theory, the branch of social choice theory that focuses on the aggregation of judgments rather than preferences.

The Problem of Social Choice Collective decision-​making is a key feature of social organization, in bodies such as the electorate, legislatures, committees, courts, juries, expert panels, companies, and other organizations. In social choice theory, we model collective decision-​making as the aggregation of individual inputs, such as votes or preferences, into collective outputs, such as collective decisions or collective preferences. In fact, social choice theory can be defined as the study of aggregation. It must not be confused with rational choice theory, the study of individually rational behavior and its collective consequences. The study of aggregation need not be committed to the behavioral assumptions of rational choice theory; in particular, it need not be committed to any “homo economicus” or “self-​ interest” model of decision-​making.

The Basics The central concept of social choice theory is that of an aggregation rule. This is an input–​output scheme—​a function—​which takes as input the votes or preferences across the members of some group and delivers as output a collective decision or collective preference, as illustrated in Figure 29.1. For instance, a group of n individuals might have to make a choice between two options, x and y, such as two candidates, the acceptance or rejection of some proposal, or the guilt or innocence of a defendant. A combination of votes across the group is called

Individual inputs

(individual preferences/opinions/votes on the given decision problem) voting procedure (aggregation rule)

Collective outputs

(collective preferences/opinions/choices on the given decision problem)

Figure 29.1  The aggregative model

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    465 a profile. It is a list of xs and ys whose ith entry stands for the vote of the ith individual. In a three-​member group, the profile represents a situation in which the first two individuals vote for x and the third votes for y. An aggregation rule assigns to each profile a collective decision, which could be either x, or y, or (optionally) a tie. The best-​known example is the majority rule. Here, for each profile, the output is the option (x or y) that is supported by the most votes; it is a tie if votes are equally split. Another example is a supermajority rule. Here, a supermajority (such as 2/​3 or 3/​4 or perhaps everyone) must vote for an option in order for that option to be chosen. A third, undemocratic example is a dictatorship of one individual, where the output always tracks the vote of a fixed individual, regardless of others’ votes. Social choice theory is concerned not just with specific examples of aggregation rules, but with the logical space of all possible aggregation rules. A typical research question is which rules, if any, have certain desirable properties (for a survey, see List 2013).

Some Arguments for the Majority Rule The majority rule has long been seen as the default democratic aggregation rule. Social choice theory offers at least three formal arguments for it, in decisions between two options (see e.g. List 2013, section 2). The first is procedural. It invokes May’s theorem (1952): the majority rule is the only aggregation rule that satisfies four procedural desiderata in a two-​option choice. These are: universal domain, which requires that any possible profile of individual votes be admissible as input; anonymity, which requires equal treatment of all voters; neutrality, which requires equal treatment of the two options; and positive responsiveness, which requires the output to be a positive function of the individual votes. If we consider these desiderata indispensable, then we have a strong reason to use the majority rule. The second argument is outcome-​based. It appeals to the epistemic (“truth-​tracking”) qualities of the majority rule and applies when there is an independent fact of the matter as to which option is “correct.” In a criminal trial, for instance, there is a fact as to whether the defendant is guilty or not. In such cases, Condorcet’s jury theorem shows that if all voters have an equal but independent chance better than random of voting for the correct option, then the majority decision is more likely to be correct than each individual’s vote, and the probability of a correct majority decision converges to 1 as the number of voters increases (e.g. Grofman, Owen, and Feld 1983; List and Goodin 2001). In practice, the theorem’s assumptions—​the independence of voters and their better-​ than-​random reliability—​are hard to achieve, but at least in favorable conditions the majority rule seems good at reaching correct decisions. The third argument is also outcome-​based, but in a utilitarian rather than epistemic way. Suppose each voter gets a utility of 1 if the outcome of the collective decision, again among two options, matches his or her preference, and a utility of 0 otherwise. Then the majority rule selects the utility-​maximizing option, a fact known as the Rae–​Taylor theorem (e.g. Mueller 2003). More generally, the majority rule maximizes the number

466   Christian List of voters whose preferences are satisfied. However, this utilitarian argument for the majority rule only applies if all voters have an equal stake in the decision.1

The Paradoxes and Impossibility Results of Social Choice Theory Condorcet, who had recognized the virtues of the majority rule in two-​option choices, also saw what can go wrong when there are more options: an insight known as Condorcet’s paradox (e.g. Gehrlein 1983; 2006). Suppose there are three options, x, y, and z; a third of the voters prefer x to y to z; a second third prefer y to z to x; and the last third prefer z to x to y. Then there are majorities, of two thirds each, for x over y, for y over z, and for z over x: a preference cycle. Each option is beaten by another option in a majority contest. In such a situation, there is no Condorcet-​winning option: an option that beats, or ties with, every other option in a pairwise majority vote. Furthermore, the majority preferences are intransitive: although x is majority-​preferred to y, and y is majority-​preferred to z, x is not majority-​preferred to z. If an individual had those preferences, he or she would be considered irrational: if I prefer apples to bananas, and bananas to coconuts, then I am rationally required to prefer apples to coconuts as well. Condorcet’s paradox challenges the notion of a majoritarian “will of the people.” The “collective will,” if defined in a majoritarian way, may violate standard requirements of rationality, such as transitivity. Condorcet’s paradox might be considered an isolated artifact. However, a series of influential results in social choice theory, of which Arrow’s impossibility theorem (Arrow 1951) is the most important, suggests that Condorcet’s paradox is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger problem. To explain Arrow’s theorem, suppose that, as before, there are n individuals, and each submits a preference ordering over the options (x, y, z, etc.), ranking them from most to least preferred. Let P1, P2, . . . , Pn denote these n individual preference orderings.2 A preference aggregation rule assigns to each such list, or profile, of preference orderings a resulting collective preference ordering, P, which ranks the options from collectively most to least preferred. Arrow suggested that an acceptable aggregation rule should satisfy at least five desiderata: Universal domain: any possible profile of individual preference orderings is admissible as input. Collective rationality: the output is a well-​defined preference ordering; in particular, there are no cycles as in Condorcet’s paradox. The Pareto principle: if everyone prefers x to y, then x is collectively preferred to y. Independence of irrelevant alternatives: the collective preference between any pair of options, x and y, depends only on the individual preferences between x and y, not on the individual preferences with respect to other options. Non-​dictatorship: there is no fixed individual who always determines the collective preference.

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    467 Arrow’s theorem shows that the five desiderata are mutually inconsistent when there are more than two options: there exists no preference aggregation rule satisfying all of them. In the special case of two options, the majority rule satisfies all five. In practice, then, any aggregation rule must violate at least one desideratum, and this comes at a cost. If an aggregation rule violates universal domain, it does not cope with all possible profiles of preferences and is therefore not robust to pluralism. If it violates collective rationality, it fails to rank the options in a complete order or generates preference cycles, as in Condorcet’s paradox. If it violates the Pareto principle, it sometimes overrules unanimous preferences. If it violates independence of irrelevant alternatives, it has at least two potential defects. The first is a lack of transparency: the collective preference between two options, x and y, may change from one profile to another as a result of changes in preferences with respect to other options, even when everyone’s preferences between x and y remain unchanged. The second defect is vulnerability to strategic voting: a failure of “strategy-​proofness.” Individuals may have opportunities to manipulate the outcome by voting strategically—​a point established more precisely by another classic result:  the Gibbard–​Satterthwaite theorem (Gibbard 1973; Satterthwaite 1975). Finally, if the aggregation rule violates non-​dictatorship, it is outright undemocratic. Riker (1982) interpreted the social-​choice-​theoretic impossibility results as challenging the coherence of any form of democracy that relies on the notion of the “will of the people,” where this is an aggregate of “individual wills” (cf. Coleman and Ferejohn 1986; Cohen 1986; Knight and Johnson 1994; McGann 2006).3 Over the years, Riker’s negative interpretation has become less widely accepted, and social choice theorists, including prominently Sen (e.g. 1998), have devoted much energy to finding escape routes from Arrow’s theorem and related results. They have done so, on the one hand, by showing that there are reasons for relaxing some of Arrow’s desiderata in certain contexts, and on the other hand, by reformulating the problem of social choice, permitting for instance inputs that go beyond rankings of the options. Richer inputs may take the form of cardinal utility assignments, ratings, or judgments (cf. List 2013, sections 4–​5; Balinski and Laraki 2011). Still, one lesson is hard to contest: there does not exist a single, universally best aggregation rule. Choosing an aggregation rule requires trade-​offs between different desiderata, and different solutions to those trade-​offs are appropriate in different contexts.

Democratic Deliberation In contrast to aggregation, which is the merging of different people’s opinions into a single collective output, deliberation, as noted, is the reasoned and well-​informed discussion of these opinions by the people involved, under conditions of equality and respect. There are several definitions of deliberation in the literature, which differ, among other things, in whether they define deliberation as a procedure or as a behavior, and in how idealized they are.

468   Christian List

The Procedure–​Behavior Distinction Just as we distinguish between voting procedures and voting behavior, so we can distinguish between deliberative procedures and deliberative behavior (Landa and Meirowitz 2009).4 Deliberative procedures are settings in which deliberation can take place. If we give voters an opportunity to talk before voting, this is an instance of a deliberative procedure: “first talk, then vote” (e.g. Goodin 2008, ­chapter 6). Deliberative behaviors are the ways in which people actually deliberate: how they treat each other when they communicate, what they say, whether they are truthful or manipulative, whether they change their opinions, and so on. We can now define deliberation either in terms of the procedural setup, for instance as a communication procedure with equal and fair participation, or in terms of the behavior that takes place, for instance as reasoned, well-​informed, and respectful speech. Clearly, there is a connection between procedures and behaviors. Different procedures may lead to different behaviors. The way people deliberate may be affected, for example, by the presence of a moderator or by constraints on the timing and duration of each participant’s speech. Once we have criteria for the behaviors that count as “deliberative,” we can ask which procedures facilitate or promote those behaviors (cf. Landa and Meirowitz 2009).

The Idealism–​Realism Distinction Some definitions of deliberation are more idealized (so that “deliberation” becomes harder to achieve in practice, while perhaps serving as an aspirational ideal), others more realistic (so that “deliberation” is a more common phenomenon). A definition that requires deliberation to generate an “ideal speech situation,” a setting of power-​ free discourse (a notion associated with Habermas), would fall on the idealized side of the spectrum (cf. Bohman and Rehg 2014), as would a definition of deliberation as communication that is fully informed, rational, truthful, oriented towards the common good, egalitarian and respectful, and based on public reasons. By contrast, a definition of deliberation simply as pre-​vote communication, which need not exclude negotiation and self-​interest, would be more realistic (cf. Mansbridge et al. 2010).

A Working Definition I will here adopt a procedural definition that is relatively realistic. I will define deliberation as a communicative procedure, typically in the run-​up to a collective decision, which is designed to promote substantive, balanced, and civil discussion. “Substantive” means that it focuses on the options and the reasons for preferring or dispreferring them (this may include narratives and the sharing of experiences); “balanced” means that it involves different perspectives, arguments, and views; and “civil” means that it is respectful (Fishkin and Luskin 2005; List et al. 2013; Fishkin 2009).

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    469 Individual inputs (individual preferences/opinions on the given decision problem)

deliberative procedure

Collective outputs (collective preferences/opinions/choices on the given decision problem)

Figure 29.2  The pure deliberative model

Pre-deliberation preferences/opinions (on the given decision problem) deliberative procedure

Post-deliberation preferences/opinions (which may be “filtered”/”transformed”) voting procedure (aggregation rule)

Collective outputs (collective preferences/opinions/choices on the given decision problem)

Figure 29.3  The mixed model

We can then explore how deliberation, so defined, might relate to aggregation. According to a “pure deliberative model,” deliberation replaces aggregation, and leads directly to a collective decision: a consensus or a compromise. This stands in contrast to a “mixed model,” according to which deliberation complements aggregation. Here, people first deliberate and then vote. Figures 29.2 and 29.3 illustrate those two models. The comparative baseline is the “pure aggregative model,” as shown in the earlier Figure 29.1.

The Effects of Deliberation on Individual Preferences To assess the different models of decision-​making, it is helpful to compare three hypotheses about the effects of deliberation on preferences. I begin with a very optimistic hypothesis.

470   Christian List

The Consensus Hypothesis: Deliberation Tends to Generate a Consensus If true, this would make the pure deliberative model tenable. Elster (1986, 112) summarizes the idea as follows: “rather than aggregating or filtering preferences, the political system should be set up with a view to changing them by public debate and confrontation. . . . [T]‌here would not be any need for an aggregation mechanism, since a rational discussion would tend to produce unanimous preferences.” As most theorists recognize, however, we cannot rely on deliberation to generate a consensus. Very few real-​world organizations manage to make pure consensus decisions, the Quakers being one often-​cited example. Indeed, if we were to define deliberation as a form of consensus-​generating discussion, real-​world instances of deliberation would be rare. Arguably, a minimal constraint on a realistic definition of deliberation is that it is a contingent matter whether a consensus emerges, not a definitional matter. Since the consensus hypothesis is not generally true under the definition of deliberation I am using, the pure deliberative model is not realistic.

The No-​Helpful-​Change Hypothesis: Deliberation Does not Helpfully Reduce Preference Diversity On a strong version of this hypothesis, people’s opinions on many issues are too entrenched to be open to change in a time-​limited deliberative process. Mackie (2006, 279) describes this as follows: “[P]‌ublic deliberation on a pending item seldom seems to change anyone’s mind. . . . [D]ue to the network [structure of individual opinions], the effects of deliberative persuasion are typically latent, indirect, delayed, or disguised.” While the consensus hypothesis was too optimistic, the “no-​change” hypothesis is too pessimistic. Experience suggests that deliberation sometimes changes people’s minds, and there is some social-​scientific evidence that deliberation promotes reflection and learning, and generates more considered preferences (e.g. Luskin, Fishkin, and Jowell 2002; Barabas 2004; Farrar et al. 2010). In particular, the experimental design of Deliberative Polling, developed by Fishkin and colleagues, allows us to compare people’s opinions before and after deliberation. In a Deliberative Poll, between 130 to 350 randomly chosen members of the public are first interviewed on some policy issue; they then receive carefully balanced briefing materials and participate in a weekend of group deliberation; finally, they are interviewed again, using the same questions as before.5 The results suggest that deliberation tends to change opinions and to make participants better informed, but also that it does not normally generate unanimity. Even if deliberation changes opinions, this may not be enough to solve the problem of social choice. Post-​deliberation preferences still need to be aggregated. As van Mill (1996; 2006) points out, if the deliberative procedure is relatively open, it might lead to post-​deliberation preferences to which the social-​choice-​theoretic paradoxes and

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    471 impossibility results continue to apply. The challenge, he says, is “to discover specific rules [of deliberation] that create stability [in the social-​choice-​theoretic sense] without, at the same time, completely undermining the freedom and equality so necessary for the legitimacy of outcomes. Too much participation and we do not get stability; too little and we end up with an overly constrained system” (1996, 749). If this challenge remains unresolved, we cannot conclude that deliberation facilitates social choice. Interestingly, deliberation might interact with the mechanism underlying Condorcet’s jury theorem. While not generating a consensus, deliberation might increase the reliability of individual opinions in cases where there is an independent fact as to which option is “correct.” At the same time, it might generate interdependencies between different individuals’ opinions. In short, it might helpfully affect voter reliability, but adversely affect voter independence. For a discussion of this trade-​off, see Dietrich and Spiekermann (2013). Let me now turn to a third hypothesis about deliberation’s effects.

The Meta-​Consensus Hypothesis: Deliberation Tends to Generate a Meta-​Consensus, Which is Associated with “Single-​Peaked” Preferences To explain this, first note that, although a full consensus—​a situation of unanimous preferences—​is sufficient for avoiding Condorcet’s paradox and Arrow’s theorem,6 it is not necessary. A certain amount of structure in the occurring profiles of individual preferences is sufficient. Black (1948) identified a relevant structure condition, called “single-​peakedness.” A profile of preference orderings across a group of individuals is single-​peaked if the options can be aligned from left to right such that each individual has an ideal point somewhere on this left–​right axis, with decreasing preference for options as they get more distant, in either direction, from the ideal (cf. Arrow 1951, ­chapter 7). For instance, a voter might most prefer a “leftist” option and prefer other options less as they are further to the right. Another voter might most prefer a “centrist” option and disprefer more extreme options. The left–​right axis relative to which preferences have this structure is called a structuring dimension. “Left” and “right” are geometrical notions here; they could have various meanings:  “progressive” and “conservative,” “urban” and “rural,” “secular” and “religious,” and so on. Figure 29.4 shows a single-​peaked profile of three individual preference orderings over five options, x, y, z, v, w (left–​right aligned in this order), and Figure 29.5 shows a non-​single-​peaked preference ordering.7 Single-​peakedness is a sufficient condition for transitive majority preferences and for the existence of a Condorcet-​winning option, namely the option that is most preferred by the median individual with respect to the relevant structuring dimension. This fact is called the median-​voter theorem.8 Furthermore, suppose we replace Arrow’s universal-​domain desideratum with the requirement that the aggregation rule admit as input only all single-​peaked preference

472   Christian List 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th x

y

z

v

w

Figure 29.4  Single-​peaked preferences

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th x

y

z

v

w

Figure 29.5  Non-​single-​peaked preferences

profiles. The majority rule then satisfies all of Arrow’s other desiderata. A similar point can be made with regard to the Gibbard–​Satterthwaite theorem on strategy-​proof aggregation. On the domain of single-​peaked preference profiles, the majority rule (along with other “median voting rules”) is not vulnerable to strategic voting (Moulin 1980). Moreover, as discussed later, even if a high enough proportion of the individuals have single-​peaked preferences, cyclical majority preferences are unlikely (Niemi 1969). So, if deliberation generates single-​peaked preferences, then it will open up an escape route from the paradoxes and impossibility results of social choice theory. Riker, who had emphasized the social-​choice-​theoretic challenge for democracy, accepted this conditional claim, writing: “[i]‌f, by reason of discussion, debate, civic education, and political socialization, voters have a common view of the political dimension (as evidenced by single-​peakedness), then a transitive outcome is guaranteed” (1982, 128). But he suggested that the effect would occur only for “issues of minor importance.” Several scholars, however, have defended the “if ” part of the conditional and argued that deliberation, at least under favorable conditions, can be expected to produce single-​peaked preferences (Miller 1992; Dryzek and List 2003; cf. Knight and Johnson 1994).9 Why? A possible mechanism involves a deliberation-​induced “meta-​consensus.” Although deliberation is unlikely to generate unanimity—​a “substantive consensus”—​it may generate an agreement on a common dimension in terms of which to conceptualize the issue and along which preferences will become single-​peaked: a “meta-​consensus.” (See List 2002 on “substantive” versus “meta-​level” agreement; cf. Dryzek and List 2003.10) For example, a group of deliberators may fail to agree on how to rank the

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    473 options, but come to agree that their disagreement concerns a trade-​off between the economy and the environment. The following three-​part hypothesis summarizes the proposed mechanism (quoting List 2007):11 (1) Group deliberation leads people to identify a common (semantic) issue dimension in terms of which to conceptualize the decision problem at stake [such as socio-​economic left versus right, secular versus religious, or urban versus rural]. (2) For a given such issue dimension, group deliberation leads people to agree on how the decision options are aligned from left to right with respect to that issue dimension; so people determine which (geometric) structuring dimension best represents the given (semantic) issue dimension. (3) Once a (semantic) issue dimension and a corresponding (geometric) structuring dimension have been identified as relevant, group deliberation leads each individual to determine a most preferred position (his or her “peak”) on that dimension, with decreasing preference as options get increasingly distant from the most preferred position. If this mechanism works, it supports the mixed decision model of Figure 29.3: deliberation followed by aggregation.12 (For a critical discussion, see Ottonelli and Porello 2013. For a formalization of the mechanism in dynamic logic, see Goldbach 2015. On the relationship between a common semantic issue dimension and single-​peakedness, see Porello 2016.)

Empirical Evidence and Assessment Data from Deliberative Polls support the hypothesis just discussed (List et  al. 2013; Farrar et al. 2010). Deliberative Polls enable us to compare the participants’ preferences before and after deliberation. The relevant study covered nine polls, discussing thirteen issues, from energy provision in Texas to the future of the monarchy in Australia. The finding was that post-​deliberation preferences tended to be closer to single-​peaked than pre-​deliberation preferences. Specifically, the study measured proximity to single-​ peakedness (as defined by Niemi 1969): the proportion of individuals whose preferences are single-​peaked relative to a common structuring dimension. The increases in proximity to single-​peakedness were greater for low-​salience issues (such as energy provision), on which people’s opinions were presumably less entrenched, than for high-​salience issues (such as the monarchy), on which people were presumably more opinionated. The increases were also greater for issues that more readily lend themselves to a unidimensional conceptualization. And the increases were greater for the subsamples of participants who emerged from the deliberation better informed, as judged from their answers to some factual questions. It remains an open question whether deliberation would also generate single-​ peaked preferences on issues beyond those covered in the study, and how scalable the

474   Christian List mechanism is, i.e. whether the effect could occur in larger groups or in the electorate as a whole, for instance as a result of a nation-​wide “deliberation day,” as proposed by Ackerman and Fishkin (2002). One might also wonder whether the phenomenon of deliberation-​induced single-​ peakedness is consistent with another frequently documented effect of deliberation: group polarization. Deliberating groups sometimes take more extreme positions after deliberation than before (Sunstein 2002). A mildly conservative group might become strongly conservative; a mildly progressive group might become strongly progressive. However, group polarization has been observed especially in homogeneous groups, as distinct from the more heterogeneous groups of the Deliberative Polls and other groups that are reasonably representative of the general public. Heterogeneity reduces the risk of creating an echo chamber in which prior opinions are simply reinforced.13 That said, increases in proximity to single-​peakedness are consistent with increases in polarization. Preferences can be both single-​peaked and polarized. Another common objection to the hypothesis of deliberation-​ induced single-​ peakedness is that single-​peakedness is a very demanding condition, and many issues do not lend themselves to a unidimensional conceptualization (e.g. Aldred 2004). However, other less demanding structure conditions on preferences are still sufficient for avoiding majority cycles, but easier to attain than single-​peakedness. An example is “triplewise value restriction” (Sen 1966), which requires that, among every triple of options, one option is never ranked top, or never ranked middle, or never ranked bottom. Unidimensionality is not required for this. A second example is “aggregate ideological consistency” (Feld and Grofman 1988), which secures a majority preference ordering that is single-​peaked relative to a single dimension while not requiring individual preference orderings to be single-​peaked relative to the same dimension. As Sen (1966, 498) notes, “[a]‌comparatively limited measure of agreement seems to be sufficient to guarantee consistent majority decisions.” The deliberative-​democracy literature has perhaps focused more on single-​peakedness than on other structure conditions because it is easier to hypothesize a mechanism by which deliberation might generate single-​peakedness (given its interpretability in terms of a common issue dimension) than to hypothesize a similar mechanism for the alternative conditions.

Deliberation and the Probability of Majority Cycles Finally, it is worth noting that, in combinatorial terms, the avoidance of cycles via the structuration of preferences is less difficult than one might think. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that individual preferences are drawn from a uniform distribution over all possible preference orderings. For example, when there are three options, there are six logically possible strict orderings, and each individual would then have a probability of 1/​6 of holding each of them. The resulting probability distribution over preference profiles is called an impartial culture (e.g. Gehrlein 1983). It is known that this distribution maximizes the probability of majority cycles (Tsetlin, Regenwetter, and Grofman

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    475 2003). Calculations further suggest that, given an impartial culture, the probability of a majority cycle increases as the number of options increases and also as the number of voters increases (Gehrlein 1983). But one striking point is often overlooked. Not only do slight increases in proximity to single-​peakedness, compared to the baseline of an impartial culture, reduce the probability of cycles (Niemi 1969; cf. Gehrlein, Lepelley, and Moyouwou 2015). But it can also be shown that very slight systematic deviations from the impartial-​culture distribution can have the same effect in a large electorate (List and Goodin 2001, Appendix 3). In the three-​option example, if each individual’s probability of holding each of the six possible preference orderings is not uniformly 1/​6, but a little above 1/​6 for some orderings and a little below 1/​6 for suitable others, then the probability of a majority cycle converges to zero as the number of voters increases. Thus the prediction of a sizeable probability of cycles under an impartial culture is a “knife-​edge” result. To be sure, one can also construct deviations from an impartial-​culture distribution that do not have this cycle-​avoiding effect, but these are arguably more contrived than the deviations that reduce the probability of cycles. Indeed, several recent studies suggest that cycles are empirically rare, and that they should be theoretically expected to be rare, even outside deliberative settings (Mackie 2003; Regenwetter et al. 2006; Gehrlein 2006; Gehrlein and Lepelley 2011). Cycles are probable only when preference diversity is very symmetrical, as it is under an impartial-​culture distribution, and suitable structures in the distribution of preferences that break this symmetry can reduce their probability. It is not implausible that deliberation could have such a structuration effect.

Formal Models of Deliberation I have discussed the idea that deliberation can change individual opinions. I will now review several social-​choice-​theoretically inspired models of deliberation and say more about the mechanisms of deliberation-​induced opinion change.

A Model of Deliberation as Preference Transformation I begin with a simple model adapted from List (2011b). In this model, people enter the deliberative procedure with their pre-​deliberation preferences and emerge from it with their post-​deliberation preferences. As before, each individual’s preferences take the form of a ranking of the options from most to least preferred. The model assumes functionality: the deliberative procedure is represented by a function which maps each profile of pre-​deliberation preference orderings across an n-​member group to a resulting profile of post-​deliberation preference orderings , as shown in Figure 29.6. Call such a function a preference transformation function. It

476   Christian List Pre-deliberation preferences/opinions (on the given decision problem) deliberative procedure (transformation function)

Post-deliberation preferences/opinions (on the given decision problem)

Figure 29.6  Deliberation as preference transformation

captures the relationship between pre-​deliberation inputs and post-​deliberation outputs from a bird’s-​eye perspective. Here are some baseline desiderata that we might expect a preference transformation function to satisfy. Universal domain: any possible profile of individual preference orderings is admissible as input. Post-​deliberation rationality:  the output is a profile of well-​defined preference orderings. Consensus preservation: in cases of pre-​deliberation unanimity (where P1 = P2 =  . . .  = Pn), the unanimous agreement is preserved after deliberation. Minimal relevance: the individuals do not always ignore their pre-​deliberation preferences in forming their post-​deliberation preferences.14 Finally, pairwise independence: the post-​deliberation preferences for any pair of options depend only on the pre-​deliberation preferences for that pair; this ensures “strategy-​proofness” of the deliberative process. A theorem proved in List (2011b) implies that, when there are more than two options, there is only one preference transformation function that satisfies all five desiderata, namely the trivial function under which there is no preference change at all (i.e. P*1 = P1, P*2 = P2, P*3 = P3, and so on). In the special case of only two options, deference to the majority preference is a non-​trivial transformation function that satisfies all five desiderata. As with other impossibility results, we should not over-​interpret this result, but view it as telling us something about the desiderata that a deliberative procedure could or could not satisfy. For instance, pairwise independence is arguably too restrictive. Plausibly, deliberation is holistic: an individual’s post-​deliberation preference between two options may depend on what he or she learns about others’ pre-​deliberation preferences for third options. The downside of this holism is that deliberation may be vulnerable to strategic misrepresentation of preferences. Whether this is a serious problem will depend on a number of empirical facts, such as the participants’ motivations and dispositions. Likewise, there may be situations in which a deliberative procedure need not satisfy some of the other desiderata. We may be prepared to relax universal domain in cases in which we can assume a certain level of pre-​deliberation agreement. And we may be prepared to relax post-​deliberation rationality if a complete ranking of the options by the deliberators is not required.

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    477 A different response is to challenge the assumption of functionality. Are post-​ deliberation preferences really fully determined by pre-​deliberation preferences, as functionality requires? Or is deliberation an indeterministic or stochastic process? One way to relax functionality without denying that the output of the deliberation is determined by its input is to argue that post-​deliberation preferences depend on a richer input, beyond pre-​deliberation preferences. The enriched input might include the participants’ information and/​or their reasons for preferring or dispreferring the options. However, enriching the input of deliberation does not automatically allow us to bypass the present impossibility theorem. A variant also holds when the inputs and outputs take the form of judgments rather than preferences (List 2011b).15

A Model of Deliberation and Aggregation While the model just discussed represents the transformation of preferences without modeling their subsequent aggregation, a combined model of preference transformation and aggregation has been developed by Perote-​Peña and Piggins (2015). In this model, a deliberation stage at which preferences are transformed is followed by a voting stage at which preferences are aggregated, as in Figure 29.3 above. Unlike most social choice theorists, who adopt a non-​cognitivist (desire or taste) interpretation of preferences, Perote-​Peña and Piggins assume that each individual’s preference ordering represents his or her beliefs as to how good the options are from the perspective of the group, where there exists a true objective betterness ordering. They further assume, in a deliberative spirit, that individuals reveal their preferences sincerely. The model allows us to investigate the conditions under which the combination of deliberation and voting is truth-​revealing, in that it leads the group to make the “correct” social choice (according to the true betterness ranking of the options), irrespective of the group’s initial preference profile.16 Perote-​Peña and Piggins assume that, in deliberation, any individual who holds the correct preference over a given pair of options will not abandon this preference, but may have a chance of persuading others to adopt that preference. Others, in turn, will be open to persuasion if they perceive the given individual’s preferences as sufficiently close to their own preferences, but not if they perceive them as too distant. This reflects the idea that people are more likely to be persuaded by those whose views are similar to their own views. It then follows that the key determinant of truth revelation of the deliberation-​and-​ aggregation process is the persuasion cost. This is defined as a measure of how similar any two individuals’ preference orderings must be for one of the individuals to have a chance of persuading the other. If the persuasion cost is high, then truth revelation—​ indeed, any preference change—​is not generally possible to achieve. In this case, the individuals are unwilling to be persuaded by anyone except those whose preferences are maximally similar to their own preferences. If the persuasion cost is not too high, by contrast, then truth revelation is feasible. Here, the individuals are, in effect, more

478   Christian List willing to listen to others. Truth revelation, however, requires a carefully designed deliberation procedure, specifying who talks to whom and in which order, and a suitably chosen aggregation rule.

A Game-​Theoretic Model of Deliberation as Information Sharing A third model of deliberation can be motivated by reference to a game-​theoretic observation about jury decisions (Feddersen and Pesendorfer 1998). Suppose a twelve-​member jury (initially in conditions without deliberation) has to reach a verdict in a criminal trial and uses the unanimity rule, where a “guilty” verdict is reached if and only if all jurors vote for “guilty.” Suppose further that each juror has received some independent and private information, a binary signal of the form “guilty” or “not guilty,” which is fallible but correlated with the truth; say, it has a 70% chance of being correct.17 Under these assumptions, one would think it is very unlikely that an innocent person will be convicted. If all jurors vote truthfully—​i.e. in line with their private information—​there is only a chance of (30%)12 that a unanimous verdict for “guilty” will be incorrect: less than one in a million. However, suppose that each juror is committed to the principle “convict if and only if the defendant’s guilt is beyond reasonable doubt,” understood as a probability of guilt above 99%. Surprisingly, the jurors may then lack an incentive to vote truthfully. Suppose I am one of the twelve jurors, and suppose, for the sake of argument, the others will vote truthfully. Should I then vote truthfully too? Note that my vote will make a difference only if everyone else votes for “guilty.” If some others vote for “not guilty,” then the outcome will be a “not guilty” verdict, no matter how I vote. If everyone else votes for “guilty,” on the other hand, then my vote will be pivotal; it will determine whether we reach unanimity. Now, if the others vote truthfully, there is only a small chance that they are all wrong: all eleven signals would have to be incorrect, a chance of (30%)11: less than two in a million and well below the threshold of reasonable doubt. So, whether or not my own signal supports a “guilty” verdict, I should vote for “guilty” under the present assumptions. Even if my own signal suggests “not guilty,” it is more likely that this signal is wrong than that the others’ signals are all wrong. The example shows that even when all jurors have the same goal—​namely to convict if and only if the defendant’s guilt is beyond reasonable doubt—​voting truthfully is not generally a dominant strategy. In consequence, unanimous jury decisions may fail to protect the innocent from wrongful convictions. Other aggregation rules, such as the majority rule, suffer from similar problems (Austen-​Smith and Banks 1996). Crucially, however, all these problems arise under a purely aggregative model of decision making: voters have no opportunity to communicate and share their private information before voting. What happens if we introduce deliberation? A  game-​theoretic body of work addresses this question (e.g. Coughlan 2000; Austen-​Smith and Feddersen 2005; 2006; Meirowitz 2006; Landa and Meirowitz 2009). Deliberation is modeled thinly as an

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    479 opportunity for voters to share their private information before voting. We can think of this as a straw poll, an informal round of voting in which everyone can reveal their signal to the group. We must now distinguish between two cases: the case in which there is a consensus on the underlying goal, and the case in which there is not (Austen-​Smith and Feddersen 2006). An underlying consensus is a situation in which, if all private information were publicly revealed, voters would always agree on what the correct choice is. When there is an underlying consensus, any disagreements stem from differences in private information. In the jury example, where all jurors agree on the threshold of reasonable doubt and on the prior probability of guilt,18 there is an underlying consensus in this sense. By contrast, when there is no underlying consensus, different voters would support different options even conditional on full disclosure of all private information. In that case, different voters are said to have different biases. Clearly, if there is an underlying consensus, then deliberation is always helpful (Coughlan 2000). In the jury example, sharing all private signals among the jurors would mean that everyone will come to the same view on whether the defendant should be convicted, and the jurors would vote unanimously either for “guilty” or for “not guilty,” depending on the shared information. Furthermore, the jurors would have no incentives to misrepresent their private signals during deliberation. Given the underlying consensus, it is in everyone’s interest that all private information be revealed truthfully. If we think of deliberation as a game, truthful information sharing is a dominant strategy here. By contrast, if there is no underlying consensus, the situation is more complicated. In the jury example, some jurors might be committed to a 1% threshold of reasonable doubt, others to a 10% threshold, still others to a 25% threshold, and so on. Furthermore, different jurors might assign different prior probabilities to the guilt of the defendant. We must then distinguish between two sub-​cases. If the voters’ biases are common knowledge, then, unfortunately, truthful information sharing may no longer be a dominant strategy in deliberation (Coughlan 2000). Participants may engage in untruthful cheap talk. If, instead, voters are uncertain about the biases of others, then there may be some scope for deliberation to induce truth-​telling, but whether it does will depend on the aggregation rule that is used after deliberation (Austen-​Smith and Feddersen 2006). If it is the majority rule, then, under some conditions, it is rational for voters to reveal their signals truthfully during deliberation. By contrast, under the unanimity rule, voters continue to have incentives to be untruthful in deliberation. In fact, the unanimity rule seems uniquely bad at incentivizing truth-​telling in deliberation. The bottom line is that if we model deliberation as nothing more than an opportunity for voters to share private information before voting—​a form of “straw polling”—​then the participants’ incentives for and against truth-​telling depend on several factors: first, whether there is a consensus on the underlying goal (if so, deliberation induces truth-​ telling; if not, it doesn’t generally do so); second, whether, in the absence of a consensus, there is uncertainty about voters’ biases (if so, truth-​telling is sometimes rational; if not, it may not be); and third, the voting rule (if it is non-​unanimitarian, like the majority rule, then deliberation sometimes induces truth-​telling; if it is the unanimity rule, it may

480   Christian List not). One response to these conclusions is to argue that if we do not model deliberation as unverifiable cheap-​talk but assume that deliberators can report verifiable evidence, then the unanimity rule as well as disclosure of biases may be conducive to truthful information sharing (Mathis 2011).

The Mechanisms of Deliberation-​Induced Opinion Change The formal models of deliberation I have reviewed differ significantly in what they assume about the individual-​level mechanisms of deliberation-​induced opinion change. The preference-​transformation model with which I began is most abstract, modeling deliberation simply as a process in which pre-​deliberation preferences are transformed into post-​deliberation preferences, without specifying any micro-​mechanisms. The combined model of deliberation and aggregation that I discussed next suggests that deliberation can change preferences via changing the participants’ beliefs about how good the options are, while presupposing that there is an objective betterness ordering. The game-​theoretic model that I discussed last portrays deliberation as a process that can change the participants’ factual-​empirical beliefs, by providing them with new information, while not changing their underlying goals or preferences. This last model, unlike the first two, is based on the classical rational-​choice-​theoretic picture of agency. I will now explain why this picture leaves relatively little room for deliberation-​induced opinion change, and how we might lift its restrictions. According to classical rational choice theory, an agent has preferences over different possible outcomes and beliefs over different possible states of the world, and acts so as to satisfy those preferences in accordance with those beliefs. Preferences are usually represented by some utility function, and beliefs by some subjective probability function. Rational choice then consists in choosing an action that maximizes expected utility, where actions are represented by functions from states of the world to outcomes (Savage 1954). According to this picture, an agent’s preferences over fully specified outcomes never change. Only beliefs about the state of the world are open to revision, and belief revision only happens when the agent learns new information, via Bayesian conditioning. In this way, the agent’s “surface-​level” preferences over uncertain prospects may change in response to new information, while the underlying fundamental preferences remain fixed. I may change my surface-​level preference between nuclear energy and coal energy when I learn how each technology affects the environment, but my fundamental preferences, such as between a clean and a polluted environment, remain the same. Classical rational choice theory further assumes full rationality:  the agent has consistent beliefs and preferences, is aware of all their implications, and can calculate the best response in any choice situation. On this picture, there is no scope for deliberation-​ induced opinion change beyond the learning of new information. By contrast, once we relax rational choice theory’s restrictive assumptions and replace them with more realistic ones, we can identify several significant ways in which deliberation might change opinions. First, there can be forms of belief change distinct

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    481 from Bayesian conditioning. Under Bayesian conditioning, belief changes are possible only when the agent acquires new information. Furthermore, this always takes the form of ruling out certain states of the world, namely those excluded by the information. The probabilities over the remaining states of the world are then reassigned in proportion to the agent’s prior probabilities. A Bayesian agent cannot learn that his or her prior probabilities were incorrect. A more permissive form of conditioning is Jeffrey conditioning. Here, the agent can acquire a new probability distribution over different states of the world, without ruling out any of them. Jeffrey conditioning permits updates of the agent’s prior probabilities, over and above Bayesian information acquisition. If deliberators can engage in Jeffrey conditioning, then deliberation might induce changes in their subjective prior probabilities and not just provide them with new information in the Bayesian sense (e.g. Halpern 2003; Bradley 2009; Dietrich, List, and Bradley 2016). Second, an agent’s fundamental preferences might themselves be open to change. In particular, the agent’s preferences may depend on how the agent perceives or conceptualizes the options (even fully specified outcomes), and a change in perception or conceptualization might lead to a preference change (Dietrich and List 2011; 2013a; 2013b). For example, I might initially perceive different policies solely in terms of how they affect my budget and wellbeing, without considering their effects on other people, let alone their effects on distant strangers and the environment. My focus on a limited set of good-​ making features of the options need not be due to a lack of information. It may be due to a lack of salience of other considerations. If new considerations become salient during deliberation—​for example, I come to see them as relevant reasons for preferring some options over others—​this might lead to a preference change. (On different forms of preference change, see also Grüne-​Yanoff and Hansson 2009 and Bradley 2009.) Third, since real people are not logically omniscient—​i.e. they are not aware of all the implications of their beliefs—​there is further scope for opinion change in deliberation. Deliberators may learn that their beliefs have implications they had not previously noticed. This may, in turn, induce a “reflective equilibrium” process, in which participants either come to endorse these hitherto unrecognized implications or revise some of their beliefs in order to avoid any unwanted implications. Participants may also come to recognize some inconsistencies in their opinions and correct them. Similarly, they might notice ambiguities that need to be addressed. A hypothetical “homo economicus,” by contrast, would never suffer from any limitations of rationality. Such an agent would not be able to “discover” any problematic features or unrecognized implications of his or her own prior views. For a model of deliberation as “self-​discovery” under bounded rationality, see Hafer and Landa (2007). In sum, depending on how far we depart from classical rational choice theory, deliberation may lead participants to change their opinions in at least four ways: by giving them new information; by drawing their attention to unrecognized implications, inconsistencies, or ambiguities within their beliefs and preferences; by leading participants to reflect on the considerations or reasons that are relevant and/​or publicly justifiable; and by putting participants in a social situation in which they come to relate to others.

482   Christian List These may be described as the “informational,” “argumentative,” “reflective,” and “social aspects” of deliberation (Dryzek and List 2003).

Deliberation and the Aggregation of Judgments A final area of social choice theory that is sometimes associated with deliberation is judgment-​aggregation theory (formalized in List and Pettit 2002 and Dietrich 2007; for a survey, see List and Puppe 2009). Its focus is not on the aggregation of preference orderings but on the aggregation of judgments, understood as “true/​false” or “yes/​no” verdicts on some statements or propositions, usually with logical connections between them. Judgment-​aggregation theory was inspired by the study of decision making in collegial courts (Kornhauser and Sager 1986; 1993). For example, a court may need to make judgments on propositions such as “the defendant has committed a particular act” (a), “the act was contractually prohibited” (b), and “the defendant is liable for a breach of contract” (c), where a and b are jointly necessary and sufficient for c. The task is not to arrive at a collective preference ordering, but to make collective “yes/​no” judgments on the relevant propositions. For another common example, consider an expert committee faced with propositions such as “atmospheric CO2 exceeds 400ppm” (d), “if CO2 exceeds 400ppm, then the Greenland ice will melt” (d→e), and “the Greenland ice will melt” (e). Again, the task is to arrive at collective judgments, based on the underlying individual judgments. Judgment-​aggregation theory offers a formal framework for modeling such aggregation problems and for identifying suitable aggregation rules that satisfy certain desiderata. By accommodating decisions involving “true/​false” or “yes/​no” judgments on logically connected propositions, it allows us to analyze a different class of decision problems than traditionally modelled in social choice theory. At first, it is not obvious why judgment-​aggregation theory should be any more relevant to deliberation than traditional social choice theory is. However, its relevance lies in the fact that it can model decisions whose content goes beyond the ranking of options, and the interest in such decisions is shared by theorists of deliberative democracy. The content of a judgment-​ aggregation problem may be an entire web of interconnected propositions, akin to what philosophers call a “web of belief ” (e.g. Quine and Ullian 1978). A court cannot simply hold the defendant liable without accepting the reasons for liability. An expert committee, similarly, cannot plausibly declare that the ice will melt if it does not also accept the premises to back up this judgment. Once we recognize the need to arrive at collective judgments on webs of propositions, we can see some further limitations of a crude aggregative approach. Several much-​ discussed examples—​ the “doctrinal” or “discursive paradoxes”—​ show that propositionwise majority voting is problematic (Kornhauser and Sager 1986; 1993; Pettit

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    483 Table 29.1 A profile of individual judgments in the court example a

b

c

Individual 1

True

True

True

Individual 2

True

False

False

Individual 3

False

True

False

Majority

True

True

False

Table 29.2 A profile of individual judgments in the expert-​committee example d

d→e

e

Individual 1

True

True

True

Individual 2

True

False

False

Individual 3

False

True

False

Majority

True

True

False

2001; List and Pettit 2002). Suppose, for instance, the individual judgments in a court or in an expert committee are as shown in Tables 29.1 and 29.2. In each case, all individuals’ judgments are internally consistent, and yet the majority judgments are inconsistent. If a court were to endorse the majority judgments in Table 29.1, it would hold that the defendant did the relevant act, that the act was prohibited, and yet that the defendant is not liable, despite accepting that the first two propositions jointly imply liability. Similarly, if the expert committee accepted the majority judgments in Table 29.2, it would be committed to an inconsistent view: CO2 is above the threshold; this will cause the melting of the ice; and yet the ice will not melt. In an attempt to avoid such inconsistencies, early discussions of judgment aggregation revolved around the contrast between “premise-​based” and “conclusion-​based” procedures (e.g. Kornhauser and Sager 1986; 1993; Chapman 1998; Pettit 2001). Under a premise-​based procedure, the group takes majority votes only on premises—​such as a and b in the first example or d and d→e in the second—​and then derives its judgments on all conclusions—​such as c or e—​by logical inference. In both tables, the result would be the collective acceptance of all three propositions, despite the majority against the proposition in the last column. Under a conclusion-​based procedure, the group takes majority votes only on conclusions—​such as c or e—​while not making any judgments on premises. In each table, the result would be the collective rejection of the proposition

484   Christian List in the final column, which shows that the premise-​based and conclusion-​based procedures may lead to opposite outcomes, even when the individual judgments are the same. It has been argued that the premise-​based procedure is more consistent with deliberative democracy’s emphasis on reason-​giving, while the conclusion-​based procedure embodies a more minimalist conception of democracy (Pettit 2001; List 2006). Technically, both procedures are still aggregation rules and need not involve any pre-​vote deliberation. Yet, the premise-​based procedure captures the idea that the group as a collective draws some reasoned inferences from the propositions it accepts by voting, an idea that Pettit (2001) has described as the “collectivization of reason.” The conclusion-​based procedure, by contrast, captures the idea of a minimalist collective outcome, namely what Sunstein (1994) calls an “incompletely theorized agreement.” Sometimes it may be controversial which propositions are “premises” and which are “conclusions.” Different orders of priority or premisehood among the propositions may, in turn, give rise to different collective judgments, thereby generating the problem of path dependence and agenda manipulability (List 2004; Dietrich 2016). Technical work (reviewed in List and Puppe 2009) has focused on characterizing the conditions under which consistent judgment aggregation is or is not possible, studying the properties of practicable aggregation rules, and identifying conditions that will or will not induce truth-​telling. Here, it has been suggested that deliberatively motivated agents are less prone to strategic voting than purely outcome-​oriented agents (Dietrich and List 2007). As a heuristic tool, judgment-​aggregation theory, like social choice theory more generally, can sharpen our understanding of the trade-​offs between different desiderata of democracy, such as robustness to pluralism, responsiveness to the majority opinion, and collective rationality. One of social choice theory’s lessons is that we can achieve any two of these desiderata, but not all three (List 2011a). The challenge, in the debate about deliberation and social choice, is to decide which of those desiderata to keep and which to relax.

Acknowledgments I am grateful to André Bächtiger, John Dryzek, William Gehrlein, Dimitri Landa, Jane Mansbridge, Ashley Piggins, Daniele Porello, and Laura Valentini for helpful comments. My work was supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.

Notes 1. On unequal stakes, see Brighouse and Fleurbaey (2010). 2. Each Pi is a transitive, asymmetric, and connected binary relation (a strict ordering). Arrow employed weak orderings (permitting ties), but for simplicity I focus on strict orderings throughout this chapter.

Democratic Deliberation and Social Choice    485 3. Some scholars argue that the instability associated with majority cycling need not be bad for democracy (e.g. Miller 1983). 4. Landa and Meirowitz distinguish between deliberative environments and deliberative behaviors. 5. In some polls, there are also non-​deliberating control groups. 6. Technically, neither result applies to the domain of unanimous preferences. 7. Each line represents one preference ordering:  options are on the horizontal axis, their ranks on the vertical one. 8. This assumes, for simplicity, an odd number of individuals, to rule out majority ties. 9. For discussion, see also Aldred (2004) and Dryzek and List (2004). 10. For further notions of meta-​consensus not associated with social-​choice-​theoretic structure conditions, see Dryzek and Niemeyer (2006). For a technical analysis, see Gehrlein, Lepelley, and Moyouwou (2015). 11. Variants also appeared in List (2002) and Dryzek and List (2004). 12. A shallower mechanism generating single-​peakedness might involve a tendency for deliberators to mimic the preferences of opinion leaders with single-​peaked preferences (List et al. 2013). 13. Even in homogeneous groups, polarization seems not to occur under sufficiently favorable deliberative conditions (Grönlund, Herne, and Setälä 2015). 14. Formally, two preference profiles are called i-​variants if they coincide for all individuals except i. Minimal relevance requires that, for each individual i, there be at least one admissible pair of i-​variant pre-​deliberation profiles for which individual i’s post-​deliberation preference orderings differ. 15. On the transformation of judgments in deliberation, see also Slavkovik and Jamroga (2016) and, in relation to probabilistic judgments, Lehrer and Wagner (1981). 16. This is subject to one restriction: in this initial preference profile, at least one individual must hold each logically possible preference. 17. For the purposes of the example, I assume that there is a common prior probability of ½ of guilt, and that, given guilt, each juror has a 70% chance of receiving a “guilty” signal, and given innocence, each juror has a 70% chance of receiving a “not guilty” signal. 18. Also, the reliability of the jurors’ signals is common knowledge.

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Chapter 30

De l iberative De mo c rac y and C ompa rat i v e De mo cratiz ati on St u di e s Nicole Curato and Jürg Steiner

Deliberation is often pitched as a tool for “democratic deepening.” It is described as an antidote to the malaise of contemporary democracies where voter apathy, declining levels of political trust, and spin-​driven discourse have come to define the conduct of politics. Public deliberation, as the story goes, can reinvigorate civic life by empowering citizens to influence collective decision-​making. Over the years, deliberative democrats have made a strong case for democratic innovations that promote inclusive and consequential reason-​giving, which, in turn, enhance the legitimacy of “advanced” liberal democracies. The promise of deliberation, however, is not only limited to “mature” democracies. Fragile political environments can create spaces for deliberation to manage political tensions and develop a shared vision for a society recovering from traumas of dictatorship and armed conflict. In this chapter, we explain the ways in which deliberation plays a crucial role in democratization and how to examine this phenomenon. Our aim is to provide a theoretically-​informed and empirically grounded overview of deliberation’s transformative power in shaping the trajectory of democratizing polities. We develop these ideas in three parts. We begin by answering the question: Why does deliberation matter in democratic transition and consolidation? We put forward three reasons by drawing on empirical examples that illustrate the potency of deliberation as a distinct form of communication in shaping countries’ democratic trajectory. The second part then identifies developments in democracy assessment literature that complement and give space to a deliberative framework. We also illustrate how a deliberative perspective can fill some gaps and speak to the broader literature on comparative studies of democratization. In the final section, we propose conceptual approaches to examine the deliberative quality of democratizing polities. Deliberative democrats are challenged to embrace the complexity of democratization while maintaining analytic

Comparative Democratization Studies    491 rigor in spotting discourses, spaces, and mechanisms that shape the trajectory of democratizing polities.

Why Does Deliberation Matter? As part of deliberative democracy’s entry to mainstream political studies, scholars of deliberation have increasingly turned their attention to the subject of democratic transitions and consolidation (Dryzek 2009; Steiner 2012; Jaramillo and Steiner 2014; Steiner et al. 2017; Curato 2015; O’Flynn and Curato 2015). Historically, the emphasis has been on institutions assumed to be favorable for democratic transitions, in particular election systems of proportionality, grand coalitions, federalism, and strong veto points (Lijphart 1977). Although these institutions keep their importance, newer research recognizes the communicative aspects of building a democratic order in post-​authoritarian societies. Deliberation can have far-​reaching consequences even though exchanging and considering each other’s views appear to be a fairly modest act (Barnett 2006). As Dryzek (2009) suggests, new regimes exhibiting capacity for deliberation not only have better chances of regime survival but also exhibit a better quality of democracy. Public deliberation makes regimes legitimate because actors whose views had a fair hearing in collective decision-​making tend to be supportive of its outcomes. It disciplines political leaders’ tendencies to make arbitrary or self-​interested decisions by promoting public scrutiny on debates about a nation’s political destiny. Eisenstadt, LeVan, and Maboudi’s (2015) work on the role of deliberation in constitution-​making provides empirical support to this claim, where statistical tests demonstrate how citizen engagement at the “front end” of the constitution drafting process has served to contribute to levels of democracy. Deliberative democratic theory, of course, gives no guarantees that exchanging reasons in an inclusive and reflective manner will generate shared conceptions of justice and the common good, but decades of empirical case studies on democratic transitions provides reasonable scope to infer that the process of deliberation has transformative power in realizing democratic goals. Here we offer three examples. First, deliberation can generate “workable agreements” which can serve as springboard for meaningful cooperation among parties with a history of conflict and injury. Chile’s Mesa del Diálogo (round-​table discussion) from 1999–​2000 exemplifies this claim. The round table, as expected, started with a tense atmosphere. Desaparacidos (enforced disappearances) were one of the most painful legacies of the Pinochet dictatorship, making a conversation between human rights activists and military officers an emotional encounter. The Mesa’s discursive context, however, made this dialogue conducive for deliberation. The forum was conducted outside the chain of command, which gave military officers some latitude for reflection and consideration perspectives that departed from the official discourse of the armed forces. The Mesa was also free from government intervention, therefore allowing parties to explore a range of options without being limited by specific political agendas. Human rights activists, for example, were given the chance

492    Nicole Curato and Jürg Steiner to bracket their biases against men in uniform and consider what they had to say instead of “toeing the line” of anti-​dictatorship movements. True to the promise of deliberation, the series of dialogues and informal chats enabled participants to develop cordial relationships and eventually “shift positions—​ones that had previously been thought to be irreconcilably antagonistic—​towards compromise” (Pion-​Berlin 2010, 535). After exploring various possibilities, participants in the round table reached a workable agreement. The military agreed to go on record and condemn their human rights violations during the Pinochet regime. The officers also provided information on the location of the disappeared as a way of taking responsibility for these abuses. Human rights activists, for their part, agreed not to disclose the identities of soldiers who cooperated in the dialogue. The round table may not have resolved deep issues of injustice but, as Pion-​Berlin (2010) suggests, the success of the Mesa lay in its symbolic character where antagonists signed off the same document and stood by the agreement. This is not a simple feat in a society struggling to restore relationships of trust between soldiers and civilians. Second, deliberation can develop habits of democratic dialogue which can shape the character of the emerging political system. Deliberation can socialize citizens to use deliberative virtues as currencies when engaging with opposing parties. Cultivating deliberative habits may include creating spaces for previously antagonistic parties to engage with each other. Poland’s 1989 round-​table talks between Solidarity and the Communist Party are now written in history as a “process of learning, of constant updating of beliefs that the population and the rulers held about each other” (Elster 1996, 18). “Kapia”—​ the square on a bridge where people who otherwise would not meet could talk to each other—​was the metaphor Matynia (2009) used to describe the communicative aspect of these talks. Shifting from protests and strikes on the part of Solidarity and oppressive tactics on the part of the state to systematic reason-​giving (and bargaining) indicates that, as Elster puts it, “the time of secret decisions and deals was over. . . . [T]‌he role of threat and force became secondary to argument and reason” (Elster 1996, 10). In spite of the imperfections of the round-​table talks, key agreements that resulted from these discussions set in motion a series of gradual and peaceful democratic transition in Eastern Europe (see O’Flynn and Curato 2015). Deliberative forums may not guarantee enduring consensus, especially on contentious issues, but they can institutionalize normatively grounded procedures to handle disagreements. Third, while times of political uncertainty are vulnerable to conflict, these are also opportune moments for reflection. As previously binding decisions lose their authority, democratic transitions open up spaces for citizens to reflect on lessons learned from authoritarianism and armed conflict and to interrogate basic assumptions about how to organize political life. As Cooke puts it: If there are no timeless, authoritative standards to legal, political or moral validity, then in order for citizens to be able to see themselves as authors in this sense, they must be able to see the law, political principles and public policies as the outcome of a process of public deliberation whose aim is the best possible justification of proposals under discussion (Cooke 2000, 65).

Comparative Democratization Studies    493 A good example is the beginning of the peace process in Colombia with the governmental program of decommissioning guerrillas and paramilitaries. With the help of the office of the High Commissioner for Reintegration a research project was undertaken, assembling ex-​guerrillas and ex-​paramilitaries to discuss ways to peace. In these discussions, the ex-​combatants often found a common life-​world (gemeinsame Lebenswelt) in the sense of Habermas (1981, 159), which allowed them to come with creative ideas of how peace could be helped (Jaramillo and Steiner 2014). Admittedly, generating workable agreements, creating habits of democratic dialogue, and promoting collective reflection are difficult to achieve in sensitive political contexts. Openly discussing divisive issues may have high transaction costs. A deliberative perspective may also bring uneasiness on the part of comparative scholars who view democratization through the lens of power bargaining and imposition by foreign powers. Deliberative democracy, however, is not a naive project. As our discussion in this section suggests, deliberation can thrive in unexpected spaces and make interlocutors out of enemies. Without denying the role of coercion and threats, a case can be made that a polity’s democratic trajectory is also hinged on relationships of communication among parties with competing discourses. The challenge is to use a conceptual approach that can bring into sharp focus deliberative impulses in democratizing societies and identify the ways in which these impulses are converted to sustained and meaningful democratic activity. This challenge, we argue, is not insurmountable given the current trends in the field of democracy assessments.

The Deliberative Gap in Democratization Studies In the past two decades, the “quality of democracy” literature has given space to studies that foreground the pluralistic and diverse character of contemporary democracies. “Single index” measurements—​Freedom House being the most cited example—​have been critiqued for privileging a set of criteria that are partial towards the Western liberal democratic understanding of democracy. This not only legitimizes condescending and normatively limited distinctions between “advanced” and “weak” democracies but also obscures the reality that upholding democratic virtues often entails trade-​offs (Foweraker and Krznaric 2000, 775). Both practitioners of “democracy promotion” and scholars of comparative democratization have developed alternative measures of democratic quality to overcome the weakness of single-​index studies. In the practitioners’ field, for example, International IDEA uses a participatory methodology where citizens of the country being assessed take charge of the evaluation instead of relying on “outsiders” to rate a country’s democratic quality (Beetham 2004, 5). This approach democratizes democracy assessments by introducing a citizen-​centric approach to an otherwise expert-​driven process. In

494    Nicole Curato and Jürg Steiner the academic literature, Diamond and Morlino have reframed the debate from asking whether countries are more or less democratic to how differently they are democratic. Instead of evaluating democracies based on a fixed set of institutional criteria, they identify several focus areas by which case studies of democracies can be compared. Participation is one of the dimensions in this assessment, the definition of which is not limited to electoral participation but is also in terms of civil society’s access to discussion of public policy issues and direct engagement at the local level (Diamond and Morlino 2004, 23–​4). On the quantitative side, Coppedge and Gerring et al. (2011) put forward an ambitious project, now known as Varieties of Democracy, which tracks the performance of one country over the span of decades based on different understandings of democracy—​electoral, liberal, majoritarian, participatory, egalitarian, and deliberative. In its most recent version, however, the deliberative variety has been dropped, “not because it is invalid but because its core features . . . are rare, virtually impossible to measure in a large cross-​national project, or indistinguishable from the participatory dimension” (Coppedge et al. 2014, 10). The objection against this omission is that deliberation is easier to measure if research focuses only on a few carefully done case studies. These approaches have challenged the dominant position of a single-​index paradigm in democracy studies and have provided conceptual and methodological tools to uncover various dimensions of democratic practice. These developments may serve to overturn the observation Archon Fung made almost a decade ago, that “implicitly or explicitly, most political scientists hold the aggregative norm of democracy” (Fung 2007, 449). At least as far as democracy assessments go, this observation appears less true. However, a major challenge remains. While comparative studies of democratic regimes have pluralized understandings of how democracy is enacted and therefore assessed, to date there is no assessment framework that sufficiently captures the concept, vision, and empirical manifestations of deliberative democracy. Diamond and Morlino for example tend to conflate deliberation and participation and, at times, equate deliberative democracy to formally structured forums where citizens take part in policymaking. In the Varieties of Democracy’s first version, the indicators used to measure deliberative democracy focused on reason-​giving in elite levels of policymaking and “independence” of public deliberation from repression and domination of particular groups. These efforts, while encouraging, remain unsatisfactory for two reasons. First, deliberative democracy is more than a sum of deliberative forums. Instead, as Dryzek argues, a deliberative system must be examined “in its entirety, rather than assess component parts in isolation” (Dryzek 2010, 14). What warrants examination are not only formally structured forums although these, of course, are important, but also practices, institutions, discourses, and mechanisms that facilitate as well as obstruct the circulation of discourses for collective will formation and generation of binding decisions. O’Flynn and Curato (2015) refer to this as a deliberative assessment’s “descriptive task.” A  broad view of deliberative democracy is necessary to spot and identify the connections among spaces where the emergence, contestation, and reflection of discourses occur.

Comparative Democratization Studies    495 Second, as a normative project, a deliberative assessment should necessarily be embedded on a set of deliberative virtues. To say that civil society has access to policymaking forums is one thing but judging the extent to which such participation contributes to an inclusive, deliberative, and consequential deliberative system is another. Venezuela, for example, is a case where participatory mechanisms such as village assemblies have been institutionalized and have served to increase the voice and visibility of traditionally marginalized groups. However, when viewed from a deliberative perspective, these “inclusive spaces” for participation have also compromised the deliberative quality of the political system as these have served as venues for discursive polarization instead of development of meta-​consensus between supporters and critics of the Chavez regime (Curato 2014). Hence, crucial to a deliberative democratic framework is not only a descriptive but also an “evaluative task” which judges the extent to which political practices uphold and promote deliberative norms (O’Flynn and Curato 2015). To this extent the Varieties of Democracy’s contribution is invaluable in comparative studies, as it illustrates how states fare depending on the set of criteria used in the assessment.

Conceptual Approaches Given the gaps in democracy assessment frameworks, deliberative democrats are faced with the challenge of developing an approach that can both describe and evaluate the deliberative quality of democratizing polities. Here we identify two distinct but complementary approaches which draw on developments in both deliberative democratic theory and related fields.

Systems One possibility is sketched by Dryzek (2009) in the article “Democratization as Deliberative Capacity Building.” In this piece, Dryzek proposes the deliberative systems approach which maps the spaces where discourses are contested and the mechanisms by which these components are connected to each other. A well-​functioning deliberative system is one where discourses in the public space are transmitted to deliberations in the empowered space, while the empowered space, in turn, justifies its decisions to constituents in the public space. Originally applied to the context of earth systems governance, Dryzek’s approach offers two advantages for the comparative study of democratization. First, this approach offers a “general scheme” which is not tied to specific institutional details identifiable to western liberal democracies. This is particularly useful when examining polities which have yet to define their post-​authoritarian institutional arrangements or contexts which may not have traditional democratic institutions but nevertheless host spaces for deliberative democratization. It also supports Diamond and Morlino’s analytical challenge of foregrounding how differently countries are

496    Nicole Curato and Jürg Steiner democratic, instead of using a fixed set of institutional benchmarks for assessment. China is an oft-​cited albeit controversial example. In spite of its bad human rights record and limitations in electoral politics, participatory innovations at the local level provide some evidence of China’s deliberative capacity (Dryzek 2009, 1383). Korolev’s (2014) study on China’s New Healthcare Reform program illustrates how the public policy process in China, in spite of its imperfections, has become increasingly pluralistic and inclusive. Applying the systemic approach, Korolev mapped the instantiation of deliberative virtues of inclusiveness, deliberativeness, equality, and consequentiality in Internet forums, public consultations, network media, and direct engagement between healthcare professionals, academics, and the government in creating China’s universal health insurance system. Aside from dispersed and networked deliberations on the issue, the government also created channels for ordinary citizens to “transmit” their grievances and demands to policymakers in an unprecedented scale. The deliberative system was “decisive,” to use Dryzek’s term, as the policy adopted reflects a range of inputs and compromises since the debate erupted in online media at the turn of the twenty-​first century. This leads Korolev to conclude that the deliberative system mobilized by the healthcare reform issue set a “new direction” in the transformation of China’s political system (Korolev 2014, 170). Indeed, one could make an insightful comparative study that examines the ways in which the deliberative system in China on universal health insurance system has fared in comparison to the United States’ deliberative system on Obamacare. Second, the systemic approach challenges scholars of comparative politics to place the analytical focus on the connections between discourses in the public and empowered spaces. Often, the democratization literature focuses either on the historical role of social movements and civil society in challenging and replacing authoritarian regimes or on the concentration of political power among elites as they compete for the spoils and patronage in a new democratic order. A systemic approach examines the deliberative capacity of mechanisms that link these two spheres of politics. O’Flynn and Curato’s comparative study of Poland and Venezuela, for example, illustrates how “pacted democracies” can have divergent democratic trajectories based on the connections of public and empowered spaces as democratic pacts are negotiated. Poland’s round-​table discussion exhibited stronger deliberative capacity not only because the negotiations were broadcast over live radio and television, and therefore open to public scrutiny, but also because of Solidarity’s efforts to get feedback from their constituents through weekly public meetings, among other accountability mechanisms. Osiatynski (1996) argues that Solidarity were in a good position to do this because of their tradition of openness as well as their sincere recognition that they did not have Polish society’s unconditional support. This created the need to legitimize their power to represent workers in the negotiating table. In contrast, Venezuela’s post-​authoritarian pact in 1958 was forged behind closed doors among economic and political elites without public participation. The deliberate exclusion of the people from policymaking, as Crisp (1994) argues, has been the defining characteristic of Venezuela’s post-​authoritarian politics. Unlike Poland which has evolved to become one of the most “stable” democracies in Eastern

Comparative Democratization Studies    497 Europe, Venezuela’s democracy has been vulnerable to “political outbursts” as expressions of popular discontent—​from a week of bloody rioting in Caracas in 1989 to protest the sharp increase of transport fares to the election of Hugo Chavez as champion of the voices of the poor. Viewed this way, the fragility of Venezuelan democracy is not because of “demagoguery” of populist leaders but because the deliberative system has, historically, been unable to process disagreements in a deliberative manner. As this section illustrates, there has been a handful of empirical work on democratization that has applied Dryzek’s systemic approach to make sense of the character of contemporary democracies. The strength of the systemic approach lies in its breadth and flexibility as researchers have scope to critically interpret democratic practices based on a set of norms, instead of being tied to definitive concepts or indicators closely linked to the liberal tradition. However, one of the critiques on the deliberative system is its seemingly static depiction of deliberation. It can provide a snapshot of discourses and their interconnections, but the temporal aspect of public deliberation is less visible. This, we argue, is not an insurmountable issue but one that can be resolved by examining the sequences in deliberation.

Sequences The sequential approach partitions the process of public deliberation in smaller sequences (Goodin 2005; McLaverty and Halpin 2008; Bächtiger et  al. 2010; Curato 2012). Like the systemic approach, it does not expect each stage to uphold all deliberative virtues at once. Instead, it underscores the division of deliberative labor depending on the context. In the case of democratization, for example, confrontational speech styles such as protests, shaming, and strikes may serve the deliberative system well in the initial phase of democratic transitions. These discursive styles can rupture dominant and oppressive discourses and bring attention to campaigns that build the deliberative capacity of civil society and the state. Going back to Venezuela’s example, Chavez’s rise to power through confrontational discourse, while off-​putting for some political analysts, was instrumental in transforming traditionally marginalized groups to a grassroots movement that could assert collective power and unravel elite politics. To this extent, it can be argued that such forms of speech are valuable in the first stages of democratization, as they promote inclusion among citizens who used to be at the margins of deliberation. From a deliberative perspective, however, these democratic impulses have to be subject to “deliberative drifts” or must evolve to moments of persuasion (see McLaverty and Halpin 2008). Put another way, “cycles of contention,” to borrow Tarrow’s (1994) term, must be linked to what we call “cycles of deliberation” or defining moments when adversarial parties come together, treat each other as interlocutors, and exchange other-​ regarding reasons to make mutually acceptable, albeit provisional agreements. At best, cycles of contention yield to deliberative moments, as the examples in the first section of this chapter illustrates. The round-​table discussions have been products of sustained campaigns, protests, and strikes which led opposing parties to the table. At worst,

498    Nicole Curato and Jürg Steiner contentious politics burns bridges between opposing parties, making divisive discursive strategies a more palatable option than deliberation. In Venezuela’s case, one can argue that political agents found it challenging to move from the stage of contentious politics to the stage of deliberative politics as Manichean discourse prevailed in the deliberative system, and unlike-​minded citizens became socialized to relationships of distrust and incivility. A sequential approach to the deliberative study of democratization is sensitive to the demands of each stage of deliberation, and, as the Venezuelan example suggests, it is also sensitive to the phase of deliberation where empirical cases fall short in deliberative capacity building. This is also true for particular meetings, where the discussion frequently may be transformed from a low to a high level of deliberation and vice versa (Jaramillo and Steiner 2014; Steiner et al. 2017). Thus, sequencing should be studied both at the macro and the micro level. Compared to deliberative systems, however, the sequential approach has yet to be applied to a comparative study of democratization, but this track worth pursuing. First, this approach has the potential to highlight contingencies of democratization. After all, democratic transition and consolidation rarely form a straight path with clearly specified goals (Přibán 2012, 107). As Barnett puts it: Unlike liberal peacebuilding, which uses shock therapy to push post-​conflict states toward some predetermined vision of the promised land, republicanism’s emphasis on deliberative processes allows space for societal actors to determine for themselves what the good life is and how to achieve it (Barnett 2006, 90).

Although Barnett’s statement was made in relation to republican peacebuilding, his insights can be applied to democratization. Barnett underscores how a deliberative perspective does not impose a “predetermined” ideal of what a democratic society looks like but underscores the contingent and agentic process of forming such vision. A sequential approach can trace the development of discourses that lead citizens to define their shared democratic ideals and how to achieve them. Mapping sequences of deliberation—​from confrontation to exchanging of reasons to (provisional) resolution of disagreements—​can shed light on how each stage contributes to or undermines deliberative capacity building, which can then explain the character of polities’ deliberative systems today. Second, a sequential approach can enrich the deliberative systems analysis by offering an account of change. Similar to Schmidt’s (2010) discursive institutionalism, a sequential approach not only “takes discourses seriously” but also analyses how “sentient agents” frame, articulate, and actively design their political contexts to move in a deliberative (or non-​deliberative) direction. Unlike historical institutionalism, which emphasizes how structural conditions constrain a system’s democratic potential, a sequential approach tracks how opportunities for deliberative action are created, undermined, and sustained. Stephen Connelly’s (2009) study on Egypt posits a powerful case study on how external political actors such as United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-​ HABITAT) can enliven the Egyptian government’s rhetoric of

Comparative Democratization Studies    499 democratization. As UN-​HABITAT took part in the government’s development program for large cities outside Cairo, practitioners and consultants invoked the global discourse of participatory planning as integral to their development work. While this involves local administrations imposing constraints on participant selection (therefore limiting inclusiveness), the discourse of participation and deliberative planning created openings for village folk to gain experience in public deliberation amid constraints. Citizens who showed weak trust in government and reluctance in admitting problems within their communities were given opportunity to identify, discuss, and consolidate “priority problems” with their peers. For Connelly, this experience, albeit modest, is part of a broader “far-​reaching radical program” which contribution to Egypt’s democratization (Connelly 2009, 191). Insights in this case study can be expanded by tracing how deliberative moments like this have served to develop the voice and political confidence of Egypt’s urban poor—​the same agents who were responsible for the so-​called Arab Spring and eventual overthrow of Mubarak’s regime.

Imagining Possibilities The systemic and sequential approaches to the deliberative study of democratization have the potential to uncover the power of deliberation in dynamic political contexts. A deliberative analysis, we argue, needs to embrace the complexity of democratization while remaining cognisant of the institutional conditions and deliberative agency that citizens use to influence the character of contemporary democracies. This field in deliberation studies, while beginning to gain ground, is still in its nascent stages. Questions on methodology remain, while conceptual debates need further elaboration. Still missing, for example, is the link between deliberative research and classical comparative politics. The latter tends to work with a large number of countries and variables that are relatively easy to measure, such as the number of political parties in the cabinet or the degree of federalism. Deliberative research, to be sure, has also moved to the macro level of entire political systems, but—​as we have seen in this chapter—​it is hard to determine the level of deliberation for a particular country, let alone to do so on a comparative basis for a large number of countries. Therefore, deliberation cannot just be thrown in as another variable into the theories of classical comparative politics. A common basis can best be found in qualitative country case studies, involving perhaps two or three cases. A good example for this approach is the research of Salnykova (2015) on the role of deliberation in the post-​Soviet transition in Ukraine and Georgia, where she shows in a mostly qualitative way how much deliberation was used in the various political arenas of the two countries and its effect on the transition process. Such analyses help to bring classical comparative politics and deliberation closer together. Nevertheless, as we hope to have illustrated in this chapter, we are confident that this conversation will move forward. In the earlier sections, we have identified possibilities for future research, building on existing empirical studies. We have also expressed

500    Nicole Curato and Jürg Steiner optimism over developments in comparative assessments of democratic quality, where deliberative studies can increasingly find space. And, as with all scholarly pursuits, there is always room for ambition. We hope that by using a deliberative democratic lens in the comparative study of democratization, we can challenge dominant assumptions and judgments about “mature” and “weak” democracies and begin to ask questions about whether today’s “advanced” liberal democracies have democratized deliberatively.

References Bächtiger, A., Niemeyer, S., Neblo, M., Steenbergen, M. R., and Steiner, J. (2010). Disentangling Diversity in Deliberative Democracy:  Competing Theories, Their Blind Spots and Complementarities. Journal of Political Philosophy, 18: 32–​63. Barnett, M. (2006). Building a Republican Peace: Stabilizing States after War. International Security, 30: 87–​112. Beetham, D. (2004). Towards a Universal Framework for Democracy Assessment. Democratization, 11: 1–​17. Connelly, S. (2009). Deliberation in the Face of Power: Stakeholder Planning in Egypt. Policy and Society, 28: 185–​95. Cooke, M. (2000). Five Arguments for Deliberative Democracy. Political Studies, 48: 947–​69. Coppedge, M., Gerring, J., Altman, D., Bernhard, M., Fish, S., Hicken, A., and Teorell, J. (2011). Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy:  A New Approach. Perspectives on Politics, 9: 247–​67. Coppedge, M., Gerring, J., Lindberg, S., and Teorell, J. (2014). Proposal:  Measuring Democracy: A Multidimensional, Tiered, and Historical Approach. Crisp, B. (1994). Limitations to Democracy in Developing Capitalist Societies: The Case of Venezuela. World Development, 22: 1491–​1509. Curato, N. (2012). A Sequential Analysis of Democratic Deliberation. Acta Politica, 47: 423–​42. Curato, N. (2014). Participation without Deliberation: The Crisis of Venezuelan Democracy. Democratic Theory, 1: 113–​21. Curato, N. (2015). Deliberative Capacity as an Indicator of Democratic Quality: The Case of the Philippines. International Political Science Review, 36: 99–​116. Diamond, L. J. and Morlino, L. (2004). The Quality of Democracy: An Overview. Journal of Democracy, 15: 20–​31. Dryzek, J. S. (2009). Democratization as Deliberative Capacity Building. Comparative Political Studies, 42: 1379–​1402. Dryzek, J. S. (2010). Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Eisenstadt, T. A., LeVan, A. C., and Maboudi, T. (2015). When Talk Trumps Text:  The Democratizing Effects of Deliberation during Constitution-​Making, 1974–​2011. American Political Science Review, 109: 592–​612. Elster, J. (ed.) (1996). The Roundtable Talks and the Breakdown of Communism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Foweraker, J., and Krznaric, R. (2000). Measuring Liberal Democratic Performance:  An Empirical and Conceptual Critique. Political Studies, 48: 759–​87.

Comparative Democratization Studies    501 Fung, A. (2007). Democratic Theory and Political Science:  A Pragmatic Method of Constructive Engagement. American Political Science Review, 101: 443–​58. Goodin, R. E. (2005). Sequencing deliberative moments. Acta Politica, 40: 182–​96. Habermas, J. (1981). Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns, vol. 2:  Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp). Jaramillo, M. C. and Steiner, J. (2014). Deliberative Transformative Moments: A New Concept as Amendment to the Discourse Quality Index. Journal of Public Deliberation, 10(2): Article 8. Korolev, A. (2014). Deliberative Democracy Nationwide?—​Evaluating Deliberativeness of Healthcare Reform in China. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 19: 151–​72. Lijphart, A. (1977). Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Matynia, E. (2009). Performative Democracy (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers). McLaverty, P. and Halpin, D. (2008). Deliberative Drift: The Emergence of Deliberation in the Policy Process. International Political Science Review, 29: 197–​214. O’Flynn, I. and Curato, N. (2015). Deliberative Democratization: A Framework for Systemic Analysis. Policy Studies, 36: 298–​313. Osiatynski, Wiktor. (1996). Roundtable Talks in Poland. In The Roundtable Talks and the Breakdown of Communism, ed. Jon Elster (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 21–​68. Pion-​Berlin, D. (2010). Informal Civil—​Military Relations in Latin America: Why Politicians and Soldiers Choose Unofficial Venues. Armed Forces and Society, 36: 526–​44. Přibáň, J. (2012). Varieties of Transition from Authoritarianism to Democracy. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 8: 105–​21. Salnykova, A. (2015). Deliberative Capacity in Post-​Soviet Democratization:  The Effects of Colour Revolutions, Institutions, and International Discourses on Inter-​Cultural Relations in Ukraine and Georgia. PhD thesis, University of British Columbia. Schmidt, V. A. (2010). Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously:  Explaining Change through Ddiscursive Institutionalism as the Fourth ‘New Institutionalism’. European Political Science Review, 2: 1–​25. Steiner, J. (2012). The Foundations of Deliberative Democracy:  Empirical Research and Normative Implications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Steiner, J., Jaramillo, M.C., Maia, R., and Mameli, S. (2017). Deliberation Across Deeply Divided Societies: Transformative Moments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tarrow, S. (1994). Power in Movement:  Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Chapter 31

Deliberat i on i n C omm u nicati on St u di e s John Gastil and Laura W. Black

The discipline of communication focuses on “how people use messages to generate meanings within and across various contexts” including research about “all forms, modes, media, and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific, and aesthetic inquiry” (National Communication Association). The field includes many different areas of specialization, including political, interpersonal, organizational, intercultural, and small group communication, and scholarly emphasis on deliberation and dialogue cuts across these domains. As a discipline, communication traces its lineage back to ancient Greek theories of rhetoric, which gave us forms of speech that endure to the present day, such as Socratic dialogue and deliberative assemblies. In the early twentieth century, the discipline developed an emphasis on group discussion and town hall discussion, in parallel with a related cultural movement in the United States (Keith 2007). Contemporary communication scholars approach deliberation from perspectives as diverse as could be found in any discipline, yet a common theme running through this scholarship is an interest in the practical problems and promise of deliberation (Carcasson, Black, and Sink 2010). Recognizing a common purpose among researchers scattered across dozens of subfields within the discipline, scholars in the United States established in 2015 the Public Dialogue and Deliberation Division. Located within the National Communication Association, this represents the first scholarly division of such an association devoted to this subject. The division’s practical emphasis comes across in its mission to “promote scholarship, teaching, practice, and public engagement related to the practice of public dialogue and deliberation.” In spite of their different research methods and topical foci, the founders of that division shared a common faith in the importance of “phronesis,” or practical wisdom that can lead to strategic action (Flyvbjerg 2001; Sprain and Boromisza-​Habashi 2013). Communication scholarship on deliberation and dialogue emphasizes the connection between theory and practice, and treats it as a central feature of our work. Scholarship in

Deliberation in Communication Studies    503 this tradition works to develop knowledge that has relevance to the experiences of particular communities in a cultural and historical context (Townsend 2013). Generalizable causal theory may emerge from such research, but scholars are more likely to undertake research that reveals localized chains of cause-​and-​effect. Other inquiries concern themselves as much with untangling the interactive subtleties of different cultural communication modes, such as group meetings (Bormann 1996; Sprain and Boromisza-​Habashi 2012) or revealing the ethical challenges inherent in decision-​making (Gastil and Sprain 2011). The commitment to practical theory means that communication scholars often engage in collaborative research alongside deliberative practitioners to produce research that is both academically rigorous and practically useful in particular contexts. When communication scholars study democratic deliberation, we conceptualize it as a communication practice involving both careful analysis of an issue and social processes that promote equality (Gastil 2008). Deliberative scholars engage in research on political processes such as citizen discussions, public meetings, elections, and campaigns, but deliberative research is distinct from conventional political communication research because of its anchor in normative deliberative theory. Relatedly, communication scholars conceptualize dialogue as a way of communicating and relating to others that involves openness, respect, and mutual trust. Although communication scholars theorize and study dialogue in a wide range of contexts (e.g. interpersonal, educational, and organizational), those who focus on public discourse tend to define dialogue normatively as “a way of approaching differences that is not divisive, but instead is ethically oriented toward finding points of connection” and building mutual understanding (Black 2015, 364). As understood within the discipline, deliberation and dialogue merit careful study and pedagogical attention partly because of their potential to address discursive problems inherent in pluralist democracy. Public dialogue could offer a corrective to alienation and isolation by fostering genuine connection and intersubjective understanding, particularly across lines of difference (Bohm 1996). Likewise, democratic deliberation has the potential to fuse respectful discourse and rigorous analysis to render well-​ reasoned collective judgments (Burkhalter, Gastil, and Kelshaw 2002). The bulk of communication scholarship on these subjects can be understood as examining the conditions under which dialogue and deliberation deliver on their promise and the communication processes that account for their success and failure. In this chapter, we provide an overview of such research, though it leaves aside or downplays some subjects covered elsewhere in the handbook—​particularly media studies, computer-​mediated communication, and nonverbal communication. We begin with work in the discipline’s oldest, rhetorical traditions, linked with early theoretical work on deliberation outside of the field of communication. We also review the conceptual insights about deliberation that have shaped much of the research that followed. The bulk of the chapter examines the practical questions of deliberation’s impact, the design formats of deliberative and dialogic processes, the dynamics of interaction principally in face-​to-​face group settings, and the special importance of communication processes such as dialogue and narrative, which complement deliberative theory’s traditional focus on reason and argument.

504    John Gastil and Laura W. Black

Historical and Rhetorical Perspectives The field of communication traces its roots back to the study of rhetoric in ancient Greece, where deliberation was understood as one of the basic modes of discourse in a republic (Bryant 1953) and a hallmark of active citizenship (Kock and Villadsen 2012). In the early twentieth century, the broader discipline embraced the idea that its mission was no longer to train great orators but to cultivate citizen leaders who could guide public discussion during the heyday of the American Forum Movement (Keith 2007). Modern rhetorical scholarship invoked the deliberative democratic ideal, in substance if not in name, before the term was in common use in political theory. For many scholars, the deliberative ideal was a critical standard against which one could measure both historical practices, such as the oratory of Woodrow Wilson (Kraig 2004), and contemporary politics (e.g. Jamieson 1992). Rhetorical scholarship addressing deliberative ideals directly has argued for re-​grounding them in rhetorical theory (Zarefsky 2008), which can mean patrolling the term to make sure it doesn’t get defined so narrowly that it excludes valuable rhetorical practices (Ivie 2002). A good illustration of the breadth of work in this tradition comes from the Pennsylvania State University Press series on rhetoric and deliberation. A recent volume finds how the 1936 presidential election ushered in the modern era of political mobilization, which promotes both deliberation and division within the public (Stuckey 2015). In work that blends the study of rhetoric and ethnography, Tracy (2010) argues that when deliberation is conceptualized as part of “ordinary democracy,” it becomes clearer that seemingly anti-​deliberative acts can serve deeper deliberative functions. Thus, she argues that deliberation should embrace “reasonable hostility,” which she finds in the justifiable anger displayed at some of the school board meetings she observed. Asen (2015) also scrutinizes school boards to see how these bodies function as part of localized deliberative systems and sees consequential policy being made through processes that do, at times, have a strong deliberative quality. A more critical approach comes from Lyon (2013), who tries to reorient deliberative theory away from persuasion on specific policy issues and toward its broader relational power. In this view, “deliberative acts” can redefine social relationships and mutual recognition as the essence of key political concepts, such as human rights.

Reconceptualizing Deliberation in Concrete Terms One theme that runs through the preceding works is a concern with specifying meanings in relation to actual practices and historical contexts. Thus, even from its earliest

Deliberation in Communication Studies    505 encounters with Habermasian theories of deliberation, communication researchers have tried to push deliberative scholarship toward the concrete, the particular, and the practical. Communication scholars’ first encounter with proto-​deliberative theory was in the writings of Jürgen Habermas, such as Legitimation Crisis (Habermas 1975). Burleson and Kline (1979) saw this work as a useful synthetic framework for better integrating humanistic and social scientific work in communication. Many communication scholars who embraced Habermas’s critical stance, however, saw an immediate need to draw the theory closer to the actual practice of speech. For instance, Huspek (1991) argued that “Habermas’s heavy reliance on transcendentally grounded concepts contributes to a theoretical top-​heaviness that prevents him from acquiring a genuine understanding of practice-​based emancipatory potentials” (225). A focus on the particular experiences of people in actual deliberative settings, however, has also vindicated Habermasian views. For instance, Hickerson and Gastil (2008) tested the “difference critique” of Habermas, which warns that socio-​economic power imbalances make deliberation impossible. Surveying thousands of jurors revealed that gender and other demographic differences did not account for differential experiences in jury deliberation. Likewise, a study of dialogues in Omaha, Nebraska, found that participants from ethnic minority groups in the community had the most favorable assessments, with many remarking on the exceptional experience of having an equal opportunity to speak (Abdel-​Monem et al. 2010). Public engagement processes appear more subject to reinforcing bias and power differentials precisely when they deviate the most from deliberative norms (e.g. Mendelberg and Oleske 2000). Such debates make even clearer the need for conceptual precision about what constitutes democratic deliberation. The first work to spell out this concept in detail at the level of interpersonal and small group interaction was Gastil’s (1993) Democracy in Small Groups, which integrated the most communication-​oriented contemporary political theory (e.g. Barber 1984; Fishkin 1991; Mansbridge 1983) with social scientific studies of interaction in dyads, groups, and organizations. Burkhalter, Gastil, and Kelshaw (2002) developed a more precise conception of deliberation in small face-​to-​ face groups. In this view, the process involves a rigorous analysis of problems and solutions modeled on functional theory of group decision-​making (Gouran and Hirokawa 1996), but it also has a social dimension that foregrounds notions of equality, consideration, and respect. This model also stressed the complementary nature of dialogue, which focuses on perspective-​taking and intersubjectivity, versus deliberation, which orients toward problem analysis and decision-​making. Ever since, this theme has appeared repeatedly in communication theory (e.g. Kim and Kim 2008). Later work extended this basic model to show how the analytic and social processes of democratic deliberation extend across diverse communication contexts and up to ever more abstract social scales (Gastil 2008; Gastil and Black 2008). That move, which comes in parallel to a more systemic turn in deliberative theory (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012), really represents a return to the larger systemic concerns foregrounded in Habermas (1975; 1996).

506    John Gastil and Laura W. Black The starkest example of practical theorizing in communication scholarship comes from Carcasson and Sprain (2016). They advance a theory of “deliberative inquiry,” which describes a four-​stage cycle as enduring as the most challenging problems a public might face. A common entry point is the recognition and framing of a problem, which often leads to a public convening that, in turn, facilitates deliberative engagement. Reporting on the results of the deliberation feeds back into the cycle by clarifying the nature of the issue for the next deliberation. After all, even if a policy intervention occurs after the reporting stage, intractable problems may be remedied but never resolved.

Theorizing and Measuring Deliberation’s Impact Even when public deliberation cannot resolve a policy problem, there are many ways in which it can benefit the participants themselves and their wider community. Much communication scholarship has addressed this issue to produce an evidence-​based account of deliberation’s direct benefits. Recent reviews have demonstrated deliberation’s capacity for reshaping not just policy judgments but also participants’ attitudes toward government, fellow citizens, and themselves (Neblo 2015; Pincock 2012). One line of research, for instance, posited that contemporary citizens experience a variety of forms of political alienation, such as powerlessness and isolation (Knobloch 2011). A subsequent study of participation in deliberative processes in Australia and the United States showed that participants in public events attributed changes in such attitudes to their taking part in meaningful deliberation with fellow citizens (Knobloch and Gastil 2014). This dovetails with studies of jury deliberation, which found that fulfilling this unique civic responsibility could inspire more regular voting and changes in a wider array of civic attitudes and activities (Gastil, Black, Deess, and Leighter 2008; Gastil, Deess, Weiser, and Simmons 2010). Participation in talk that is refreshingly deliberative and civil also can whet one’s appetite for future deliberation (Han and Brazeal 2015). Perhaps the largest set of studies investigates the capacity of deliberation to change people’s viewpoints on the topic under discussion. One early study showed that deliberation could sharpen participants’ viewpoints, even if that meant creating an ideological split between those on the political left and right (Gastil and Dillard 1999), though studies conducted since have shown that, depending on the nature of the deliberation and the issue itself, participants can alternatively arrive at a broad policy consensus, or at least find common ground (Gastil, Black, and Moscovitz 2008). In terms of the substance of such shared judgments, scholars have found a tendency to converge on judgments that show a careful consideration of a policy’s impact on broader communities and diverse publics (Gastil, Bacci and Dollinger 2010; Pearce and Littlejohn 1997). Communication theory has also considered how deliberative events can reinforce, or transform, prevailing discourse norms (Burkhalter, Gastil, and Kelshaw 2002; Sprain

Deliberation in Communication Studies    507 and Boromisza-​Habashi 2012). Thus, Townsend (2009) showed how New England Town Meetings sustain underlying democratic norms. Even something as small as a particular discursive tactic, such as “I’m just raising the question,” can factor into whether public meetings can entertain contrary points of view or tolerate dissent (Leighter and Black 2010). The very idea of deliberation itself, in this view, emerged as a special discourse mode within a broader “public discussion model,” which was itself a cultural accomplishment (Bormann 1996).

Deliberative and Dialogic Designs Given the importance of understanding varied discursive forms and practices, it should not surprise one that communication theorists often participate in the creation of discursive designs. Conventional views of theory distinguish among empirical/​causal, interpretive/​hermeneutic, and normative/​critical approaches (e.g. Littlejohn and Foss 2011), but Aakhus (2007) argues that “communication-​design work is an activity of theorizing communication” (115). Though Aakhus was thinking in organizational contexts, rather than civic ones, his approach aptly describes much of the design work done by deliberation and dialogue scholars: “Communication design happens when there is an intervention into some ongoing activity through the invention of techniques, devices, and procedures that aim to redesign interactivity and thus shape the possibilities for communication” (112). Dialogue and deliberation design features include the use of small group conversations, carefully prepared information that frames the issue for discussion, trained facilitators, and conversational guidelines and use of space to promote deliberative norms (Black 2012). Design decisions also include choices about how participants are recruited, whether groups will make a decision, and what happens with information that is generated during the discussion. Communication research has examined how these key features vary in different deliberative and dialogic designs and what these variations mean in terms of outcomes. For example, event designs vary in whether participants are randomly selected, invited as representatives of different stakeholder groups, or come in response to an open invitation. Events can also utilize experts in different ways. While it is typical for deliberative events to use experts to help frame background information provided to participants, experts can also serve as “on tap” resources to answer questions that come up during the group’s discussion (Sprain, Carcasson, and Merolla 2014). These design choices can impact the type of communication that occurs during the event and the perceived legitimacy of decisions that are made. Deliberative practitioners use specific techniques such as the “world café ” method, or study circles processes, to help design events to meet the particular goals. Some events employ simple designs, which limits the number of different techniques used and emphasizes process stability. For example, organizations such as the Essential Partners,

508    John Gastil and Laura W. Black which focuses exclusively on engaging opposing groups on highly divisive issues, employ very specific recruitment, framing, and facilitation processes in order to structure the group’s conversation through a very specific process (Pearce and Lilttlejohn 1997). In contrast, large-​scale events such as the Australian Citizens’ Parliament engage participants in a wide variety of techniques during the event. Studies that look at the influence of design emphasize that these features influence how participants share information and stories, which can shape their knowledge and opinions of the issues (Black and Lubensky 2013). Because deliberation can operate through different communication modalities on different social scales, some designs can become complex multi-​level processes. For example, the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review Commission organizes randomly-​ selected panels of twenty to twenty-four citizens to deliberate for three to five  days on a ballot measure. At the end of the week, the panelists produce a written Citizens’ Statement that then goes into the official state issue guide mailed to every registered voter. This process transfers the insights of an intensive small-​group deliberation to a larger voting public to improve the quality of electoral deliberation. Thus far, research suggests the process works as intended both at the small-​group level (Knobloch et al. 2013) and for the electorate (Gastil, Richards, and Knobloch 2014).

The Dynamics of Group Interaction Communication research explores social factors that contextualize and shape interactions, communicative choices people make during their interactions, and the impact those choices have on relationships, groups, and larger social contexts. Given this disciplinary framework, deliberative communication scholars often focus analytic attention on the group dynamics. We recognize that participants in deliberation and dialogue events have both strategic and social solidarity goals (White 2008) and our research examines how these goals are manifest in the dynamics of group interaction. Communication scholars use a wide range of methods to study deliberation (Black et al. 2010). The study of outcomes typically involves data such as participant questionnaires, to measure attitudes and behaviors, or data external to the deliberation process such as policy outcomes, voting rates, or political participation. In contrast, the study of group dynamics often uses qualitative case studies or content analysis of a small number of groups to look closely at how deliberative talk occurs. Communication scholars are able to draw on discourse analytic methods to pay close attention to the actual interaction of deliberative and dialogue events. This means that communication scholars can analyse key aspects of deliberation and dialogue, such as listening, respect, and civility (Black and Weiderhold 2014), or openness by seeing how they are communicated during deliberative events. These social dimensions are theorized as central to democratic deliberation, but are notoriously difficult to measure other than through participants’ post-​event self-​report surveys (Black 2012). However, by looking closely at interaction,

Deliberation in Communication Studies    509 communication scholars are able to better understand how participants’ communication choices help or hinder the deliberative process (e.g. Dutwin 2003; Graham and Witschge 2003). A great deal of communication research on the group dynamics of deliberation has examined how participants use information, express agreement or disagreement, or reach decisions. Studies of information track how participants in deliberative events use the information provided by forum organizers and moderators (Muhlberger and Weber 2006), what information participants draw on to make their arguments, and whether the information use promotes high-​quality deliberative discussion (Polletta, Chen, and Anderson 2009). Information can be studied from varied disciplinary approaches, but communication scholars focus on how information is framed, used in arguments, and responded to by other group members. In this way, information use is seen as part of the group dynamics in deliberative discussion. Disagreement is central to deliberative democracy because the normative principles of inclusion and equality require the presence of a diverse range of perspectives. Moreover, deliberation requires some level of disagreement in the rigorous analysis of issues for participants properly to work through the trade-​offs of different possible choices. Yet, ideally deliberation also involves some level of agreement, mutual understanding, or decision making (Karpowitz and Mansbridge 2005). Communication scholars are interested in understanding the communicative dynamics of this agreement and disagreement in deliberative discussion. Studies investigate how participants express agreement and disagreement during their discussions, what kind of power dynamics are evident through their disagreements, and how groups move toward agreement on an issue (Stromer-​Galley 2007; Stromer-​Galley and Muhlberger 2009). Research also investigates what kinds of disagreements are seen as appropriate for deliberation and how participants and facilitators understand the idea of “civil disagreement” that is central to deliberative discussion (Black and Weiderhold 2014). Deliberative events typically utilize facilitators who manage all of these group dynamics and guide the group’s discussion. Communication research on facilitators has examined the different communicative tasks they perform and the methods they use to frame and guide the group’s interaction (Frey 2006). Studies of National Issues Forums events highlight that facilitators with different styles (such as passive, moderate, or involved) engage in different communication strategies and have an influence on how groups discuss the issues (Dillard 2013; Ryfe 2006). Some research questions the amount of power that facilitators have to shape the group’s interactions (Toker 2005), but largely the communication research on facilitators views their work as productive and valuable for deliberation. Facilitators who lead deliberative and dialogue events are tasked with observing and assessing group interaction and making choices about when to intervene. Some communication scholars have collaborated with facilitators to better understand how these facilitators evaluate group members’ behaviors during deliberative events (Mansbridge et al. 2006). This research found that facilitators identified interactions as positive if they maintained a positive group atmosphere or made progress on the group’s task.

510    John Gastil and Laura W. Black Facilitators also characterized emotional expression as positive if it showed “passion” for a topic and helped groups stay engaged in the task, but not if it detracted from the positive group climate or made participants feel defensive. These insights from facilitators have helped communication scholars key in on aspects of deliberative talk that go beyond the prescriptions of normative theory to better interrogate how people actually communicate when they are placed in situations designed to promote deliberative discourse. As members of a practical discipline, many communication scholars who study deliberation and dialogue treat their classrooms as a kind of laboratory for ideas and designs as much as a space for teaching those designs and ideas back to students. In this way, classrooms are treated as “proto-​public spaces” (Eberly 1999)  where communication scholars use the study of design and group dynamics to teach students through engaged, deliberative pedagogy. Several communication programs around the US have community outreach programs or centers that take an engaged approach to the work of deliberation by training students as facilitators for campus and communication events. These deliberative centers in universities act as what Martin Carcasson calls local “hubs of democracy.” They not only have educative effects for students, they also help build communities’ “deliberative capacity,” and “strengthen the connection of colleges and universities to their local communities” (Carcasson 2014, 3). The combination of pedagogy, research, and community engagement is typical in communication studies and is a hallmark of our practical approach to deliberative scholarship.

Narratives and Storytelling A final distinguishing characteristic of the communication discipline’s approach to studying deliberation is that our research enlarges the study to include public dialogue. Communication scholars have a longstanding interest in dialogue both as a way of understanding social practices and as a specific type of communication practice (Carbaugh 2013). Normative conceptions view dialogue as a discursive ideal that involves genuine openness, a commitment to being fully present in a conversation, and an effort to build mutual understanding with others whom we perceive as different from ourselves (Buber 1958). Dialogue is seen as valuable in a wide range of relationships that occur in interpersonal, group, organizational, and political contexts (Anderson, Baxter, and Cissna 2004). Although dialogue is less focused on analysis and decision-​making, it has some conceptual overlap with deliberation; and communication scholars who study deliberation consider the ways in which these two ideals are related (Barge 2002; Black 2008; Burkhalter, Gastil, and Kelshaw 2002). Scholars interested in public dialogue stress its ability to help groups transform conflicts (Pearce and Littlejohn 1997) and build mutual understanding across lines of cultural or other deep differences (Pearce and Pearce 2001; Spano 2006).The research on intergroup dialogue (Broome and Jacobsson Hatay 2006; Ellis 2010) is related to larger

Deliberation in Communication Studies    511 research traditions in communication studies that examine intercultural communication and emphasize how groups can use dialogue techniques to manage their conflicts by building a better understanding of different cultural values and perspectives on issues (Carcasson, Black, and Sink 2010). A key feature of dialogic design is the presence of personal storytelling. Stories allow participants in dialogue events to share their perspectives and explain the experiences they have had that influence how they see the issue at hand. Communication scholars have taken an interest in how people tell their stories, what conditions invite stories, how stories are responded to, and how these storytelling interactions function to promote or inhibit deliberation and dialogue. Some communication research shows that narratives display participants’ values and identities, and can therefore invite perspective taking (Black 2008; Black and Lubensky 2013), which can further the dialogic goal of building mutual understanding. Some research has explored how stories can serve as meaningful, transformative moments that alter how the group interacts and engages in deliberation (Black 2008; Jaramillo and Steiner 2014). In this way, the study of storytelling is part of communication scholars’ efforts to understand the dynamics of group interaction during deliberation and dialogue events (see also Chapter 4 by Polletta and Gardner in this volume). Stories are also used to share information and support arguments in both dialogue and deliberation (Black 2008; Polletta and Lee 2006; Ryfe 2006), which can promote the analytic functions of deliberation. Stories are also a form of discourse that is available and accessible to participants, even those who are unfamiliar with the expert discourse, and can be viewed as a way for those who come from traditionally marginalized groups to make meaningful contributions to deliberative discussion (Young 1996). Critics warn that the emotional dynamics of storytelling could sway group members away from the kind of well-​reasoned argument that is at the heart of deliberation. Communication scholars are also concerned with the identity and power aspects of storytelling and note that it matters whose stories are heard and who tells stories on behalf of others (Sprain and Hughes 2015). Deliberative communication scholars take these concerns seriously and argue that the design of deliberative events is crucial in mediating the storytelling dynamics and the ways in which participants manage both emotional and analytic aspects of their task (Johnson, Black, and Knobloch 2017).

Future Directions We expect that communication scholarship will continue to advance along the lines we have described here by maintaining a firm footing in tension between theory and practice, emphasizing both process and outcomes, considering design, and looking closely at the dynamics of group interaction and specific communication practices like storytelling, listening, argument, and decision-​making. Future directions also include developing more concrete conceptions about deliberation and dialogue.

512    John Gastil and Laura W. Black Communication scholarship could continue to clarify what deliberation means, both in practice and in terms of operationalization of concepts. We suspect that the deliberative process may be more than simply a multidimensional variable—​but rather, overlapping cycles of related cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. Diana Mutz argues that deliberative scholars ought to develop middle-​range theories that “are each important, specifiable, and falsifiable parts of deliberative democratic theory” and offer “empirically and theoretically grounded hypotheses about specific relationships between those concepts” (Mutz 2008, 521). We agree with this general premise and believe that the recent development of mid-​range theories related to deliberation can advance the communication research on design, process, and outcomes of deliberative events. However, we do not believe empirical deliberative scholarship need distance itself from normative theory. Although normative claims are not testable, per se, the arguments advanced by normative deliberative theory include empirical assumptions, many of which invite testing. Disproving assumptions can force reworking specific normative arguments and help deepen the theoretical work on deliberation. The discipline of communication includes work from a wide range of epistemological and methodological traditions, and sustaining normative deliberative theory contributes to our interest in the interplay of theory, research, and practice. Communication scholars can also further explain the relationship between dialogue and deliberation, both in theory and practice, and how participants navigate the tensions between these different ideals. Moreover, communication research could investigate how deliberation relates to other kinds of political action and what power dynamics are at play during deliberative events. Deliberation and dialogue involve some inherent dilemmas for participants (Guttman 2007) and communication scholarship could work to understand how participants manage these dilemmas in their interactions. Communication research on deliberation will also need to do more to link the micro-​ focused interaction studies with the more macro-​oriented questions about outcomes. Although there is a strong body of work on the outcomes of deliberation, and a robust set of studies on interaction dynamics and communication practices, these two areas are often separate. The work on communication as design offers one promising way to link process and outcome research. There also may be other ways for communication scholars to build a shared understanding of how the small discursive moves that occur in deliberation and dialogue relate to larger outcomes for individuals, institutions, and larger political and social units. Finally, communication theory and research will likely remain anchored in practical theory. Many communication scholars will continue to take engaged approaches to research that involve collaborating with community partners, public agencies, nonprofit groups, and policymakers. This engaged approach will involve further refinements to their pedagogy, with their students becoming involved in outreach efforts that fuse public deliberation research with service learning. By taking this approach, communication scholars are poised to advance deliberative theory, more broadly, while simultaneously reshaping larger social practices and institutions in pursuit of stronger deliberative systems.

Deliberation in Communication Studies    513

Acknowledgments The introductory section of this chapter draws on the proposal to establish the Public Dialogue and Deliberation Division, a document that was co-​authored and critiqued by the authors in collaboration with Martin Carcasson, Sara Drury, Mike Hogan, Bill Keith, Tim Steffensmeier, Rebecca Townsend, and others. This chapter also draws on research assistance provided by Robert Richards.

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Chapter 32

Arguing a nd Deliberat i on i n In ternationa l Re l at i ons Thomas Risse

The practice of international relations is all about talk. What do diplomats do when they conduct the foreign affairs of their state? They talk. What are threats or promises, the daily business of international relations? They are speech acts. It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that the field of International Relations (IR) has ignored language and communication for a long time. The legacy of realism and Realpolitik approaches to IR which treat states as billiard balls bumping into each other in the great “balance of power” game has resulted in a treatment of language and communication as nothing more than the transmission belts for the underlying state interests (for classical realism see Morgenthau 1948; for neorealism or structural realism see Waltz 1979). When neoliberal (or rationalist) institutionalism came along in the late 1970s and early 1980s and scholars started theorizing about international cooperation and international institutions as sets of norms and rules, communication and the intersubjective quality of these norms were treated as largely epiphenomenal (for neoliberal institutionalism see Keohane and Nye 1977; Krasner 1983; Keohane 1989a). It was not until the late 1980s when social constructivism gradually entered the stage that scholars started paying attention to communicative action as the basic stuff which international affairs are made of. In 1986, Friedrich Kratochwil and John Ruggie published a seminal article in International Organization in which they pointed out that the various neoliberal institutionalists had overlooked the intersubjective quality of norms and, thus, the role of communication in their study of international cooperation (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986). Three years later, Kratochwil published his book Rules, Norms, and Decisions in which he introduced Habermas’s theory of communicative action to an American IR audience (Kratochwil 1989). Yet, Katzenstein’s edited volume in 1996, which collected scholarship on international norms from a social

Deliberation in International Relations    519 constructivist perspective, does not contain a single article on communication and language (Katzenstein 1996). Twenty years later, this picture has changed dramatically. There is no longer any IR textbook or handbook which does not cover “discourse” or “discourse theory.” Jennifer Milliken’s 1999 article on “The Study of Discourse in International Relations” (Milliken 1999) is the second most cited article of the European Journal of International Relations (EJIR).1 My own “Let’s Argue! Communicative Action in World Politics” piece (Risse 2000) ranks no. 7 in the list of most cited articles in International Organization.2 Yet, this chapter is not about the “linguistic turn” in IR per se. Rather, I concentrate on one aspect of these debates, namely a focus on deliberation, arguing, and communicative action in a Habermasian tradition (see e.g. Habermas 1981; Habermas 1992; for an overview on similar debates in public policy in general see Fischer and Gottweis 2013; Bächtiger and Wyss 2013). I start with the “ZIB debate” of the mid-​1990s, named after the German language IR journal Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen which explicitly concentrated on the extent to which Habermas’s theory of communicative action could be made fruitful for the study of international relations, namely diplomacy and negotiations. I then discuss the state of the art with regard to the empirical evaluation of Habermasian assumptions in the field of IR. I conclude with some thoughts on the normative implications for global governance (see also Will Smith’s contribution to this handbook, Chapter 55).

The “ZIB Debate:” Arguing Over Arguing The so-​called ZIB debate as it has been labeled in the German IR community was part and parcel of a larger “deliberative turn” in the social sciences in general (see Dryzek 2000; Neyer 2006). While concepts of deliberative democracy contributed to normative political theory, the purpose of the ZIB debate was analytical—​to critically explore the conditions under which arguing and deliberation mattered in world politics. The ZIB debate represented a German version of the controversy between rational choice and constructivist approaches in IR which was carried out in the English-​speaking communities at the time (see e.g. Wendt 1992; Katzenstein 1996; Keohane 1989b). Harald Müller’s seminal contribution introduced Habermas’s theory of communicative action (Habermas 1981; Habermas 1992) to the study of international politics and demonstrated its potential for the explanation of empirical phenomena in global affairs (Müller 1994; English version: Müller 2001). Müller claimed that there is a logical gap in standard functionalist accounts of international cooperation. These explanations typically assert actors’ interests and motivations geared toward cooperation, at least under certain conditions. Yet, it remains unclear why these motivations should lead to actual

520   Thomas Risse cooperation under conditions of anarchy leading to existential insecurity and to concerns about relative gains, as (neo-​) realists claim (Grieco 1988; see the debate between neorealists and neoliberal institutionalists, Baldwin 1993). To put it differently, the functional need for cooperative solutions does not in itself explain the factual coming into being of inter-​state institutions. Müller then argued that neoliberal or rationalist institutionalism overlooked that actors—​including state negotiators and diplomats—​do not only have strategic action repertoires at their disposal, but they can also revert to what Habermas calls “communicative action,” that is, communication geared toward achieving a common understanding—​deliberation. Before negotiators can engage in distributive bargaining, they must develop a “common life-​world” and need to reach a common understanding of what they are bargaining about including the underlying norms and rules of what might constitute a fair deal. Müller claimed that rational choice approaches to international cooperation typically bracket the “common knowledge” assumption and that “common knowledge” among negotiators requires communicative understanding including some degree of deliberations. A rather heated discussion ensued to what extent rational choice can accommodate communicative action. Neoliberal institutionalists such as Otto Keck or Gerald Schneider argued that “cheap talk” models are able to take care of the ability of actors to truthfully signal their preferences and that the “common knowledge” assumption does not require communicative action in the Habermasian sense (Keck 1995; Keck 1997; Schneider 1994; Grobe 2010; on “cheap talk” models in general see Farrell and Rabin 1996; Johnson 1993). “Habermasians” replied that talk is never cheap, since lying to your negotiating partner might bear real material costs in international life and that rationalist institutionalism has a particularly hard time to accommodate practical discourses over norms and rules (e.g. Müller 1995; Risse-​Kappen 1995; for other contributions see Jaeger 1996; Müller 1996; Prittwitz 1996b; Schmalz-​Bruns 1995). Frank Schimmelfennig, Bernhard Zangl, and Michael Zürn formulated a middle ground between the two positions by accommodating some of the Habermasians’ concerns within a broader understanding of rational choice (Schimmelfennig 1997; Zangl and Zürn 1996). They argued, for example, that boundedly rational actors should have an interest in “getting the facts right” (Bayesian updating) and, thus, might engage in a communicative discourse over facts. Schimmelfennig in particular developed a theory of “rhetorical action” focusing on the strategic use of arguments and reasoning in order to further actors’ interests (see particularly Schimmelfennig 2001; 2003). He called it rhetorical entrapment when actors are able to shame others into norm-​conforming behavior on the grounds of some previously agreed common standards of legitimacy of a given community. He used NATO as well as EU enlargement after the end of the Cold War as empirical cases to substantiate his argument. Throughout the 1990s, this debate was largely confined to the German-​speaking IR community—​except for Neta Crawford in the US who used a Habermasian approach to shed new light on the debates over decolonization and over humanitarian interventions (Crawford 2002; see also Lynch 1999 on public spheres in the Middle East). However, there have been some parallel debates in the Anglo-​American world in political theory

Deliberation in International Relations    521 between advocates of deliberative democracy and rational choice theorists (see e.g. Elster 1998b; Elster 1992; Dryzek 2000; see Christian List’s chapter in this handbook, Chapter 29).3 In 2000, I “translated” the ZIB debate into English by publishing my “Let’s Argue!” piece in International Organization (Risse 2000). In this piece, I used Gorbachev’s agreement to NATO membership of unified Germany as well as transnational discourses over human rights as empirical illustrations (on the latter see also Risse 1999; Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999). At the time, however, these were mere empirical illustrations rather than rigorous tests of hypotheses. By the turn of the century, the debate between rational choice and social constructivism focusing on communicative action in the Habermasian sense had run its course. There remained some disagreement among Habermasians in IR whether the “logic of arguing” represented a distinct logic of action (Risse 2000) or whether the “logic of appropriateness” (March and Olsen 1989; 1998) should be regarded as the overarching logic of social action which could accommodate both instrumentally strategic behavior and the “logic of arguing” (Müller 2004; see also Deitelhoff and Müller 2005). The value added of these meta-​theoretical discussions was less and less comprehensible for the larger IR community. Instead, those interested in the logic of communicative action turned toward empirical research and investigated whether reasoning and deliberation actually mattered to account for outcomes of international negotiations.

Arguing Goes Empirical: The Institutional Conditions of Deliberation The empirical turn of research into the conditions and effects of communicative action and deliberation in world politics concentrated, first, on various sets of international negotiations and their outcomes.4 For example, Nicole Deitelhoff examined the negotiations leading to the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC) (Deitelhoff 2006; 2009)  and observed “islands of persuasion” which proved nevertheless crucial to explain the ultimate success of these talks. Crawford’s work on decolonization and humanitarian interventions and the role of arguments in these deliberations has already been mentioned (Crawford 2002; see also Lynch’s work on China and communicative engagement, Lynch 2002). Other empirical case studies included international environmental negotiations (Prittwitz 1996a; Orsini and Compagnon 2013; Ulbert, Risse, and Müller 2004; Ulbert 1997) or the decision to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely (Müller 2002; see also the 2013 symposium in Critical Policy Studies, Quantin and Smith 2013). In addition, work on compliance with international human rights treaties tried to demonstrate that arguing and persuasion played a crucial role in these processes (e.g. Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink 1999; 2013). Anna

522   Thomas Risse Holzscheiter studied the “power in discourse” with regard to the Convention on the Right of the Child (Holzscheiter 2010). Second, the “deliberative turn” (Neyer 2006; see also Neyer 2012) in IR reached EU studies. Once again, the EU proved to be a laboratory for probing theoretical propositions developed in various disciplines of the social sciences. For example, Christian Joerges and Jürgen Neyer studied the EU’s comitology as deliberative bodies (Joerges and Neyer 1997a; 1997b; see also Smith 2013 on wine reform in the EU). Arne Niemann examined arguing and bargaining with regard to the EU’s external trade negotiations (Niemann 2004; 2006), while Jeffrey Checkel looked at persuasion in the context of compliance with the Council of Europe’s human rights provisions (Checkel 2001). There has also been work on the EU’s constitutional processes, from the negotiations leading up to the single market (Gehring and Kerler 2008) to the Constitutional Convention of the early 2000s (Göler 2006; Panke 2006; Risse and Kleine 2010). Schimmelfennig’s contributions on rhetorical action have already been mentioned (Schimmelfennig 2001; 2003). Moreover, Vivien Schmidt suggested an entire research program in this context which she labeled “discursive institutionalism” focusing on the explanatory power of ideas and communication (Schmidt 2008; Schmidt 2010). Finally, while not directly related to communicative action and deliberation, various studies on transnational public spheres are noteworthy here, since they directly or indirectly referred to Habermas’s work on the public sphere as communicative space (Habermas 1962). Marc Lynch’s research on the Arab public sphere has to be mentioned in this context (Lynch 1999), while Cathleen Kantner analyzed the transnationalization of debates on military interventions across Western public spheres (Kantner 2016). However, most research concentrated on Europe and the (non-​) existence of a transnational European public sphere and the extent to which it permitted deliberation and meaningful communication across national boundaries (see e.g. Eder and Kantner 2000; Kantner 2004; Koopmans and Statham 2010; Risse 2010, part  2; Risse 2015a; Wessler et al. 2008). This research largely confirmed that the various national public spheres are thoroughly Europeanized in the sense that national media of EU member states regularly report about European affairs, that the salience of EU-​related issues has strongly increased in recent years, and that speakers from other European countries as well as from the EU are regularly represented in the various public spheres. However, transnational deliberation in the true sense of the word seems to occur rather rarely in Europe (overview in Risse 2015b). More than fifteen years of empirical research on arguing and deliberation in international relations and EU affairs have yielded the following results.5 First, it makes little sense to simply count speech acts in order to establish which logic (consequentialism, appropriateness, or deliberation) prevails in a given communicative situation. Empirical studies demonstrated that arguing speech acts are almost always dominating discourses, even in tough bargaining situations (see e.g. Holzinger 2001a; 2001b). International negotiators almost always justify even the most self-​interested demands with reference to some general or specific and previously agreed-​upon norms or to some

Deliberation in International Relations    523 (mostly ill-​specified) international “common good.” In other words, rhetorical action in Schimmelfennig’s sense is all-​pervasive in international affairs. But this—​sometimes ritualistic—​behavior does not tell us much about the effects of this reason-​giving. If nobody listens and is prepared to be persuaded, one can argue until blue in the face—​and nothing happens. At the same time, a good argument at the right time might carry the day and convince the audience. Yet, the same can happen with regard to a threat or a promise as typical bargaining moves. We cannot infer from the sheer use of arguments and reasons that deliberation actually mattered and that persuasion played a role to account for outcomes. Empirical research on arguing and deliberation, therefore, moved from determining the extent to which arguments, reasons, and justification were given in various communication settings to establishing the effects of these deliberative communications. Does it matter that actors constantly argue and justify their claims? Is somebody actually listening (see Dobson 2014) and being persuaded (see also Michael Morrell in this handbook, Chapter 15)? Second, early work on arguing and deliberation assumed that actor orientations were crucial to determine the underlying logic of action (Jörke 2013a). But it turned out to be almost impossible to empirically infer actor motivations with any certainty. Moreover, it is not clear at all that actor orientations should be theoretically decisive to determine which logic prevails. This resembles Müller’s point that the logic of appropriateness sets the “rules of the game” and ultimately determines which of the three logics of action carries the day (Müller 2004). Take a courtroom situation: Irrespective of the motivations of the defense lawyers or the prosecutors, both sides have to engage in legal reasoning and discourse in order to persuade the audience of a third party—​the judge and/​or the jury—​that their respective standpoints are correct. The rules of legal proceedings establish a “shadow of hierarchy” which in turn leads the logic of arguing to prevail. Jürgen Habermas concluded from these and other findings that we need to investigate the institutional scope conditions enabling communicative rationality so that arguing actually leads to persuasion and gives rise to outcomes that one would not have expected on the basis of pure bargaining.6 This led to a reformulation of the research question that originally triggered the debate (see also Deitelhoff 2009): Which institutional scope conditions are conducive for arguing to matter in communicative settings and, thus, to affect both processes and outcomes? This move toward studying the institutional scope conditions of arguing and deliberation in international negotiations closely resembles what has been called “deliberative negotiations” by Jane Mansbridge and others (Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2016).7 The concept connotes a middle ground between pure deliberation and pure bargaining and—​in a similar spirit—​establishes the conditions under which deliberative behavior makes a difference in negotiations (see also Odell 2000; Young 1999 on integrative bargaining). Thus, we need to look at those enabling conditions in the institutional framework, including access, publicity, and the role of “honest brokers.”8

524   Thomas Risse

Inclusivity or Exclusivity of Access Habermas’s “ideal speech situation” as a counterfactual presupposition9 assumes that everybody concerned should have access to the discourse. Of course, this condition is almost never present in international settings, which are usually highly exclusive. If we relax the argument a bit and concentrate on those cases in which so-​called stakeholders are present in international negotiations (e.g. NGOs; civil society organizations), there is little systematic evidence that more inclusive international institutions tend to be more deliberative than exclusive inter-​state organizations. The increasing body of literature on transnational private governance and on more inclusive public–​private partnerships does not lead to firm conclusions either way (see e.g. Dingwerth 2007; Dingwerth 2008; Beisheim and Liese 2014; Hall and Biersteker 2002; Risse 2006; Esguerra Portocarrero 2014). Whether or not transnational institutions which systematically include non-​state actors enable deliberation seems to depend on the same scope conditions as those for inter-​state institutions.

Transparency vs Secrecy A second institutional scope condition concerns the degree of publicity of negotiations. According to Jon Elster, arguing in front of an audience has to be in line with social norms of procedural democracy (Elster 1998a; 1998c). Because a perfect coincidence between private interests and justifications for a position is considered suspicious, actors are pressured to act in a way that is perceived as impartial, not selfish. Their validity claims have to be plausible and verifiable. Coherent instead of constantly changing justifications for a position hint at the constraining effect of these norms. In contrast to Elster, Jeffrey Checkel has argued that negotiations in front of a public audience result in ritualistic rhetoric, and that deliberation behind closed doors is more conducive to preference changes (Checkel 2001). The two claims are not mutually exclusive, but depend on the kind of audience and its required consent. Elster refers to procedural norms of an otherwise neutral audience, whereas Checkel (2001, 54) alludes to attentive domestic audiences that expect their negotiators to pursue national or otherwise given interests. In other words, once speakers are certain about the preferences of their audiences whose consent is required, social norms lose their constraining effect. Negotiating actors do not need to argue, but can employ rhetorical devices to sway their constituencies. Under these conditions (of a principal–​agent relationship), secrecy and negotiating behind closed doors might be the only way toward problem-​solving, since it enables speakers to argue “out of the box” and to work toward a reasoned consensus without having to fear that some principal in the audience might accuse them of “betraying the national interest.” While deliberating behind closed doors seems at first to contradict the principle of democratic transparency, there are also good normative reasons for

Deliberation in International Relations    525 secrecy in “deliberative negotiations” (see Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2016; see also Chambers 2004).

Privileging Honest Brokers A final way in which the institutional setting can influence whether arguing is effective concerns the degree to which it privileges the emergence of “honest brokers.” Honest brokers are considered trustworthy by the opposing sides and can therefore acquire authority to suggest innovative solutions, and are able to shift negotiations toward a problem-​solving mode (see Young 1991 for an early argument on this point). The crucial point here is that trustworthiness and authority are not only a matter of individual personality; they are also the result of a specific institutional context that privileges and legitimates authority in negotiations. Take the EU’s comitology, once again, where rules of procedure privilege expertise and thus arguments based on knowledge rather than interest. In such a setting, authority may stem from the recognition of an actor’s superior expertise on a subject matter rather than from his or her formal position. As a result, speakers that seek to affect the outcome have to frame their interests in a way consistent with recognized and consensual knowledge (see Haas 1990).

Sequencing and the Role of Power Asymmetries The “deliberative turn” in the social sciences in general and in IR in particular challenged the assumption that one can read off political outcomes from the preferences of the actors involved, on the one hand, and from the power resources at their disposal, on the other. Indeed, if outcomes of deliberative processes simply replicate the power structures in the world, why bother studying these phenomena? In other words, if arguing is effective, it should empower those in world politics who do not command strong material (economic or military) capabilities, be it state or non-​state actors. Of course, power asymmetries are never absent in international negotiations. The question is under which conditions they are likely to recede into the background and actors engage in truth-​seeking deliberation in which the “forceless force of the better argument” prevails, at least to some extent. We can then investigate the degree to which actual discourses approximate such an ideal typical deliberative discourse. The more access to the communicative processes is restricted, the more power asymmetries among participants creep in; and the more non-​transparency prevails, the less the discursive communication resembles a deliberative discourse and the more it looks like a power-​ dominated discourse in the Foucaultian sense (Foucault 1991). This consideration also means that it is not necessary to treat a Habermasian understanding of deliberative discourse and a Foucaultian power-​dominated discourse as paradigmatic opposites (for a different point of view see Jörke 2013b). Rather, one can

526   Thomas Risse use these different understandings of discourse as endpoints of a continuum which then enables us to locate empirical discourses and to determine the degree to which they resemble either one of them. Holzscheiter, for example, in her study of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Holzscheiter 2010), demonstrated the evolution of the international debates on the rights of children as a move from a Habermasian “power in discourse” to a Foucaultian “power of discourse.” A similar argument has been made by Fritz Scharpf (1997). According to him, arguing matters particularly in early stages of negotiations (e.g. pre-​negotiations) when actors need to agree on what the stakes are, what the underlying norms are, how they judge the facts pertinent to the bargaining, and what constitutes a fair deal. In other words, when “common knowledge” needs to be established (see above), arguing and deliberation should matter more than in later stages of negotiations when it is all about distributive bargaining.

Effects: Does Deliberation Lead to Better Agreements? It follows from the above that negotiations entailing deliberation should lead to better outcomes than those solely involving bargaining based on fixed preferences by actors, for two reasons (see also Saretzki 1996). First, successful communicative action is likely to yield a “reasoned consensus” rather than a bargaining compromise. An empirical indicator for the former is that actors give similar reasons for their agreement and a shared interpretation of the results (Eriksen and Weigard 1997). Second, an agreement based on reasoned consensus is likely to be situated above lowest common denominator solutions, to be “surprising” in the sense that it cannot be read off the initial preference of the (major) actors involved, or to represent better problem-​solving of the issue at hand. Of course, there is no guarantee that communicative action will yield a reasoned consensus, since it can also result in continuing dissent. Moreover, the empirical evidence for such “better outcomes” is still not very systematic (see, however, Bächtiger and Wyss 2013 for a more optimistic view). For example, we can infer from Deitelhoff ’s study of the ICC that the “islands of persuasion” were crucial for bringing about the Rome Statute, against the strong objections of the US in the final phase of negotiations (Deitelhoff 2006). Our own research on the EU’s constitutional convention and the agreement on the EU’s single legal personality also indicates that a reasoned consensus was reached (Risse and Kleine 2010). In contrast, the famous principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” between developed and developing countries, a cornerstone of the sustainable development agenda which was enshrined in the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, represents a classical bargaining compromise with little initial agreement among the negotiating parties of what it actually means (Steffek 2000).

Deliberation in International Relations    527 Hence the continual bickering about the respective obligations of the various states—​up to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. To sum up, the empirical turn in IR research on arguing and bargaining showed, first, that both types of communication modes are ever-​present in international negotiations. Second, scholarship moved to identify institutional scope conditions for deliberation to have an effect on negotiation outcomes. Unfortunately, this work has not yet resulted in rigorous hypothesis-​testing and is mostly based on various comparative case studies. One problem is methodological: it requires extremely detailed process-​tracing (Bennett and Checkel 2014) on the micro level of individual negotiation sequences to discern the effects of communicative action and deliberation in international negotiations. Given the secrecy surrounding most international negotiations, the empirical material is often not available to be able to estimate whether or not deliberation contributed to the outcome.

Conclusions: Normative Implications This chapter has tried to show that the “deliberative turn” in international relations started with a focus on international cooperation as communicative action in the Habermasian sense, thus challenging the rational choice mainstream of neoliberal institutionalism. Scholarship then turned empirical to not only demonstrate that arguing actually matters in global affairs, but also to discern the scope conditions under which deliberation effects negotiation outcomes and international institution-​building. However, there has also been a more normative project with regard to deliberative democracy in global governance from the beginning (see Will Smith in this handbook, Chapter 55, for details; e.g. Held and Koenig-​Archibugi 2005; Wolf 1999; Zürn 2000; with regard to the EU see e.g. Eriksen and Fossum 2000; Joerges 2000; Neyer 2012). The starting point of these contributions is the widely perceived democratic or legitimacy deficit of global governance institutions including the EU (see e.g. Grant and Keohane 2005; Keohane, Macedo, and Moravcsik 2009; Follesdal and Hix 2006). The more these institutions regulate and deeply interfere with the domestic policies and politics of states, the more issues of accountability and legitimacy arise, particularly when the lines of accountability from international organizations to ordinary citizens as the ultimate principals in liberal democracies are becoming remote. One solution is the strengthening of inter-​and supranational parliamentary bodies, as is the case with many regional organizations (Rittberger 2016). Another remedy is improving the deliberative quality of regional and international institutions so as to make sure that the voices of those being affected by their decisions are being heard. Last not least, many authors have placed their hopes on (international) non-​governmental organizations (INGOs) and civil society organizations to improve the democratic quality of international institutions (see e.g. Keck and Sikkink 1998; Keane 2003; Florini 2000).

528   Thomas Risse At this point, the empirical contributions discussed above have their normative implications. They treat global governance arrangements not just as institutions to solve collective action problems and to lower transaction costs, but as discursive arenas to deliberate about appropriate standards of behavior and about improving the human condition. From a normative point of view, the task would then be to design international institutions in such a way as to enable communicative rationality to prevail (Habermas 2007). This concerns access to the discourse for the underprivileged and those representing them (but see the caveat above), transparency and publicity, as well as mechanisms allowing for honest brokerage. If transparency and publicity are not possible because of the secrecy of negotiations, one should at least expect a process of “two level arguing” by which negotiators justify their practices in front of domestic audiences.10 Last but not least, the empirical and the normative study of deliberation share the view that deliberation and arguing should empower the weak. Empirical studies of arguing use this point as an indicator of whether arguing and persuasion actually took place, given the assumption that, in various negotiation settings, materially weak actors have not much more at their disposal than the “power of the better argument.” At this point, the empirical study of arguing and deliberation connects with critical theories of society. Deliberative settings should allow for challenging the politically powerful and, thus, not only serve to empower the weak, but ultimately to increase social justice and fairness (Müller 2008).

Acknowledgments I thank André Bächtiger and John Dryzek for comments and suggestions on the draft of this chapter.

Notes 1. According to the EJIR website, see http://​ejt.sagepub.com/​reports/​most-​cited (last visited on January 22, 2016). 2. See https://​www.cambridge.org/​core/​journals/​international-​organization/​most-​cited (last visited on October 22, 2016). 3. I thank John Dryzek for pointing this out to me. 4. The following is based on and updates Risse 2013; Risse and Kleine 2010. 5. See Deitelhoff and Müller 2005; Niesen and Herborth 2007; Ulbert and Risse 2005; Risse and Kleine 2010; Risse 2013 for the following. 6. At a conference in Frankfurt am Main in June 2006. See Habermas 2007; also Habermas 1992. 7. I thank André Bächtiger for pointing this out to me. 8. The following updates Risse and Kleine 2010. See also Deitelhoff and Müller 2005. 9. IR debates about communicative action often overlook the status of the “ideal speech situation” as a counterfactual presupposition in Habermas’s theory. Many authors appear

Deliberation in International Relations    529 to assume that they should look for actually existing “ideal speech situations” in international affairs to be able to apply Habermas’s theory of communicative action. They then conclude, of course, that the preconditions for a discourse in a Habermasian sense are almost never present. 10. I owe this point to David Held and Mathias Koenig-​Archibugi. See Risse 2004, 312.

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Chapter 33

T he P olitical P syc h ol o g y of Deliberat i on Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg

Deliberation is both an ideal and a reality. Jacobs, Cook, and Delli Carpini report that one-​quarter of Americans participate in face-​to-​face meetings about public issues (2009, 37), and in the United States and around the world, citizens deliberate together on juries (Gastil et al. 2010), in local neighborhood gatherings and other meetings (Bryan 2004; Fung 2004; Karpowitz 2006; Mendelberg and Oleske 2000), as part of deliberative mini-​publics and civic forums (Karpowitz and Raphael 2014), and even in efforts to make recommendations for constitutional change (Warren and Pearse 2008). The fact that such deliberative opportunities are real and growing is itself a reason for scholars both theoretical and empirical to pay attention to them. As democratic theory has taken its well-​chronicled “deliberative turn” (Dryzek 2000), opportunities for productive exchanges between political theory and the study of political behavior have proliferated. Such interactions have not always been easy (Mutz 2008; Thompson 2008) because the aims and scholarly values of the two approaches sometimes differ. Indeed, normative theories of deliberation articulate an ideal that may never fully be attained, meaning that empiricists cannot definitively “prove” deliberative theory right or wrong. Nonetheless, a number of theorists do urge that more deliberation actually occur in contemporary political life (Gutmann and Thompson 1996; 2004). Deliberative democratic theory asserts that democracy is best served when free and equal citizens justify their preferences over collective decisions to each other in an open and public process of reason-​giving. What this means in practice is a matter for political psychologists to explore in a continuing fruitful dialogue with deliberative theory. Though theorists debate the details (Chambers 2003; Gutmann and Thompson 2004; Macedo 1999), it is possible to derive a set of standards from common elements of the deliberative approach to democratic theory. Most definitions involve discussion

536    Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg oriented to “egalitarian, reciprocal, reasonable and open-​minded exchange of language” (Mendelberg 2002, 153).1 Dryzek defines it as “communication that induces reflections on preferences, values and interests in a non-​coercive fashion” (Dryzek 2000, 76; see also Mansbridge et al. 2010). Similarly, Myers and Mendelberg summarize deliberation as “the free, equal, and open-​minded dialogue about a matter of concern among anyone affected by the issue” (2013, 701). These definitions place free, equal, and open-​minded communication at the center of democratic life and as the most important way of confronting disagreements. Deliberative theorists reject not only coercion or domination, which would clearly violate the free and equal clauses, but also the more subtle pursuit of power or even the weight of majority will per se as legitimate bases for democratic decision-​making (Mansbridge et al. 2010; Young 2002). Deliberative theorists are, therefore, skeptical of the notion that preferences are prior to politics; they part ways with utilitarian theories that hinge on the aggregation of pre-​formed preferences and interests (Mansbridge 1983). Instead, they hold that preferences can be formed and transformed through public talk. For example, Chambers (2003) describes listening and opinion change—​a willingness “to revise preferences in light of discussion, new information, and claims made by fellow participants” (309)—​as central elements of deliberation. This also means that offering and listening to reasons, rather than social forces, is the distinguishing characteristic of deliberation (Mendelberg 2002). As Habermas famously put it, opinion should not rest on power, instinct, or prejudice, but on “the forceless force of the better argument” (1975, 108). To be sure, theory has departed from the requirement that deliberators talk as if they are brains suspended in philosophical ether (Chambers 2003). As one group of theorists describes it, “Contemporary deliberative theorists have moved away from the language of ‘reason’, with its Enlightenment overtones of a unitary and knowable entity, to a focus on mutual justification” (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 67). Still, though reason is no longer commonly reified in these writings, a modified form of it continues to serve as a principal concept. Mansbridge and colleagues envision it this way: “Participants in deliberation advance ‘considerations’ that others ‘can accept’—​considerations that are ‘compelling’ and ‘persuasive’ to others and that ‘can be justified to people who reasonably disagree with them’” (2010, 67). This change carries significant implications for psychology’s role in deliberation research. When normative theory grounded itself primarily in abstract notions or stipulative ideals, it distanced itself from the way human beings actually operate. By then moving away from requiring deliberators to rely on logic and evidence and toward a vision anchored in human interaction, normative theory placed itself in the middle of the psychological enterprise. Deliberative theorists’ vision involves claims about how political opinions and behaviors are affected by discussion with others. For example, among the theorized benefits of deliberative participation is an increase in civic engagement, activity, empowerment, and efficacy (Barber 1984; Fishkin 1995), greater tolerance for opposing points of view (Gutmann and Thompson 1996), a rise in political knowledge and the quality of reasoning, including a better understanding of the considerations relevant to one’s own

Political Psychology of Deliberation    537 preferences (Fishkin 1995; Chambers 1996; Mutz 2006), and a more capacious, empathetic understanding of other citizens, including those with very different or unequal backgrounds and perspectives (Chambers 1996). And this is only a partial and incomplete list. Deliberation is anticipated to have salutary effects on a host of variables that have long been central concerns for students of political psychology.

The Contributions of Political Psychology Political psychologists can make several productive contributions to an understanding of what happens when people come together to talk about matters of common concern. We see these contributions not as a hostile audit of deliberative ideals but rather as part of a useful conversation that can engage both political theorists and deliberative practitioners alike. First, political psychology can offer up a more complete view of citizens and their political tendencies and capabilities, including their beliefs, opinions, and habits of information processing. As Lupia, Krupnikov, and Levine put it, the question is whether deliberative theory is “psychologically realistic” (2013, 468). Understanding how citizens tend to think and feel about politics and thus their ability to live up to the requirements of deliberation helps to set expectations for both the virtues and the limits of opportunities for deliberative discussion. Second, political psychology can help to give empirical meaning to the ideals and standards articulated by deliberative theorists (Mutz 2008; see also Myers and Mendelberg 2013). As the political philosopher John Rawls put it, “At least in the course of time, the effects of common deliberation seem bound to improve matters” (1971, 359). But “improvement” is a vague standard. Political psychology can thus be helpful in exploring different operationalizations of deliberative ideals and their effects. Mutz (2008) argues, for example, that empirical researchers can help to define concepts, specify logical relationships, and evaluate the connection between a set of hypotheses and evidence. This process of pinning down operational definitions and relationships is critically important because normative ideals like improvement or equality or open-​ mindedness are complex and multi-​faceted. Political psychologists contribute productively to deliberative theory by cultivating clear measures of deliberative processes or outcomes and advancing testable hypotheses. The goal of such effort is not to arrive at some definitive judgment on deliberative theory as a whole, but rather to specify middle-​range concepts, contexts, processes, and associated outcomes in deliberation as it is actually practiced in contemporary political life. Third, the mutual exchange of considerations cannot occur in isolation:  deliberation is a group-​based phenomenon. This fact is obvious, and yet, it has been under-​ theorized and its implications under-​explored. Here, social and political psychology

538    Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg offer an understanding of group dynamics that can again shape our expectations for deliberative forums (Mendelberg 2002). To the extent that political psychologists open up the “black box of deliberation” to understand better what, exactly, happens within the group setting, the effects of social forces, background inequalities, and language will become clearer. As Mercier and Landemore (2012) argue, paying attention to the group-​ based nature of deliberation can help scholars better navigate the differences between the abundant evidence of psychological biases in individual processes of reasoning and what happens in deliberating groups. The fourth potential contribution of political psychology to the study of deliberation flows from the third. Along with careful attention to hypothesizing and operationalizing deliberative processes and outcomes, researchers can begin to theorize and test the conditions under which deliberative ideals are more closely approximated. This contribution is the least developed in political psychology to date. Such conditions might include the features of the group—​its gender, racial, or income composition, the diversity or homogeneity of its members’ pre-​existing views, the rules and procedures it uses, its mode of interaction (online or face-​to-​face), or the presence or absence of moderators or experts. But attending to context might also mean exploring variation in the larger political and institutional settings within which deliberation occurs. Is the deliberative forum empowered by existing institutions to make decisions directly, or does it serve an advisory function? Some theorists are careful to define deliberative democracy as requiring a decision (Mansbridge et al. 2010), and the rules by which those decisions are reached are themselves a key institutional choice.2 This is an area of considerable research within social psychology, where studies vary the requirement to reach a decision and observe the effects of that requirement on the use of reasons (Hastie, Penrod, and Pennington 1983; Kameda 1991; Kaplan and Miller 1987). Applied to deliberation, the goal of such investigation is not to “prove” that deliberation works or does not, but rather to pursue the more proximate question of which real-​world conditions tend to facilitate deliberative ideals and goals. With these contributions in mind, in the remainder of this chapter we offer a brief review of how political psychology can lead to an increased understanding of virtues and vulnerabilities of deliberation. Given the limitations of space, this cannot be an exhaustive rehearsal of all the relevant literature (see Mendelberg 2002; Lupia, Krupnikov, and Levine 2013; Karpowitz and Mendelberg 2011; Myers and Mendelberg 2013 for more complete treatments). Rather, we will highlight two broad areas of potential contribution: understanding citizen belief systems and exploring how features of groups affect deliberative processes.

The Deliberative Citizen If nothing else, political psychologists are likely to agree on one conclusion: deliberation is an unnatural state of affairs for most citizens. Decades of political science research

Political Psychology of Deliberation    539 on the nature of citizen beliefs has shown that citizens do not think much about politics most of the time, that they have, on average, very low levels of political knowledge (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996), that they struggle to connect their opinions to larger political ideologies, and that their issue opinions tend not to be very stable over time. In Converse’s memorable words, “large portions of an electorate do not have meaningful beliefs, even on issues that have formed the basis for intense political controversy among elites for substantial periods of time” (1964, 245). Bartels puts it somewhat (but not much) more gently: most citizens have meaningful beliefs, “but those beliefs are not sufficiently complete and coherent to serve as the starting point for democratic theory” (2003, 49). Because citizen attitudes are fragmentary and casual, they carry with them only ill-​formed and sometimes contradictory sets of considerations, not concrete or reliable preferences about political issues. When asked to give their opinions, they simply average across the set of considerations that happen to be accessible at the top-​of-​the-​ head (Zaller and Feldman 1992). This process explains the attitude instability Converse first identified, as well as a host of other dynamics—​such as the fact that when it comes to politics, many people are highly vulnerable to question wording and other framing effects (Bartels 2003; Achen and Bartels 2016). In addition to the problem of low knowledge, people are also often misinformed, holding factually inaccurate beliefs and, even worse, expressing high levels of confidence about those false beliefs and resisting correction unless unavoidably confronted with the correct information (Kuklinski et al. 2000). Nor is it the case that individuals judge information objectively when they receive it, even holding constant the quality of the information. Rather, they are strongly influenced by biases, such as the characteristics of the messenger (Kuklinski and Hurley 1994; Lupia and McCubbins 2000), and by their emotions and prior attitudes (Redlawsk 2002). Evidence for motivated reasoning—​the biased processing of information based on pre-​existing emotions and attitudinal predispositions—​is abundant (Taber and Lodge 2006; Kunda 1990; Kahan et  al. 2012). People tend to be forgiving and uncritical of information or arguments that fit their predispositions and unforgiving and hypercritical of information that contradicts their beliefs. Those with strong pre-​existing attitudes tend to double down on their prior opinions after they are exposed to a balanced set of arguments about an issue (Taber and Lodge 2006). Even more broadly, Lodge and Taber (2013) argue that when it comes to politics, people do not evaluate arguments consciously and carefully then reach a considered opinion; rather, most of the time, political judgments are made quickly, emotionally, and outside of conscious awareness, then rationalized with reasons afterwards. In other words, judgment typically comes before reasons—​the exact reverse of the decision-​making processes anticipated by deliberative theory. These tendencies may be a stable, pervasive aspect of human cognition (Kuklinski and Quirk 2000). Psychologists distinguish between “central” processing of information, where reasoning is effortful, slower, explicit, and systematic, and “peripheral” processing, which relies on quick, implicit inferences based on stereotypes and other heuristics (Kahneman 2011; Lodge and Taber 2013). Political reasoning often seems to be of the latter type. In addition, emotions are not separate from reasoning; often,

540    Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg they precede and shape the reasoning process (Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen 2000; Albertson and Gadarian 2015), and do so outside of conscious awareness. These cognitive processes may lead to systematically biased beliefs, such as those described above, as well as a tendency to hold high opinions of in-​groups and low opinions of out-​groups (Kinder and Kam 2010). Because people are prone to these sorts of biases and distortions in information processing, errors in their political judgments are systematic. Most people make similar sorts of errors. That means the biases will not be neutralized by the “miracle of aggregation,” to use Converse’s phrase (Converse and Pierce 1986). Deliberation does not cancel cognitive or affective biases merely by assembling individuals into a group (but see Gilens 2012 ­chapter 3). This psychological literature presents both a problem and an opportunity for deliberative theories. On the one hand, the fact that people are rationalizers, not reasoners, means that it is not the “forceless force of the better argument” that leads them to their political conclusions most of the time. But it is precisely because judgments about politics are often ill-​formed, incomplete, and biased that deliberative theorists argue in favor of more deliberative opportunities (Fishkin 1991; 1995). This is the opportunity that theorists see in deliberation. Deliberation is meant to interrupt the usual cognitive patterns and move political judgment from the realm of peripheral to central processing.3 Such a change is likely to be challenging or uncomfortable for some (Hibbing and Theiss-​Morse 2002; but see Neblo et al. 2010). Deliberation may simply be out of reach for them. But if people’s political attitudes are often an ambivalent mix of conflicting and partially-​formed considerations (Feldman and Zaller 1992; Lavine, Johnston, and Steenbergen 2012), perhaps there is room for learning (Prior and Lupia 2008), for recognizing the other side (Mutz 2006), and even for thoughtful opinion change in response to new information (Hochschild 1993). The first place to look for answers is the very setting that deliberative theorists have designed for the express purpose of cultivating the deliberative citizen:  deliberative forums. Among the most frequently studied aspects of these forums is opinion change. That is often taken as a preliminary, easy measure of the anticipated outcome of open-​ mindedness. Participants are exposed to relevant information and reasons from multiple sides, and then assembled into deliberating groups to process these materials and come up with a collective set of relevant questions or decisions (Fishkin 1995). Multiple studies across a wide variety of contexts find that people’s opinions move as a result of participating in these deliberative events (Luskin Fishkin, and Jowell 2002; Barabas 2004; Andersen and Hansen 2007; Esterling, Fung, and Lee 2013; Farrar et  al. 2010; Gastil, Black, and Moscovitz 2008; Gastil and Dillard 1999; Karpowitz and Raphael 2014). On the other hand, Gilens (2011) argues that the magnitude of opinion change from experiences like Deliberative Polls is quite modest given the intensity of the experience, and others have maintained that the size of opinion change depends on the nature of the issue and the intensity of pre-​deliberation opinions (Wojcieszak and Price 2010; Farrar et al. 2010). But of course, opinion change by itself is not evidence either for or against deliberative processes. Opinions may move as a result of non-​deliberative processes including social pressure, the sheer repetition of arguments, or prejudice

Political Psychology of Deliberation    541 toward outgroups, as classic studies in social psychology demonstrated (for a review see Mendelberg 2002). By the same token, they may remain steady after a careful weighing of the evidence and considerations on both sides of the issue. High-quality deliberation does not hinge on the presence or absence of change, per se, but rather on evidence that group processes helped individuals and groups gain new knowledge, confront different perspectives, and thoughtfully consider (or reconsider) their views (Ackerman and Fishkin 2004). With respect to knowledge, abundant evidence exists that deliberation can increase participants’ factual understanding of the issues under discussion (Andersen and Hansen 2007; Barabas 2004; Farrar et al. 2010; Gastil and Dillard 1999; Karpowitz and Raphael 2014). Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer (2011) demonstrate that deliberative knowledge gains tend to be widely distributed and are not merely a function of prior levels of political sophistication, and Fraile (2014) shows that deliberation can reduce the gender gap in political knowledge. In addition, knowledge gains can persist after the deliberative event has concluded, as deliberators become more motivated to attend to the political information around them (Jacobs, Cook, and Delli Carpini 2009; Levendusky, Druckman, and McLain 2016). Deliberation also appears to have other salutary effects on the structure of citizen opinions.4 Using data from seven National Issues Forums, Gastil and Dillard (1999) find that participation in deliberative events increases attitude certainty and can have a modest effect on ideological consistency (see also Gastil, Black, and Moscovitz 2008; but see Sturgis, Roberts, and Allum 2005). Given citizens’ tendency to lack meaningful opinion, this evidence of growing opinionation may often be a positive development (though in situations of entrenched conflict, certainty could be considered anti-​deliberative). In addition, Cappella, Price, and Nir (2002) demonstrate that people who are exposed to disagreement in their political conversations emerge with a larger “argument repertoire”—​in other words, an increased ability to list reasons why they hold their opinions as well as reasons why someone might hold an opposite opinion.5 Deliberation can help ameliorate one of the most consistent and troubling demonstrations of problematic information processing and attitude instability:  framing effects (Tversky and Kahneman 1981; 1986). As Tversky and Kahneman demonstrated, individuals tend to respond differently to logically equivalent problems, depending on how those problems are presented. In one of their most famous examples, the expected number of people avoiding death as a result of a new healthcare program is framed as the likelihood that people “will be saved” or the likelihood that people “will die.” Though the expected number of individuals saved is equivalent across both ways of presenting the problem, framing this number as a loss as opposed to a gain decreased participants’ support dramatically. Results such as these demonstrate ways in which public opinion appears easily manipulated, inconsistent, and arbitrary. However, Druckman (2004) shows that when assigned to a group discussion setting where individuals have a chance to talk together, especially in groups where half the participants had been exposed to one frame and half to another, individuals resisted framing effects and thus expressed preferences that were more coherent and rational. Even in discussion groups where all

542    Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg individuals had been exposed to the same frame, framing effects were reduced as compared to a control group of people who did not deliberate with each other, though the reduction occurred primarily among those who like thinking about difficult problems and had experience in economics and statistics classes. It appears, then, that deliberation can interrupt some psychological tendencies, such as low levels of knowledge, lack of meaningful opinions, or equivalency framing effects, that have worried democratic theorists. But such positive effects are not always the result of a deliberative exchange of reasons. For example, some studies of deliberative forums find that knowledge gain and opinion change can occur prior to any discussion at all, as deliberators anticipate the opportunity to take part in an event (Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer 2011; Farrar et al. 2010). These results are consistent with research by Tetlock (1983) and by Kruglanski and Freund (1983), who find that people who know their opinions will be made public are less vulnerable to motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases. The mere expectation of being held accountable for opinions in a public, discussion-​based process can cause people to pay more attention and think more seriously than they otherwise would. The extent to which deliberation has positive effects on political knowledge also depends on the nature of the deliberative setting and the features of the group discussion. For example, in an experimental study in which they randomized whether discussion about current political issues occurred in politically mixed or homogeneous groups, Levendusky, Druckman, and McLain (2016) find that relative to a non-​deliberating control group, participants in both discussion conditions were more engaged with the issue—​they thought more carefully about the issue, it became more important to them, and they were more likely to search for additional information about the issue, even going so far as to provide their email addresses so that they could receive additional communication about the topic. They were also more likely to sign a petition addressing the issue. Thus, deliberation strengthened participants’ attitudes and increased the likelihood that they would access relevant political information—​outcomes that directly support the hopes of  democratic theorists. At the same time, the researchers also showed that deliberation intensified partisan thinking—​a dynamic that is deeply inconsistent with open-​minded willingness to consider opposing points of view. Specifically, discussion primed the importance of partisan identity, and this effect was especially large in the homogeneous discussion condition. Talking with fellow partisans reinforced participants’ pre-​discussion partisan commitments, thus increasing the likelihood of partisan motivated reasoning. This effect also occurred, though to a lesser extent, in mixed discussion groups. The downside of stronger and more constrained attitudes may be a tendency to see the world through partisan-​tinted glasses and the possibility that discussion will exacerbate partisan polarization instead of prompting deliberators to listen carefully to the other side (see Mutz 2006 for similar findings in dyadic discussion). In sum, research shows that deliberative events can nudge citizens toward more deliberative processes and outcomes. The most consistent and widespread effects are for

Political Psychology of Deliberation    543 gains in information, whether about the issue or about the considerations that play into any given side. Reports of a meaningful elevation in the quality of reasoning, and in the causal connection from reasoning to opinion, are more scarce or show more limited effects (see research reviewed by Mendelberg 2002, but see also Gerber et al. 2016, which contrasts the effect of arguments backed by reasons to arguments repeated frequently). Moreover, existing work also points to the need to attend to group-​based forces, which means examining the actual exchange of talk—​a topic we take up next.

The Social, Cultural, and Emotional Side of Deliberation: Group Communication and Inequality If group-​level processes can be key to laudatory deliberative outcomes, social and political psychologists worry that groups themselves can also introduce other potential sources of bias. Groups can, under the right circumstances, serve to correct some individual-​level errors and biases (Mercier and Landemore 2012), but they may exacerbate others and expose individuals to social pressures and other forces that create deliberative trouble. This means that careful attention to the nature of the group and its influences on talk and decision-​making is essential. While group-​level forces are many, and a comprehensive review would take up much more space than is available here, we highlight three sources of group effects: a tendency toward group polarization, the role of preference diversity, and the effects of unequal social identities. Group polarization is the finding that discussion can amplify the strength of majority opinion, moving the members of a like-​minded group predictably “toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by the members’ predeliberation tendencies” (Sunstein 2002, 176).6 This dynamic can result from two distinct processes: first, social comparison, where group members work to maintain their reputations and self-​ conception by emphasizing the attitudes they perceive to be normative within the group; and second, persuasive arguments, where the pool of good arguments that support the majority view is likely to be larger than the arguments that support the minority view (Sunstein 2000).7 Despite considerable support for these tendencies in laboratory settings, the evidence in favor of group polarization in deliberative events has been mixed (Karpowitz and Raphael 2014). Schkade, Sunstein, and Hastie (2007) find evidence of it in ideologically homogenous groups discussing political issues (see also Levendusky, Druckman, and McLain 2016), as do Price, Nir, and Cappella (2006) in an online setting where deliberators discussed tax policy plans. On the other hand, Luskin, Fishkin, and Hahn (2007) discover no tendency toward polarization in a study of Deliberative Polls, and Farrar and colleagues (2009) turn up only sporadic evidence of any group composition effects in an experimental study that also relied on the Deliberative Polling approach. Lindell

544    Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg et al. (2017) show, too, that even when it is present, polarization is not always a departure from deliberative ideals. This mixed pattern of findings can be explained in part by focusing on the importance of deliberative institutions and contexts, which may interrupt the processes of polarization. For example, Sunstein (2002) asserts that within the Deliberative Polling design, the lack of a collective decision, the presence of a random sample of the population, the balanced panel of experts, the presence of moderators, and the written briefing materials might all work to shift the argument pool and alter the norms of the group and thus the effects of social influence in ways that will reduce polarization. Esterling, Fung, and Lee (2013) examine a large-​scale deliberative event, the “Our Budget, Our Economy” meetings organized by AmericaSpeaks, in which participants at nineteen different cities came together to talk about the nation’s fiscal future. Prior to deliberation, researchers asked a battery of questions about participants’ views on the policy questions under consideration. At each site, deliberators were then randomly assigned to tables where they spent the day discussing the issues with others and reviewing background materials. Because of random assignment to tables, some groups were more conservative in their fiscal attitudes, some more liberal, and some mixed (though none of the groups were completely like-​minded). Using a variety of tests, the researchers uncover no evidence of consistent polarization. Conservatives assigned to conservative tables did not become more conservative, nor did liberals who happened to be assigned to more liberal groups become more liberal. Esterling, Fung, and Lee (2013) do, however, find evidence of what Taber and Lodge (2006) call individual-​level “attitude polarization”—​that is, when exposed to a diverse set of arguments, people moved in the direction of their own ideological predispositions. Thus, conservatives assigned to more ideologically diverse tables became more conservative, and the opposite was true for liberals at diverse tables. Deliberation did not, therefore, bring an end to motivated reasoning; instead, it produced a form of motivated skepticism about arguments from the other side.8 Barabas (2004) shows that relative to a non-​deliberating control group and to people who reported talking about Social Security outside of formal deliberation, deliberators significantly increased their understanding of basic facts about Social Security. This factual knowledge translated into systematic changes in opinion about public policy, but the changes depended on both the individual’s pre-​discussion understanding of the issue and on the presence of deliberative consensus (defined as more than two-​thirds of a group’s comments about the issue being in a consistent direction). When a consensus existed, individual opinion moved in the direction of the consensus regardless of prior knowledge levels. On issues about which group discussion was more diverse and no consensus emerged, however, those with low pre-​deliberation knowledge moved in the direction of the group’s prevailing opinion, while those with greater pre-​discussion knowledge levels (and presumably more developed views) tended to be unmoved or even to move in the opposite direction from the consensus. Thus, Barabas finds that the ability of deliberation to move opinion depends both upon increases in factual knowledge and on group-​and individual-​level factors, such as the diversity of opinions

Political Psychology of Deliberation    545 voiced within the group and the willingness of participants to keep an open mind. In sum, deliberation had expected effects in some respects. Those with lower knowledge gained it, and this gain changed their opinion. That points toward a reason-​based process. However, consistent with a social forces framework, opinion change was heavily shaped by the majority opinion. Further in line with a social explanation, those with strong prior opinions were also susceptible to majority social influence rather than the forceless force of the argument. Had the opinion change been caused by the majority’s persuasive arguments, these individuals would have changed in diverse groups as much as in consensus groups, yet they change only in the former. Together, these studies highlight the importance of attending to a deliberator’s pre-​ discussion preferences and experiences, to the dynamics of the group, and to the interaction between the two. What emerges from attending to these interactions is not a simple story. Well-​designed deliberation can, at least under some circumstances, avoid some of the pitfalls that social psychologists worry most about. Informative discussions can have a persuasive effect on individuals, but this does not necessarily mean that individuals treat their pre-​deliberation views in an objective way or that deliberation suspends the psychological mechanisms that have been found in other contexts. Rather, pre-​deliberation views continue to shape and inform the way deliberators interpret and respond to the diverse arguments they hear. In this sense, at least on issues where citizens have developed stronger attitudes or policy commitments, deliberation is unlikely to fundamentally alter those commitments. One possible implication of this conclusion is that deliberation of the kind that theorists envision is more likely to occur when preferences are less fully developed or on issues that are emerging onto the political scene and have not been the subject of long-​standing or ideologically entrenched debate. These insights raise the question of when and how deliberators in group settings can be influenced by the other side. Deliberative theory requires that minority preferences be heard and that group decisions stem from a free and fair exchange of information, not merely the strength of the majority. So, when do groups ignore minority views, and when do they take them seriously? Using innovative lab and field experiments, Myers (2017) highlights the challenge for minority preferences. He randomly assigned whether a piece of relevant information was given either to a member of the numerical majority or the minority in terms of interests relevant to the discussion topic. The information was more likely to be ignored when it was given to a member of the minority. When the interests of group members conflict, groups may thus experience a collective form of “motivated reasoning,” discounting information from minority interests and thus biasing the group’s consideration of relevant reasons and ultimately undermining the quality of its decision process. The good news is that when the information was in the hands of a majority member, the group used it in the objectively correct manner to reach its decision. This finding challenges a large literature in psychology that finds that groups are almost always unable to appropriately share information held by its members. Paradoxically, then, the clash of interests—​a factor assumed to undermine quality deliberation because interests are supposed to take a backseat to open-​minded discussion—​can neutralize cognitively biased information-​sharing (another danger of

546    Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg group discussion). However, that merely rescues deliberation from one trouble only to plunge it into another. While these results raise doubt that deliberation will yield in practice to the “forceless force of the better argument,” a large literature in social psychology identifies some conditions under which minority influence can occur (see Mendelberg 2002 for a detailed overview). Work in this research tradition shows that group norms greatly shape whether a minority wields influence in the group. A group norm that welcomes dissent actually matters more than individuals’ beliefs and attitudes (Paluck and Green 2009). A norm nudges the majority to take the minority seriously enough to listen to its arguments and process them, prompting the kind of deep thought and open-​mindedness that deliberation requires (Moscovici 1985; Turner 1991). Some scholars point to the conflict in perceptions as the mechanism. The pathway to minority influence lies in cognitive imperatives to get an accurate read on the world (Mutz 1998). The minority challenges the majority’s way of seeing (Wood et al. 1994). As the majority struggles to figure out which view of reality is more correct, it must think afresh (Moscovici 1985). The result is the kind of mutuality that resembles the deliberative standard of reciprocity. Others point to social identity as the mechanism (Turner 1991). The minority is more likely to affect the views of the majority the more that it evokes a common social identity with the majority. In that case, minorities can both influence and avoid the stigma of the dissident. Deliberation in contexts where the disagreement maps onto salient social cleavages often shuts out the minority (David and Turner 1996). The work on minority influence shines a light on the crucial difference between interest minorities and social identity minorities in deliberative settings. Much of the empirical research on diversity or disagreement, reviewed above, studies the effects of interest diversity almost exclusively. But that focus provides an incomplete picture of the processes that play out during deliberation. For one, even when political preferences are the nominal axis of disagreement, social identities can play an important subtext role. The Levendusky, Druckman, and McLain (2016) study considered above is an example. Political controversy primes partisanship, which figures as a social identity as much as or more than it operates as a set of preferences about issues of politics. For another, identities may form an independent source of group dynamics. Take, for example, the case of gender. Women are socialized in ways that have led to a gender gap in self-​confidence (Beyer and Bowden 1997), a heightened sensitivity to cues about their value (Bylsma and Major 1992), a deficit relative to men in expectations about competence (Karakowsky, McBey, and Miller 2004; Rosenwasser et al. 1987), and a corresponding hesitancy to take on leadership roles. These tendencies may be especially pronounced in political settings, which are often still regarded as a “man’s game” (Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001), though they are relevant to any setting where men and women talk together with the goal of making binding decisions. As Ridgeway and Correll explain, “Self-​other competence expectations affect the likelihood that an individual will speak up with confidence in the setting or hesitate and wait for another to act. . . . When someone speaks up, these expectations affect whether others ignore

Political Psychology of Deliberation    547 or listen to what is said. Thus, self-​other competence expectations affect the extent to which men and women assert themselves, whether their ideas and points of view are heard, and whether they become influential in the context” (2004, 518). In other words, social identity affects how individuals enter into a group discussion, their likelihood of speaking up and being heard during the discussion, and their ability to be seen as influential members of the group after the discussion is over. Identity is thus much more than a “background” variable within groups; instead, identity-​based inequalities can shape group processes and outcomes from beginning to end. Our work on gender and deliberation illustrates this framework (Karpowitz and Mendelberg 2014). Our point of departure was the observation that women tend to exercise less power than men. This inequality may manifest itself at every step of the way when a group deliberates. To study this problem, we gathered individuals into small groups to discuss how much society—​and the group itself—​should tax its members to redistribute the funds to the least well off. We arranged the participants into groups that varied in gender composition. In addition, the group was randomly assigned a decision rule by which it was required to render its decision. One rule was the standard majority rule; the other was unanimous rule—that is, the group was instructed to decide by consensus. The combination of women’s relative numbers and the rule created status for women in the group. Women in groups where women were a minority fared poorly—​ if the group used majority rule, which advantages the gender majority. Women fared better, however, if the group used unanimous rule, which aids the minority. So far these results are consistent with a preference explanation. Any group would benefit from majority rule when it is the majority, and from minority protection of unanimous rule if it is the minority. However, other results are not explained by a preference framework, but instead, by the framework of gender inequality. Women benefited in these ways regardless of their political preferences or values. In other words, gender shapes group discussion in ways not accounted for by preferences over political issues, or even the values that underlie them, such as egalitarianism (Mendelberg and Karpowitz 2016). Furthermore, men benefited more than women in the equivalent situation. Men leverage the potential of a rule more effectively than women do, no matter what it is; they carry more influence than women both as the gender majority under majority rule and as the gender minority under minority rule. They also weather the disadvantages of low identity status in the group more effectively; women sink lower than men as the gender minority under majority rule. Again, these patterns do not show up when people are considered as preference groups. Finally, this argument finds support in studies of enclave deliberation. That is the idea that disadvantaged identities have a particular, legitimate need to meet in groups consisting only of their own members (Karpowitz and Raphael 2014; Young 2002). This expectation has received almost no systematic, rigorous empirical test to this point. In conducting such a test, we find that under some conditions, women in enclaves—​and especially those who enter discussion with the least self-​confidence—​gain substantially, even when we account for political views (Karpowitz and Mendelberg forthcoming). Men do not receive these benefits, reinforcing the role of social identity.

548    Christopher F. Karpowitz and Tali Mendelberg

Concluding Thoughts Deliberative events are happening in formal decision-​making institutions that have long existed as well as in a growing number of new civic forums. Deliberative theory has provided a useful way to conceive of the goals such forums should serve. Political psychology in turn can help deliberative theory to become more than a set of sometimes abstract aspirations. Our brief review has shown that much more attention needs to be paid to the group-​ level contexts in which deliberators are brought together. Scholars have only just begun to understand how and when groups affect their participants in ways that are consistent with normative aspirations and when groups do just the opposite. We have highlighted the importance of attending to features such as the group’s mix of preferences and social identities and to the institutional side of deliberation, such as its internal processes and external political context. Much more remains to be done to understand other elements of the deliberative context, such as the presence of moderators (Humphreys, Masters, and Sandbu 2006; Mansbridge et al. 2006; Rosenberg 2007) or the choice between online and face-​to-​face gatherings (Price 2009). Empirical investigation into these group-​ level factors is still in its infancy. Other institutional factors may matter as well. For example, small-​scale deliberation occurs within a larger political system that is almost always less deliberative. Deliberators can always quit deliberating and pursue their interests through elections, the courts, or other more adversarial options (Karpowitz 2006). How will the presence or absence of such alternative institutions affect what happens within the deliberative group? A naive version of deliberative theory would see the creation of specifically deliberative institutions as the remedy for the democratic shortcomings of its citizens. We have shown here that deliberating groups can, under the right conditions, lead to a more informed and thoughtful version of public opinion, but at the same time, such groups also expose citizens to other social and psychological forces that require increased attention of their own. Far from facilitating an escape from political psychology, the proliferation of deliberative institutions and methods heightens the need to understand psychological variables and processes all the more.

Notes 1. Our approach to deliberation focuses on group-​based discussion, not on informal conversations between individuals (see Mutz 2006; Walsh 2003 for careful studies of those settings) or on individual reflection about reasons and ideas disseminated by the mass media (see Chambers and Costain 2000; Page 1996 for examinations of this notion of deliberative reflection). For lack of space we also do not discuss the growing fruitful literature on the use of citizen deliberation to check corruption, reform authoritarian systems, and promote democracy (Fujiwara and Wantchekon 2013; Humphreys, Masters, and Sandbu 2006; Olken 2010).

Political Psychology of Deliberation    549 2. Whether collective decisions are required for group discussions to count as deliberation is the source of some dispute among deliberative theorists (Chambers 2003; Cohen 1989; Fishkin 1995; Gutmann and Thompson 1996). 3. Effortful central processing is not necessarily a synonym for better decision-​making, as Scherer et al. (2015) show for medical decisions. Similarly, Kuklinski and colleagues (1991) find that asking individuals to avoid gut-​level reactions and to reflect about the consequences of their judgments actually reduced tolerance toward outgroups. 4. By contrast, deliberation appears to have more mixed effects on outcomes like tolerance, prejudice reduction, and efficacy (Lindell et al. 2017; Myers and Mendelberg 2013). 5. Both List et al. (2013) and Farrar et al. (2010) show that deliberation can increase the extent to which participants’ attitudes are “single peaked”—​that is, preferring policies that are closer to a single point along a policy dimension over policies that are farther from that preference point. Single-​peakedness is a critical attribute of individual opinions on many social choice accounts of democracy because it helps to avoid cycling and other unstable collective outcomes. 6. A  related idea is attitude convergence—​the notion that discussion prompts opinions to move toward the pre-​discussion group mean, even in groups that are not ideologically or attitudinally homogeneous (Myers and Mendelberg 2013). 7. A well-​known example of social comparison processes at work is the idea of groupthink, which involves strong group pressure toward conformity, a willingness to stifle or overlook information that does not fit the group’s emerging consensus, and a tendency to interrogate the ideas and perspectives of the out-​group more harshly than those of the in-​group, thus leading to poor decision-​making outcomes (Janis 1982; Baron 2005). Consistent with groupthink, Druckman (2004) shows in his framing study that in homogeneous groups, participants who were most vulnerable to framing effects demonstrated a substantial overconfidence bias in their judgments. 8. On a more hopeful note, in a related study of a large deliberative event focused on healthcare policy, Esterling, Fung, and Lee (2015) also find that individuals reported increased satisfaction with the process and the policy outcomes when their table’s discussion included a moderate level of ideological disagreement, suggesting that deliberators wanted to hear the other side as long as the two sides were not excessively polarized (or excessively homogeneous) in their attitudes. In addition, Lindell et al. (2017) find that both polarized and moderated effects can have deliberative characteristics.

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Chapter 34

Deliberat i on and Fra mi ng Thomas J. Leeper and Rune Slothuus

Most theories of democracy expect an actively engaged citizenry. To fulfill their role, citizens are called upon to acquire knowledge, develop well-​informed preferences over political candidate alternatives, make reasoned choices about political matters, and express those preferences and choices through voting and possibly other forms of participation (see Berelson 1952; but see Althaus 2006). For example, Dahl (1989, 112) stressed that a key feature of the democratic process is that citizens are able to acquire an “enlightened understanding” of political issues that will allow them to make “the choice on the matter to be decided that would best serve the citizen’s interests.” In this view, a basic premise of representative democracy is that citizens can form and express their preferences for which public policies they want government to pursue and that those preferences are, in turn, implemented as policy or at least influential in representatives’ decision-​making (Dahl 1989; Mansbridge 2003). Varieties of democratic theories, of course, argue this point in different ways. Some see citizens as required only and perhaps best represented by a mere veto on elite decision-​ making (Riker 1982). Others see the public as more engaged but limited in capacity or opportunity for preference formation and expression (Lippmann 1928; Schumpeter 1942). More commonly, citizens are treated as a collective body to be quantified into a narrow conception of “public opinion” as an average tendency toward favor or disfavor of particular policies (see Herbst 1995). Still others envision an active, talkative, “deliberative” form of citizen involvement. It is on this final form of citizen engagement that we focus in this chapter. Our goal is to examine the extent to which deliberative forms of democracy provide uniquely valuable opportunities for preference formation and engagement relative to an elite-​driven politics we see as prevalent in contemporary democratic societies. We begin with the empirical literature on elite influence on public opinion—​centered around the concept of framing—​and characterize the psychological process by which citizens form opinions under these conditions. Next, we introduce deliberation as an

Deliberation and Framing    557 alternative or perhaps complement to this individualistic process. Highlighting the claimed advantages of deliberation for democratic health, we then discuss whether and under what conditions citizens are able to form political preferences of similar quality to those formed in a deliberative encounter. Leveraging the evidence for the psychological process of “elaboration,” we argue that many of the advantages of deliberation can be achieved through citizens reasoning alone over the alternative arguments provided by a competitive party system. We conclude with implications of this result for the literature on deliberation and for democratic politics writ large.

Normative Ideals The heart of democratic politics and government is the formation and aggregation of preferences—​that is, the process of determining how citizens’ comparative evaluations of political alternatives (Druckman and Lupia 2000, 2) are bound together into the implementation of governance. Individual evaluations are a natural byproduct of lived human experience. Humans evaluate the world in order to appraise or understand the various objects we encounter in our lived environment (Eagly and Chaiken 1998, 303). Democratic theorists, however, are often interested in the “quality” of these evaluations; that is, whether they are well-​justified or perhaps “correct.” In turn, different political institutions can vary in the collective choice resulting from those preferences and from the information-​sharing and preference-​changing capacities of those institutions, and this invites questions about how particular institutional configurations might produce higher or lower quality choices (Riker 1982; see Druckman et al. 2014 for a review). What kinds of institutions produce the best collective choices? Scholars disagree, of course, but one prevalent topic of study is deliberative models of politics. Though there is no single, consensus definition of deliberation (Bächtiger et al. 2010; Mendelberg 2002, 153), many theorists focus on a few essential features of deliberative democracy. Deliberation “implies that political decision-​making is or should be ‘talk-​ centric’ rather than ‘vote-​centric’,” and deliberation accordingly is “not concerned with the aggregation of pre-​existing, fixed preferences” but rather is “a process in which political actors listen to each other, reasonably justify their positions, show mutual respect, and are willing to re-​evaluate and eventually revise their initial preferences” (Steenbergen, Bächtiger, Spörndli, and Steiner 2003, 21). Thus, deliberative democracy sees preference formation as a public, interpersonal activity at the core of democracy rather than an exogenous and private process that precedes political choice. Deliberation requires “autonomy” and “recognition” such that each citizen is given fair opportunity to air their preferences and defenses of those preferences in the course of deliberation (Calvert and Warren 2014). It follows from these ideals that although citizens come into deliberation with political positions and explanations, they are expected to hear alternative arguments presented by others and update their own viewpoints in response. In the course of deliberation, an

558    Thomas J. Leeper and Rune Slothuus ideal “rational discourse” occurs, in which “actors tell the truth, justify their positions extensively, and are willing to yield to the force of the better argument” (Bächtiger et al. 2010, 33). Meyers and Mendelberg (2013, 701) write that “deliberation is the free, open-​ minded dialogue about a matter of public concern among anyone affected by the issue.” Underlying all of this procedural guidance is an unrelenting commitment to the power of arguments. According to Fishkin (1997), “We can imagine questions receiving a virtually unlimited amount of time so that, in the end, the only force leading to a resolution of any question is the ‘force of the better argument’ ” (40). Deliberation is about the testing of competing arguments and the collective recognition of the most compelling. Even if a consensus cannot be reached, the strongest arguments can form the basis for collective agreement or negotiations and bargains (Habermas 1996; Gutmann and Thompson 1996). Although demanding, deliberation in this way is thought to “produce decisions that are epistemically better, more ethically robust, and politically more legitimate than decisions made without the benefit of deliberation” (Calvert and Warren 2014, 203). Both individual preferences and collective choices are thought to improve under deliberation (Fishkin 1997; Gutmann and Thompson 2004). Rather than a mere mathematical aggregation or quantification of citizens’ individual preferences, deliberation is thought to produce not only different collective choices but choices that are also better (Landemore and Elster 2012). At its core, then, deliberation asks us to consider whether there is value in a politics that lacks the small-​scale, interactive, talk-​centered characteristics of deliberation. In short, is there value in a mass politics wherein citizens do not collectively deliberate but instead arrive at their preferences largely through intrapersonal deliberations acted out atomically, partly in response to mass communication from political elites, within a shared political context?

Elite Competition and Citizen Preference Formation In democratic societies today most citizens do not participate directly in deliberative democratic decision-​making but instead learn about politics from mass media and social media (see Iyengar and Simon 2000; Bennett and Iyengar 2008) and from direct encounters with public policies and politicians’ campaigns (Soss 1999; Druckman, Kifer, and Parkin 2009; Broockman and Butler 2017).1 From these inputs, the human tendency for evaluative appraisal produces attitudes and preferential rankings of political alternatives. Citizens then, sometimes infrequently, express those opinions through polls, voting, informal conversation, and other forms of participation (Zukin et  al. 2006). There is some evidence that political elites then respond to these expressed preferences but much of that representation is indirect and unevenly reflective of public views (Druckman and Jacobs 2009; Jacobs and Page 2005; Gilens and Page 2014; Soroka and

Deliberation and Framing    559 Wlezien 2010; Lax and Philips 2015). This looks very little like the deliberative ideals outlined above. But what do we know of how citizens form political preferences? And what of the quality of that preference formation? There is one thing that is certain: conditional on citizens’ long-​standing predispositions (such as ideology and personality), much of what citizens think about politics results from consideration of information communicated via the mass media (Zaller 1992). This influence has most actively been studied around the concept of framing, with the accumulated evidence suggesting that elites can powerfully shape what citizens think about particular political issues (Iyengar and Kinder 1987), how they think and reason (Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley 1997; Brewer and Gross 2005), and what opinions, decisions, and choices the public eventually settles upon (Chong and Druckman 2007b). Framing—​understood to mean a communicator’s selective presentation and interpretation of political realities—​can have a sizeable impact on citizens’ opinions.2 For example, if a hate group rally is framed by emphasizing the idea of free speech, most citizens hearing that framed message will tend to base their opinion on this consideration and support allowing the rally to be held. In contrast, if the rally is framed by emphasizing the threat to public order, those citizens will tend to, instead, base their opinion on this consideration and oppose allowing the rally (Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley 1997). Kinder (2003, 359)  summarizes the framing concept clearly:  “frames supply no new information. Rather, by offering a particular perspective, frames organize—​or better, reorganize—​information that citizens already have in mind. Frames suggest how politics should be thought about, encouraging citizens to understand events and issues in particular ways.” Given that others have provided comprehensive summaries of the expansive framing literature (Chong and Druckman 2007b; de Vreese and Lecheler 2012), we focus our attention on two issues: first, whether framing poses a threat to deliberation and citizen competence and, second, whether framing offers some virtue for preference formation by way of leading citizens to form preference that are better informed and more coherent (e.g. grounded in deeper principles and values).

Elite Framing as a Threat to Deliberation? Framing would seem to present an obvious threat to the ideals of deliberation. By actively attempting to influence citizens and doing so for the often selfish purpose of electoral success (Disch 2011), political elites propagandize without an obvious opportunity for group deliberation. In one sense, then, it is elites who make framing problematic. By serving an agenda-​setting function and steering public discourse, framing limits citizens’ capacity for expression and voice. In another sense, however, framing also highlights the finite capacity of citizens for political thinking and their tendency to engage in self-​serving cognitive processes. We address each of these downsides in turn.

560    Thomas J. Leeper and Rune Slothuus By definition, framing implies the selective provision of political attention to a limited set of considerations, arguments, facts, and perspectives. Framing extracts potent dimensions from the political cacophony. As such, not all arguments and perspectives of an issue are voiced. When one or perhaps a few related frames dominate a debate, elites quash rare voices and the perspectives of those not already in the elite. Content analyses of political debates generally show the presence of competing frames in most debates but often only a few perspectives are emphasized, and sometimes just a single frame dominates alone (Chong and Druckman 2011; Hänggli and Kriesi 2010). This potentially threatens the deliberative ideal that in political discourse all relevant arguments should be considered. Perhaps more problematic than the necessary limiting of the number of considerations and arguments is the strategic incentive of political actors to favor certain frames over others. Their contributions to political discourse are self-​serving to the extent that politicians tend to be office-​seeking (Mayhew 1974) at the expense of political honesty. In its worst forms, elite influence comes in the form of pandering and the intentional promulgation of misinformation (Druckman and Jacobs 2015; Jacobs and Shapiro 2000). In these cases, framing not only reduces the opportunity for public deliberation but actively competes against the ideal of free, open, and truthful exchange of viewpoints. The reality is that the “strongest” frame may not be one that provides majority support for the “highest quality” policy. The ideal of enlightened political choice can therefore be undermined by careful political manipulation (Riker 1996). Yet elites are not the only worry when one considers the relationship between framing and the democratic ideals motivating deliberative theories. Citizens, too, can contribute to the negatives of framing. Indeed, framing studies can be read as illuminating the limited capacity of citizens to respond critically to elite communications. That is, framing reveals that citizens may not have coherent preferences and are easily swayed by frames and arguments. While taking a more optimistic view themselves, Sniderman and Theriault (2004, 133–​4) describe a dominant interpretation of the repeated demonstrations of framing effects by noting that it is “widely agreed that citizens in large numbers can be readily blown from one side of an issue to the very opposite depending on how the issue is specifically framed.” This concern that citizens appear to be too open to competing arguments or frames might be particularly acute on political issues that are complex or where citizens hold ambivalent or weak attitudes. On the other hand, and perhaps ironically, others have been concerned by citizens’ limited responsiveness to framing. Citizens often have pre-​existing opinions and views on which considerations are most important on a given issue (i.e. they have pre-​existing “frames in thought”). Such opinions and beliefs might have been shaped by elites’ frames in the first place but, once formed, existing opinions and frames in thought tend to limit the openness of citizens to arguments and frames they might later encounter. As argued by Lakoff (2004), people think in frames and if an argument or fact does not fit the frame in thought, this information is ignored or rejected. Thus, “[t]‌o be accepted, the truth must fit people’s frames. If the facts do not fit a frame, the frame stays and the facts bounce off ” (Lakoff 2004, 17). Druckman, Fein, and Leeper (2012) showed in an

Deliberation and Framing    561 experiment how frame-​induced policy opinion biased subsequent information search and assessment of new arguments or frames. When study participants were allowed to choose which information and arguments they wanted to learn during a debate, they tended to select arguments they would expect to support their pre-​existing opinion, resulting in “dogmatic adherence to opinions formed in response to the first frame to which participants were exposed” (430). Such behavior obviously violates the deliberative requirement of assessing other actors’ arguments with an open mind and to seek a rational consensus.3 The limited influence of framing on preference formation can also be seen as problematic if the lack of a framing effect was caused by citizens assessing the message based on the messenger rather than on the merits of the arguments emphasized by the frame. Frames are typically sponsored by specific political actors, and citizens tend to assess the quality of a frame based on its source rather than its content (Druckman 2001; Hartman and Weber 2009; Slothuus and de Vreese 2010). This means that if the source is a visible political group, such as a political party, or if the messenger bears an ideological label, citizens might assess the frame based on whether they like or agree with the source rather than assessing the substantive content of the argument. This is particularly the case if partisan elites are ideologically polarized (Druckman, Peterson, and Slothuus 2013), which they often are on the issues that matter the most to the political process. Such “source cue” effects again violate the deliberative requirement of assessing arguments based on quality alone. In sum, there are risks both that the frames supplied by elites will be manipulative, or cover only a narrow range of perspectives, and that citizens will have a finite capacity to process frames, making them susceptible to whatever frame is pushed early in a debate or to one that invites an overreliance on pre-​existing political orientations. But this does not mean that framing has nothing to offer—​far from it.

Virtues of Framing for Preference Formation Most political issues are complex, and citizens’ reasoning about political choices is cognitively taxing. As Leeper and Slothuus (2014, 131) explain, “[w]‌hile humans are born with and socialized into predispositions, they are not born with the political information necessary to apply these predispositions to the specific tasks citizens are expected to perform in a democracy:  forming policy opinions and candidate preferences.” Therefore, political elites such as politicians, party organizations, and interest groups play a key role in structuring political issues in a way that allows citizens to participate in democratic decision-​making (for an elaboration of this perspective, see Leeper and Slothuus 2014, 130–​8). Framing is a primary means for offering structure of, and providing information for, political debate, a point increasingly appreciated by deliberative democrats as well (Calvert and Warren 2014). Elite argumentation through framing offers citizens the opportunity to hear about issues they otherwise would not be exposed to, and to reckon with an array of arguments

562    Thomas J. Leeper and Rune Slothuus about those issues. In many cases, framing also means a simplification of the complexity of political problems. Framing can make policy issues easier to comprehend and understand; hence framing might be a precondition for citizens’ ability to take part in deliberation of policy issues. As Nelson and Kinder (1996) argue, frames provide “recipes” for how to form opinions based on the ingredients that elites think will be broadly important to large swaths of the electorate. On this basis, exposure to elite frames could actually stimulate citizens to form an opinion (Kinder and Nelson 2005). Moreover, by dividing a policy space along clear dimensions, political elites facilitate citizens’ use of their values and predispositions in the formation of views on specific policies (see Riker 1996). Sniderman and Theriault (2004), for example, show that when multiple frames are present in a debate, citizens better connect their own values to specific policy preferences than when fewer arguments are present: the main lesson, they argue, is “that citizens not only can stand up and hold to their values in the face of political argument but that the voicing of opposing arguments may even assist them in translating their political attitudes into positions on specific issues” (Sniderman and Theriault 2004, 151). While elite framing per se has much to offer citizens, many further virtues come from competitive framing (Chong and Druckman 2007a). Specifically, competitive framing allows alternative dimensions to be considered in an effort by elites to find majority supported positions. Because frames divide the public along salient issue dimensions, some frames create widespread support while others do not (see Riker 1996). While some frames may be known to be stronger a priori (i.e. to capture a large share of public support), this is not necessarily the case. As such, the iterative nature of competitive framing brings new arguments into the debate. Content analyses of real-​world framing show that this competition between elites begins with a wide-​ranging set of arguments but typically narrows down to a few key frames on each side of the issue (Chong and Druckman 2011; Hänggli and Kriesi 2010). This process of focusing of debate reflects the public appeal of the various arguments as well as citizens’ need for limited (rather than expansive) argumentation. Where deliberation theorists see citizens’ active discussion of these arguments as essential to the quality of their own opinions and the collective good, framing research would seem to suggest that airing a wide array of arguments is a precursor to rather than a core element of collective choice. A further virtue of competing frames is the tendency for such competition to stimulate citizens’ elaboration upon those alternative frames leading, in turn, to better-​ considered opinions (Chong and Druckman 2007a). The capacity of citizens to assess the substantive arguments put forward in a debate with opposing sides is further supported by evidence for the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of persuasion. The ELM is a theoretical framework capable of organizing and synthesizing a large psychological literature on persuasion. Since framing is often used by political actors to persuade—​in ways similar to using persuasive arguments—​the ELM has obvious relevance for framing theory. In the ELM, a key variable in understanding the influence of arguments is the degree to which the individual is willing or able to engage in active elaboration of persuasive messages. Studies of the ELM show that when citizens are

Deliberation and Framing    563 presented with compelling arguments and engage in active elaboration of the message, they rely less on “source cues” such as the likability of the speaker when forming opinions (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Instead, when citizens elaborate they focus on the reasons for particular positions and tend to favor the one for which there is strongest evidence and arguments. The ELM thus provides a psychological microfoundation whereby citizens can use elite-​provisioned frames to develop opinions on complex political questions and argument-​backed justifications for those views. Interestingly, recent empirical studies of deliberation go in the same direction. For example, Gerber et al. (2014; 2016) showed in a Deliberative Poll that positions which have higher justification levels drive opinion change, and Colombo (2016) found a relationship between justification levels and the use of arguments in opinion formation during a referendum campaign. Media framing involves not only the communication of arguments but also endorsements, facts (and misinformation), and cues about the relevance of values, self-​interest, and other priorities. Broadly defined, framing thus provides citizens with a wealth of stimuli to evaluate when forming political opinions. And this use of elite messaging and arguments is not simply blind followership. Druckman, Peterson, and Slothuus (2013) show that Americans formed opinions on several important issues that went against the position of their preferred political party when the other side had a more compelling argument, at least as long as the partisan elites were not overly polarized. Similarly, Leeper and Slothuus (2016) found that citizens in a Danish referendum campaign followed the position of their preferred political party, but only to the extent that forming an opinion was in line with the citizens’ general orientations toward Europe. In a different study focusing on citizens’ perceptions of the economy, Bisgaard and Slothuus (2018) found that political parties can encourage citizens of different partisan stripes to converge on a common interpretation of reality, hence creating a shared point of departure for debates about policy solutions to societal problems. In a more elaborate investigation, Baumgartner, De Boef, and Boydstun (2008) looked at public opinion toward the death penalty in the United States. The issue of capital punishment is complex and often moralized. Facts can be hard to come by, as shown by a 2012 National Academy of Science report that found ambiguous—​at best—​evidence of the deterrent effect of the death penalty (Nagin and Pepper 2012). How, then, does framing shape citizens’ views? Baumgartner, De Boef, and Boydstun showed that over the past half-​century the American media have communicated countless distinct arguments—​ranging across those emphasizing fairness, constitutionality, morality, mode of execution, cost, efficacy, and international standing—​each in turn encompassing a vast number of specific claims. This competition over alternative understandings of and positions on the death penalty has resulted in the emergence of a single strong frame: innocence. Far from the manipulative frames that some democratic theorists worry about, the innocence frame is a just one. It argues that the death penalty punishes too many people who are in fact innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced. Baumgartner, De Boef, and Boydstun (2008) found that the victory of the innocence frame over rival arguments has led to a

564    Thomas J. Leeper and Rune Slothuus shift in opinion (declining support for capital punishment), in policy (more and more state-​level bans on execution), and in practice (fewer of those sentenced to die are being executed and more innocent people are being exonerated). Framing, as an elite-​and media-​driven process, entailed a protracted airing of alternative views and what can almost universally be seen as a morally defensible collective judgment in opposition to the death penalty.

Improving Opinions with Framing and Deliberation: Obligations and Responsibility of Political Elites Despite the appeal of Dahl’s notion of “enlightened preferences,” it is impossible to establish an uncontroversial definition of a “better” and “worse” opinion. Even Dahl’s call to leave such decisions to the citizen are unsatisfying. Yet deliberative democracy is appealing precisely because its proponents believe that the opinions and collective choice resulting from a deliberative process are better. We shy away from such normative judgments, but we can rely upon the available literature to understand how elite framing and citizen deliberation interact. We have taken a pro-​framing stance, which implicitly means we think that elites should take a positive role in shaping public debate, informing citizens’ views, and offering the mass public reasonable and varied alternatives to choose between. We see the reliance on elite framing as a way of addressing the concern that the ideals of deliberative democracy, while normatively appealing, might be too demanding to realize in real-​world settings (Bächtiger et  al. 2010, 33), and a pressing question is whether ordinary citizens are willing or have the capability to engage in political deliberation. As Mendelberg (2002, 173) asks, “[p]‌erhaps . . . citizens cannot deliberate adequately, and should not be expected to do so.” We see potential in the interaction between elite framing and citizen deliberation: framing by political elites can structure policy issues in ways that enable citizens to grasp the meaning of them and elites voice competing arguments that can fuel citizen deliberation. Yet we acknowledge, as Bendor and Bullock (2008) do, that “voters aren’t the risky links in large democracies. Officials are” (17). To the extent that framing is influential in citizens’ thinking and the formation of collective choices, the risks of framing lie not in citizens’ use of available arguments communicated by elites but instead in the possibility that elites will not compete effectively and the reality that certain institutional arrangements make such competition less likely to occur. Framing is a virtue to the extent that frames are numerous, informed, and competitive. Frames structure debates, organize ideas and values, and cast attention onto aspects of issues that are most important to the citizenry at large (for a recent discussion of framing by deliberative theorists, see Calvert and Warren 2014). When democratic

Deliberation and Framing    565 systems are structured to enable competition, framing is a natural product and natural means for citizens to reduce the complexity of the daunting task of political decision-​ making (see Downs 1957). When media are numerous, well-​funded, and free, they provide a check on elite discourse and a filter through which to communicate and find meaningful political debate (Feldman, Huddy, and Marcus 2015). Yet even within favorable institutions, politicians, parties, and even media can still manipulate and mislead. The greatest check on this is competition. If framing research of the last decade has taught us anything, it is that competitive but non-​polarized information environments inform and persuade citizens through reasoned argumentation (see Chong and Druckman 2007a; Druckman, Peterson, and Slothuus 2013). Political scientists are often quick to dismiss elites. The political theory canon is often characterized as anti-​partisan (see Madison, Hamilton, and Jay 1787; Rosenblum 2010)  and some suggest that political theory longs for an independence from partisanship (see, for example, Disch 2011, 103). Yet democracy is essentially unthinkable without parties as an organizing force for elite competition (Schattschneider 1942, 1), which in turn drives the framing dynamics we see as vital to mass preference formation. Effective preference formation at the mass level and the meaningful collective choice of citizens depends on this elite-​level activity. Regardless of whether deliberation serves as a fundamental or tangential element of democratic practice, what citizens bring to democratic decisions are the frames in thought formed earlier in politics in response to the largely partisan competition over political issues. We see citizens’ preferences as unthinkable without elite partisan framing, so we do not see any reason why deliberation should be thought of as something that can be isolated from these processes. In short, “issue framing need not indicate a pathology” (Disch 2011, 110). Instead, the concerns with framing should be focused on the elites rather than the citizens who benefit from those communications.

Conclusion At the core of our chapter are two competing perspectives. The first is that framing poses a threat to the normative ideals of deliberative democracy by creating a democracy of followership, with political elites using framing to structure debate and even to create the public support needed to rationalize their implementation of their a priori preferred policies. The second view is that the complexity and importance of politics merits a justifiable outsourcing by many citizens of their responsibility for participation in collective deliberation. High demands for political engagement can come at the expense of citizens’ other interests and obligations. If we are to believe Downs (1957), citizens rationally satisfice, relying on heuristics and expert peers to help them arrive at the views they otherwise would. In this way, framing helps them to analyze and structure political questions and provides them with answers they can easily make sense of. In this

566    Thomas J. Leeper and Rune Slothuus view, framing provides a shortcut by which citizens have access to the conclusions of others’ deliberations, thus enabling them to rely more narrowly on elaboration alone to meaningfully take part in the political process and form reasoned preferences (cf. Schattschneider 1942). In this view, competitive, elite framing of politics is necessary and provides a route to the desirable outcomes espoused by advocates of collective deliberation. Of course, this puts great responsibility on political elites. In the end, we lean toward the latter position. While deliberative democracy shows promise, we believe a form of mass democracy centered on elite provision of information, arguments, and reasons for particular political choices, which citizens may use for largely intrapersonal deliberation, is more viable. Indeed, it may be the only feasible form of democratic government. While a growing body of empirical work demonstrates that citizens can and do engage in political deliberation (e.g. Colombo 2016; Fishkin 1997; Gerber et al. 2014; n.d.; Jacobs, Cook, and Delli Carpini 2009; Mutz 2006; Walsh 2004), there is far more evidence that citizens use media-​and partisan-​provisioned information to form and express meaningful opinions on a wide array of issues. An elite-​centered view has several important implications for research on deliberation. First, it invites a more critical look at the preferences that citizens bring into the deliberation context from their own lived experience. A useful distinction in the framing literature is between “frames in communication” and “frames in thought.” The former are those expressed in mass or interpersonal communications. The latter are cognitive representations within citizens’ minds. If deliberation involves an airing of arguments and a structured deliberation over political alternatives, then the arguments brought to the table should be understood as expressions of these frames in thought. Where, then, do they come from? What implications does it have for deliberative practice that these reasons—​which are essential to the deliberation process—​originate in messages sent by media and politicians? Second, we ask whether deliberation is a fair expectation of citizens overburdened with everyday life. If framing provides citizens with arguments, allows them to elaborate upon reasons for holding alternative opinions, and, indeed, invites them to makes political choices, what are the added costs of deliberation worth? What more is deliberation offering beyond a purely elite-​driven discourse, when weighed against the costs of deliberative participation? Creative research designs are needed to explore these questions empirically, and one place to start is to build on the experiment by Minozzi et al. (2015). Third, if framing is a largely elite-​driven activity and this constitutes the modal democratic experience for most citizens, what role if any should elites play in deliberative spaces? Are they excluded? If so, at what cost to the quality of the collective choices? If not, what are the consequences for the universal and autonomous expression of arguments—​an essential deliberative characteristic? One potentially fruitful avenue of thinking might be for scholars of deliberative democracy to consider how to ensure that elites will provide the information necessary for citizens to engage in meaningful collective deliberation and intrapersonal elaboration. Urbinati and Warren (2008) argue that:

Deliberation and Framing    567 we should think of representative democracy not as a pragmatic alternative to something we modern citizens can no longer have, namely direct democracy, but as an intrinsically modern way of intertwining participation, political judgment, and the constitution of demoi capable of self-​rule. Understood in this way, elections are not an alternative to deliberation and participation, but rather structure and constitute both (402).

In this way, we see framing as an integral part of contemporary partisan competition. Robust party competition in elections ensures that citizens are presented with an array of credible alternatives and that those alternatives are structured and organized through competitive debate and argumentation over the best policies. But framing also goes further than the deliberative goal of “may the best argument prevail” to call upon citizens to consider and recognize the core question at stake in a debate. In other words, framing asks citizens not only to judge which alternative is best but also to choose which dimension, lens, value, or frame should be used in making that decision. Strong frames typically appeal to core values and ideals. A public debate about a proposed hate group rally is not simply a weighing of arguments for and against the rally. Instead, frames ask citizens to judge what politics is fundamentally about—​should we as a society give more weight to civil liberties or public safety? Deliberation sees argumentation as a route to a credible, enlightened decision on a particular question. Competitive framing achieves this and potentially more. It clarifies and facilitates the aggregation of preferences by allowing citizens to organize and prioritize the values that should underlie governance generally. It is because of its power and its appeal to citizens’ core values that we see competitive framing as an inevitable—​and indeed essential—​ aspect of politics.

Notes 1. While media exposure can involve dialogue or conversation—​in article comment sections and social media posts—​such activity is relatively infrequent and practiced by only a few. 2. Another conceptual definition of framing relates to so-​called equivalency frames exemplified by Kahneman and Tversky’s famous “Asian disease problem.” In equivalency framing, mathematically equivalent alternatives are described in slightly different terms—​how many people will die from a disease under a given policy versus how many people be saved under the same policy—​and Kahneman and Tversky’s work (and that of others) shows these modified wordings can alter individuals’ preferences over policy alternatives. We think these types of problems are relatively distinct from the broader class of framing dynamics that we examine here. 3. Here, however, lies another interesting link between framing and deliberation. A  small body of research shows that deliberation and elite framing can usefully interact. Druckman and Nelson (2003), for example, show that small-​group conversations can reduce the influence of one-​sided framing when others with whom one interacts have been exposed to alternative frames. This implies, again, that competition—​be it directly at the elite level or secondarily in the form of interpersonal discussions—​makes framing a largely positive

568    Thomas J. Leeper and Rune Slothuus contribution to opinion formation (see also Barabas 2004; Klar 2014). This reflects the evidence that deliberative encounters tend to change opinions through framing or persuasion rather than the mere exchange of information (Westwood 2015). More perversely, a separate body of evidence suggests that deliberation actually exacerbates disagreement (Wojcieszak 2011; Sunstein 2009), but more work is needed to understand precisely how framing influences this form of “group polarization.”

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Chapter 35

Deliberat i on in So ciol o g y Erik Schneiderhan and Shamus Khan

Sociology has had a long-​standing interest in the study of deliberation. In 1835 one of its earliest practitioners, Alexis de Tocqueville, described the essential nature of local community deliberations to American democratic society. Through their collective discourse over politics and through juries, Americans could develop a virtuous civic culture that would help them avoid the dangers of democratic despotism and the tyrannies of majorities. A few decades later Karl Marx argued that deliberation was an important mechanism for bringing about radical social change.1 And as evidenced by her writing and her practices at Hull-​House in Chicago, Jane Addams was convinced that deliberation was a critical element of a robust democracy and social ethics in the late nineteenth century.2 Across these works (and a host of others), the sociological approach to deliberation had strong empirical foundations and argued for the centrality of deliberation to civic culture, democratic institutions, social emancipation, and social ethics. Across a range of classical texts within the canon of sociology we see deliberation as a “big idea” which might guide the organization of modern social life. In some pockets of the sociological literature it still is; we outline these below. But we also argue that present-​day sociological work on deliberation by and large has moved away from big ideas toward a narrow project that is fairly disconnected from the world outside of scholastic inquiry. In this chapter we highlight what we consider the best sociology has to offer scholars of deliberation. Our presentation includes ideas and practice, that is, how sociology helps us think about deliberation and how we have gone about studying it. We conclude with a discussion of the limitations of our discipline’s approach to deliberation and perhaps, more important, what we might do about it in our work going forward. While a significant portion of classical texts engaged with the role of what we now think of as “deliberation” within their sociological theory, today we find that the most significant sociological theories are able to advance without a model or even recognition of deliberative processes. Community discourse, once a staple of sociological

574    Erik Schneiderhan and Shamus Khan inquiry—​be that in how it created civic culture, social ethics, or shared understanding—​ is now a rather specialized realm of sociological inquiry. This divorce of deliberation from sociological theory provides a rather unfortunate opportunity for our chapter. First, it allows us to ask how deliberation might look different if it were to engage more with the recent insights of sociological theory. Second, we turn this around and ask how sociological theory might look different were it to return to a more serious engagement with deliberation. The most significant turn in sociological thinking, we would argue, is its increasing rejection of substantialism in favor of relationality. This development, best reviewed by the classic paper, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology” (Emirbayer 1997), suggests that rather than think of actors as discrete things made up of a collection of variables, we should think of them as enmeshed within a web of relations. Social action, then, is understood to be less guided by demographic “attributes” like our race, class, and gender, and more driven by our position within a structure of relations with others and institutions. The focus of sociological thought, thus, turns away from the individual as a unit of analysis and instead thinks more about the system of relations within which individuals are located. Such a model of social action is both deeply sympathetic to, and in deep conflict with, deliberation theory. On the one hand, it focuses its attention on the social process of what we might think of “between-​ness”—​a core element of deliberation. On the other, deliberation often focuses on the rationality and decision-​making of individual-​level actors, relying upon a notion of the individual actor that relational theorizing has largely abandoned.3 In order to fully understand this shift, we first briefly outline Habermas’s view of communicative action, and juxtapose it with the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu (whom we take as a representative of the relational school). We then outline a range of ideas that such theorizing brings to deliberation, including linkages to public issues, attention to power and modes of domination (including race and gender), sensitivity to context, and conceptualizing social situations as dynamic. Habermas’s (1984) contribution, through his theory of communicative action, is likely well known to readers of this volume. Still, its sociological dimensions are worth reconsidering, particularly as we think through the divergence of deliberation and sociological thought. Habermas’s interest was to ground reason not in Weberian rationality or Kantian reason but instead to think of it as a social process embedded in language and communication. While the set of Habermas’s linguistic concerns are largely ignored by sociologists, his attention to communication as a social act places his work firmly within a relational context. For Habermas, social action is not individualistic, nor is its meaning subjectively constituted; instead, drawing upon insights from Parsons’ (1937) ideas of the structure of social action, and interactionist theories of G. H. Mead, Habermas sees reason as embedded with a system of relations with other actors—​mediated through communication. While the communicative turn of Habermas has been embraced by deliberation scholars, his more relational approach has been less thoroughly engaged. The radicalism of the theory of communicative action was to suggest that individuals did not possess

Deliberation in Sociology    575 reason; instead, reason was an aspect of a social situation, or what might be understood as an intersubjective accomplishment. While this led some within deliberation to think about how people talked to one another, it did not completely divorce those within this tradition from an individualist approach to understanding decision-​making. While Habermas’s theory focuses on the discursive, his French contemporary, Pierre Bourdieu, draws more upon Pascal than Kant, and thereby emphasizes the customary over the rational, and the material and embodied more than the communicative. Bourdieu’s theoretical framework proceeds by outlining relational spaces (in his language, “fields”), which are defined by a set of resources (“capital”). For example, novelists exist in a relational space defined by their economic success and their cultural influence. The positions that novelists occupy within this space determine their dispositions (“habitus”). Novelists highly regarded by critics with outstanding sales are in a dominant position, and likely “disinterested” in their orientation; those with great sales figures but little cultural esteem, by contrast, are dominated by and thereby dismissive of critics. Core to such a model is that we understand the world as a set of relational spaces, bound to a set of resources, which actors deploy to advance their relative positions. In short, the Bourdieuian model makes power central to the analysis. Actors exist in this relational space, are defined by power, and have their dispositions determined by the positions they occupy (and not some other aspect of an individual self). Finally, Bourdieu thinks of fields in relation to one another. But part of their relationship—​indeed, part of the project—​is to be autonomous. For Bourdieu, the autonomy of different fields of social life (say, art from the economy, or politics from religion) is a central emancipatory project. If Bourdieu is not interested in the discursive, it may seem strange to associate him with deliberation—​a process that does not necessitate discourse, but certainly relies upon it heavily.4 Not so. As Emirbayer and Schneiderhan (2012) point out, Bourdieu was heavily invested in revitalizing and opening up the public sphere. His efforts to uncover the social mechanisms related to human suffering were nothing if not an engagement with democratic politics and an attempt to visualize new social possibilities. Bourdieuian social thought, with its attention to the embodied, relational fields and to power, can invigorate deliberation in ways that help it reconnect with the “big ideas” of sociological analysis, and address some of the pressing concerns (like power and difference) that deliberation has treated unsatisfactorily. How we study deliberation is driven by how we know and construct our objects of analysis. The relational turn in sociology has moved sociologists beyond a variable-​ centered approach of deliberation and toward a consideration of process, dynamics, and context. This has muddied the methodological waters, as it is very difficult to pin these kinds of things down. Whether grounded in the ideas of Habermas or Bourdieu, what does it mean to study deliberation as process (or a set of relations?) and how does one go about it? We try to clarify this in what follows by considering recent emblematic work within sociology. We see four major impacts to relational thinking on the deliberation literature: (1) a core attention to power and domination; (2) linkage to public issues; (3) treating social situations as dynamic; and (4) contextualized, historicized theorization. We take these up in turn below.

576    Erik Schneiderhan and Shamus Khan Relational thinking has at its core a model of power and domination. To ask about relationships is to think about how such relationships are arranged—​which is to say, how power works through the social order to generate outcomes. Deliberation theorists have been comparatively quiet on the relationship between rationality and power (cf. Flyvbjerg 1998), and often imagine that deliberation can transcend context, working the same way in all spaces. Yet as Baiocchi and Ganuza (2014) point out, power functions in myriad ways that those working within the deliberation literature often do not recognize. Such attention to power also addresses one of the most important criticisms of deliberation: namely its inattentiveness to race, gender, and class (Elrick, Schneiderhan, and Khan 2014; Young, 1999; Walsh 2007). Where the literature increasingly considers these factors, it does so as modes of difference; but as those who work around race, class, and gender have consistently argued, these are not just variables of difference, they are part of systems of power. The workings of such power cannot simply be moderated by redefining the situation. Sociology has begun to question what Pellizzoni (2001) calls the Habermasian “myth of the best argument.” At the intersection of rational choice theory and Habermas is the axiomatic notion that deliberation serves as a mechanism that can address or “remedy” whatever perspectival or informational shortcomings participants might bring to the public sphere. Taken to the extreme, deliberation is mainly a mechanism for a coordination game (often with expert assistance) in which we all hope the outcome is Pareto-​ optimal. Theoretically, deliberation in the public sphere often asks subjects to disembed themselves from all aspects of their social self—​including their ethnicity, class, gender, and age (cf. Rawls 1971). Identity and any related interests have no place in this space. Information is relatively benign, contains no standpoint assumptions, and is used to provide reasons as deliberative bodies move toward the universal. Recent sociology is moving toward a rejection of these “naive expectations about the autonomy of reason from political reality or the capacity of reason to defeat naked power” (Cohen and Rogers 2003, 253). Sociology’s move away from such naive expectations has manifested in part as a reconceptualization of race and ethnicity and how it works in deliberation. The current scholarly consensus rests upon a body of empirical research that either frequently studied deliberation in a homogenous white population or asked participants to bracket their ethnic identity (Dahlberg 2005; Young 1996; Young 1999; Young 2000; Young 2001; though see the exceptions of Ani 2015; Steiner et al. 2017). Even that work that does consider ethnicity and deliberation (cf. Mendelberg and Oleske 2000; Mendelberg 2002; Walsh 2007; Wheatley 2003) tends to take a static view of ethnicity—​conceptualizing it as something actors have (and can bracket or not bracket) rather than something they do. As we point out in our own work (Schneiderhan, Khan, and Elrick 2014), such “bracketing” (denying subjects’ ethnic experiences, artificially creating homogeneity, further empowering those who already enjoy considerable privileges, and demanding denials from those already likely to be disadvantaged within political discourse) privileges those in power and enables individuals with unmarked or invisible privilege to speak as if they are promoting the general interest. Young (2001) terms this

Deliberation in Sociology    577 the “hegemonic quality of discourse.” Within this “identity dance” some scholars have shown how dominant groups have inadvertently silenced groups on the margin, making them uncomfortable taking positions in deliberation (Mansbridge 1983; Sanders 1997; Young 1996). This is not simply a technical design challenge. It is a matter of taking into account “background contexts, and in particular upon the constellation of social forces” (Cohen and Rogers, 2003, 259). In his classic overview of how sociologists (should) think, C.  Wright Mills (1959) seeks to embed social actors in what he calls “context”—​which includes both the broader social relations and the history of those relations. Mills is arguing against “abstract empiricism,” or imagining that we can remove actors from relations and history and empirically study them to generate claims about the world. Instead, we must embed them firmly within their messy worlds, complete with the issues of public concern of their day. Sociologists like Erik Olin Wright have taken up this publicly oriented approach, drawing upon a more Marxist relational analysis by asking us to consider how our social relations might be constructed and reconstructed to reduce inequality and increase social justice (2011; cf. Fung and Wright 2003). Wright imagines deliberation as a “real utopia”—​emphasizing the core idealism of deliberation but combining it with a more pragmatic understanding of participatory governance, attuned to those historical and relational elements around deliberation that make it either productive of emancipation or irrelevant to it. Gianpaolo Baiocchi, one of Wright’s former students, has enthusiastically pursued these ideas with a particular focus on participatory budgeting and its potential to transform society (2001; 2003; Baiocchi and Ganuza 2014). The question for sociology is how to give voice to these marginalized individuals? A possible answer is perhaps one of sociology’s strongest contributions to the recent deliberation literature. Sociology’s vector of engagement with power and deliberation is to consider institutional arrangements, specifically how they might be reconstructed to create what Abelson et al. (2003, 239) call “two-​way interaction between decision makers and the public” or what Baiocchi and Ganuza (2014, 37) call a “direct and exclusive link between forums and decisions.” Along with this is the idea of conceptualizing a multiplicity of publics (Emirbayer and Sheller 1999), including subaltern ones (Fraser 1992), as spaces for these linkages. Fung and Wright’s (2003) “empowered participatory governance” (EPG) model is one of sociology’s strongest statements as to how we might compensate for power imbalance through specific governance regimes and institutional designs that include deliberation but don’t take for granted that it will in and of itself act as a buffer against social forces. In particular, Baiocchi’s work on participatory budgeting demonstrates how deliberation and EPG can lead to different and non-​hegemonic outcomes. Much of the existing literature on deliberation, including our own work, offers up deliberation that doesn’t really matter in the real world. Field experiments and deliberative assemblies, as we have argued elsewhere, have high external validity but do not connect to any outcomes outside the specific research context. The relentless critic might argue that it all is just a lot of empty talk about things that often don’t matter to those

578    Erik Schneiderhan and Shamus Khan participating. Sociology is increasingly putting a premium on considering its work in light of the idea that one must interrogate any understanding of the world and any actions related to that understanding in terms of their “cash-​value” in society. “What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true?” asks the pragmatist William James (1907, 45). We think this is a question deliberation scholars should take seriously. Sociology’s relational turn is closely tied to the recent revival of American pragmatism, a philosophy that was deeply concerned with the importance of deliberation for social growth and democracy. Pragmatism’s conceptualization of social action is decidedly different from the rational choice paradigm common in the current deliberation literature. Pragmatism understands social action as based in a set of habits that we deploy and then adhere to; these habits help us solve our daily problems and simplify the complexity of navigating the world. When they break down we deploy what Dewey (1916) thought of as “intelligence” or what Joas (1996) has termed “creativity” to fashion new solutions (and new habits). Importantly, rational decision-​making is largely absent from the pragmatist model of action, emphasizing instead the decisions and patterns others undertake, and the socially available frameworks of understanding. A pragmatist approach helps to capture the idea that deliberation is the dynamic process of communicative interactions, constrained by available vocabularies, rules, context, and personal interests, which lead to the emergence of particular decisions. Here we are far away from the deliberative ideal of the public sphere seen in the Habermasian bourgeois coffee house. In this spirit, Perrin and McFarland (2008) call for consideration of deliberation as a “creative act”—​this is in keeping with the recent pragmatist turn in sociology—​and Perrin (2014) points out that the “rules of participation are important” but we should be aware that there are often “unintended consequences.” Here Perrin is focused on the outcome: “public opinion as expressive action itself—​the content of deliberation is the opinion to be measured” (p. 98). The adoption of a non-​teleological approach to deliberation allows us to think of multivocality and multiple lines of action. Padgett and Ansell (1993) show the deliberations of Cosimo de Medici as “robust action” wherein an actor is embedded in multiple sets of social relations that generate a plethora of interests and opportunities. What emerges is a “flexible opportunism” as the actor leaves open different options, sometimes in multiple games. This is an important point that draws on Leifer’s (1991) situational chess. Rather than map out moves based on interests and personality, players were found to play and adaptive and flexible game. Beyond the flexibility and lack of a telos in social action, a main sociological insight is that at times actors enmeshed in social relations might not even know what particular game they are playing, something that many scholars would take as given. It is a different conceptualization of the arena of deliberation and social relations, and ties very much to Emirbayer and Sheller’s (1999, 156) conceptualization of publics “as open-​ended flows of communication that enable socially distant interlocutors to bridge social-​network positions, formulate collective orientations, and generate psychical ‘working alliances,’ in pursuit of influence over issues of common concern.” In this, dynamism links to power. The open-​ended,

Deliberation in Sociology    579 multi-​vocal multiplicity of publics allows power differentials to be bridged. This bridging ties to the idea of “enactment” of identity we have considered in our own work (Schneiderhan, Khan, and Elrick 2014). Multivocality allows room for meaning making and ethnic boundary making (the “doing” of ethnicity, or enactment) in the public sphere. Relationality helps us think about how deliberation might travel and differ across sets of relations (not just geography). Depending on the specific relations within which we are embedded, how we might “do” deliberation will be very different. The knowing comes out of the particular context. Asking how “members of society themselves define [Justice],” Maynard and Manzo (1993), looking at juries and building on Garfinkel (1967), find that commonsense “indexical” reasoning trumps deliberation’s rules and architecture. In other words, we might look at deliberation as something practical, an activity that takes place in the everyday and that people know how to do. Constructing the object of analysis in such a way would call for on-​the-​ground collection of data through participant observation, conversation analysis, and in-​depth interviewing. It is a different way of interrogating and observing the Habermasian (1984) “lifeworld” of culturally embedded understandings and agreements in a lived-​in and relational space that provides a background environment for deliberation. And it builds off Habermas’s understanding of how this lifeworld is created and recreated by members of society but often contains elements that are taken for granted or simply understood, like how to comport oneself in a university seminar or at the counter of a diner. Even particular talk emerges out of specific histories. Gibson’s (2012) work on the deliberations around the Cuban missile crisis is a case in point. He demonstrates that the decisions to create a blockade and eventually negotiate with Khrushchev to get the Soviet missiles out of Cuba emerged from a messy social context that included particular mechanisms of talk, as well as specific domestic and international contexts. Mechanisms also underpin sociology’s approach to stories. Chen (2013) understands personal stories (a viable alternative to appeals to reason in the Habermasian public sphere), as ways in which participants can express and articulate demands and push for accountability. Edgell et al. (2016) link this idea of voice to marginalized groups, showing that “stories are treated as legitimate justifications” by those less likely to be heard. Polletta finds that such storytelling is not just productive for individual members who tell their stories, or as ways for the marginalized to generate legitimacy. The mere act of listening to personal stories (and not, say, reasons), helps others appreciate competing positions (even those they oppose), and better understand their own positions (Polletta and Lee 2006; see also Polletta et al. 2011). Such stories emerge out of personal history and are reproduced through relations. Habermas and Bourdieu were nothing if not historical, and spent significant effort historicizing their objects of analysis. The public sphere is the product of a particular history. Imagining that such a sphere can be promoted independently of such a contextual development, or that its effects would be the same across contexts, is naive. Yet scholars who mechanically apply the same kind of deliberative procedures across different contexts do exactly this. As sociologists and anthropologists have consistently shown, when

580    Erik Schneiderhan and Shamus Khan transported to new places, new times, and new sets of relations, old ideas do not function in the same ways. The situatedness of culture suggests an attention to contexts—​ both historical and situation—​in ways where there may not be “deliberation” so much as “deliberations” ruled by related, but nonetheless particular logics. We often act as if deliberation happens in a cultural and historical vacuum (though see Sass, this volume, Chapter 5). Koller (2010) points this out in his challenge of existing work on deliberation, asking whether or not the public sphere that we observe in our specific moments of observation is all that durable. Does it last? Democracy is not just a process of decision-​making. It is also about how people live their everyday lives embedded within social relations. To fully capture the emancipatory potential of democracy, deliberation must focus less on decision-​making as the outcome, and more on social relations. In short, we end by suggesting that deliberation theorists and practitioners take seriously the relational turn of sociology, and more fully engage with those ideas represented within this scholarly movement. What would this look like? First, scholars would need to be less reliant on individuals as units of analysis and demographics as constituent of individuals and more attentive to the situations and social relations within which individuals are located. This would mean thinking about deliberation not as a “pure” process that can be abstracted from context or history, but instead as a deeply situated one. The implication is also that rather than deliberation being a single thing, it might have multiple instantiations, in workplaces, families, community institutions, and, of course, political life. This move from the liberal underpinnings of deliberation to relationality means taking power and difference more seriously, embracing them as a core feature of social relations, rather than developing tools to help make them less of a “problem.” The real problem is that by disembedding actors from their relational context we may well generate more pure models of understanding of a process. This is not a good thing, for it is only in being embedded within contexts that we can speak to the real and practical concerns of people. In moving away from context, in becoming more pure, and becoming more sophisticated in its tools for generating such purity, deliberation has laid the groundwork for its own increasing irrelevance. We call, then, for a relationally situated deliberation. We are underwhelmed by evidence of robust deliberations that have no real impact on anything in the public sphere, or their small, often contrived, context. But this should not be our only measure. “What happens when Mr. Smith goes home?” That is, deliberation’s biggest impact may well be outside of the political process. When we think of democracy as more than just the process of decision-​making—​as also about how people live their lives with their families, at work, and in their community relations—​then we see that our call is not for the abandonment of deliberation, but in many ways its expansion. Yet for it to grow it must transform, and rather than seeing the rich and complicated context of relational life as a problem for analysis should instead suggest that such relations make analysis possible, and relevant.

Deliberation in Sociology    581

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

See Miller (1984, 89–​90) for a good discussion of this point. See Schneiderhan (2015, 49–​51). See Dryzek (2000), however, for the discourse tradition in the study of deliberation. See Ryfe (2007) for an effort to provide a comprehensive theory of deliberation grounded in Bourdieu.

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582    Erik Schneiderhan and Shamus Khan Fraser, N. (1992). Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. In Habermas and the Public Sphere, ed. C. Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 109–​42. Fung, A. and Wright, E. O. (2003). Deepening Democracy:  Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance. The Real Utopias Project vol. IV (London: Verso). Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-​Hall). Gibson, D. R. (2012). Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). James. W. (1907). Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking: Popular Lectures on Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green). Joas, H. (1996). The Creativity of Action (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Koller, A. (2010). The Public Sphere and Comparative Historical Research. Social Science History, 34: 261–​90. Leifer, E. M. (1991). Actors as Observers:  A Theory of Skill in Social Relationships (New York: Garland). Mansbridge, J. J. (1983). Beyond Adversary Democracy (new edn, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Maynard, D. and Manzo, J. F. (1993). On the Sociology of Justice: Theoretical Notes from an Actual Jury Deliberation. Sociological Theory, 11: 171–​93. Mendelberg, T. (2002). The Deliberative Citizen:  Theory and Evidence. Political Decision Making, Deliberation and Participation, 6: 151–​93. Mendelberg, T. and Oleske, J. (2000). Race and Public Deliberation. Political Communication, 17: 169–​7 1. Miller, R. W. (1984). Analyzing Marx: Morality, Power, and History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press). Padgett, J. F. and Ansell, C. K. (1993). Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici, 1400–​1434. American Journal of Sociology, 98: 1259–​319. Pellizzoni, L. (2001). The Myth of the Best Argument: Power, Deliberation and Reason. British Journal of Sociology, 52: 59–​86. Perrin, A. J. (2014). American Democracy:  From Tocqueville to Town Halls to Twitter (Cambridge: Polity Press). Perrin, A. J. and McFarland, K. (2008). The Sociology of Political Representation and Deliberation. Sociology Compass, 2: 1228–​44. Polletta, F. and Lee, J. (2006). Is Telling Stories Good for Democracy? Rhetoric in Public Deliberation after 9/​11. American Sociological Review, 71: 699–​721. Polletta, F., Chen, P. C. B., Gardner, B. G., and Motes, A. (2011). The Sociology of Storytelling. Annual Review of Sociology, 37: 109–​30. Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Ryfe, D. M. (2007). Toward a Sociology of Deliberation. Journal of Public Deliberation, 3 (1): Article 3. Sanders, L. M. (1997). Against Deliberation. Political Theory, 25: 347–​76. Schneiderhan, E. (2015). The Size of Others’ Burdens: Barack Obama, Jane Addams, and the Politics of Helping Others (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).

Deliberation in Sociology    583 Schneiderhan, E., Khan, S., and Elrick, J. (2014). Deliberation and Ethnicity. Sociological Forum, 29: 791–​807. Steiner, J., Jaramillo, M.C., Maia, R., and Mameli, S. (2017). Deliberation Across Deeply Divided Societies: Transformative Moments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tocqueville, A.  de (1835). De la démocratie en Amérique [trans. H. Reeve as Democracy in America (New York, 1838)]. Walsh, K. C. (2007). Talking About Race: Community Dialogues and the Politics of Difference (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Wheatley, S. (2003). Deliberative Democracy and Minorities. European Journal of International Law, 14: 507–​27. Wright, E. O. (2011). Real Utopias. Contexts, 10: 36–​42. Young, I. M. (1996). Communication and the Other:  Beyond Deliberative Democracy. In Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 120–​36. Young, I. M. (1999). Justice, Inclusion and Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Politics:  Essays on Democracy and Disagreement, ed. S. Macedo (New  York:  Oxford University Press), 151–​58. Young, I. M. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Young, I. M. (2001). Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy. Political Theory, 29: 670–​90.

Chapter 36

Deliberati v e P ol i c y Analysi s Frank Fischer and Piyapong Boossabong

The Emergence of Deliberative Policy Analysis Deliberative policy analysis has its origins in the argumentative turn in policy analysis (Fischer and Forester 1993; Fischer and Gottweis 2012). Influenced initially by the work of Habermas (1984), it emerged as an alternative to the use of standard empirical-​ analytic methods of the social sciences to solve public policy problems. Not only has the conventional neopositivist approach failed to produce the promised results, it has generally operated with a technocratic, and largely an anti-​democratic, bias. Basic to deliberative policy analysis is a method for bringing together a wider spectrum of citizens, politicians, and experts in the pursuit of policy decisions that are both effective and democratically legitimate. The term deliberative policy analysis stems from the volume with that title edited by Hajer and Wagenaar (2003a). Fundamentally, it is presented as an alternative to mainstream technocratic policy analysis, for which there are several reasons. One has had to do with the fact that such policy inquiry has largely failed to meet its original promise, namely to provide usable knowledge for policy problem-​solving (Fischer 2015). A second reason is that the technocratic policy analysis largely privileges a form of empirical knowledge over the perspectives of both the politicians that it is to serve and the citizens who provide the cornerstone of democratic governance. The alternative solution, according to the theory of deliberative policy analysis, is a turn away from official social-​scientific investigation toward a focus on policy arguments, the main currency of the political policymaking process. If rigorous empirical solutions are not available—​or within the realm of the possible—​a practical and even more relevant approach would be

Deliberative Policy Analysis    585 to improve the competing policy arguments, both empirically and normatively, and to facilitate their communicative exchange. Furthermore, the policy analyst could develop procedures and methods for facilitating such exchanges. This would not mean dismissing or neglecting the standard empirical role of policy analysis; rather it would supplement the assignment with the task of creating public spheres and facilitating deliberative forums for various policy actors to exchange and deliberate policy proposals. Beyond the standard emphasis of the empirical-​analytic approach, the analyst would seek to include a variety of modes of reason and the forms of knowledge to which they give rise to. As Hajer and Wagenaar (2003b, 30) explained, “the role would move beyond that of suggesting efficient, effective policy solutions to that of facilitating the citizen’s capacity for deliberation and collective learning about values, preferences, assumptions about self and others, mutual dependencies, power differentials, opportunities, constraints, and the desirability of solutions and outcomes.” Public policy decisions would then be a result of deliberations which strive for various possibilities including a consensus, an agreement, mutual understanding, or even the recognition and understanding of the differences.

What Deliberative Policy Analysis Is About and Why We Need It Such a mode of analysis is necessarily an interpretive, pragmatic, and linguistically oriented approach attuned to the continuous give-​and-​take that springs up around concrete issues (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003b, 1). Firstly, the interpretive aspect of deliberative policy analysis is to understand policymaking to be about different meanings that seek to define or reconstruct social action (4). Yanow (2003) explains how such interpretive analysis allows different communities of meaning in the policy process to share and deliberate through the process of interaction where local knowledge is not excluded. Secondly, policy deliberation is practice-​oriented as it stresses judgment based on practical forms of reason. Wagenaar and his colleague emphasize the interpretive, moral, and emotional dimensions basic to policy deliberation. And lastly, a perspective on language and discourse pulls these concerns together. In this regard, discourse analysis is commonly employed as a tool in deliberative policy analysis. As Hajer (2003, 88) explains, this highlights the importance of policy discourses that create vocabularies, story lines and generative metaphors. Deliberation among different discourse coalitions is, in this view, an essential aspect of the policy process. Why do we need deliberative policy analysis? It is seen as a mode of analysis that is fundamental to understanding the practices of new forms of governance in modern society (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003b, 7). In this view, collaborative dialogue and democratic deliberation are important for legitimating the shift from government structures

586    Frank Fischer and Piyapong Boossabong to new flexible forms of governance—​more effective, accountable, and democratic. Deliberative policy analysis also takes on special importance with the recognition that many problems are simply too complicated, too contested, and too unstable to be handled by schematic and centralized forms of policymaking (Fischer and Gottweis 2012). By recognizing and confronting contemporary value pluralism, this mode of analysis is able to cope with real-​world value conflicts through consensus-​building processes, collective learning, and deliberative judgment (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003b, 21). Moreover, it provides ways to more inclusively consider interests, open to new options and opportunities, and function more deliberatively in ways that serve the public good. It also promotes choice influenced by the practical experiences and local knowledge of citizens and stakeholders and, in the process, helps to forge mutually beneficial cooperative solutions (Innes and Booher 2003, 34–​43). Apart from this, deliberative policy analysis is sensitive to the governance potentials of new deliberative sites, new actors and new themes (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003b, 3). As such, it focuses on policy argumentation in concrete everyday situations, recognizing that the practical world is abundant with dialogue. At the same time, it is sensitive to inclusive practices that promote deliberative democratic values that can lead to effective or legitimate solutions (19–​20). In the interest of enhancing social interdependence, deliberative policy analysis can also create mutual trust and social capital needed for effective action (Innes and Booher 2003). In this regard, it seeks to fulfill Harold Lasswell’s call for a “policy sciences of democracy” (Torgerson 2015).

Foundations of Deliberative Policy Analysis The deliberative approach rests foremost on an alternative post-​positivist epistemology. As such, it rejects the idea that policy analysis can be a value-​free technical project (Fischer and Gottweis 2012, 2). In no way denying the role of empirical analysis, “the argumentative turn seeks to understand the relationship between the empirical and the normative as they are configured in the processes of policy argumentation.” It therefore “concerns itself with the validity of empirical and normative statements, but moves beyond the traditional empirical emphasis to examine the ways in which they are combined and employed in the political process.” Some ask what can we do this perspective? How can it be “operationalized?” (Landemore 2014). But this question misses the point. The goal of deliberative policy analysis is not to replace one operational methodology with another. Instead, it more fundamentally concerns a mode of thinking; it is a way of grasping a deeper intellectual understanding of the problem at hand by examining what it is a part of. To the degree that deliberative policy analysis does involve a methodology, it is a question of developing and employing an alternative inquiry system based on dialectical argumentation.

Deliberative Policy Analysis    587 In this scheme, a formalized process of argumentation and deliberation can be a very instructive aspect of the analytical process. Designed to clarify normative and empirical assumptions that underlie competing policy positions, such an approach facilitates the processes of judgment and decision-​making. Even when policy analysts are unable to agree, deliberative argumentation offers a method for examining the normative implications of policy recommendations and for pointing to potentially consensual agreements that can provide constructive ways to move ahead (Fischer and Gottweis 2012, 1–​27). Along the way, it also helps to clarify points of disagreement that impede the path to either consensual agreement or recognition of different views.

Advantages and Models of Deliberative Policy Analysis The primary advantage of this approach is that it provides policy decision-​makers and other political actors with a better spectrum of relevant information than does conventional empirical policy analysis. Moreover, it better reflects the way policy deliberation works in practice. In the political world, politicians and policymakers put forward proposals about courses of action anchored to normative arguments. In this process, empirical questions and findings seldom drive or determine the debate (Fischer 2006). In general, actors tend to hang on to their normative orientations in the face of conflicting or problematic facts, only altering or changing their views when literally forced to by circumstances. Empirical information comes into play but generally when specific factual aspects are in question. There is no one model of deliberative policy analysis (Churchman 1971; National Research Council 1996; Fischer 2000). One of the most systematic illustrations is the framework developed by the National Science Foundation. Deliberation, according to this model, can be facilitated by an organized deliberation among competing normative positions, especially as they pertain to larger societal concerns and the normative frameworks around which they are organized. Designed to identify or uncover conflicts, both existing and potential, in an effort to forge consensus, deliberative policy analysis stresses the productive role of interactive communication. This “analytic-​deliberative” method brings experts and citizens into closer contact, providing guidelines for organizing a participatory process capable of “broadly formulating the decision problem, guiding analysis to improve decision participants’ understanding, seeking the meaning of analytic findings and uncertainties, and improving the ability of interested and affected parties to participate effectively in the risk decision process” (National Research Council 1996). As such, the approach spells out the need for a diverse range of participants from across the spectrum of affected parties, interested groups, experts, and policy decision-makers, all of whom should be involved at each stage of the deliberative process, especially the early phases of problem identification

588    Frank Fischer and Piyapong Boossabong and formulation. Deliberation is foreseen as a crucial step to inform decision-​making in each phase of the process, from determining the problems to be analyzed to finding ways to characterize uncertainty and negotiate disagreements about goals and strategies. As the NRC puts it, “deliberation frames analysis, analysis informs deliberation, and the process benefits from the feedback from the two.” Deliberation, as the NRC makes clear, does not end all disputes. But controversies are seen as helpful in identifying problems, especially normative problems, that can otherwise block or impede efforts to reach agreements that permit forward movement. “Not only do controversies encourage in-​depth analysis to identify and explicate the social implications of a policy solution, they can also surface partly conflicting assessments of programs and policies that can then be further articulated and consolidated in the course of a controversy” (Fischer 2009, 133). This can also be extended to the higher levels of societal deliberation, if they don’t surface in the process on their own. Fischer (1995; 2003) has offered a methodological framework that supports this perspective. The framework involves a four-​level logic of deliberation that focuses on questions concerning the verification of empirical findings, the relevance of the findings to the situational context, the implications of the findings for the societal system as a whole, and the normative issues related to competing ideological frameworks. These levels constitute a methodological framework for discursively mapping and probing the empirical and normative factors that come into play in a complete policy judgment. As such, they help to facilitate a more comprehensive deliberative process. These concerns, it is important to underscore, assume particular significance in a turbulent world. The policy problems, and thus the argumentative policy processes, facing today’s governments are found to be more complex, uncertain, and very often riskier than they were when policy analysis was first put forward. Frequently poorly defined, contemporary policy issues are far “messier” that they were in earlier periods, in particular lacking clear-​cut technical solutions (Ney 2009). Under these circumstances conventional deliberative practices—​ often technocratic—​ have proven insufficient. Indeed, as Fischer and Gottweis (2012, 3) note, scientific inquiry and knowledge have often confounded problem solving, becoming themselves sources of uncertainty and ambiguity. Instead of resolving policy problems, they can in fact generate political conflict themselves. Finally, it should be noted that deliberative policy analysis is not without its critics. In addition to those who might ask how it could be “operationalized,” as noted above, most of the criticisms are the same as those that confront the deliberative perspective more generally. The most common criticism has to do with time. Mainstream policy analysts invariably argue that deliberative policy analysis takes too much time and thus judge it to be an impractical adjunct to the policymaking process. Missing from this dismissal, though, is the fact that deliberation can lead to policy decisions which take into account a wider range of issues, that it can add a degree of legitimacy to the policy process which conventional empirical policy analysis cannot, and that it leads to greater motivation on the part of the relevant citizens and stakeholders

Deliberative Policy Analysis    589 in the implementation of the policy decisions. Others argue that deliberative policy analysis challenges the existing policymaking structures—​but this is in fact what it is designed to do, opening up such structures to a wider range of voices and perspectives. Still others maintain that it undermines the authority of expertise. This is true, but only if one accepts the conventional, largely technical, understanding of expertise. Deliberative policy analysis, in contrast, draws on a constructivist conception which seeks to elucidate the normative assumptions embedded in the conventional practices of expertise.

Practices of Deliberative Policy Analysis: The Case of Khon Kaen City Municipality, Thailand Since 1932 the Thai governmental regime has been shaped by constitutions that combined old and new powers. The old powers were those of the monarchy, the military, and the Democrat (conservative) party, while the new powers reflected the elected neoliberal government, led from 2001 by a rich businessman. The neoliberals had won the previous five elections (in 2001, 2005, 2007, 2011, and 2014) by selling populist policies and by generously distributing money to potential supporters. The older power elites, by contrast, claim legitimacy by promoting morality-​led politics, charging that the other party corruptly rules with the use of a form of money politics. Both sides engage in an ongoing tug-​of-​war around these issues. But regardless of who wins, Thai government is highly centralized. The Constitution of 1997 endorsed a decentralization of administrative structures throughout the country. These new structures provided local communities with the opportunity to determine their own courses of development. Several local governmental bodies were introduced to play a role in developing local infrastructures, in particular to take care of the local ecology and the delivery of basic services such as welfare provision, healthcare, education and garbage collection. The Municipality of Khon Kaen took advantage of these administrative arrangements, creating its own route to a form of collaborative network governance that provided a context for the emergence of deliberative policy analysis in the town. This was the result of a decision by two local political parties to put aside their differences and to cooperate toward common ends. Local politicians began to devote less energy to competing with one another, and became more engaged in seeking collaborative networks of established development agents in the city—​among them public agencies, traditional city leaders, local businesses, the local universities and schools, as well as community committees, community-​based organizations, non-​governmental organizations, ethnic groups, some international organizations, representatives of migrants, and general active citizens.

590    Frank Fischer and Piyapong Boossabong While these networks were not ideal—​as some groups still had more power than others—​the municipality nonetheless changed from “working for” the urban communities to “working with” them by allowing each community to play a role as an autonomous “sub-​municipality” able to deliver basic community services, make decisions about the future directions of its area in the form of a community development plan, and then implement the plan. These sub-​municipalities helped to support city-​wide community garbage collection, maintenance of public parks, and local street reconstruction and repairs, as well as the organization of traditional festivals (Division of Policy Analysis and Planning 2014). In the process, the relations between the city municipality and the communities shifted in important aspects from an earlier patron–​client system to a cooperative form of governmental network. There are several important and interrelated factors in Khon Kaen that supported this development. One is the presence of very strong civil society social movements that have struggled for democratization of the local region and the country as a whole. In fact, these groups in Khon Kaen are widely perceived to be among the strongest political activist organizations in the country struggling against the military regime. They have used a call for citizen participation as a oppositional political strategy against the central authorities. In terms of the more specific programs by the municipal government, much of what has happened is owed to the vision of a progressive mayor supported by this activist political culture. In his view, representative democracy was insufficient. Rather than just having representatives make decisions for them, he argued that people should have a right to deal with their needs through their own decision-​making processes. In this way, he and his staff not only implemented the decentralization mandate in the Constitution, but further decentralized it politically. Toward this end, he spoke of his own mayoral role as facilitator rather than leader. In the course of these decentralizing developments a form of deliberative policy analysis emerged to assist local residents and administrators in formulating and guiding their decisions. The foundation for these deliberative activities was the establishment in 2001 of a peoples’ council along the lines of a town meeting. Roughly 160 organizations, associations, and groups participated in the deliberative fora, in a structure that complemented the formal municipal council meetings held by elected local politicians. The mayor described the peoples’ council as a communicative forum introduced to enhance the transparency of the city municipality on the one hand and to empower the people on the other. He also believed that to think and act together the municipality needed to allow city dwellers to engage argumentatively with one another. Furthermore, he spoke of freedom of expression, equality and a plurality of voices as the basis for building a “beautiful city,” and also addressed the importance of reciprocity (“Ear Artorn”) and the sense of being members of the same family (Khon-​Kaenians). In the process, the town hall meeting became part of the urban governance culture. Although the city’s mayor has changed, the town meeting format has continued, even during the intervention of an authoritarian form of military rule at the national level to which the municipalities are accountable.

Deliberative Policy Analysis    591 To facilitate this process the municipality developed a Division of Participation Promotion. This division, in cooperation with a group led by academics from the local universities, who called themselves the Khon Kaen Think Tank (KKTT), emerged to play an important role in facilitating the discussions in various ways with a form of deliberative policy inquiry. In the main, these think tank members, many of whom had studied abroad, employed ideas that they had learned in their studies of urban planning, public administration, and policy analysis. The work involved various steps in preparation for the town hall meeting. After examining the relevant scholarly knowledge from the available literature on the policy problem at hand, the KKTT members engaged in original research to better understand or clarify particular aspects, especially those pertaining specifically to Khon Kaen. To this end they sought to integrate different types of knowledge, including local forms indigenous to the community. With this information at hand they then examined the relation of the empirical dimension of the problem to the normative implications of competing decisions, mapping out the decision processes and the likely implications of each decision—​all with the aim of facilitating the community discussions. With these in mind, they created deliberative standards designed to guide the participatory deliberations. These standards came from various approaches but were heavily influenced by work from Germany on creative thinking in deliberative processes—​ ideas introduced by one member who had earned his doctorate in Berlin. The focus was on ensuring that each participant would have an equal right to express their ideas and needs, learn from each other about possible solutions, and have the opportunity both to influence the decision process and to frame further discussions and actions with fellow community members. The KKTT also paid careful attention to value conflicts surrounding the various policy issues that could disrupt and bring the deliberative process to an abrupt end. These included problems related to authoritarian practices not uncommon in Thai political culture, especially given the military regime in charge of the country as a whole. The deliberative process typically began with the City Planning Division and the think tank members, who selected the deliberative participants, dividing them into groups that would look at different aspects—​technical, social, and cultural—​of the issue under discussion. Each group was assigned the task of developing a list of considerations that were involved and was asked to sort out the various factors that would have to be dealt with. This involved a process of mapping out the details and implications of the issues. The maps then provided the basis for planning scenarios that pointed to various ways in which the decision process and subsequent implementation could work. Rather than being a casual activity, the scenario construction process was built on standard practices employed in urban planning. After the groups had completed their scenarios they were all brought together and asked to critique the scenario plans of the other groups. The deliberative facilitators did not explicitly engage the participants in this process, but were on hand to provide further information and answer questions, in addition to ensuring that the participants

592    Frank Fischer and Piyapong Boossabong respected and followed the deliberative standards agreed at the outset. The processes typically went through various iterations designed to improve the scenarios, and especially to increase the likelihood of their being accepted. At the end of this process, the participants reassembled in larger groups, now including interested members of the public, to present their proposals for further deliberation at an “open for all” town hall meeting. In this more public setting, the city mayor and his staff were also present. Where there was clear agreement at the end of these exchanges, the municipality, with the consent of the mayor, adopted the plan and turned it over to the appropriate ministry for implementation. Deliberations also led to initiatives and commitments by local investors to co-​fund city development projects such as transportation development. The discussions emphasized the fiscal and legal constraints imposed by the central government on local projects. Because the central government would not provide funding for projects such as the further development of the transportation system, well over a dozen local investors stepped in to offer 5 million Thai baht as start-​up money for the various projects. Motivated by the new municipal spirit created by the public deliberatory engagements, they did this for “the good of the hometown.” Widely applauded by local citizens, the mayor and his staff responded by establishing a municipally owned enterprise that facilitated such co-​investments, including the sharing of resources with neighboring municipalities. More generally, the participatory planning process succeeded in establishing a common policy framework for determining and prioritizing the future of city development. This resulted in participatory projects related to collaborative services in areas such as garbage collection, community park maintenance, and a disaster and emergency warning system. The collaborative planning framework also contributed to the development of public–​private partnerships that created pedestrian streets where shops could sell local hand-​made products and food from the region. Further, it led to a decision to build a city museum (Division of Policy Analysis and Planning 2014). Perhaps the most important outcome was the realization that through the deliberative planning process the local community could take its future into its own hands. It created, as such, a mutual understanding that citizens did not need not to wait for others to do things for them. In particular, they could start to plan and operate independently of central bureaucracies.

Conclusion We began with an outline of the theoretical perspectives underlying deliberative policy analysis, whose development was seen to have been inspired in significant ways by the argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning (Fischer and Forester 1993; and more specifically advanced by Hajer and Wagenaar (2003a)). After presenting the logic of and case for deliberative policy analysis, the process and practice were illustrated by

Deliberative Policy Analysis    593 the use of deliberative policy analysis in the municipality of Khon Kaen. Here we saw how the approach has moved from a theory to a practical method for policy decision-​ making. From the analysis we conclude with several observations. First, in theoretical terms deliberative policy analysis should be an essential tool for deliberative democracy. Not only can it play an important role in helping citizens understand the issues for deliberation, but it can also be understood as part of the larger deliberative system, a new research direction in deliberative theory (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012). From a practical perspective we can identify various experiences and practices that help to facilitate the deliberative process. Especially important is that the people who serve as facilitators should be politically as well as professionally committed to developing authentic practices of deliberative democracy. That is, there is much more involved than the conventional facilitator’s practical philosophy of “just getting to yes.” This point becomes particularly clear in the case of deliberative policy analysis in the developing world, as in Khon Kaen. Such projects typically emerge from social movements in the context of struggles to democratize not only a local community but the country as a whole—​that is, in parts of the world where social justice and democratic politics tend to be in short supply. In this regard, typically these practices are about social justice as much as citizenship and participation, particularly in the global South. For this reason the facilitators should themselves be committed activists seeking to further these goals. The final observation, in this respect, is about the relation of theory to practice. An examination of the literature reveals a gap between theoretical accounts and actual practices. Theorists of deliberative policy analysis seldom discuss the “nuts and bolts” of the practice, while practitioners are unlikely to record their concrete experiences with the methodology. Although this chapter tries to start bridging the gap, there is clearly a need for more cooperative interaction between the two groups—​a task that could well provide a basis for a research program.

References Churchman, C. W. (1971). The Design of Inquiring Systems (New York: Basic Books). Division of Policy Analysis and Planning (2014). City Municipality Performance Assessment Report. Khon-​Kaen: Khon-​Kaen City Municipality (in Thai). Fischer, F. (2000). Citizens, Experts, and the Environment:  The Politics of Local Knowledge (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Fischer, F. (2003). Reframing Public Policy:  Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fischer, F. (2007). Deliberative Policy Analysis as Practical Reason: Integrating Empirical and Normative Arguments. In Handbook of Public Policy Analysis: Theory, Politics and Methods, ed. F. Fischer, G. Miller, and M. Sidney (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press), 223–​36. Fischer, F. (1995). Evaluating Public Policy (Chicago, IL: Nelson-​Hall). Fischer, F. (2009). Democracy and Expertise:  Reorienting Policy Inquiry (Oxford:  Oxford University Press).

594    Frank Fischer and Piyapong Boossabong Fischer, F. (2015). In Pursuit of Usable Knowledge:  Critical Policy Analysis and the Argumentative Turn. In Handbook of Critical Policy Studies, ed. F. Fischer, D. Torgerson, A. Durnova, and M. Orsinin (Cheltenham: Edgar Elgar), 47–​66. Fischer, F. and Forester, J. (eds) (1993). The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Fischer, F. and Gottweis, H. (eds) (2012). The Argumentative Turn Revisited: Public Policy as Communicative Practice (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). Hajer, M. (2003). A Frame in the Fields:  Policymaking and the Reinvention of Politics. In Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society, ed. M. Hajer and H. Wagenaar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 88–​110. Hajer, M. and Wagenaar, H. (eds) (2003a). Deliberative Policy Analysis:  Understanding Governance in the Network Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hajer, M. and Wagenaar, H. (2003b). Introduction. In Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society, ed. M. Hajer and H. Wagenaar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–​30. Innes, J. E. and Booher, D. E. (2003). Collaborative Policymaking:  Governance through Dialogue. In Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society, ed. M. Hajer and H. Wagenaar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 33–​59. Landemore, H. (2014). Review of “The Argumentative Turn Revisited:  Public Policy as Communicative Practices.” Perspectives on Politics, 12: 49–​51. National Research Council (1996). Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (Washington, DC: National Academy Press). Ney, S. (2009). Resolving Messy Problems:  Handling Conflict in Environmental, Transport, Health and Ageing Policy (London: Earthscan). Parkinson, J. and Mansbridge, J. (eds) (2012). Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Torgerson, D. (2015). Harold D.  Lasswell and Critical Policy Studies:  The Threats and Temptations of Power. In Handbook of Critical Policy Studies, ed. F. Fischer, D. Torgerson, A. Durnová, and M. Orsini (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar), 27–​46. Yanow, D. (2003). Accessing Local Knowledge. In Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society, ed. M. Hajer and H. Wagenaar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 228–​46.

Chapter 37

De l iberative Pl a nni ng Pr actices—W i t h ou t Smothering I nv e nt i on A Practical Aesthetic View John Forester

In research articulating “a critical pragmatism,” I have argued that democratic deliberations must interweave three practical concerns in planning contexts: how to involve appropriate expertise, how to represent values, interests, or concerns that matter, and, not least of all, how to shape commitments to action (Forester 2009; 2016b). Without incorporating diverse expertise, deliberative results risk being stupid. Without being responsive to what matters, deliberative results are irrelevant or solve the wrong problems. And without commitments to action, deliberative results risk being just talk. This chapter refines this three-​part scheme to examine how, in practice, proponents and scholars of democratic deliberation might fruitfully explore issues of invention and imagination, option generation and creativity, play and visualization—​by considering a “practical aesthetics” of deliberative practices. Building upon a practice-​focused oral history method (Forester 1999; 2009; 2013; Laws and Forester 2015; De Leo and Forester 2017; 2018), we explore democratic deliberation less as abstract possibility than as political performance (cf. Gastil 2014; Nabatchi et  al. 2012; Dryzek 2010; Fishkin 2009; Burkhalter, Gastil, and Kelshaw 2002; Rosenberg 2007). Drawing from three deliberative urban planning cases—​near Toronto, in The Hague, and in Milan—​a broadly ethnographic and interpretive, discourse-​analytic view mines John Austin’s insight that “fact is richer than diction,” as more conceptual-​analytic views do not (Austin 1961; Forester 2012). In each case, we will explore how deliberative practitioners portrayed and enacted an aesthetic yet practical view of democratically deliberative work. We examine how these practitioners ushered in the dawning of political and practical deliberative worlds. We see how they aesthetically rendered and encouraged relationships of curiosity and play, interactions of inquiry before argument—​all

596   John Forester shaping participants’ imaginations of shared urban futures: a prospective incinerator here, better housing there, or acclaimed urban design (Shearing and Ericson 1991; cf. Laws and Rein 2003; Strati 2014).

What’s in a Word: Metaphor, Aesthetics, and Shaping Expectations The prospect of an incinerator’s being built nearby your neighborhood might well attract your and your neighbors’ attention. Even when a locality needs the jobs that an incinerator’s sponsors promise, not everyone might cheer, trusting or deferring to officials’ best intentions. Architect and planner Laurence Sherman found himself asked for help by a municipal mayor in just such a situation. Local politicians wished to provide not a public forum as an unruly opinion-​fest, but a form of transparent public deliberation and open argumentation so citizens could democratically debate the incinerator issues. They had even thought to provide police protection at this deliberation, the mayor explained, and with the meeting announced and scheduled, the mayor invited Sherman to help manage the debate. Sherman’s account of how this deliberative event unfolded moves instructively from deliberative intentions through practical adjustments to actual execution (Forester 2011; 2013 ­chapter 1): I recall a public confrontation that was brewing, where I was called one Thursday by the mayor of a rural township near Toronto, asking me to moderate a public meeting that had been widely publicized as a “debate”, scheduled for the next Tuesday evening. This public meeting was to be held in the local ice arena that seats 700 people, to “debate” a proposal to build a huge incineration plant that would burn Toronto’s garbage and bring much needed revenue to this municipality. The mayor said most people, the residents, would be coming to oppose the idea, others from the struggling business community would likely support it, and that Council anticipated violence and had called upon the provincial police to keep order. The “debate” would be between the engineering proponents and the opposing environmental experts. I agreed on certain conditions: stop calling the meeting a “debate”—​this should not be an exchange between “talking heads” but rather a public discussion; all of the elected Council members must attend, sitting to one side, listening and taking notes, but not to speak; the local media must be invited and have the opportunity to question the panel, as would everyone else attending who wanted to comment. The mayor agreed. The place was packed. I opened by outlining how the meeting would go, and saying that there was one thing that we all in this room had in common: we all needed more information and we all needed to hear more opinions about the proposition and the

Deliberative Planning Practices    597 process that must occur for a decision to be made, and that was why we were here tonight, for an exchange, not a lecture or a debate. I could instantly feel the room of 700 people settle down. I had touched upon everyone’s assumptions and anxieties, and they saw their roles and now they understood what was going to take place. The discussion went off very peacefully, everyone who had something to ask or say was recognized, pro and con; much information and opinion was exchanged, and when people left, they all knew they had had the opportunity of being heard, and they left with a better idea of what next steps were to be taken and how they might participate. The proposition was ultimately rejected by a special referendum that Council decided to hold, once they had listened very carefully that night.

We have here two “working” or practical theories of public deliberation. The first theory is embraced by the City Council and Mayor. The second is Sherman’s. Both accounts hold that participants in a public deliberation will concern themselves deeply with questions of identity, possibility, and pragmatic decisions. Both theories lead us to expect deliberating parties to ask, transparently, if not sequentially, about possibilities: “What are our options? What can we do?” They will also explore goals and vulnerabilities: “How shall we prioritize or consider our needs (hopes, desires, concerns . . .) for jobs, for clean air, for our health?” They will also press to ask and answer pragmatic questions about decision-​making and public welfare: “What should we do now?” But their theories of deliberative practice also differed crucially. The City Council and Mayor imagined the prospective public deliberation as a “debate.” That metaphor of contestation or explicit public argumentation was so threatening even in their imaginations that they had thought it wise to invite the police to assure order. Even with police present, they sensed, they expected they would still need help to “moderate” that debate, so they turned to Sherman, an architect-​planner known for designing and managing constructive processes of public deliberation and participation (Forester 2013, ­chapter 1). The city council’s working theory of deliberation, then, elaborated the metaphor of “debate.” What do we do in a debate? We face opponents. We argue with them. We try to find the flaws in their arguments, to show why we are “right” and they are “wrong.” And “they” do the same “to us.” But we also know, as do they, that when we hear attacks upon our arguments, we can easily hear thinly veiled attacks on our selves: our competence, our adequacy of preparation, our diligence, our judgment, perhaps our character. We’re likely to anticipate that taking part in a public debate—​not over drinks with friends—​ could be much more emotionally fraught, taxing, or even dangerous than any ordinary conversation. Stress levels, and cortisol levels, will shoot up—​the closer we come to the event itself! The City Council politicians appear to illustrate a Wittgensteinian problem: the picture of “debate” seems to hold them captive. The questions matter; the public is divided; what else can we do but acknowledge, and not hide, differences of views and then have a moderated argument about what to do? This view is curiously academic: it privileges ideas and the conflict of ideas, as if the people holding those ideas are mere

598   John Forester transportation, mere placeholders, as if we could cleanly and antiseptically separate the ideas in conflict from the impassioned arguments of flesh and blood people “committed to” or “intimately identified with” or even “scared to death about” those ideas. The closer the politicians come to holding this debate—​with hundreds of residents arguing over an incinerator (as badly needed, dangerous, both?)—​the more they sense what they have begun. This will be no intellectual seminar discussion about the public good, but an argument of passionate pleas and claims about diverse public goods: not about “the facts” alone but about governance, reputation, and risk—who can and can’t be trusted, who’s been responsible and who’s been blind to the public good, who’s been in lobbyists’ pockets, and so on. This promises, of course, dangers of ad hominem attacks and fear-​mongering, insinuations of bad faith, prospects of escalation and mutual threat instead of mutual learning—​and so the politicians have invited the police “to keep order,” to avoid harm if not to achieve good. The politicians were committed to a public deliberation, at least to some transparency, but evidently stuck in the metaphor of debate, and hardly knowing what else to do, they turned to get help. Sherman’s theory of deliberation—​his set of expectations, his informed anticipation—​ sees deliberation less as general, abstract roles, rules, and responsibilities and more as specific, culturally sensible roles, rules, and responsibilities that community members can actually perform, can practice together. He sees deliberative questions as practical inquiries, and, relative to the politicians, he is less romantically taken, curiously enough, with the appeal of more disembodied, “talking head,” academic debates, somehow devoid of the debaters themselves. Sherman also sees that before we can argue about what we should do, where we can or should go, we need to ask where our feet are planted now. Sherman’s working theory of deliberation suggests, roughly:  Public controversies will surface complexity and diverse views, inherited distrust and cynicism, inequalities of information and expertise, poor and partial understandings of one another among principal participants. Deliberative participants will come with histories of hopes and fears, passions and biases and more (cf. Rosenberg 2007). So Sherman sees that deliberators can work to learn first, and only then debate or negotiate decisions. Here he echoes practical advice of many planning and public policy analysts, “Learn before problem-​ solving!” or “Dialogue before debate,” or “Don’t ask, ‘What’s the problem?’ Ask, What’s the story?’ ” (Innes and Booher 2010; Schön 1983; Forester 2009; Neustadt and May 1986; PCP 2003; Kanra 2012, cf. Forester 2013: ­chapter 3; cf. Manin 2005). But more: how our metaphors “frame” or portray prospective public deliberations matters enormously, Sherman’s suggesting, not just conceptually or psychologically. We use metaphors, more profoundly, if subtly, to shape worlds:  inviting you to a “study group,” or to a “debate,” we shape your expectations of “what you’re getting into,” politically, ethically, interactively. This world-​shaping is both practical, interactively, and thoroughly aesthetic, as we imagine, portray, and give style to our actions. So Sherman recommended to the municipal officials:  “Stop calling the meeting a ‘debate’—​this should not be an exchange between ‘talking heads’ but rather a public

Deliberative Planning Practices    599 discussion,” where politicians’ grandstanding, he stressed, would not pre-​empt any interested person’s questions. Imagining the prospective public deliberation as a “debate” gave substance to the municipal leaders’ invitation: it answered participants’ practical questions, “If I attend, what might I do there? How am I supposed to act in a debate?” Here we see the practical aesthetics: the metaphor suggests a way of acting with others (Strati 1992; Kersten 2008). This moves us well beyond “framing” in policy studies (Schön and Rein 1994; cf. Laws and Rein 2003). Anticipating this practical effect of their metaphor, a fraught and adversarial meeting, the city officials decided to call in public security to manage potential threats of violence! Could their aesthetic rendering have been more practical? Sherman’s agreement to help “on certain conditions” signaled that he had to negotiate his role; he had to resist the politicians’ first request. Convening a public deliberation, then, seems inescapably intertwined with issues of power and authority. Sherman insisted on portraying a different practical picture of the prospective meeting: no longer a “debate” but a “public discussion” where, uncharacteristically, the politicians would not speak but would listen, not argue but listen and learn. But then how did Sherman present that fresh portrayal to the audience in the packed arena? He recognized widespread concerns by pointing to vital questions that everybody there faced together: just what was the proposal, and what would be the decision-​making process? Ignorance, uncertainty and ambiguity became shared enemies (cf. Forester 2009; 2013: ­chapter 3). Sherman was direct: he was there so that everyone would have better information to inform decision-​making. To, “why we were here tonight,” his portrayal was an explicit offer, not a demand: “for an exchange, not a lecture or a debate”—​for the reciprocity of “exchange,” neither for the hierarchical world of “the experts will lecture to the ignorant . . .” nor for the world of “proponents versus opponents” in debate! So here we return to a practical aesthetics: as Sherman not only portrayed but also then enacted this public deliberation in this particular style. Sherman’s approach seems simple enough, but consider how easily this packed meeting could have been just one more disastrous “public hearing.” We learn from what Sherman did not do: he did not simply ask people to state their concerns, he did not ask the politicians to take positions first and listen second, he did not try to organize these experts against those, he did not disentangle this meeting from the decision-​making process that would follow. All those apparently plausible moves might have thwarted, not encouraged, democratic deliberation. Sherman worked, instead, to acknowledge participants’ concerns, to focus on their shared, felt needs to learn, and he encouraged dialogic discussions rather than adversarial ones to encourage joint fact-​finding (cf. Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-​Larmer 1999, and this volume). We move now to the practical aesthetics of portraying—​inside the black box of “deliberation”—​just what deliberators might actually do, if they are more than argument machines!

600   John Forester

Multi-​Modal Deliberative Learning, or the Practical Aesthetics of Inquiry We turn now to deliberative work of a “street level democrat,” Willem Giezeman, in The Hague (Laws and Forester 2015). Giezeman’s account defies easy categorization. He is too concerned with neighborhood scale to call him a “social worker.” He is too concerned with citizenship, identity, and the good life to call him a “single-​issue-​focused” or oppositional community organizer. He is too concerned with practical results to see him as focused only on public dialogues. Nevertheless, his work has surprising and striking implications for students of political deliberation. Giezeman’s extended practice story ranges from work to improve housing conditions to efforts to teach immigrant Islamic girls to ride bicycles, with many reflective and deliberative conversations in between (Laws and Forester 2015). He was raised in “an orthodox Roman Catholic family,” the youngest of nine sons and three daughters, accustomed to working in the family laundry business with “poor and low status” people in The Hague. After getting a social work degree in the early days of “community organizing” in Holland, Giezeman worked in a poor neighborhood on diverse issues, including, memorably, local housing concerns, where we can pick up his story: One of the ladies from neighborhood came to me and said, “Well, there was somebody who just had to pay the landlord to rent a very, very bad house, and we want to stop this, really! So what shall we do?” So I said what I had learned at school: “Let’s have a meeting!” . . . Five or six women went all over the neighborhood and put the leaflets everywhere, and that same night we had a meeting  . . .  in a little sports facility in the neighborhood, . . . and . . . nobody else could get in, it was so packed! It was really packed! . . . I was scared to death, and I just sat there stiffly like a rock and I managed the meeting. So the woman who had come to me told everyone about the whole problem, and the people who had to pay such rent spoke about the problem. Some people in the neighborhood also said that they disliked all this, what the landlord was doing. And then [all at once], after about half an hour, someone called out to everyone: “Let’s squat!” So we ran out of that neighborhood center, and we went to that house, forced open the front door and started to squat there . . . (laughing). We went in—​but people had never squatted in this neighborhood . . . We had made a big banner over the street. . . . The police didn’t know what to do as well—​they were there but they didn’t really do anything. After a while we went out and we left the people who wanted to rent it there.”

After recounting scoldings the next day from the police who were more concerned with threats of revolution than with housing violations, Giezeman continued,

Deliberative Planning Practices    601 Everyone in the neighborhood was so tremendously proud of what we had done—​ because we had done something in a situation where nobody ever did anything—​ even people in the neighborhood and in the cultural center where I  worked. . . . I think that, for some people it was really a turning point, in the first place for me, anyway, but for the women who were working there, who I was working with, it was also very important. …​ What happened? The first thing I remember was the panic: panic about the things that were going to change. It was a fear about losing safety, losing social and cultural surroundings—​that it would never be the same. It meant, for me, that I started to organize meetings, with representatives of the whole street, the whole neighborhood. We asked everybody to come and I worked very hard to persuade everyone to come over.

These neighborhood meetings, we see in this context, were certainly intended to be as generally deliberative as they were potentially, at least, instrumental. “With representatives . . . of the whole neighborhood” they were not “old boys” meetings of the elite and powerful, they were not single-​issue oriented, but they were an attempt to continue a kind of community self-​reflection, a deliberation, about shared living conditions and prospects for improvement. But these meetings turned out to be quite instructive, not simply multi-​purpose but perhaps multi-​modal, engaging not faculties of reason alone but capacities of humor and irony, sharing of food, music and even dance. Giezeman tells us, So we had the meetings every three weeks and it was always around an hour talking about all kinds of things around urban renewal and all the kinds of things that were happening around the street, about education and about health. But that was always just half the meeting—​and then we put on the gramophone and we danced for an hour, and there was a party! And for about two or three years we did that every three weeks! First, we’d start with a little meeting, and then we’d have a party and have drinks, play cards or whatever. The mad thing was that the managing director of the housing association always tried to be there because it was so cozy—​gezellig! The architect of the new houses, when they made the new houses, was very often there, and even when I’m speaking to him now—​he’s a very old man—​he says, “What a wonderful time!”

“Urban renewal,” “education and health,” “the gramophone,” and “a party”? Had I heard this correctly? The digital recorder would have it right; but were Giezeman, the residents, and the housing association staff crazy—​or were my own presumptions of “organizing,” or “public deliberation,” so conventional, staid and narrow that I could not see the sense and significance of what he was telling me? What could make sense of several years of organizing such (unconventional? extraordinary? pre-​figurative?) deliberations?

602   John Forester I wanted to explore this, so I asked, “How does the phonograph and the music fit into the broader picture of community organizing?” and Giezeman continued with instructive detail and a compelling example: It’s absolutely essential. It’s not about conflict. I’d learned that it’s about good friends and relationships in business. So I  did the same thing in organizing as I  did at home: it’s about good friends and relationships, so the best way to build relations is maybe to have a party—​and, well, these parties were famous at that time . . . The local officers and the people from the housing association and politicians—​ they always tried to join those parties, because it was for them a beautiful time. Well, once the architect, who designed the new houses for those people, brought his wife to one of these parties (laughs). All the women at the time wore skirts and not pants, but the wife of the architect had leather pants! And even today, if I talk about it now with one of the neighborhood women, she will say, “Yeah, yeah! That crazy woman with the leather pants!” . . . They still talk about her. But well, she was there! What was happening, in that way, was that they were part of the, well, larger society. One time, one of the aldermen came, and so, in an environment where there was some dancing, they all thought that they were part of the whole city—​part of it, not so bad that the big guys don’t come.

Dawning Aspects of Deliberation, Picturing New Forms of Deliberative Life This passage challenges stereotypes of public deliberation as well as those of community organizing. Giezeman responds first with an eye to “the broader picture of community organizing,” and his first move is striking, surprising, and deep: “It’s not about conflict”! Clearly, here, because he knew full well about the earlier inclinations of residents to squat, he’s not dismissing conflict. So Giezeman asks a prior question: what relationships might be required if community members hope to organize themselves at all—​to build community, to maintain an organization, to recruit members, to be able to talk to one another and reconcile differences, to discuss strategies so they could act together, perhaps in “conflict” with others? Giezeman suggests, well before “conflict” in his organizing process—​one concerned about neighborhood and city welfare (education, health, and urban renewal)—​came developing trusted relationships, cooperative and not just instrumental relations, he implies, but those of “community,” of “good friends and relationships,” with, he implies, bits of solidarity, fellow-​feeling, looking forward to one another’s company as neighborhood residents. Here he’s learned from his father’s business and his own relationships with employees of quite different backgrounds. His fuller account mentions the ritual participation that helps build community, at births or deaths for example, involving ways of showing up, taking part, showing regard, respect, and attention. Learning to work together “in business” taught Giezeman about working together for the good of the community, too, and

Deliberative Planning Practices    603 so “building relations” was, even in the community organizing context, an “essential” prerequisite to engaging in “conflict” (Escobar 2009). Giezeman, then, enriches our stock of relationship-​ building rituals:  to those marking births and deaths in families, he adds, “so the best way to build relations is maybe to have a party,” and here he challenges two conventional pictures of community deliberations. First, there’s the academician’s image: public deliberation is a seminar discussion focusing upon participants’ insights. Second, there’s the community organizer’s typical single-​issue-​oriented “meeting” focusing upon members’ willingness to act. Both pictures, Giezeman implies, ignore the relationships making their meetings possible at all. Similarly, neighborhood planner Jim Diers argued that community organizers could learn from duck hunters’ knowledge that different ducks respond to different “calls.” If organizers used only the “single issue organizing call”—​call it “the loon call”—​as they recruited in diverse communities, they should hardly wonder that only the loons showed up—​and not also those interested in volunteer service, or community building, or self-​help (Forester 2012, cf. Escobar 2015)! So, too, Giezeman learned that community deliberations called not just for an enemy to oppose but for building the “good friends and relationships” that had mattered in the family business. Giezeman refers not to “friends” as merely drinking buddies here, but as co-​workers watching each other’s backs, co-​workers depending upon each other to sustain an enterprise, co-​workers caring about each other’s welfare because they work together. Building those relationships, those friendships, calls less for abstract intellectual agreements than for particular gestures of appreciation and reciprocity, paying attention together to the conditions of work and neighborhood that matter to them both (Diers 2004). So Giezeman suggests no choice between discussing substantive issues and “having a party.” He describes instead a multi-​modal deliberative strategy of bringing together people who care about their community’s issues—​urban renewal, health, and education—​and care too how they treat one another, how they live together now. That seems ordinary enough, and yet, for scholars of democratic deliberation, quite extra-​ ordinary too: having a party as integral to democratically deliberative efforts—​does that make political sense? Perhaps we too easily presume that moral integrity in democratic deliberations somehow requires participants to have dull senses of irony and humor, few capacities to improvise or to be playful (Barrett 2012; Forester 2009, c­ hapter  8; Gadamer 1975; Sicart 2014)? But if deliberating parties will be consequence-​calculators more than consequence-​imaginers, that will hardly help them to learn about options of value that they might yet invent together. So Giezeman suggests that public deliberation requires both generative and analytic aspects. A broad literature on public dispute resolution and negotiation calls this, commonsensically, “inventing before deciding” (Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-​ Larmer 1999; Wheeler 2013). If we make deliberative decisions too quickly, what Peter Adler terms “drive-​by solution seeking” (Forester 2009; 2013), we oversimplify our choices, restrict our options, search less creatively for plausible outcomes and, as

604   John Forester Susskind argues, then reach less efficient options too (Susskind and Cruickshank 1987; Simon 1969; Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-​Larmer 1999; Forester 2009). If we turn too quickly to the quest for solution, if not the quest for certainty, we can displace interpretation with facile analysis, attending less to what matters than to what we can easily measure. Pre-​commitment to method can be helpful, or distracting. Expertise is crucial when applied to the right problem. But as experienced planners and deliberative practitioners warn, experts who are involved too early can gravitate toward the problems that they rather than others can solve, which may not be the problems of public concern at hand (Forester 2011). Folk wisdom warns, “Those with hammers will look for nails!” But is any profession immune to risks of trained incapacity? Where social science seems relevant, narrowly if rigorously trained experts may look not for nails but for data-​sets, whether or not the problems they can then address are those that matter to their sponsors (Szanton 1981). These are old, abiding, and still significant problems (Rittel and Webber 1973). But surely public deliberators addressing life and death issues of health policy, for example, or community members struggling to rid housing of rats and shoddy construction, should carefully debate the best strategies, make what decisions they can justify, and enjoy themselves in their own free time. “Nonsense!” Giezeman might argue—​ instrumental, rationalistic, academically self-​serving nonsense—​for we can only have a debate, or make a justified decision among alternatives, after we do the creative, generative work of formulating a menu of options, as we craft value-​creating, significant alternatives in the first place! (cf. Escobar 2009). So Giezeman’s appeals to “have a party,” and Gadamer’s concerns with play, are serious, neither rule-​free as if “anything goes!” nor rule-​governed and narrowly prescriptive. In public deliberative settings, Susskind and Rumore help us to understand what kinds of invention and play can be appropriate (Susskind and Rumore 2015). They recommend “devising seminar norms”: ground rules, for example, that encourage deliberative participants to invent and offer suggestions and options that work to serve not only their own interests but the explicitly and previously recognized interests of others—​ those who are present and with whom they are interdependent. These “devising” norms short-​circuit or pre-​empt parties’ adversarial and escalating moves of self-​defense and self-​justification. These norms presume that parties will not be self-​denying, but that they will attempt to make suggestions that other parties can agree to entertain and even refine. So, significantly, the “devising” ground rules do not ask parties to betray or compromise their principles; they presume instead that parties will protect themselves and yet act creatively, seeing that they must act interdependently with others, to invent options that promise to meet not only their own but others’ significant interests too.

Problem Formulation Before Problem Solution Deliberators’—​or organizers’—​arguments and options don’t take shape by themselves. They arise out of a background of concerns and hopes, senses of value and promise, threats and fears—​out of ambiguity and moral complexity—​that deliberating representatives or participants must consider, explore, interpret, and shape. In deliberative

Deliberative Planning Practices    605 settings what’s at hand is never fully given and must always be assessed historically and culturally (Laws and Forester 2015; Wagenaar 2011). Who “we” are and what we care about, find significant, hold dear, and what “we can do together” are abiding deliberative questions that no simple process of prior agenda-​setting or choice-​menu creation can resolve in an unquestionably pristine, pre-​deliberative and pre-​political moment. Options to be debated or deliberated upon do not appear via some mysteriously political immaculate conception: who shall craft them? In the conventional terms of problem-​solving, public policy analysis or the rhetoric of governance, we must formulate problems before we can solve them (Rittel and Webber 1973). Before debates can proceed sensibly, prior conversation or dialogue must allow participants to frame and interpret what they might ever debate at all (March 1978; PCP 2003). Perhaps there’s an academic perversity here. Perhaps too many disciplinary seminars have led scholars of deliberation to believe that as strangers we might be better able to listen to one another, to understand others’ significant concerns, the less well we know each other. Perhaps a presumptive rationalism suggests to us that when relative strangers must tackle difficult problems together, they will waste valuable time if they break bread together first. But we hardly need to be economistic bargainers to see that when deliberators begin with suspicions of one another’s identities, histories, motives, or commitments, they will act more defensively, less creatively, and less productively than if they knew and understood more about each other, enabling them to find ways to share information, create value, and fantasize less. Deliberators do not and cannot come together as blank slates, without histories—​they come with suspicions and fears, differing senses of futurity and discount rates, differing senses of rights and harms, of duties and obligations, of being doers and done-​to as well (Wheeler 2013; Rosenberg 2007). A simple but striking experimental research result makes this argument still more compelling. Michael Wheeler (2013, 32–​3) suggests that negotiators primed to take the practical context as unforgiving or potentially punishing did far less well with each other than those primed to take the very same ambiguous context as potentially open to creative strategies (Forester 2016a). That research corroborates Giezeman’s insight about “friends and relationships” as even more “essential” to community organization and public deliberation than “conflict.” Shaped by the squatting action early on, Giezeman was no stranger to conflict, nor was he conflict-​averse. Yet he wanted more than instrumental success in conflicts with landlords or city authorities. He suggested deliberation had to precede mobilization, and building upon “friends and relationships” allowed democratic deliberators to have creative, constructive conversations. Giezeman’s message about “friendship” was an ethical injunction but more too. For he saw what we might call the “deliberative infrastructure” required, both to convene residents, politicians, and housing association staff, and to encourage them to learn from one another through shared rituals—​meals, site visits, even dance. He took this to enable their value creation, rather than reinforcing the defensiveness of their inherited suspicions.

606   John Forester Giezeman’s appeal to “relationships and friendship” before conflict, then, suggests that public deliberators cannot be argument machines: they will not be better listeners if they hardly know each other, if they have hardly shared meals or listened to one another’s stories (Forester 1999; Rosenberg 2007). He asks us to doubt that public deliberators would do better if they hardly met together at all—​but perhaps sat in separated cubicles so they could not distract each other with the cut of their clothes, a look of the eye, a Geertzian glance (or was that a wink, a signal, a question, a flirtation?). If we reduced public deliberation to decision-​taking, we would pretend that participants could leave aside their senses of dialogue and interpretation, play and invention—​ as if their keen senses of perspective taking and irony, humor and humility were irrelevant (Barrett 2012; Forester 2009, ­chapter 8; Gadamer 1975). We would impoverish our deliberative conversations, appreciate fewer values at stake in ambiguous issues, recognize less as significant to stakeholders, deprive worthy proposals of potential support, and render less efficacious, creative, responsive, and arguably just any possible decisions.

Identity Shaping Giezeman’s community meetings were apparently not pitting residents against the housing association staff or the politicians. Instead, these meetings brought them all together, not abstractly by appealing to “community building” or to some unitary public interest, but performatively—​ practically, interactively—​ over cards, drinks, music, camaraderie, and dance. But Giezeman says much more here, and if it’s about leather pants, it’s hardly just about the leather or the pants! He’s told us that “these parties were famous at that time,” and he’s given us an example of what made those parties so well-​known, so “famous.” Here was a real, refreshing space of conversation and a practical, if virtual, space of play. His appreciative memory of the architect’s wife suggests that he and others regarded this “crazy” woman not as any mental case but as someone who dared not only to think abstractly about, but to try out—​to probe and to enact—​new possibilities of being in the community, being different from what had been taken for granted before. Here again, a practical aesthetics directly animated an exploratory political, democratic deliberation. Here the community members, including Giezeman, had fostered a space where they could not only discuss together new possibilities of health, housing, and education, but they could also enact, demonstrate, and perform new ways of being together, exploring new community possibilities too. They had created a deliberative container, an infrastructure in which, unlike the earlier days of the squatting action, they showed one another that quite intimate aspects of daily life, here clothing and gender and class norms, were open to change, open to creative action and performance today, tonight. So these multi-​modal deliberative meetings were also about exploring questions of identity: are we so stigmatized that political authorities and professionals will shun us, or will they join us, eating, drinking, discussing, and dancing with us? Are we really “so bad”? Aren’t we an integral part of the city after all? These questions, Giezeman suggests, were performed, addressed, partially put to rest through ritual processes

Deliberative Planning Practices    607 of sharing meals and music; identities were shaped and explored in those meals, through the dancing and the fluid dress codes, at least as much as through any political arguments. Giezeman’s unconventional story suggests evocatively how organizers’ aesthetic work can shape both perceptions of democratic deliberations and participants’ practices in them. He warns us that conflict or decision-​centric portrayals of deliberation may ignore relationship building rituals—​breaking bread, card-​playing, or dancing—​that can enrich the inventing that must precede any decision-​making. He also suggests that as conveners portray deliberative meetings—​as “debate” or “discussion” or “discussion and a party” and so on—​they encourage distinct political designs allocating time and virtual space to exploring “what if . . .?” questions before arguing to justify decisions. Giezeman also sees that as participants view one another, they enact and reshape deliberative designs or scripts: they convey respect or dismissive stereotypes, they meet across class divisions or fail to, they seek to create value or simply to allocate it (Escobar 2015; Forester 2009; Lynch 2012). Giezeman suggests that public deliberations can hardly be designed once and for all. Yet as conveners, facilitators, and participants negotiate aesthetic senses of what they are doing together—​debating or bargaining, inventing or deciding, and so on—​they will encourage correspondingly helpful or debilitating practices. These aesthetic senses or deliberative images matter enormously, as an Australian filmmaker, in another community planning context, once powerfully suggested: “I think it’s harder to hurt someone,” he said, “when you know their story” (Forester 2009). If we view public deliberation as multi-​modal, exploratory and action-​oriented, rather than as solely argumentative, we might design deliberative processes to embrace creative and inventive, generative and problem-​posing practices to complement and focus those of reason-​giving and decision-​making.

Deliberative Design Processes as Collective Intelligence Systems In Italy, Marianella Sclavi, an anthropologist, planning professor, and consultant on “creative conflict resolution,” worked for years with municipal and civil society leaders to organize legitimate, inclusive, and creative deliberative governance processes to improve cities and neighborhoods. Sclavi’s detailed “practice story,” excerpted here, explores a deliberative design process to re-​fashion a bridge structure spanning railroad tracks near Milan’s Garibaldi Station. With the city government’s mandate Sclavi involved diverse neighborhood residents, tested alternatives through design charrettes, and even hosted an international design competition to support public decision-​ making (De Leo and Forester 2017; 2018). She explained the generative character of this deliberative work:

608   John Forester Other people [joining the design process, in the beginning] were talking about bridges in the Netherlands which are all green, bridges for the crossing of wildlife  . . .  bridges all covered with grass so the cows and the sheep could pass through. . . So we had workshops, meetings, showing—​with power point slides or little YouTube clips—​different ideas, in a kind of brainstorming, “What ideas could we have, what could we do?”… So I do not ask what do we have in mind only, but instead, “Look around! All of us are researchers—​we can look around . . .” And very quickly we all get involved and enjoy it: that is what collective intelligence is about. So we are having fun by doing that—​each one who has an idea comes and brings the idea, possibly with photos and things. … Collective intelligence means that everybody looks around for new ideas, not [being] stuck on the starting positions, because it is a process of mutual learning, of collective exploration and discovery.

Here I asked, “But is this just chaos?” Sclavi replied, I like chaos, it’s useful, new ideas come from chaos, [and] unless you organize chaos you are not going to create new ideas!

Here Sclavi develops Giezeman’s insights (De Leo and Forester 2017; 2018). She begins not with choices that menu-​makers had already decided, but with expanding “What ideas could we have?”—​ideas answering practical questions of “What could we do?” She calls this search process, as “everybody looks around for new ideas,” “a kind of brainstorming,” but she sees this as no facile parlor trick. She has invited quasi-​representative stakeholders not simply to be decision-​makers or voters but to be “researchers” who might craft options for future decision-​ making (Susskind and Rumore 2015; cf. Rosenberg 2007, 357). So Sclavi has a practical-​aesthetic view here. She sees stakeholders as potentially creative agents, as researchers; she imagines the larger process of democratic deliberation as one of “collective intelligence,” not just public choice. The generative discussion of possibilities can be “fun,” she argues, because it can be playful, an open and surprising process of discovering what could be, what out-​of-​the-​box designs or images or unique suggestions the participants might invent. Decisions must come later, Sclavi knows, but she works, too, to “invent before deciding,” to protect “divergent” processes of crafting proposals from later “convergent” pressures of decision-​taking (Menkel-​Meadow 2001; Fisher and Ury 1991). Sclavi insists upon democratic common sense: should ten of us order together from this restaurant’s menu when we could well have much better options nearby? Like Giezeman and Sherman, she appreciates the emotions and sensitivities in play as stakeholders work to imagine new possibilities:  for incinerators, better housing or urban design. All this, she also knows, will shape subsequent “decision-​making,” as these deliberations stimulate “new ideas” and “collective intelligence,” learning to enrich public imagination.

Deliberative Planning Practices    609 So Sclavi envisions—​as she designs and organizes—​democratic deliberation as option-​generating, consequence-​learning, and only then decision-​making: as participatory action research producing collective learning for public choice. Sclavi’s workshops convened residents and professionals to search for new ideas, which led to convening an international design competition to present city officials with expertly crafted options. Considered judgment here trumped initial opinion; deliberative discussions improved upon initial mandates, as process design had encouraged (Elster 1998; Lester and Piore 2009).

Practical Aesthetics Revisited: Encouraging Inquiry and Imagination These three practitioners challenge theorists of democratic deliberation to be less thunderously silent about invention and imagination, option generation and creativity, play and visualization as they can contribute to democratic deliberative processes. Sherman’s, Giezeman’s, and Sclavi’s accounts suggest that our very invitations to participate in public deliberations can encourage defensive strategizing or imaginative value creation. Not only those invitations, but facilitators’ ongoing conduct, will have subtly world-​shaping, expectation-​setting effects. But we risk having debate displace dialogue, or decision-​ making correctly solve the wrong problems. If we ignore the practical aesthetics of rich, multi-​modal deliberative practices, generating options, learning, then deciding, we risk not encouraging but smothering invention. We risk making our potentially democratic deliberations, participatory planning and policy processes, less expertly informed, less wisely adaptive, and less creatively inventive than they might actually be (Forester 2016b).

Acknowledgments I am grateful to Willem Giezeman, Marianella Sclavi and Laurence Sherman for sharing accounts of their work. For helpful suggestions, I am indebted to Christopher Ansell, Andrè Bächtiger, John Dryzek, Oliver Escobar, Patsy Healey, Jean Hillier, Charles Hoch, Enza Lissandrello, Raine Mantysalo, Tina Nabatchi, Laura Saija, and Leonie Sandercock. I am responsible for any flaws that remain.

References Austin, J. (1961). A Plea for Excuses. In J. Austin, Philosophical Papers, ed. J. Urmson and G. Warnock (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 175–​204. Barrett, F. (2012). Yes to the Mess:  Surprising Leadership Lessons from Jazz (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

610   John Forester Burkhalter, S., Gastil, J., and Kelshaw, T. (2002). A Conceptual Definition and Theoretical Model of Public Deliberation in Small Face-​to-​Face Groups. Communication Theory, 12: 398–​422. Diers, J. (2004). Neighbor Power: Building Community the Seattle Way (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press). De Leo, D. and Forester, J. (2017). Reimagining Planning: Moving from Reflective Practice to Deliberative Practice—​A First Exploration in the Italian Context. Planning Theory and Practice, 18: 202–​16. De Leo, D. and Forester, J. (2018). Reimagining Cities, Reimagining Planning (Naples:  INU Press). Dryzek, J. (2010). Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance (Oxford:  Oxford University Press). Elster, J. (1998). Introduction. In Deliberative Democracy, ed. J. Elster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–​18. Escobar, O. (2009). The Dialogic Turn. In-​Spire Journal of Law, Politics and Societies, 4: 42–​70. Escobar, O. (2015). Scripting Deliberative Policy-​Making. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 17: 269–​85. Fisher, R. and Ury, W. (1991). Getting to Yes (New York: Penguin Books). Fishkin, J. (2009). When The People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Forester, J. (1999). The Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Forester, J. (2009). Dealing with Differences:  Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes (New York: Oxford University Press). Forester, J. (2011). Learning from Practice in the Face of Conflict:  Integrating Technical Expertise with Participatory Planning. Planning Theory and Practice, 12: 287–​310. Forester, J. (2012). Learning to Improve Practice:  Lessons from Practice Stories and Practitioners’ Own Discourse Analyses (Or Why only the Loons Show Up). Planning Theory and Practice, 13: 11–​26. Forester, J. (2013). Planning in the Face of Conflict: The Surprising Possibilities of Facilitative Leadership (Chicago, IL: American Planning Association). Forester, J. (2016a). Daunting or Inviting:  “Context” as Your Working Theory of Practice. Planning Theory and Practice, 17: 169–​72. Forester, J. (2016b). On the Evolution of a Critical Pragmatism. In Encounters in Planning Thought:  16 Autobiographical Essays from Key Thinkers in Spatial Planning, ed. B. Haselsberger (New York: Routledge), 280–​96. Gadamer, H-​G. (1975). Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press). Gastil, J. (2014). Why I Study Public Deliberation. Journal of Public Deliberation, 10: Article 5. Innes, J. and Booher, D. (2010). Planning with Complexity: An Introduction to Collaborative Rationality for Public Policy (London: Routledge). Kanra, B. (2012). Binary Deliberation. Journal of Public Deliberation, 8: Article 1. Kersten, A. (2008). When Craving Goodness Becomes Bad. Culture and Organization, 14: 187–​202. Laws, D. and Forester, J. (2015). Conflict, Improvisation, Governance: Street Level Practices for Urban Democracy (New York: Routledge). Laws, D. and Rein, M. (2003). Reframing Practice. In Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society, ed. M. Hajer and H. Wagenaar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 172–​206.

Deliberative Planning Practices    611 Lester, R. K. and Piore, M. J. (2009). Innovation:  The Missing Dimension (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Lynch, M. (2012). Revisiting the Cultural Dope. Human Studies, 35: 223–​33. Manin, B. (2005). Deliberation:  Why We Should Focus on Debate rather than Discussion. Paper presented at the Program in Ethics and Public Affairs Seminar, Princeton University, October 13, 2005. March, J. (1978). Bounded Rationality, Ambiguity, and the Engineering of Choice. Bell Journal of Economics, 9: 587–​608. Menkel-​ Meadow, C. (2001). Aha? Is Creativity Possible in Legal Problem Solving and Teachable in Legal Negotiation? Harvard Negotiation Law Review, 6: 97–​144. Nabatchi, T., Gastil, J., Weiksner, G. M., and Leighninger, M. (eds) (2012). Democracy in Motion:  Evaluating the Practice and Impact of Deliberative Civic Engagement (New York: Oxford University Press). Neustadt, R.and May, E. (1986). Thinking in Time:  The Uses of History for DecisionMakers (New York: Free Press). PCP (2003). Constructive Conversations about Challenging Times:  A Guide to Community Dialogue (Watertown, MA: Public Conversations Project). Rittel, H. and Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in A General Theory of Planning. Policy Sciences, 4: 155–​69. Rosenberg, S. (2007). Rethinking Democratic Deliberation. Polity, 39: 335–​60. Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (New York: Basic Books). Schön, D. and Rein, M. (1994). Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies (New York: Basic Books). Sclavi, M. (2004). Arte di ascoltare e mondi possibili [Art of Listening and Possible Worlds] (Milan: Bruno Mondadori). Shearing, C. D. and Ericson, R. V. (1991). Culture as Figurative Action. British Journal of Sociology, 42: 481–​506. Sicart, M. (2014). Play Matters (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Simon, H. (1969). The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Strati, A. (1992). Aesthetic Understanding of Organizational Life. Academy of Management Review, 17: 568–​81. Strati, A. (2014). The Social Negotiation of Aesthetics and Organisational Democracy. In Aesthetic Capitalism, ed. P. Murphy and E. de la Fuente (Leiden: Brill), 105–​27. Susskind L. and Cruickshank, J. (1987). Breaking the Impasse:  Consensual Approaches to Resolving Public Disputes (New York: Basic Books). Susskind, L., McKearnan, S., and Thomas-​Larmer, J. (eds) (1999). The Consensus Building Handbook:  A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement (Thousand Oaks, CA:  SAGE Publications). Susskind, L. and Rumore, D. (2015). Using Devising Seminars to Advance Collaborative Problem Solving in Complicated Public Policy Disputes. Negotiation Journal, 31: 223–​35. Szanton, P. (1981). Not Well Advised (New York: Russell Sage Foundation and Ford Foundation). Wagenaar, H. (2011). Meaning in Action:  Interpretation and Dialogue in Policy Analysis (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe). Wheeler, M. (2013). The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World (New York: Simon and Schuster).

Chapter 38

Deliberat i v e  L aw David L. Ponet and Ethan J. Leib

In the main, deliberative democratic theory seeks ways to root laws and the lawmaking enterprise in discursive opinion and will formation, with the goal that the subjects of law are also its authors in a meaningful way. Deliberative democratic institutional designers set out to transform the information exchange of free and equal persons—​“communicative power”—​into administrative or legal power. While the first generation of deliberative democratic theory focused on establishing—​in theory and in law—​the ideal conditions for deliberation, “second wave” work sought empirical instances where these conditions could be established and tested (Owen and Smith 2015). More recently, attention has turned to a systems-​based view that seeks to pitch entire political systems as deliberative, even when they lack singular moments of authentic deliberation (Mansbridge et al. 2012). The “systemic turn” emanates from a recognition that no single forum, institution, or site of deliberation, no matter how robust, is adequate to legitimate the full range of laws and policies that democratic polities adopt. Democracies are complex systems with numerous nodes in which political work gets done: from empowered governmental spaces to schools, non-​profits, and foundations. The systems view holds that interactions between the parts are similarly complex and that while deliberation may be lacking within individual institutions, non-​deliberative practices can still be viewed “as constitutive elements of a deliberative process” (Owen and Smith 2015). The systemic turn’s insight that one instance of deliberation does not in turn legitimate a whole system is a critical advance. Yet the thinned-​out version of deliberation that can sometimes be attributed to the systemic approach too easily writes off non-​deliberative outcomes and thus could justify extant arrangements and practices, threatening to abandon deliberative democracy’s original aspiration as a reform-​ directed effort. Even under a systems approach, it is essential to be able to identify which nodes are the critical ones that should remain targets of institutional reform through deliberative democratization. Encouragingly, scholars and practitioners within the deliberative lawmaking space continue to grapple with making our practices more deliberative and legitimate. We believe “second wavers” were right to focus on discrete sites of deliberative

Deliberative Law   613 democratization, for these are precisely what contribute to the deliberative nature of the system as a whole. In this chapter, we explore three evolving areas of deliberative lawmaking:  administrative law, districting commissions, and deliberative plebiscites. Although the greatest impact of deliberative democratic theory for legal scholarship has been within election law (Levy and Orr 2017), we start with an area that has not been quite as affected by efforts in deliberative democratization, even though it is the site—​by far—​of the most lawmaking in modern democracies.

Administrative Lawmaking The rise of the administrative state and the expansive architecture of rules that it has wrought by unelected officials has understandably occasioned questions about its democratic legitimacy. Several theories in the US compete in their attempts to reconcile discretionary agency policymaking with principles of American constitutional democracy. Early commentators viewed Congress as the owner of all regulatory policy and agencies as mere transmitters or translators of Congressional policy. Later, focus turned to the “interest representation” model of rulemaking in which the notice-​and-​comment mechanism enshrined in the Administrative Procedure Act was said to admit various interests and preferences in a deliberative process that mirrors other governmental sites of policymaking. Finally, more recent accounts have relied on a political or presidential control model that locates legitimacy in the executive branch’s control over agency judgments (Staszewski 2012). On this view, agency deference to executive preferences is justifiable since the president was elected by a majority of the people; accordingly, his popular mandate would seem to extend across the range of agency decisions that loosely fall under his popular aegis. As we elaborate below, the potential for further deliberative democratization of the administrative state remains a worthwhile focus for institutional designers influenced by the deliberative democratic tradition—​especially its “second wave.” The Administrative Procedure Act (APA), controlling the internal procedures of so much (though far from all) agency action (Davidson and Leib 2015), does command a form of deliberative democracy through its notice-​and-​comment provisions: before an agency promulgates a final regulation controlling conduct with the force of law, it usually must subject its proposals to the crucible of a notice-​and-​comment process, giving citizens and those ultimately subject to the regulation an opportunity to be heard and to participate in the deliberation of the agency. In addition to the participatory ambitions of the APA, agency rules are subject to “hard-​look” judicial review, in which courts examine the rulemaking record and can invalidate agency decisions if they find the regulation to be poorly justified, ultra vires, or otherwise invalid. Thus if an agency wishes its decisions to hold, it must demonstrate that rules have been subject to proper deliberative procedures and have some rational substantive merit. The hard-​look judicial standard is supposed to incentivize well-​considered rulemaking that flows from

614    David L. Ponet and Ethan J. Leib some kind of deliberative process. Judicial deference to agency action is widespread, but the threat of review can help motivate deliberation ex ante. Of course the reality of rulemaking doesn’t always match the ideal. The presidential control model offers rulemaking democratic legitimacy by suggesting that if agencies—​ even without deliberation—​follow the preferences of elected officials, who are accountable to voters, then the decisions that come from agencies will also enjoy democratic legitimacy (Staszewski 2012, 856). But the presidential control model leaves too much legitimation to be done by singular elections. It had always been an insight of deliberative democratic theory that tacit consent provided by hypothetical debate or political structure fails to vindicate the republican principle that laws have to be attributable to the governed in a non-​fictive sense (Michelman 1997). Accordingly, it is fair to say that the presidential control model countenances an aggregative—​not deliberative—​view of democracy. In a move similar to the one made by systemic turners, the presidential control model accentuates the democratic elements of rulemaking by adverting to election and thus seeks to cast the whole enterprise under the democratic pall. However, a deliberative view of administrative legitimacy underscores the need for public officials actually and specifically to “engage in reasoned deliberation on which courses of action will promote the public good” (Staszewski 2012, 857). One can easily imagine elected and appointed officials proffering some reasons that relate directly to the merits of a policy decision but others that surely would reflect naked political interests and calculations. The political control model offers little guidance in distinguishing acceptable from unacceptable political reasons for discretionary agency decisions. Thus, the presidential control model or the “systemic turn” can threaten the hope for a deliberative democracy at the very sites where most laws are made and enforced, such as the regulatory apparatus of the administrative state. The presidential control model, in short, suffers from the limits of majoritarianism and the minimalist account of democratic accountability.1 Contrary to the principles of deliberative democracy, the majoritarian view asserts the primacy of numerical majority to the neglect of minority views and reasoned deliberation. Additionally, the majoritarian view ignores social choice challenges: that majority views are often a function of decision rules, not a true reflection of majority opinion which may not exist in any coherent way on specific issues. In fact, the public does not possess preferences on most issues that come before agency decision-​makers—​especially before the issues are framed through the process of administration—​and it is insufficiently informed or motivated to vote on the basis of single agency decisions, in any case. Imputing agency decisions to a majority that votes at one moment in time for the (oftentimes incumbent) president thus seems like rationalization rather than justification. Moreover, any decision rendered by a US agency in a president’s second—​and under US limits, final—​ term could preclude the possibility for a form of retrospective accountability altogether. Given these shortcomings of the various accounts of administrative rulemaking, how can we imbue regulatory lawmaking with deliberative democratic norms?

Deliberative Law   615 We believe the current legal ecosystem in the US can be modified with some rather modest reforms to enhance its deliberative character. As we explained earlier, the APA already furnishes an architecture for deliberative engagement with the public. Before a proposed rule can be formally adopted with the full force of law, agencies are legally compelled to publish the proposed rule in the Federal Register and commence a comment period in which interested parties can submit reactions and comments to the proposed rule within a discrete timeframe. Once the notice and comment period ends, the final rule must include a statement of basis and purpose; it can then be subject to hard-​look judicial review, which empowers courts to make sure administrative agencies can “justify their decisions with adequate reasons” (Watts 2009, 5). And reason-​ giving, of course, is a core requirement of deliberative democracy (Thompson 2008). In theory at least, the agency rulemaking process could be one of the most participatory and deliberative sites in the whole governance system, one that enables rulers and ruled to deliberate together, a relative rarity in deliberative democratic systems, which tend to prioritize deliberation among subjects and deliberation among rulers.2 But while the notice-​and-​comment provisions allow—​and arguably invite—​deliberation, they risk opening the rulemaking process up to a handful of elites. In fact, empirical research on public participation in agency rulemaking shows that participation is limited, of low quality, and dominated by elites (Fontana 2005, 85). The actual practice seems to detract from the legitimacy of agency rules—​especially from the perspective of deliberative democracy. What to do? A number of reforms could be introduced to incentivize greater and more discursive public participation in rulemaking. David Fontana, for example, suggests that the more deliberative the rulemaking process, the more deference that rule should enjoy from the courts; this could incentivize agencies to employ deliberative procedures in their rulemaking. He goes as far as proposing that representative jury-​like bodies drawn from cross-​sections of the population should sit with agencies to deliberate over rules. For obvious reasons deliberative democrats find much to like in the jury model (Leib 2004, ­chapter 6). Yet, since agencies are constantly working on innumerable rules covering a range of arcana that would make the jury model in this context potentially unrealistic, there may other refinements available to make this area of jurisgenesis more deliberative. Proposed reforms include the imposition of more stringent publicity requirements so that the universe of interested parties who submit comments might be expanded. An additional possibility is using the stage of regulatory review in the Executive Branch as another gatekeeper to make sure agencies are prioritizing deliberative process rather than only cost–​benefit analysis, the conventional use of a layer of regulatory review in the US’s current configuration (Davidson and Leib 2015). In the area of administrative law, deliberative democrats should stay the course, trying to make sure rulers and ruled deliberate together to produce legitimate laws. This remains a promising area for deliberative lawmaking and a ripe field for the reform-​minded.

616    David L. Ponet and Ethan J. Leib

Districting Commissions In accordance with Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution, every ten years electoral district boundaries are redrawn following census data in order to equalize district populations. In most states, the boundaries are determined by state legislatures. In recent years, several states have established nonpartisan citizen commissions to conduct the business of designing electoral district maps. States have set up these commissions in the interest of ending the practice of “partisan gerrymandering,” so that legislatures do not create maps composed of safe seats that are in practice impervious to electoral challenge. The partisan gerrymander serves the interest of the majority party (and sometimes the minority party too, whose seats become entrenched): this can work to the detriment of voters who may benefit from more robust electoral competition. Democracy is usually thought to require voters choosing their rulers, not rulers choosing their voters. Nonpartisan or bipartisan commissions—​now in existence in several states—​serve as a remedy, and present the possibility of enhanced electoral competition, which may be a prerequisite for meaningful deliberation. A recent US Supreme Court decision, Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, centers on the constitutional legitimacy of locating districting power in such commissions, particularly when they are established by plebiscite rather than state legislatures,3 since the plain text of the US Constitution seems to delegate districting power specifically to the “legislatures” of the several states. In brief, the decision can be construed as a victory for deliberative democracy over aggregative or pure party democracy. In the case before the Court, the Arizona state legislature filed suit against the state’s redistricting commission on the grounds that when Arizona voters decided to set up such a commission fifteen years ago they violated the Elections Clause of the US Constitution:  it states that the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for . . . Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” Since the text seems to have a specific delegation to the “Legislature thereof,” the state legislature felt that circumvention through the mechanisms of direct democracy must be invalid under the Constitution. The Court rejected this argument, upholding citizens’ rights to adopt creative mechanisms for redistricting that counter the self-​interest and conflicts of interest which lead to widespread electoral entrenchment when this power is exclusively in the hands of the legislature. The establishment of nonpartisan redistricting commissions by a handful of states reflects a movement toward deliberative lawmaking, a trajectory that is easier to appreciate from the perspective of “second wave” deliberative democratic theory than it is from within the “systemic turn.” The creation of decision-​making fora for discussion about how to draw electoral districts contributes to staking out participatory democratic inflection points. By removing redistricting power from partisan legislatures whose decisions and bargains are largely explainable by partisan interest (not rational arguments that appeal to the common good) and placing that power in representative nonpartisan

Deliberative Law   617 commissions selected from a wide pool of eligible voters, this shift in power moves the electoral system toward a deliberative lawmaking ideal. Indeed, deliberative democratic theory requires not only collective decision-​making by those who will be affected by the decisions, but also by participants or decision-​makers committed to rationality and impartiality (Elster 1998, 8). As the Court understood, structural safeguards must be put in place to avoid “manipulation . . . by politicians . . . to entrench themselves or place their interests over those of the electorate” (Arizona State Legislature 2015, *26). And conflicts of interests are rampant when “legislators dra[w]‌district lines that they ultimately have to run in” (Cain 2012, 1817). Nonpartisan redistricting commissions hew much closer to deliberative democratic norms in practice and in the results they produce. As Justice Ginsburg observed in her opinion for the Court, studies show that nonpartisan and bipartisan commissions tend to “draw their maps in a timely fashion and create districts both more competitive and more likely to survive legal challenge” (Arizona State Legislature 2015, *8, citing Miller and Grofman 2013, 661, 663–​4, 666). They can generate much more rational and impartial outcomes that tend to flow from a significantly more deliberative process. California, for example, now boasts some of the nation’s most competitive seats because districts are drawn according to organic populations, not by incumbent politicians that draw lines in an effort to pack their supporters into odd-​shaped districts that guarantee their re-​election. Among its virtues, deliberative lawmaking seeks to bridge unacceptable chasms between the governors and the governed. The Federalist Papers make clear that the people are the true font of power and authority—​and need to remain in meaningful control: “The genius of republican liberty seems to demand . . . not only that all power should be derived from the people, but that those intrusted [sic] with it should be kept in dependence on the people” (Madison 1961, 223). The creation of competitive seats contributes to this vision and shifts power back to the people by allowing them to choose their representatives as opposed to elected officials choosing their voters. Competitive elections, while not a benchmark for deliberative democracy per se, seem like a conducive condition for it. Although it is true that meaningful deliberation can occur in many nodes within a polity outside of elections, competitive electoral seats can broadly stimulate deliberation in the political public sphere as well as in civil society. If seats are safe and elections noncompetitive, there is little incentive for the average voter to pay attention and participate in elections, to say nothing of less politically efficacious political action. Competition introduces actual stakes into campaigns and elections, so average voters are more inclined to tune in and weigh in—​moving us toward deliberative democratic goals (e.g. Hill 2003, 281–​2; Evans 2014). The recent case before the Supreme Court was not directly about whether nonpartisan redistricting commissions are valid under the US Constitution as such; it was about whether citizens could create them directly, rather than using the legislature to establish them. But it should be easy to see why much was at stake in the case: if citizens can’t force their representatives to establish such commissions through mechanisms of direct democracy, there are precious few incentives in place for the legislatures

618    David L. Ponet and Ethan J. Leib to abrogate their own authority. Indeed, even the credible threat of direct lawmaking through mechanisms of direct democracy can be a significant “spur” for legislative action (Persily and Anderson 2005). Recognizing this structural impediment to deliberative democratization, the Court’s opinion read the US Constitution to permit citizens to use their legislative power to install such commissions. As the Court held, “it would be perverse to interpret the term ‘Legislature’ . . . to exclude lawmaking by the people, particularly where such lawmaking is intended to check legislators’ ability to choose the district lines they run in” (Arizona State Legislature 2015, *31). This functionalist reading contributes to citizens’ authoring their own laws. In prior cases, the Court observed that “redistricting involves lawmaking in its essential features and most important aspect” (Smiley v. Holm 1932, 366). Therefore, the Court permitted this practice of nonpartisan commissions to continue and to be further refined—​as a counterforce to the partisan gerrymander. Deliberative democrats in the “second wave” should remain interested in this institutional innovation that could further deliberatively democratize redistricting—​which can be a gateway to an enhanced deliberative political culture more generally. Two final points: First, as we will explore in the next section, direct democracy—​the method for instituting redistricting commissions endorsed by the Court in the Arizona State Legislature case—​itself also can be subject to deliberative democratization. As Justice Thomas’s dissent in the Arizona State Legislature case was correct to note, the Court actually has a tradition of “disdain for state ballot initiatives” (Arizona State Legislature 2015, Thomas, J., dissenting, *1). So endorsing its use here as a counterforce to the legislature’s lock-​up of the redistricting process should not be read as a general complacency about system design in direct democracy; the “cheers for direct democracy”—​ as Thomas has it—​need to be earned, which can mean reform to the direct democracy system. Second, it bears noting that while map-​drawing in the vast majority of states in the US remains within the clutch of state legislatures and their gerrymandering ways, this is another area ripe for more reform. “Second wavers” ought to continue hacking away at this important node within the lawmaking enterprise with creative efforts at deliberative democratization. We worry that a steadfast commitment to the systemic turn could occlude such meaningful opportunities for deliberative reform from view.

Deliberative Plebiscites From some standpoints, it’s easy to cast direct democracy—​where the people vote directly on matters of public policy—​as a pure version of self-​rule. If democracy equates to self-​rule, unmediated authorship of the people’s law through direct democracy could be treated as paradigmatic. Yet the deliberative model of democracy strives for a more authentic version of self-​rule. In this conception, direct democracy can be a piece of the story but is not the ideal or the whole.4 A better appreciation for the function direct democracy can play within the “system” of a robust deliberative democracy underscores

Deliberative Law   619 the richness of another node for deliberative lawmaking and the fertile grounds that yet remain for reform-​minded deliberative democrats. Direct democracy can contribute to deliberative democracy in at least three central ways. As we highlighted above, direct democracy can serve a chastening function, forcing legislators to pursue the interests of the represented rather than their own interests. Second, it can have an educative function, which can serve to get citizens informed about the issues of the day, increasing what one might call the “deliberative quotient” in political culture. And, finally, it can serve an important sluiceway function when it is designed properly to produce what one might call a meaningful “deliberative law dividend” by bringing the communicative power of civil society into direct contact with the instrumentalities of state action. The very existence of a mechanism for direct citizen action within the political system can make it more likely that legislators will aim to track the interests and preferences of the people (Matsusaka 2004; Gerber 1996). Even if this means legislators will think twice about majoritarian interests—​or, worse, wholly ignore minoritarian preferences—​at least the political system will not suffer the pathologies of politicians deliberating only to accommodate their own self-​interest. Both “second wavers” and “systemic turners” can appreciate the chastening function of direct democracy (assuming it can be borne out empirically5)—​and can imagine design efforts that make sure the threat of direct democracy is at the very least credible. Without the threat of direct overrule by subjects, legislators will lack proper incentives to pay attention to their constituents throughout their terms while the real lawmaking occurs. And if they can too easily control the implementation of initiatives (see Gerber et al. 2001), direct democracy cannot serve its chastening function either. When citizens and legislators tune into policy only around election season, a less deliberative system follows—​and both “second wavers” and “systemic turners” will appreciate design-​tinkering at the margins. To be sure, some deliberative democrats may fear that direct legislation is too high a price to pay because minoritarian interests can suffer. But these trade-​offs are not unique to one brand of deliberative democratization over another. The same could be said for direct democracy’s educative function. While voter knowledge is quite generally low—​and many citizens display widespread political ignorance in direct democracy and elsewhere within the political sphere (Somin 2013)—​research confirms that jury participation can increase political efficacy, and that when citizens have a more direct stake in governance, they are motivated to learn about and participate in political life more broadly, a desideratum of a robust deliberative democracy (Gastil et al. 2010). Some empirical evidence confirms this effect for direct democracy as a whole (Tolbert, McNeal, and Smith 2003). Its virtues notwithstanding, many deliberative democrats still want nothing to do with direct democracy. They may doubt its educative function within a hybrid system of democracy, and they may simply feel there are cheaper and less non-​deliberative nodes in the political system that could accomplish the result better:  more widespread use of the jury, for example. Yet both “systemic turners” and “second wavers” might see useful ways of capitalizing on direct democracy’s educative function,

620    David L. Ponet and Ethan J. Leib through opportunities for reform that could improve deliberative democracy’s overall performance. “Systemic turners,” true to their project, will not aim to fully “deliberatize” the institution of direct democracy, since they will see—​quite rightly—​that even non-​deliberative nodes can improve deliberation across the system indirectly. Yet they may still press for better use of more reliable information within direct democracy elections—​with or without information proxies (MacKenzie and Warren 2012)—​and for direct democracy to be made more jury-​like to increase educative effects. “Second wavers” might go even further in that direction by setting up panels or policy juries to inform the rest of the populace prior to voting. These designs—​like the “Citizens’ Initiative Review” panels proposed by John Gastil (Gastil 2000; Gastil and Richards 2013) or the Citizens’ Assembly reform undertaken in British Columbia (Warren and Pearse 2008)—​are both “second wave” ideas and can promote the educative effects of direct democracy.6 But they do so with greater aspirations for deliberatively democratizing the direct democracy node itself. In any event, both types of deliberative democrat might aspire through design tinkering with direct democracy to raise a jurisdiction’s “deliberative quotient”: the amount of authentic deliberation in society that reaches the political public sphere, however indirectly. “Second wavers” and “systemic turners” would likely approach the sluiceway function of direct democracy in more contrasting ways. In Between Facts and Norms, Jürgen Habermas offers a model for understanding the way power should be distributed within any legitimate political order. He emphasizes that one of the central tests for the legitimacy of a state “depends primarily on whether civil society, through resonant and autonomous public spheres, develops impulses with enough vitality to bring conflicts from the periphery into the center of the political system” (Habermas 1996, 330). He seeks improved intersection between civil society and the state: “This sociological translation of the discourse theory of democracy implies that binding decisions, to be legitimate, must be steered by communication flows that start at the periphery and pass through the sluices of democratic and constitutional procedures situated at the entrance to the parliamentary complex or the courts” (365). Of critical import are the sluiceways by which civil society can penetrate to the core of the political sphere. Although Habermas didn’t see it this way,7 direct democracy procedures can perform this sluiceway function. Ultimately, Habermas—​prefiguring the “systemic turn”—​is, in our opinion, somewhat too sanguine about civil societies’ “signaling,” “thematizing,” and “problematizing” functions (359). Although a few civil associations may occasionally be successful in steering the deliberations of the state, Habermas too readily accepts civil society’s influence as wholly indirect most of the time: “Civil society can directly transform only itself, and it can have at most an indirect effect on the self-​transformation of the political system; generally, it has an influence only on the personnel and programming of the system” (372). It is only in a “crisis situation” that Habermas permits an immediate sluiceway between civil society and the state (359).8 This is just fine for the “systemic turners.” But “second wavers” are looking not only to increase an ambient “deliberative

Deliberative Law   621 quotient” in society but also to get institutions to pay an actual deliberation dividend in the lawmaking process itself. Of course, even “second wavers” know that you can’t have “wall-​to-​wall deliberation” or “deliberation all the way down.” But the effort to enhance the possibility of sluiceways between civil society and the core of the political system through reforms of direct democracy seem promising from the perspective of the “second wave.” This is what has motivated innovations like the “popular branch” (breaking the people up into smaller groups for meaningful deliberation in policy juries with mandatory service (Leib 2004))—​and some parts of Gastil’s “Citizens’ Initiative Review,” which aims to keep deliberating publics as a core input into the decision-​making of direct democracy. Again, a host of reforms remain available to those “second wavers” focused on enhancing our practice of deliberative lawmaking.

Conclusion It is tempting to dismiss discrete sites of deliberative lawmaking as merely episodic and thus inadequate to legitimize the whole polity. But accepting non-​ deliberative parts as somehow contributing to a deliberative sum can undermine deliberative democracy’s aspiration for reform. Examination of three evolving areas of deliberative lawmaking—​ administrative lawmaking, districting commissions, and deliberative plebiscites—​underscores the ongoing relevance and promise of “second wave” deliberative democratic institutional design. We hope we have shown that continued reform in the “second wave” tradition can deepen our deliberative practices and help bring these efforts to scale. More, we hope we have identified some critical nodes that even “systemic turners” should appreciate need continuing innovation from the perspective of deliberative democratic institutional design.

Notes 1. Criticisms along the lines outlined in the text come from many camps—​inside deliberative democratic theory and outside it (e.g. Criddle 2010; Seidenfeld 2013). Distinguishing among deliberative, republican, contractarian, and fiduciary accounts of state authority is something we bracket for future work. 2. For some exceptions to this tendency, see Ponet and Leib 2011; Warren 2009. 3. For an exploration of how direct democracy can break up partisan lock-​up and how direct democracy can be improved by parties, see Leib and Elmendorf 2012. 4. On why deliberative and direct democracy are not necessarily antipathetic to one another, see Leib 2006. For the canonical statement that “legislation by plebiscite is not and cannot be a deliberative process,” see Sager 1978, 1414. 5. Obviously, there is some debate in the empirical literature about the current plausibility of the chastening function. Compare Hug 2011 (confirming Matsusaka’s thesis using

622    David L. Ponet and Ethan J. Leib new modeling techniques and dataset that others had used to challenge the thesis) with Marschall and Ruhil 2005 (challenging Matsusaka’s method and findings); and Lax and Phillips 2012 (finding no effect of direct democracy on policy congruence across a host of issue areas). Even if empirical testing does not confirm a chastening effect as currently designed, deliberative democrats could still look for reforms to direct democracy calibrated to generate such an effect. 6. If the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly is seen as providing an information proxy or a “trust check” on an otherwise self-​interested legislature, it can just as easily be seen as a “systemic turner” reform. The educative function can be pursued alongside the effort to generate trust-​based legitimacy (MacKenzie and Warren 2012). 7. For Habermas’s quick dismissal of plebiscites, see Habermas 1998, 184–​5, 332, 369, and 557 n. 59. In turn, he essentially damns plebiscitary democracy through guilt by association with Carl Schmitt, Joseph Schumpeter, and totalitarianism. 8. Habermas invokes Cohen and Arato’s theory of civil society (Cohen and Arato 1992, 587); they also suggest that its communicative power is limited to moments of crisis.

References Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (2015) 576 U.S. _​_​_​_​. Cain, B.E. (2012). Redistricting Commissions:  A Better Political Buffer? Yale Law Journal, 121: 1808–​44. Cohen, J. and Arato, A. (1992). Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press). Criddle, E. (2010). Fiduciary Administration: Rethinking Popular Representation in Agency Rulemaking. Texas Law Review, 88: 441–​503. Davidson, N. and Leib, E. J. (2015). Regleprudence—​at OIRA and Beyond. Georgetown Law Journal, 103: 259–​315. Elster, J. (ed.) (1998). Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Evans, H. K. (2014). Competitive Elections and Democracy in America: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (New York: Routledge). Fontana, D. (2005). Reforming the Administrative Procedure Act:  Democracy Index Rulemaking. Fordham Law Review, 74: 81–​127. Gastil, J. (2000). By Popular Demand:  Revitalizing Representative Democracy Through Deliberative Elections (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Gastil, J., Deess, E. P., Weiser, P. J., and Simmons, C. (2010). The Jury and Democracy: How Jury Deliberation Promotes Civic Engagement and Political Participation (New York: Oxford University Press). Gastil, J. and Richards, R. (2013). Making Direct Democracy Deliberative through Random Assemblies. Politics and Society, 41: 253–​81. Gerber, E.R. (1996). Legislative Response to the Threat of Popular Initiatives. American Journal of Political Science, 40: 99–​128. Gerber, E. R., Lupia, A., McCubbins, M. D., and Kiewiet, D. R. (2001). Stealing the Initiative: How State Government Responds to Direct Democracy (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-​Hall). Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).

Deliberative Law   623 Hill, S. (2003). Fixing Elections: The Failure of America’s Winner Take All Politics (New York: Routledge). Hug, S. (2011). Policy Consequences of Direct Legislation:  Theory, Empirical Models and Evidence. Quality and Quantity, 45: 559–​78. Lax, J. R. and Phillips, J. H. (2012). The Democratic Deficit in the States. American Journal of Political Science, 56: 148–​66. Leib, E. J. (2004). Deliberative Democracy in America:  A Proposal for a Popular Branch of Government (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Leib, E. J. (2006). Can Direct Democracy Be Made Deliberative? Buffalo Law Review, 54: 903ff. Leib, E. J. and Elmendorf, C. S. (2012). Why Party Democrats Need Popular Democracy and Popular Democrats Need Parties. California Law Review, 100: 69–​113. Levy, R. and Orr, G. (2017). The Law of Deliberative Democracy (London: Routledge). MacKenzie, M. K. and Warren, M. E. (2012). Two Trust-​Based Uses of Minipublics in Democratic Systems. In Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 95–​124. Madison, J. (1961). No. 37: Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government. In A. Hamilton, J. Madison, and J. Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. C. Rossiter (New York: New American Library), 220–​7 [first published 1788]. Mansbridge, J., Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Christiano, T., Fung, A., Parkinson, J., Thompson, D. F., and Warren, M. E. (2012). A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Systems:  Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–​26. Matsusaka, J. G. (2004). For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Marschall, M. J. and Ruhil, A. V. S. (2005). Of Models and Methods: A Response to Matsusaka. State Politics and Policy Quarterly, 5: 364–​72. Michelman, F. I. (1997). How Can the People ever Make the Laws? A Critique of Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason And Politics, ed. J. Bohman and William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 145–​7 1. Miller, P. and Grofman, B. (2013). Redistricting Commissions in the Western United States. UC Irvine Law Review, 3: 637–​68. Owen, D and Smith, G. (2015). Survey Article: Deliberation, Democracy, and the Systemic Turn. Journal of Political Philosophy, 23: 213–​34. Persily, N. and Anderson, M. C. (2005). Regulating Democracy through Democracy. Southern California Law Review, 78: 997–​1034. Ponet, D.L. and Leib, E. J. (2011). Fiduciary Law’s Lessons for Deliberative Democracy. Boston University Law Review, 91: 1207–​19. Sager, L. G. (1978). Insular Majorities Unabated: Warth v. Saldin and City of Eastlake v. Forest City Enterprises, Inc. Harvard Law Review, 91: 1373–​1425. Seidenfeld, M. (2013). The Role of Politics in a Deliberative Model of the Administrative State. George Washington Law Review, 81: 1397–​1457. Smiley v. Holm (1932). 285 U.S. 355. Somin, I. (2013). Democracy and Political Ignorance:  Why Smaller Government Is Smarter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Staszewski, G. (2012). Political Reasons, Deliberative Democracy, and Administrative Law. Iowa Law Review, 97: 849–​912.

624    David L. Ponet and Ethan J. Leib Thompson, D. (2008). Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 497–​520. Tolbert, C. J., McNeal, R. S., and Smith, D. A. (2003). Enhancing Civic Engagement: The Effect of Direct Democracy on Political Participation and Knowledge. State Politics and Policy Quarterly, 3: 23–​41. Warren, M. E. (2009). Governance-​Driven Democratization. Critical Policy Studies, 3: 3–​13. Warren, M. E. and Pearse, H. (eds) (2008). Designing Deliberative Democracy:  The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Watts, K. A. (2009). Proposing a Place for Politics in Arbitrary and Capricious Review. Yale Law Journal, 119: 2–​85.

Chapter 39

Deliberat i v e C onstitu ti ona l i sm Hoi L. Kong and Ron Levy

Constitutional theory and deliberative democracy theory share a common fixation on problems of legitimacy. In constitutional theory, legitimacy is typically conceived as a democratic problem (Bickel 1962; Waldron 1999). Here a central dilemma is how to use law to establish and enforce a polity’s foundational commitments—​its institutions, values, and collective mission—​without wholly ceding power over those commitments to a closed band of elites. Judges and lawyers tend to be a constitution’s day-​to-​day stewards (a role sometimes shared with legislators and technocrats). But they are often insulated from the broader public sphere, and are accustomed to deploying distinctively legal norms and language. The fundamental question for constitutional theory is: are these elite decision-​making methods sufficiently alive to the preferences and interests of the citizens who notionally authorize the constitution in the first place?1 Deliberative democracy theory often raises similar democratic legitimacy problems, but with a more distinctly deliberative focus. Concerned with ensuring that decision-​ making occurs under conditions of equal inclusion, reflection, adequate information, and flexible, open-​minded and reciprocal discussion (among others), deliberative democracy casts questions of legitimacy in a somewhat different light. Given their distinct approaches, can theories of deliberative democracy and of constitutionalism—​ defined here as practices of creation, interpretation, and application of a polity’s basic legal norms—​combine to construct a more complete picture of constitutional legitimacy? This question is central to deliberative constitutionalism, a quickly growing field of systematic scholarship, and a hybrid of constitutional and deliberative democracy theory (Levy et al. 2018; Worley 2009). In this chapter we outline some of the field’s main

626    Hoi L. Kong and Ron Levy questions. We also occasionally venture some answers. Some scholarship in the area has an empirical cast (e.g. Ginsburg, Elkins, and Blount 2009; Eisenstadt, LeVan, and Maboudi 2015); in what follows, however, we focus on a selection of normative consequences stemming from deliberative constitutionalism’s express focus on deliberation. Our broadest contention is that deliberative constitutionalism presents a meta-​theory capable of unifying other constitutional theories about the legitimacy of public power arrangements. But deliberative constitutionalism does not merely recap and reproduce established constitutional theories in a different form. It also potentially mends some persistent conceptual fault-​lines, restarting and redirecting longstanding debates in constitutional theory. One argument we advance is that incorporating insights from deliberative democracy can dissipate some of the force of the constitutional legitimacy dilemma (the “counter-​ majoritarian” problem in US parlance). Deliberative constitutionalism often focuses on the extent to which judicial review enhances democratic deliberation. A constitution should construct a set of public processes for carefully working through social controversies by promoting the resolution of differences among social preferences. At the same time, the processes should help the polity continually to reinterpret and refine its basic laws. Importantly, this does not rule out a non-​binding model of judicial practice—​ one that never (or seldom) sees judges overrule substantive democratic choices. Non-​ binding constitutionalism may seem problematic or even paradoxical. However, it may still be an effective way to fulfill what should be, in our view, a constitution’s overriding objective of creating a framework for public deliberation. Binding judicial review, too, may have deliberation-​enhancing effects. For instance, under certain conditions, distributing decision-​making power among many courts—​including the courts of states in a federation—​can prompt a sustained, clarifying public conversation about contentious policy. Deliberative constitutionalism’s approaches to legitimacy in some ways represent significant departures. First, as Green notes (2015), deliberative constitutionalism accounts for the roles of a set of actors in democracy and governance ranging well beyond the traditional courts–​legislatures axis of constitutional theory (e.g. dialogue theory: Hogg and Bushell 1997; Tremblay 2005). Its account of the roles of ordinary citizens is especially robust. Second, deliberative models of constitutionalism place deliberation front and center. According to Dryzek (2004; focusing on Walzer’s (1991) reading of the US Constitution), a deliberative “account is very different from the standard liberal interpretation of the Bill of Rights as protecting a private realm of individual pursuit of interests beyond the grasp of government.” The chapter moves as follows. First we outline a selection of key questions in deliberative constitutionalism. We then explore some of the theory’s implications for addressing, and partly defusing, legitimacy problems with respect to human rights; similarly we analyze the structural features of constitutions, such as federalism. We draw some conclusions in the final section.

Deliberative Constitutionalism   627

Principal Questions in Deliberative Constitutionalism At the broadest level, research on deliberative constitutionalism divides into two genres of questions (Levy et al. 2018, 4): (i) Deliberation to law. Can deliberative democratic methods of constitutional lawmaking enhance the legitimacy of a constitution? (ii) Law to deliberation. Can the practice and the effects of law, especially constitutional law, in turn enhance deliberative democracy? If answers to both of these questions are affirmative, then a full account of a deliberative democratic constitutional order will examine the reciprocal influence of, on the one hand, deliberation that generates legitimate constitutional law and, on the other hand, constitutional practice that enhances democratic deliberation.

Deliberation to Law One aspect of the deliberation to law dynamic is of longstanding concern to deliberative democratic theorists: the process of constitution-​making. It is important to be precise about what these theorists mean by a constitution in this context. Elster has argued that there are three senses of the term “constitution”: First, many countries have a set of laws collectively referred to as “the constitution”. Second, some laws may be deemed “constitutional” because they regulate matters that are in some sense more fundamental than others. And third, the constitution may be distinguished from ordinary legislation by more stringent amendment procedures. (Elster 1995, 366)

The debate around constitution-​making tends to focus on texts that have the defining features of the second and third senses; however, we focus our attention on all three of these kinds of laws. Deliberative democratic theorists engage with two aspects of constitution-​making: (i) Means. What are the means by which constitutions come into being? For some theorists, the procedures involved in the making of a constitution legitimize the text if they involve widespread public debate. Ackerman (1991) captures the legitimizing force of this intense public attention with his concept of a “constitutional moment.” Tierney (2012, 24) shows that constitutional referendums can

628    Hoi L. Kong and Ron Levy be structured to allow for widespread and meaningful citizen deliberation about what a constitution should contain, and Levy (2013) has argued that only a constitution enacted in such a way can be deemed legitimate, in light of considerations such as the need for citizens to give informed consent to foundational norms affecting them. Many authors, including Landemore (2015), have examined and generally praised experiments (e.g. in Iceland and British Columbia) aimed at maximizing public involvement in the very drafting of constitutional or quasi-constitutional texts. Eisenstadt, LeVan, and Maboudi (2015) indicate that sustained citizen participation in deliberative democratic processes of constitution-​making, especially during the drafting phase, can have positive effects on a polity’s subsequent level of democratization. Yet such optimism is not universally shared. For instance, Ricoy (2014, 525) has argued that because a constitution is generally hard to amend, those involved in making a constitution are incentivized to rent-​seek and not engage in deliberation. (ii) Significance. What is the significance of the very act of enshrining a set of political commitments in a constitutional text? Some theorists with deliberative leanings reject the idea that a constitution (in the sense of a text that is fundamental and hard to amend), can ever be legitimate because by its very nature, the act of enshrining the will of a polity at a founding moment shuts down public deliberation about matters of ongoing fundamental importance (Goldoni 2014). Drawing on Chambers (1998), we argue in the next section that it is possible to understand the making of a constitution not as a founding moment but as one moment in an ongoing conversation. In this vein, Chambers has argued against the claim that written constitutions are necessarily contracts that capture the will of the people. Instead, she claims that they can be instruments through which a polity engages in an ongoing conversation about its deepest commitments. For Chambers, a constitution should entrench a polity’s diverse conceptions of justice, acknowledge that these have been accommodated throughout the nation’s history, and provide mechanisms for future accommodations (154). Understood in this light, constitutional entrenchment simultaneously reflects a polity’s ongoing debates about its fundamental values, and catalyzes further democratic deliberation. It is this catalytic function that we characterize as “law to deliberation.”

Law to Deliberation Law extensively colors and channels democratic decision-​making. In some cases, legal scholars’ familiarity with legal practice can help to illuminate, in detail, the effects of constitutionalism on deliberation. Within the law-​to-​deliberation perspective, we can imagine at least two kinds of deliberation-​enhancing effects (Levy et al. 2018, 4–5):

Deliberative Constitutionalism   629 (i) Deliberative filtering. Can constitutionalism render democratic decision-​making in a more deliberative form? In one view, suggested by Habermas (1996, 354–​6) and others, deliberative democratic decision-​making is said to begin in the social periphery as relatively vague citizen preferences, aspirations, and values. It is initially spread diffusely among civil society groups, media (old and new), and myriad small-​scale conversations. These later filter through the formal constitutional apparatus, especially courts and legislatures. Such bodies call upon legal and other elite expertise to help process raw preferences into coherent and concrete law. (ii) Deliberative telescoping. Another view, associated with Rawls (2005, 137)  and others, sees the deliberative effects of constitutionalism moving in the opposite direction. Can legal modes of reasoning subject collective choices to rational scrutiny, modeling forms of rationalism that public discourse may emulate? Courts apply an established set of tools of legal deliberation. For instance, they rely on the logic of analogy, invoke rules of evidence to test empirical assumptions, and issue carefully articulated public reasons. The reasons and methods of constitutional decision-​making perhaps inform and discipline debate in the public sphere according to salient points of logic or principle, and “educate citizens in how to reason with one another on contested issues” (Zurn 2007, 192). The controversy over legal recognition of same-​sex marriage offers a prime example of both deliberation-​enhancing models, but particularly the latter. In the US, as the matter reached the state and federal courts, proponents of same-​sex marriage drew links to past cases on discredited anti-​miscegenation laws (Obergefell v.  Hodges transcript of proceedings 2015, 70). In addition, in the US and Canada, weak or unsupported arguments frequently collapsed when exposed to judicial scrutiny. One such argument was that “tradition” alone provided reason to discriminate. The rationalist perspective of the courts arguably helped wear down entrenched but outmoded social assumptions, which could no longer be sustained in the light of logic. For example, using publicly accessible rhetoric, appellate Judge Posner said that “[t]‌radition per se . . . cannot be a lawful ground for discrimination—​regardless of the age of the tradition” (Baskin v. Bogan 2014, 661–​3). Also importantly, legal decision-​making helps to clarify the social interests at stake on all sides of a debate. It can do this by being emotive. At the US Supreme Court, the concluding words of Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion spoke lyrically of the needs of same-​sex couples to be loved (Obergefell v. Hodges 2015, 28)—​words that inspired numberless opinion pieces and internet memes. Alongside other factors (Baunach 2012), constitutional equality rights discourse can help to account for the rapid change in public sentiment in the US and Canada on same-​ sex marriage through the 2000s and 2010s, as advocates and opinion-​writers incorporated the tropes and perspectives of litigation on the subject into their own rhetorical arsenals. Note, as well, the role of federalism in this story. In both the US and Canada,

630    Hoi L. Kong and Ron Levy a series of state/​provincial judgments on same-​sex marriage over several years perhaps softened public attitudes nationwide in the lead-​up to the matter’s appearance before the Supreme Court of each country. (We pick up this suggestion below.) The same-​sex marriage cases reveal a deliberative and procedural conception of judicial review. The reason the relevant laws could not stand was not because their substantive moral conclusions were deemed to be unacceptable. Rather, they were struck down because they failed to satisfy the requirements of public reason. In light of the available information about the circumstances of couples in same-​sex relationships and the consequences of recognizing same-​sex marriages, and after reflection and reciprocal discussion about these facts and the relevant ethical questions, the arguments in support of bans could not be maintained. Moreover, the judicial reasoning in these cases shaped political deliberation across the polity, and this catalytic force of judicial review attracts the deliberative constitutionalist’s attention. Other constitutional theorists who are more concerned with morally correct outcomes or with pre-​deliberative political preferences might place the emphasis elsewhere. A further chief distinction in deliberative constitutionalism—​less well-​appreciated—​ is between two possible orders of effects of constitutionalism upon deliberation (Levy et al. 2018, 5–6): (i) First-​order deliberation. Can constitutionalism enhance deliberation about the many collective decisions that touch directly on the interests of citizens? (ii) Second-​order deliberation. To what extent can laws dealing not directly with citizen interests, but with the political and legal institutions within which those interests are deliberated, secure robust democratic deliberation? We have already seen an example of the effects of constitutionalism on first-​order deliberation: constitutional equality guarantees provided a framework for public deliberation over the scope of marriage, and thus directly touched the lives of citizens. By contrast, second-​ order  deliberation (also known as “meta-​ deliberation”: Thompson 2008) is deliberation about the conditions and processes of political deliberation itself, whether this occurs within or outside of public institutions. Second-​ order laws make judges into democratic gatekeepers. When judges apply constitutional norms to strike down or uphold a given set of democratic institutional arrangements, they must make at least implicit choices among democratic models. In recent work by one of us touching on this, a conclusion was that, in judicial decision-​making about the laws of the political process, values of liberty, equality, and integrity generally trump that of deliberation (Levy and Orr 2016). The best-​laid plans of deliberative democrats must therefore contend with judges who frequently fail to endorse the value of public deliberation. One reason for such reticence is the rise, in the post-​war period, of the proportionality test. Now the pre-​ eminent analytic tool in constitutional litigation around the world (Sweet and Matthews 2008), proportionality testing to some extent frees constitutionalism from the rigidities of older, categorical approaches to constitutional reasoning (Aleinikoff

Deliberative Constitutionalism   631 1987, 986). Yet a problem with proportionality for second-​order decision-​making is its reductive focus on binary competitions. The test imagines a balance scale: on the weighing pans a pair of rights or interests lie in tension. The metaphor of balancing all but requires judges to treat these rights or interests as though they are locked in a rivalrous, zero-​sum relation to each other. This can poorly serve a legislative initiative that seems to restrict a right, yet aims to enhance deliberative democracy. To give an example, electoral campaign spending limits may aim to facilitate free speech by approximating conditions of equal inclusion, under which political actors can engage in reciprocal discussion and no party can dominate the democratic process through the sheer force of greater spending. A standard proportionality test, focused on balancing, disassembles this relatively thick, deliberative model of expression into its component parts. Balancing sees a legislative limit on expression that is to be weighed against a competing interest: the value of unfettered speech thus lies in tension with deliberation. However, understood not just as communication but as communicative action (Habermas 1984), expression involves a series of recurring and reciprocal speech acts. This reciprocity entails an ongoing discussion characterized by mutual learning and persuasion, under conditions that permit deliberation (e.g. equal inclusion and adequate information). Democratic speech is thus best viewed as a coherent compound of expression and deliberation. Can judges revise their proportionality methodologies into more nuanced tests? We think proportionality inquiries should test assumptions, interests, and values without the presumption that a conflict lies between constitutional rights and other public interests. The notion of proportionality has an important role to play in the testing of legislation, by asking: What are the legitimate ends of a piece of legislation, and to what extent does the legislation achieve those ends? These questions are already standard in proportionality inquiries. However, some stages of proportionality testing reinforce a rigid cost-​benefit balancing structure, such as the “least restrictive” or “minimally impairing” stage, where the court asks if the legislature could have passed an alternative law less restrictive of rights. Such stages should be abandoned or revised to avoid locking in the analytic presumption that laws affecting speech necessarily restrict speech. Rather than purport to search for a less “rights restrictive” alternative, a court should flexibly seek out a version of the law that best fulfils all the litigating parties’—​including the legislature’s—​aspirations for the law. Such an approach might see judges more consistently recognize and preserve second-​order legislative initiatives aimed at enhancing deliberation.

Rights as Deliberative A number of constitutional theorists express doubt about investing rights with fixed substantive content. Rights are thus conceived as vessels capable of accommodating a wide range of normative content. For instance, a right to “family life,” depending on prevailing social meanings, can either promote or militate against same-​sex marriage

632    Hoi L. Kong and Ron Levy recognition. Moreover, the legal application of rights is almost invariably situational: it is heavily dependent on context and the precise counterclaims raised in a case. In most liberal democracies, few rights are “infringed” by legislation for no good reason at all. More commonly, legislation reflects choices between rights and other important interests (e.g. between unfettered hate speech and the safety and dignity of minorities). Rigid substantive rights risk solidifying in amber what might have been only a transient social or judicial consensus on public policy (e.g. negative economic rights, read broadly, were once used to invalidate all manner of welfare-​state regulation). It is now therefore common to propose that a constitution should be partly (but only partly) empty of substantive content. This proceduralist camp of constitutional theory is represented in the US by Ely (1980) and others, and in the UK by Allan (2001, 248–​9) and others. In this view, constitutions are thought to provide guideposts for deliberation about political commitments, within a spectrum, without lastingly specifying a position on that continuum (Dworkin 1996, 8–​11). For instance, a constitution that expressly protects equality rights reflects the polity’s commitment in principle to securing equality interests against legislative or administrative interference. However, the precise content of substantive constitutional norms is secondary in importance to the constitution’s creation of a particular decision-​making process. Situated within the proceduralist camp, our view of deliberative constitutionalism suggests that the best constitutional process is one that helps a polity continually to work through social controversies and refine its own constitutional commitments via procedures of robust deliberative democracy. For instance, the proportionality test should be conceived of as a primary site of deliberation, and not simply as a means of protecting entrenched substantive rights. We saw that proportionality at present is an imperfect tool for second-​order decision-​making. Yet, for first-​order deliberation about substantive interests, proportionality can generate a culture of testing, scrutiny, and justification of laws and social assumptions (Dyzenhaus 1998, 34), which may bring greater deliberative discipline to democratic decision-​making. A key corollary is that bindingness is less relevant for substantive political commitments than is often assumed in constitutional theory. A perennial question, as we saw, concerns the appropriate degree of constitutional entrenchment in law. In the human rights field, variations on this question include: (i) Entrenchment. Should a polity adopt (a) a fully constitutionally entrenched bill of rights, (b) one that is constitutionalized but abrogable by a legislature invoking an “override” clause, or (c)  a merely legislative, “quasi-​constitutional” rights document, under which judges may issue non-​binding declarations that a law is incompatible with a particular right? (ii) Social and economic rights. An important sub-​question is whether positive social and economic rights (e.g. rights to housing and healthcare) should be strongly binding, despite democratic and institutional competence concerns arising when judges alter public policies that have broad economic and social impacts.

Deliberative Constitutionalism   633 (iii) International law. To what extent should constitutional rights sourced from or informed by international law bind locally? In common-​law countries, judges occasionally reference international human rights even when those rights are not yet implemented domestically as formally binding law. On a deliberative-​constitutionalist view, these questions have a distinctive cast. The main question to be asked about constitutional legitimacy here, we suggest, is not whether the norms should bind, but whether they enhance deliberation. At least two reasons support this approach. First, an appropriately designed constitution can provide a distinctive deliberative input into the system of public deliberation, whether or not the norms strongly bind as a formal matter. It can generate vibrant cultures of rights-​reasoning in the public sphere. From legislative human rights bills already enacted (e.g. in the UK, New Zealand, and two Australian jurisdictions), there is evidence that even weakly binding legal norms can achieve this effect (McLean 2001). While on the one hand judges here inject their rationalist perspectives into the public discourse, the judges also remain attentive to changes in public sentiment—​hesitating to get too far out ahead of the social mainstream. Second, a deliberative democratic model of rights adjudication partially steers clear of classic democratic legitimacy problems by diminishing the counter-​majoritarian conflict: the clash between majority preferences and rights claims. In traditional legal models, a top-​down judicial fiat issues only after positions have solidified during lawmaking. Fully formed interests then clash with rights when a judge considers whether to invalidate a law (to which supporters now may be deeply committed) only after the law’s final enactment. On the traditional approach, majoritarian democracy and minority rights or interests are at odds; one must therefore yield to the other. By contrast, deliberative democracy seeks to alter preferences when they are still plastic. Careful institutional design may be able to delay the point where interests solidify into settled, clashing rights. By enabling more rigorous social deliberation about rights and interests, deliberative constitutionalism pursues one of the key functions of deliberative democracy: encouraging citizens to learn from and be persuaded by each other in order to rethink their conceptions of what is in their own interests, and to find common ground. Such preference flexibility can forestall conflicts between rights (usually asserted by electoral minorities) and competing interests (often those of a majority). Note that, despite some similarities, deliberative constitutionalism is not the same as dialogue theory. In the latter, legislatures and courts negotiate over the content of a law and its impact on rights; a court can act as a check, turning the legislature’s attention to salient rights claims. Ideally, this back-​and-​forth leaves the legislature’s supremacy largely undiminished. By contrast, deliberative constitutionalism’s aim is to preserve not legislative power, but broad systemic deliberation—​among ordinary citizens, media, civil society groups, and branches or departments of government. It sets its sights well beyond the binary legislative–​judicial struggle to define rights and considers how the enactment of rights protections can catalyze deliberation and keep social preferences flexible across a polity.

634    Hoi L. Kong and Ron Levy A number of institutional implications follow from these ideals. For instance, a high court’s premature resolution of a matter can foreclose deliberation, leaving only the possibility for interpretive tugs-​of-​war between rights-​bearers who, having been granted a specific and rigidly defined right, are unlikely to accept any limit on it. An example in the US is the judicially elaborated right to abortion. Some progressive US constitutional scholars who favor robust abortion rights have nevertheless criticized Roe v.  Wade (1973) for provoking a lasting social backlash—​a consequence, they assert, of the final decision having pre-​empted the emergence of greater social consensus on the matter (Eskridge 2005). One response to such risks is to adopt a loosely binding rights model. Legislative human rights acts perhaps best encourage preference plasticity, since they ensure that the decisions of courts are never final. However, we also saw above that even binding state, provincial, or federal-​circuit judgments can enhance deliberation. Though they bind locally, elsewhere these decisions are not binding but only persuasive. They may have helped to modify public attitudes and lay groundwork for the inclusive marriage decisions in national high courts. Getting an array of judges and citizens rethinking, over a long period, the assumptions underlying social preferences may have been enough to soften those preferences. Under this model, a policy should be contested legally at multiple stages, and should not too hastily reach the country’s highest court. Cases should proceed through multiple levels of judicial decision-​making and, in a federation, should do so in multiple states. The contestation should be gradual and inclusive enough to stimulate polity-​wide consideration of the issues at stake. The judicial process itself can be designed to be more inclusive, for example by enabling numerous litigants, including amici curiae/​intervenors (third parties who represent the various interests affected by the litigation). In sum, the deliberative constitutionalist view suggests that a constitution ought to be principally a vehicle for deliberation, and envisages various institutions and modalities through which this can occur. A constitution’s ultimate task should be to inject a distinctive, rationalist, and flexible methodology into the collective decision-​making system of a democracy. Such a task can take years, decades, and even generations (Habermas 2001, 768, 774).

Structural Implications Thus far, we have focused our deliberative constitutionalist analysis on rights claims. We have endeavored to show how constitutional law can structure reasoning by judges in ways that facilitate democratic deliberation in the wider polity. This position, we claimed, allows us to recast the counter-​majoritarian difficulty. Instead of focusing on the question of whether judicial review is illegitimate because it frustrates democratic will, we claimed that judicial review is legitimate to the extent that it facilitates democratic deliberation, both within institutions of public power (including the courts) and within wider society.

Deliberative Constitutionalism   635 We turn now to consider what constitutional theorists call issues of “constitutional structure.” In this chapter we focus on federalism, in part because we are constrained by space, but also because we think that debates about federalism questions clearly illustrate the broader theoretical claims we want to make. Let us begin with a classic definition of the federal principle as “the method of dividing powers so that the general and regional governments are each, within a sphere, co-​ordinate and independent” (Wheare 1963). In this section we will argue that federalism—​viewed in light of this principle as a constitutional practice and idea—​ facilitates deliberation within and among the constituent political units of a federation. In order to introduce the discussion, consider a position that understands federalism in terms of preferences, rather than deliberation. According to this view, federalism is a mechanism for creating a marketplace for government policies. Different units in a given federation offer packages of services and taxes from which mobile citizens select, and under conditions of fair market competition there is a matching of policies to citizen preferences (Bratton and McCahery 1997). In this view of federalism, the constitution’s function is to prevent market distortions. Governments are, for instance, precluded from enacting policies that disrupt the flow of market activity among states. Such policies can take the form of protectionist state laws, or federal laws that regulate more than is necessary to provide services that are beyond the capacity of the states (e.g. national defense) or solve coordination problems among the states (e.g. pollution that crosses state boundaries) (Macey 1990). This market-​ oriented view of federalism is influential and persuasive, but deliberative constitutionalism places its own emphasis elsewhere. Instead of thinking of citizens of a federation as consumers seeking only to satisfy preferences, a deliberative view conceives of them as members of multiple political communities. In some circumstances (e.g. purely local economic transactions, with purely local effects) this conception of membership will primarily be in terms of their state, while for other purposes (e.g. commercial transactions that move across state boundaries or have federation-​wide effects) it will be in terms of the federation as a whole. A constitution, in this view, establishes the boundaries for these different political communities primarily so that deliberation among citizens and officials about matters of concern to their diverse polities can flourish (Levy 2007; Weinstock 2001). One effect of such constitutional line-​drawing is that the legislatures of a federation are implicated in two kinds of deliberation: (i) Matters within jurisdiction. There is first-​order deliberation about matters that fall within the legislatures’ constitutional authority. Lawmakers within a federal legislature will debate about matters that are relevant to the federal polity, while their state counterparts will have discussions about issues of concern to their communities. Uhr (1998, c­ hapter 4) has analyzed the various ways in which legislatures fulfill these essential deliberative functions, particularly in federations. (ii) Disputes about jurisdiction. There is also deliberation about the boundaries of legitimate political authority within a given federation. Constitutional contests

636    Hoi L. Kong and Ron Levy over jurisdiction are, in the terms we have set out above, instances of second-​ order deliberation. They fundamentally involve disputes over what political community, and as a consequence which offices of public power, can claim legitimate political authority over an area of social, economic, and political life (Young 2007, 66). The constitution sets the terms of such a debate, and the consequence of resolving a disagreement is that a given set of institutions is authorized to deliberate about matters of first-​order concern. Seen in this light, disputes over the constitutional division of powers involve deliberation about the appropriate political reach of the forums of public deliberation. This view of federalism is significant for two reasons. First, it conceives of citizens and officials in a way that is consistent with their roles as members of political communities. As Elster has argued, political life is infused with questions of justice and fairness. Citizens and officials, properly understood, concern themselves with these questions and with how their own actions affect others. They are furthermore committed to deliberation about these matters, on terms that are themselves fair. By contrast, consumers in the marketplace seek only to advance their own self-​interest, and their actions are limited and guided only by market forces. Although matters of economic efficiency may, of course, be the object of political deliberation, to transpose in its entirety the ethos of the marketplace to public institutions and constitutional structures is to do violence to the basic character of political life (Elster 1997, 24–​5). The deliberative constitutionalist may reject the market view of federalism for this reason alone. There is a second reason for embracing the deliberative constitutionalist’s understanding of federalism, and it is related to our discussion above of the relative bindingness of constitutions. A view of federalism that is focused on deliberation will avoid foreclosing essential debates about the nature and scope of political community in a federation. At any moment in time a federation will have a certain character. So, for instance, a federal government in a certain period of a federation’s economic development may enjoy relatively broad powers to regulate economic affairs. In that period, the citizens within the federation may also identify more with the federal government, and therefore the federal polity, than they do with the state government, and their more immediate neighbors. Yet a federalist constitution, understood in deliberative terms, will facilitate continuing debate about the legitimate political reach of each order of government, and will allow for complex conceptions of political community and affiliation. This deliberative view is particularly relevant in the context of multinational federations. As Leclair (2013) has noted, nationalist ideologues in these federations seek a reductive view of federalism, in which the lines that define political communities are sharply drawn, and questions of political identity can be answered without ambiguity or complexity. The ardent nationalist believes that a constitution should provide final “right answers” to these second-​order questions. By contrast, the deliberative constitutionalist seeks to ensure that there are forums and processes that facilitate ongoing deliberation about these contentious matters (Macdonald 1996, 216). Here, as in the case of rights jurisprudence, the deliberative constitutionalist is a committed proceduralist.

Deliberative Constitutionalism   637

Conclusion We have focused on two areas of constitutional law that provide vivid illustrations of deliberative constitutionalism’s value: rights and federalism. The examples can be multiplied and the work in this area continues at a rapidly increasing pace. We noted above that a full understanding of deliberative constitutionalism requires sensitivity to the dialectic relationship between democratic deliberation and law. It is our hope that with this chapter we have pointed the way towards such an understanding, by clarifying distinctions, identifying the stakes, and providing some examples of the theory and practice of deliberative constitutionalism.

Note 1. This point requires additional nuance in relation to the UK, where authority arguably stems, instead or as well, from the sovereignty of parliament.

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Chapter 40

De l iberative De mo c rac y and Sci e nc e Alfred Moore

Politics and science can seem an awkward couple: bound together by practical necessity, each has the potential to undermine the other. On the one hand, science threatens to undermine democratic politics. This can be seen in anxieties throughout the twentieth century that technocracy might serve to narrow and subvert the sphere of democratic decision and debate. In democratic theory, both Habermas (1971) and Dahl (1985) have worried about the privileged position of experts in political decision structures, and have sought solutions in terms of better communication between experts and non-​ experts. But there are also concerns about the more insidious power of expert discourse itself to define reality for the purposes of political deliberation and decision (Gieryn 1999; Fischer 2000). On the other hand, politics seems to threaten science when it subordinates the search for truth to political priorities or material or ideological interests. This is problematic insofar as scientific expertise is crucial to the enlightenment of political will. It serves to inform public and political deliberation, empower democratic collective action, and tell truth to power from a position of independence (Schudson 1996). Yet each of these roles implies the value of insulation from politics, for it is only in virtue of its separation and autonomous development that science can be an effective resource for politics. The idea that experts should be “on tap, but not on top” (in a phrase usually credited to Winston Churchill) thus has a ring of common sense about it. We clearly need authoritative and trustworthy scientific knowledge in order to make robust and effective public decisions; but we also need to be wary of legitimate hierarchies of knowledge atrophying into relations of domination. But this relationship seems more challenging when, in cases ranging from climate change to vaccines, science becomes political. There are of course many ways in which science might be said to be political. It could be because values are embedded in or delegated to artifacts (Latour 1991), or because science bears on the distribution of resources (Greenberg 2001; Kitcher 2001)  or risks (Beck 1992), or simply because it shapes the material

Deliberative Democracy and Science    641 conditions of our lives (Winner 1986, 29; Sclove 1995, 17; Kitcher 2001, 199). But a more basic claim is simply that science becomes political to the extent that it becomes a site of conflict under the shadow of coercive decision (see Brown 2009; Moore 2017). This sets up an important connection to deliberative politics: When science becomes political, what kind of politics of science do we want? And what might a deliberative politics of science look like? An early and influential account of the role of science in deliberative politics was given by John Dewey. Science was central to Dewey’s account of democracy in two ways. First, he understood democratic society itself as an extended process of experimentation and inquiry. A democratic community exploring worthwhile ways of living together and reacting to changes in its environment was, he thought, analogous to a scientific community exploring the natural world. Democracy was an ongoing experimental process of exploring both means and ends, and testing both against experience. Indeed, flexibility and responsiveness to the unanticipated effects of our various actions, he thought, was the specific advantage of democratic societies in a context of rapid technological, economic, cultural, and (we would now add) environmental change. This flexibility and responsiveness was achieved by combining majority rule and public deliberation, whereby “the counting of heads compels prior recourse to methods of discussion, consultation and persuasion” (Dewey 1927, 207).1 Democracy is best placed to identify and evaluate the complex and ever-​evolving consequences of human action, he argued, because it is a regime that stimulates widely inclusive communication. Second, Dewey emphasizes the need for dialogue between citizens and experts as a central part of that process of inquiry. While social inquiry must be maximally inclusive, citizens often cannot articulate their interests or needs without the support of experts, and he thus imagines a division of labor and an ongoing dialogue between experts and lay citizens, with lay citizens in the position of informing experts “where the shoe pinches,” and then judging the bearing of expert knowledge on their own conceptions of their problems (Dewey 1927, 207). Dewey, then, was concerned with the problem of how to make inclusion in the most general sense consistent with the need for specialist knowledge in the identification of consequences of actions. He thus puts public deliberation at the heart of democracy, and science at the heart of public deliberation. Dewey’s approach has, in its broad outlines, proved attractive to a wide range of democratic theorists. Elizabeth Anderson follows Dewey in thinking of public policy as a collective search for solutions to common public problems. She emphasizes the importance of feedback over time made possible by “periodic elections, a free press skeptical of state power, petitions to government, public opinion polling, protests, public comment on proposed regulations of administrative agencies” (Anderson 2006, 14). These institutions effectively make the democratic process a fallibilistic and dynamic one. Dewey’s recognition of the importance of expert competence appeals to Philip Kitcher (2011). Kitcher finds in Dewey an endorsement of a division of epistemic labor, whereby the organization of collective intelligence requires the construction of a system of public knowledge, which provides knowledge of consequences that must inform

642   Alfred Moore both individual and collective political judgments. Mark Brown emphasizes the radical openness of Dewey’s conception of democracy, in which “lay deliberation and technical expertise can enrich each other,” and whose pragmatism accommodates a constructivist approach to science and expertise (Brown 2009, 161). Fischer (2000) draws on Dewey in advocating a participatory approach to public policy. And, as I will discuss further below, Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe (2009) frame the role of social movements in what they call “technical democracy” in terms of a Deweyan politics of experimentation and exploration. In this broad Deweyan tradition, it is clear that for deliberative democrats there is no problem in principle with dependence on science within democratic politics. However, there are many practical challenges to the structuring of institutions such that they are “capable of preserving both democracy and complexity” (Bohman 1996, 171), and there are great variations in the institutions and processes through which we might structure both the production of scientific knowledge and engagement between science and citizens. These problems have been addressed in both theory and practice in the domains of scientific governance, and in the fields of environmental political theory, social epistemology, and philosophy and sociology of science. One aim of this survey is to show the value of bringing discussion from these fields into conversation with the mainstream theories and practices of deliberative democracy. I will first discuss the importance of considering the role of deliberation within scientific communities and institutions, particularly as it bears on the production of scientific judgments and decisions at the boundary between science and politics. I will then discuss the emergence of institutions for communicating scientific knowledge to policymakers, public officials and citizens, which include not only expert tribunals but also the development of citizen panels, consensus conferences, and other forms of mini-​publics. Finally, I will discuss the role of “uninvited” participation in science, emphasizing the role of social movements and critical civil society in both challenging and informing scientific knowledge production.

Deliberation within Science Deliberative democrats have tended to pay more attention to the contribution of science to public deliberation than to the question of how, where, and with what results scientists themselves engage in deliberation and decision. Thus, it is common for the requirement that deliberation be “fact-​regarding” (Offe and Preuss 1991, 156–​7) to be framed in terms of deference to a scientific consensus. Thomas Christiano, for instance, argues that public deliberation must be a “truth-​sensitive” process, one which takes up the “best available reasons,” and the best available reasons are those that reflect “the status quaestionis [state of investigation or scholarly consensus] in the relevant reliable scholarly disciplines” (Christiano 2012, 52). This approach can also be found in Rawls.2 In working out the principles of justice that “rational persons with true general beliefs”

Deliberative Democracy and Science    643 would agree to, “we must rely upon current knowledge as recognized by common sense and the existing scientific consensus” (Rawls 1999, 480). It is significant that Rawls couples “common sense” and “the existing scientific consensus,” for it suggests that the appeal to scientific consensus turns not only on its truth—​even though that is always fallible and revisable—​but also on its public accessibility. This point is emphasized by Gutmann and Thompson, who integrate science into public deliberation under the aspect of reciprocity. Reciprocity requires both that reasons are given to justify policies and decisions made by citizens and their representatives and that the reasons should be accessible or comprehensible to all the citizens to whom they are addressed (2004, 4). Scientific expertise may be practically difficult to understand, but it is a form of reasoning that is in principle public because it can be recovered or retraced, with sufficient effort. When discussing the valuable role of expert claims in underwriting the accuracy of deliberations about healthcare, Guttmann and Thompson add an important complication: while lay people may be obliged to accept the claims of experts, “we should not, of course, accept these conclusions uncritically. Accepting the justification for such conclusions presumes a certain amount of trust, but not blind trust. More specifically, the trust is not blind if two conditions hold. First, there is some independent basis for believing the experts are trustworthy (such as a past record of reliable judgments). Second, the experts can describe the basis for their conclusions in an understandable way. The justification would then be accessible in the way that reciprocity requires” (Gutmann and Thompson 2004, 146). However, critical acceptance of the claims of scientific experts requires some attention to be paid to the conditions of their production, and in particular to the quality of deliberation and decision among them. Here I will not focus on the everyday communication in the laboratory,3 but rather on deliberation among scientific experts as they put together knowledge claims for use in political decision-​making processes. The sites for such deliberation range from expert committees on food standards or safe levels of radiation in the environment that are a ubiquitous feature of the regulatory and administrative landscape,4 to large and novel entities such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And the questions at issue are not typically in the heartland of science proper, but rather in the domain of ill-​structured problems, where scientific knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for decision-​making. What is called for in these cases is a collective judgment by scientists in a context of complexity and uncertainty and a range of non-​epistemic pressures and constraints. Deliberation among experts differs from the broader public deliberation that has been the principal concern of many deliberative theorists in that it typically does not address moral norms or the common good in any direct way—​it is not deliberation aimed at clarifying values but rather establishing more narrowly (but rarely entirely) technical judgments. However, expert deliberation epitomizes the priority of the quality of argument that is insisted upon by many deliberative democrats. It is for this reason that Philippe Urfalino (2012) describes what he calls “Areopagus” deliberations,5 that is, institutions of committees of the wise, as approximating the conditions in which the force of the better argument and the epistemic quality of deliberation and decision is given the highest priority. In our context

644   Alfred Moore it is important to note that such collective judgments and decisions can be evaluated according to their deliberative quality. The quality of deliberation within scientific communities and institutions is an important condition for those who have not shared in their deliberations to take the results on trust. Empirical studies of expert deliberations by sociologists and philosophers have revealed a diversity of practice that offers rich ground for engagement with the work of deliberative democrats studying the dynamics of small group deliberation and decision in other contexts. David Guston, for instance, examined voting processes in the Carcinogens Subcommittee of the US National Institutes of Health’s Toxicology Program when it voted (by a narrow majority) to remove saccharin from the list of substances “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” (Guston 2005, 396). The vote allows us to see, firstly, that there were differences of opinion, which is of course to be expected, but which is often masked by the figure of expert consensus (Beatty 2006). Secondly, it allows us to see that, in this study, industry representatives and those associated with laboratory disciplines more frequently found themselves in the minority on the side of “less protective” than any other sectoral or disciplinary subgroup, while those associated with organismal disciplines such as zoology and medicine tended to find themselves in the minority on the side of “greater caution /​more protective” (Guston 2005, 399). The broader point Guston makes in favor of voting in such contexts is that it gives outside observers information about the means by which a collective decision was reached. “A scientific subsystem that does not partake in such a politics of transparent social choice—​one that hides both its substantive disagreements and its disciplinary and sectoral interests beneath a cloak of consensus—​is not a fully democratic one. . . . Scientists need to vote in well-​orchestrated ways if they want substantive influence on public laws” (Guston 2005, 401). Beatty and Moore (2010, 210) also argue in favor of voting on expert committees as a contribution both to the transparency of the proceedings and to show that the agreed position was favored by a majority of deliberative equals. Philippe Urfalino (2012) contrasts the effects of decision by voting and by consensus in the US Food and Drug Administration advisory committees and in the French Medicines Evaluation Committee. If we return now to the idea of deference to a scientific consensus, we can see that it makes a difference whether we mean consensus as the unforced convergence among independent observers or consensus as a way of making decisions in groups.6 While the degree of agreement among well-​placed and competent observers may be a good reason to defer to their judgment on a technical question, the process by which that agreement was reached and the potential public accessibility of that process are of great importance. There are many different ways of organizing these technical deliberation and decision procedures, with different effects both internally, on the quality of deliberation in the room, and externally, on trust and legitimacy. There is a great deal to be gained from closer study of the ways in which voting and deliberation are combined, sequenced, and (perhaps) made transparent, in expert deliberations.

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Science and Public Deliberation: Institutions for Dialogue One of the most remarkable changes in scientific governance in the advanced democracies over the last few decades has been the growth of a wide range of institutions and reforms aiming at public inclusion in technical decision-​making processes. This is reflected in a shift in emphasis from public understanding of science to public engagement with science. The field of public understanding of science had its origins in concerns about the quality of public discussion on matters of technical complexity, and its effects on trust in science. In its early days in the 1980s, it tended to operate with a “deficit” model, in which public mistrust was taken to be a function of a lack of comprehension of scientific claims and arguments. The orientation, then, was to analyzing the causes and contexts of such misunderstandings and working out better forms of science communication and education. Early work in the field thus focused on the notion of “scientific literacy” (Miller 1983), which involved knowledge of textbook-​style facts, scientific methods, an appreciation of the social benefits of science, and the rejection of pseudoscience. This approach invokes the idea that understanding in the sense of comprehension of science would lead to understanding in the sense of sympathy for scientific projects (see Durant, Evans, and Thomas 1989). Research into public attitudes, however, has confounded, or at least complicated, the idea that poor knowledge of science and a relative inability to assess technical information are the most likely explanation for refusal to accept expert claims (Evans and Durant 1995; Bauer, Allum, and Miller 2007). Partly for these reasons, since the early 2000s the field has shifted emphasis to public engagement with science and technology, an explicit change designed to capture a commitment to two-​way communication, and an openness to the possibility that science might be informed by the public, and not simply the other way round (see Bucchi 2009). This shift in the study of science communication from understanding to engagement marks an important point of convergence between the problems of public trust in science and more theoretically driven work on institutional innovations to support public deliberation. More broadly, the rise of new institutions for citizen engagement involves a convergence of political opportunity and democratic entrepreneurship, as political controversies and legitimation crises around technical, medical, and environmental issues in several advanced democracies created a governmental demand for institutional innovations that could combine scientific expertise and popular engagement. The variations in design, conduct, functions, and potential democratic effects of what have since become known as “mini-​publics” will be discussed elsewhere in this volume. However, a few comments are in order to locate mini-​publics in the context of the politics of science and technology in the advanced democracies. First, the use of public engagement mechanisms in a more general sense has a long history in the domains of science, technology, and environment (see Fiorino 1990; Rowe

646   Alfred Moore and Frewer 2005; Brown 2006).7 The problems to which they were a response varied widely, but they have centered on public acceptance of the risks and potential environmental, social, and moral side-​effects of scientific and technological developments (see Beck 1992). Peter Dienel (1992) proposed citizen engagement with experts through “planning cells” and “citizens’ assessment” as a way of addressing what he thought of as a “deficit of legitimation” when consequential decisions were made by experts (Dienel 1992, 10). The first British consensus conference was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and held on the theme of plant biotechnology (Joss and Durant 1995). While there are strong democratic rationales for experimenting with citizen participation and deliberation, science and technology issues often involve a dynamic in which economic development is set against citizen apprehension. This meant that there was both political will and public funding geared to finding new ways of managing public discussion to avoid the sorts of damaging politicization that arose around, on the one hand, environmental and planning issues and, on the other, moral problematizations of new technologies such as IVF and genetic engineering. This in particular has led technology critics to worry that these political innovations—​whatever their possible democratic benefits—​are called on principally where public acceptance is sought for developments that governments regard as either economically beneficial (such as GM crops) or inevitable. Second, a feature common to many different designs, which is of particular relevance here, is the separation of expert and lay citizen deliberation. There are good reasons for this separation. The first is that the presence of any highly informed participants can lead to them dominating the discussion, thus inhibiting a wider range of perspectives and reasons being brought to light (Kadlec and Friedman 2007). This is also one of the rationales for seeking “pure” publics, that is, excluding citizens who have already engaged in the topic at hand: that they will tend to unproductively dominate the discussion and narrow the reasons considered by the group. The second is to give the group enough information to tackle a complex topic with which they may not have been familiar. This is usually achieved by giving participants a text drawn from the relevant expert knowledge to inform them prior to their deliberations, or inviting a number of experts to address the participants and field questions from them, or some combination. The need to give a balanced account of the state of expert knowledge sufficient to inform the participants but not prejudge the outcome of the deliberation is a challenge largely to be addressed in the design and facilitation of events (Moore 2012). While this is a problem experienced to some degree in most mini-​publics, it is particularly acute where the issues are highly technical. Both the tendency of mini-​public designs to exclude organized civil society actors and to separate expert and citizen contributions to the process have led critics in the field of science and technology studies to regard such innovations with suspicion (Irwin 2006). Finally, citizen deliberation on scientific and technological issues has been used for the purpose of rebuilding trust and anticipating conflict and controversy. Public trust has been a particular concern in the governance of science and technology, where episodes of fierce controversy (over GMOs, for instance, or vaccine safety) have sensitized

Deliberative Democracy and Science    647 officials to the possibility of public controversy over science-​based policies, and have motivated attempts to engage with wider publics. The idea of “anticipation” has been framed by some STS scholars as public engagement with new technologies “upstream” (Barben et al. 2008), before they become entangled in political commitments and path dependencies. Others have focused more narrowly on anticipating “future threats to public trust” (MacKenzie and Warren 2012, 118). MacKenzie and Warren argue that in many issue areas that are properly delegated to executive agencies, potential issues have to be “anticipated by (agency-​based) elites who are trustees of public purposes” (MacKenzie and Warren 2012, 119), and they would anticipate better by drawing on the deliberations of a random selection of citizens than by simply trying to “imagine” potential public concerns on their own. By anticipating reasonable public concerns, officials can put in place policies and practices to make governance worthy of trust. Reflecting on a number of deliberative experiments in the domain of scientific governance, Burgess gives some support for this view. When diverse groups of citizens “engage in deliberation that is carefully structured to be informed and civic-​minded, they often return to the role of expert and expertise, and describe what they consider to be trustworthy exercise of this expertise around key thresholds for decisions” (Burgess 2011, 1). The key point is not so much the substance of the recommendations as the fact that, across these different topics, “as participants recognized the complexity of the decisions and diversity of perspectives they emphasized trustworthy governance” (Burgess 2011, 2). One irony is that while the impetus for experimentation with public engagement has come from experience of controversy, analyses of the use of mini-​publics in scientific governance suggests that they are often drawn on in contexts characterized by a lack of public controversy. As Bogner puts it, “this form of lay participation, which is organized by professional participation specialists and carried out under controlled conditions, rarely is linked to public controversies, to the pursuit of political participation, or to the experiences of people directly affected” (Bogner 2012, 507). Indeed, such would be the implication of aiming for “upstream” engagement. However, as with mini-​publics more broadly, there is such variety of institutional forms, contexts, and case types that it is hard at this stage to say with any confidence where, if anywhere, they will find a long-​ term place in the field of scientific governance.

Science and the Critical Public Sphere One criticism of these institutional innovations has been that they are still implicitly structured around the idea of drawing on the existing state of scientific knowledge to inform a select group of citizens in their deliberations on public affairs (Brown 2014, 63). Critics have pointed on the one hand to the danger of implicit bias embedded within expert discourse (see Fischer 2000), and on the other to the epistemically generative role of citizens. That is, they have emphasized the “lay” knowledge possessed by citizens

648   Alfred Moore who lack formal accreditation but have experiential knowledge in particular contexts (see Wynne 1989; Agarwal 2001), and drawn attention to the role of social movements in pursuing inquiries. From the point of view of deliberative theory, such contestation recalls Habermas’s notion of the public sphere as a “far-​flung network of sensors” (Habermas 1994, 9) that first detect inchoate anxieties, discomforts, and threats, and then through association and communication generate claims that can be made available to wider public judgment. It also invokes Fraser’s notion of “subaltern counter-​ publics,” which “invent and circulate counter-​discourses” and “formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs” (Fraser 1990, 57). One important effect of societal practices of contestation and critique is the articulation of issues, which is to say, the introduction of new actors, arguments, and problem framings into public discourse and ultimately collective decision processes. Taking inspiration from Dewey, Callon et al. use the metaphor of collective exploration and discovery. They advocate “opening up” the process of discovery to researchers “in the wild,” to include the citizen “co-​researchers” who function like nerves, feeling unanticipated effects and making possible the societal process of investigating and explaining those feelings, and perhaps mitigating them. Callon et al. emphasize that what is at stake when such anxieties and discomforts emerge is not simply “establishing the truth of the facts” but of “making the situation intelligible” (Callon, Lascoumes, and Barthe 2009, 28). They interpret the Deweyan figure of collective inquiry in terms of contestation, for it is only through the process of controversy, they argue, that such intelligibility emerges. The groups concerned, their interests and identities, are “revealed as the controversy develops,” and “it is for precisely this reason that the latter is an apparatus of exploration that makes possible the discovery of what and who make up society” (28). It is for this reason that they prefer to speak of “matters of concern” rather than “matters of fact” and “matters of value.” A clean distinction between the facts of the matter and the values at stake could perhaps be the outcome of a struggle, but should not be presumed in advance by those who would analyze a controversy in process. Sociotechnical controversy, on their account, functions to identify “zones of ignorance” and leads to their exploration. The “game[s]‌of confrontations to which [controversy] gives rise,” they argue, bring to light new information and promote mutual learning among antagonists. Controversies make networks of problems “visible and debatable” (31). Callon et al. are right to emphasize the importance of lay engagement with experts in the co-​production of knowledge and social identities, since there are many cases in which what is at stake is not the formal processing of well-​articulated issues, interests, and identities, but rather the formation of new matters of concern. New knowledge suggesting a link between a particular gene and a certain disease makes carriers of that gene into concerned parties, without a firm identity as such, nor a clear set of interests, yet with a claim to inclusion as affected parties, and an entitlement to contribute to their self-​definition. Such contestation can enable the articulation of issues at several levels. Public involvement can take place most obviously at the point of formulation of research problems. At this stage, laypeople are able to frame research problems, and effectively to

Deliberative Democracy and Science    649 play the role of devising and managing research programs. In an early study of what he termed “popular epidemiology,” Phil Brown (1992) detailed the activities of a number of residents of Woburn, Massachussetts, who noticed over several years that there seemed to be a cluster of infant leukemias in their district. They searched for causes, and came to suspect pollution from nearby industrial waste sites. The residents talked with one another, exchanged information, asked questions, and formed an association. They educated themselves, and met with scientific experts, including a biostatistician. Their suspicions were initially dismissed by officials, but they accumulated results and eventually won recognition of “trichloroethylene syndrome.” This carries strong echoes of the “popular epidemiology” carried out by Lois Gibbs in the US in the case of Love Canal (Tesh 2000, 31). The point of this and similar cases is not to suggest that lay people are experts themselves, but rather to emphasize the engagement between experts and laypeople in the production of research. Public involvement in expert practices can also address the conduct of ongoing research programs. The work of research communities investigating HIV-​AIDS in the 1980s, for instance, was strongly influenced by the formation and involvement of movements like ACT-​UP (see Epstein 1996). From the perspective of the FDA and medical researchers, clinical trials were scientific experiments, but for those with the illness they were ways to access potentially effective drugs. Epstein details how activist communities gathered and analyzed information they got directly from physicians and scientists, and how they used that information to bypass their earlier reliance on official institutions for information. The conduct, design, and interpretation of clinical trials was a particular focus of confrontation between activists and medical authorities. He emphasizes throughout that the activists “were not rejecting medical science,” but were rather “denouncing some variety of scientific practice . . . as not conducive to medical progress and the health and welfare of their constituency” (Epstein 1996, 2). James Bohman, putting Epstein’s case in the context of deliberative theory, makes a distinction between the inclusion of perspectives and the inclusion of reasons. Perspectives are “cognitive properties of deliberators” (Bohman 2006, 179) arising from their social knowledge and experience, whereas reasons are the interests, values, and opinions to be considered in public deliberation. Perspectives provide the “experiential source” of reasons (Bohman 2006, 179). The maximal inclusion of perspectives is a condition of possibility for the recognition and subsequent critical scrutiny of reasons. In this case, the inclusion of activists in the process of inquiry brought the perspectives of patients into contact with the perspectives of doctors, researchers, and policymakers, and as a result standards of experimental validity came to be balanced with other values. The point of the example of HIV research is that no single perspective gave the “right” answer; rather, “[w]‌hen taken together in inclusive deliberation, these values put in reflective equilibrium led to an outcome that produced a better solution, all things considered (although not necessarily from the point of view of any one perspective)” (Bohman 2006, 180). At stake in deliberation, then, is not truth or correctness according to a procedure-​independent standard, but rather social robustness as a basis for further inquiry (Bohman 2006, 188). Thus, Bohman reads the case as an exemplar of Deweyan “cooperative inquiry,” in which

650   Alfred Moore affected publics deliberated about the “norms of cooperation between expert agents and lay principals, including even epistemic norms of validity, reliability, and evidence” (Bohman 1999, 590). Yet while the effect was to expand inclusion and generate cooperation, it is important to note that it was the threat of disruption through both protest and non-​cooperation in clinical trials that was an important condition for their inclusion in the research collective. Such confrontation does not in itself answer any of the substantive questions about what decisions are to be taken in particular cases. The democratic effect comes from forcing putative authorities into communicative justifications of their practices, including “even epistemic norms of validity, reliability, and evidence” (Bohman 1999, 590). This point does not rest on any claims that the groups involved are themselves experts in some sense or possess lay knowledge, even though this and other emblematic cases have involved both (see Wynne 1989). Rather, it makes the more limited claim that such practices of contestation and confrontation open up settled expert practices to scrutiny and questioning.

Conclusion The theme of science and deliberation highlights the way in which the study of deliberation can be enriched by interdisciplinary engagement with science and technology studies, science communication research, and with philosophy of science and social epistemology. It also suggests ways in which ideas developed by deliberative democrats can bring insights to each of the areas I have surveyed. To mention just a few: there may be a great deal of value in closer study of the ways in which voting and deliberation can be combined and sequenced in deliberations among experts, and in thinking normatively about the best ways to organize and structure such deliberations to minimize well-​ known pathologies of group discussion processes. Deliberative democrats could also usefully contribute to the difficult question of how to balance the benefits of secluded deliberation among experts and the need for transparency to give external observers grounds for trust in the outcomes of those deliberations. Another line of research has to do with epistemic approaches to democracy, and in particular with extending theoretical discussions of the epistemic benefits of inclusion to domains characterized by expert knowledge (Moore 2014). Finally, there is value to thinking systemically about the interactions between these various dimensions of a deliberative politics of science. It is an important question, for instance, whether mini-​publics on issues concerning science, technology, and the environment are simply complementary to civil society activity oriented to scrutiny and contestation in those same issue areas, or whether “invited” participation crowds out or undermines more critical forms of public engagement. More generally, the shift towards a “systems” approach to understanding the place of deliberation within complex democracies may provide a useful framework for drawing together the diverse studies of the boundary between science and politics, and for locating them in a more coherent democratic framework.

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Notes 1. See Knight and Johnson (2011, 96–​104) on the centrality of voting, as well as argument, within Dewey’s account of democracy and an insightful discussion of its implications for democratic theory. 2. See Brown (2014) for a survey and comparison of the problem of expertise in Rawlsian and Habermasian deliberative democratic traditions. 3. The everyday communication of scientists that goes into the production of knowledge, in the form of shop-​talk and more formally structured communication through conference presentations, articles in journals, and so on, has been explored in detail in the laboratory ethnographies of science and technology studies (see Latour and Woolgar 1979). 4. Sheila Jasanoff (1990) describes scientists within the regulatory domain as a “fifth branch” of government. 5. The council of the Areopagus was an important legal institution in ancient Athens. 6. Stephen Turner (2003, 90) makes a similar distinction between a “scientific consensus” and a “consensus of scientists.” 7. It is worth noting that Dahl’s early development of the idea of the “minipopulus” was set in the context of the difficulties of bringing competent citizen judgment to to bear on delegation to experts in government, that is, seeking delegation without alienation (Dahl 1985, 76).

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652   Alfred Moore Brown, M. B. (2006). Survey Article:  Citizen Panels and the Concept of Representation. Journal of Political Philosophy, 14: 203–​25. Brown, M. B. (2009). Science in Democracy:  Expertise, Institutions and Representation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Brown, M. B. (2014). Expertise and Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Democracy: Issues and Cases, ed. S. Elstub and P. McLaverty (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 50–​68. Bucchi, M. (2009). Beyond Technocracy: Science, Politics and Citizens (Dordrecht: Springer). Burgess, M. M. (2011). Full Circle:  The Emphasis on Trustworthy Expertise in Public Deliberations on Biotechnology. Paper presented at workshop on Scientific Authority in Democratic Societies, Peter Wall Institute, University of British Columbia. June 27–​28. Callon, M., Lascoumes, P., and Barthe, Y. (2009). Acting in An Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy, trans. G. Burchell (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Christiano, T. (2012). Rational Deliberation Among Experts and Citizens. In Deliberative Systems:  Deliberation at the Large Scale, eds. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 27–​51. Dahl, R. (1985). Controlling Nuclear Weapons: Democracy Versus Guardianship (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Dewey, J. (1927). The Public and Its Problems (New York: Holt and Company). Dienel, P. (1992). Die Planungszelle:  Eine Alternative zur Establishment-​ Demokratie) Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag). Durant, J., Evans, G., and Thomas, P. (1989). The Public Understanding of Science. Nature, 340: 11–​14. Epstein, S. (1996). Impure Science:  AIDS, Activism and the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Evans, G. and Durant, J. (1995). The Relationship between Knowledge and Attitudes in the Public Understanding of Science in Britain. Public Understanding of Science, 3: 57–​74. Fiorino, D. J. (1990). Citizen Participation and Environmental Risk: A Survey of Institutional Mechanisms. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 15: 226–​43. Fischer, F. (2000). Citizens, Experts and the Environment:  The Politics of Local Knowledge (Durham, NC: Duke University Press). Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. Social Text, 25/​26: 56–​80. Gieryn, T. F. (1999). Cultural Boundaries of Science:  Credibility on the Line (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Greenberg, D. (2001). Science, Money, and Politics:  Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Guston, D. H. (2005). On Consensus and Voting in Science: From Asilomar to the National Toxicology Program. In The New Political Sociology of Science, ed. S. Frickel and K. Moore (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press), 378–​404. Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (2004). Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Habermas, J. (1971). Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics, trans. J. J. Shapiro (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). Habermas, J. (1994). Three Normative Models of Democracy. Constellations, 1: 1–​10. Irwin, A. (2006). The Politics of Talk: Coming to Terms with the “New” Scientific Governance. Social Studies of Science, 36: 299–​320.

Deliberative Democracy and Science    653 Jasanoff, S. (1990). The Fifth Branch:  Scientific Advisers as Policymakers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Johnson, J. and Knight, J. (2011). The Priority of Democracy:  Political Consequences of Pragmatism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Joss, S. and Durant, J. (eds) (1995). Public Participation in Science:  The Role of Consensus Conferences in Europe (London: Science Museum). Kadlec, A. and Friedman, W. (2007). Deliberative Democracy and the Problem of Power. Journal of Public Deliberation, 3(2): Article 8. Kitcher, P. (2001). Science, Truth and Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press). Kitcher, P. (2011). Science in a Democratic Society (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press). Latour, B. (1991). The Impact of Science Studies on Political Philosophy. Science, Technology and Human Values, 16: 3–​19. Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts (Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE Publications). MacKenzie, M. and Warren, M. (2012). Two Trust-​based Uses of Minipublics in Democratic Systems. In Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 95–​124. Miller, J. D. (1983). Scientific Literacy:  A Conceptual and Empirical Review. Daedalus, 112: 29–​48. Moore, A. (2012). Following from the Front:  Theorizing Deliberative Facilitation. Critical Policy Studies, 6: 146–​62. Moore, A. (2014). Democratic Reason, Democratic Faith, and the Problem of Expertise. Critical Review, 26: 101–​14. Moore, A. (2017). Critical Elitism:  Deliberation, Democracy, and the Politics of Expertise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Offe, C. and Preuss, U. K. (1991). Democratic Institutions and Moral Resources. In Political Theory Today, ed. D. Held (Cambridge: Polity Press), 143–​7 1. Rawls, J. (1999). A Theory of Justice (rev. edn, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press). Rowe, G. and Frewer, L. J. (2005). A Typology of Public Engagement Mechanisms. Science, Technology and Human Values, 30: 251–​90. Schudson, M. (2006). The Trouble with Experts—​and Why Democracies Need Them. Theory and Society, 35: 491–​506. Sclove, R. E. (1995). Democracy and Technology (New York: Guilford Press). Tesh, S. N. (2000). Uncertain Hazards: Environmental Activists and Scientific Proof (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Turner, S. P. (2003). Liberal Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts (London: SAGE Publications). Urfalino, P. (2012). Reasons and Preferences in Medicine Evaluation Committees. In Collective Wisdom: Principles and Mechanisms, ed. H. Landemore and J. Elster (New York: Cambridge University Press), 173–​202. Winner, L. (1986). The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in An Age of High Technology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Wynne, B. (1989). Sheepfarming after Chernobyl: A Case Study in Communicating Scientific Information. Environment Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 31: 10–​39.

METHODS

Chapter 41

A Preface to St u dyi ng De l iberation E mpi ri c a l ly André Bächtiger

How to study deliberation and deliberative quality empirically? This question, first of all, intersects with the question whether and how we can translate normative concepts into empirical constructs. Some have argued that any such translation will fail. On this view, normative and empirical types of inquiry are incompatible, or even incommensurable: One can either talk about what is, or what should be, but not about both. This hard-​line position, which makes a clear distinction between values and facts, has become a fairly minority view in contemporary times. John Gerring and Joshua Yesnowitz (2006) argue that the gap between normative and empirical analysis is an artificial one:  “[N]‌ormative theorizing must deal in facts just as empirical work must deal in values; they do not inhabit different worlds” (108). First, empirical investigations are necessary to translate normative concepts into recommendations for practice: “Acting morally presupposes that we understand that world and also, we should add, presupposes some investigation of causal and predictive relationships” (108). Second, and more controversially, empirical investigations might also help in the process of identifying normative principles themselves. Indeed, recent deliberative theory has been inspired by empirical research: concepts such as “metaconsensus” (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2006), “intersubjective consistency” (Niemeyer 2011)  or “deliberative negotiations” (Warren and Mansbridge 2013) have arisen out of empirical observations. The choice of the right kind of empirical methodology, in turn, is a question on which normative theorists have no special expertise to offer. For quite some time, normative theorists interested in deliberation have omitted any methodological work and just employed stylized or imported facts. This detachment has led to some problematic judgments of the empirical status of deliberative democracy. In his seminal review article on the intersection between deliberative theory and empirical political science, Dennis Thompson (2008) bemoaned that despite various attempts to empirically test the normative claims of deliberative theory much research “has not fully engaged with the normative theory . . . They extract from isolated passages in various theoretical writings a

658   André Bächtiger simplified statement about one or more benefits of deliberative democracy, compress it into a testable hypothesis, . . . and conclude that deliberation does not produce the benefits the theory promised and may even be counterproductive.” Indeed, there are examples—​like the “Stealth thesis” claiming that citizens prefer delegation to deliberation (Hibbing and Theiss-​Morse 2002)—​which use problematic operationalizations of deliberative democracy and have been refuted by better operationalizations and data (Neblo et al. 2010). Indeed, the unpleasant state of having only stylized or imputed facts at hand has radically changed in the past decade. Several approaches have been developed to investigate whether and how much deliberation has taken place. Two broad approaches to studying deliberation empirically can be distinguished: an “input–​output” approach and a “process-​based” approach (see Bächtiger and Parkinson forthcoming; for an excellent overview of available methodological strategies and tools in empirical research on deliberation, see Black et al. 2011). The input–​output approach focuses on supportive institutional settings for deliberation—​such as deliberative mini-​publics—​and then assumes that deliberation has occurred if input and output criteria conform to (or, at least do not contradict) deliberative and other democratic criteria. For instance, if all relevant voices or a representative sample has been included in the deliberative process, and if outcomes such as opinion changes are based on learning and are not produced by undue group influences, then deliberation must have taken place. While still widely used, the input–​output approach has come under attack. As Ryan and Smith (2014) put it in the context of deliberative mini-​publics: “A focus on preference and opinion change alone . . . tells us little about the deliberative quality of interactions within the mini-​public. We should not take for granted that random sampling, balanced background information, facilitated small group discussion and plenary sessions in which experts are interrogated promotes deliberation.” Even worse, recent empirical research has shown that opinion change is a highly problematic marker of deliberative quality. Focusing on different communication modes (including modes which emphasize justification and reflection versus “free” discussion without any intervention), Baccaro, Bächtiger, and Deville (2016) demonstrate in an experimental study that the communication modes with a higher deliberative quality, more learning, and fewer social influences produced markedly less opinion change than the one with worse deliberative quality, no learning, and more social influences. Process-​based approaches attempt to address these objections by opening the black box of the discussion process. They try to capture how much deliberation there is in the discussion, what antecedents produce higher process quality and how process quality and outcomes are related. Various instruments for assessing process-​related qualities have been developed: the most widely used are speech act analysis (Holzinger 2001), the Discourse Quality Index (DQI; Steenbergen et  al. 2003)  and Stromer-​Galley´s (2007) measurement scheme of deliberative quality. All these instruments have a quantitative orientation. The DQI, for instance, counts whether and how often actors justify their position in a speech, refer to the common good, show respect towards other groups, demands, and counterarguments and make a constructive proposal of how the

A Preface to Studying Deliberation Empirically    659 conflict can be solved. Deliberative quality is also analyzed at the level of individual capacities and dispositions, rather than as intersubjective and relational dynamics (see Schneiderhan and Khan, this volume, Chapter 35). This poses particular problems for analyzing deliberative action in a systemic context. Indeed, studying the quality of deliberative systems requires a novel set of methodological tools, a point that will be addressed below. As documented in various chapters of this Handbook, the instruments mentioned before have enabled researchers to peer in various venues, such as parliamentary debates, discussions in deliberative mini-​publics, and even discussions on the Internet. Most recent research has also begun to link the quality of deliberation with outcomes, most notably with opinion change. Results are not conclusive, but there is some evidence that opinion change can be partly attributed to a systematic, justificatory and argument-​ based component and not to undesirable group dynamics such as group polarization or social conformity pressures (Gerber et al. 2016; see also Siu 2009; Westwood 2015). While the sophistication of quantitative approaches to measuring deliberation has increased over the years (see e.g. Gerber et al. 2016; Esterling et al. 2018), they nonetheless confront two major challenges. On the one hand, quantitative work on deliberative processes still struggles with the challenge of causality. In this Handbook (Chapter 42), Esterling discusses the difficulties of (experimental) research designs to make causal inferences whether deliberation really made a difference. One problem is that many “deliberative experiments” are “package treatments”—​involving information, deliberation, and expert-​questioning—​which do not allow to isolate the exact causal effect of the deliberative process in the small discussion groups (see also Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer 2011). While some scholars have speculated that it may be the information component that drives opinion change and knowledge gains, others have claimed that the causal factor is expert questioning and reason-​giving. This makes it indeed imperative to disentangle the impact of discussion from information and expert effects. On the other hand, the quantitative orthodoxy in studying deliberative quality has come under attack from qualitative researchers. As King (2009, 6) argues, Habermasian discourse ethics “is interested in the intersubjective achievement of understanding and process of decision-​making.” Therefore, a proper evaluation of deliberative quality must assess “how this is perceived by other participants—​not merely the subjective speculations of outside observers” (King 2009, 6). Bevir and Ansari (2012) have provided the most vigorous attack on the quantification of deliberative quality. They argue that if deliberation realizes the goal of political legitimacy and emancipation, then we must treat deliberating actors as “intentional actors with the capacity for creative reasoning and agency.” (3). Interpretive approaches which emphasize local reasoning and challenge the fallacy of expertise “are therefore more consonant with both the concepts and the practical aims of deliberative democracy.” It is important to note that Bevir and Ansari do not fundamentally object to quantifying strategies, as long as coding efforts are based on careful interpretation by external coders. For instance, they acknowledge that the DQI “implicitly incorporate[s]‌interpretive approaches.”

660   André Bächtiger Nonetheless, quantitative measures such as the DQI have largely obscured the meanings of deliberative acts. Interpretation is made by external coders, and the focus of these instruments is usually on the variation of proportions of the different indicators of deliberative quality (whereby the size of the proportions is affected by different institutional incentives and norms). What is not considered is that the indicators of deliberative quality—​such as justification and respect—​may take on different meanings depending on the context (see also Schäfer 2015, 49). Moreover, participants’ (and observers’) perceptions of the meanings of deliberative acts might vary as well. A respectful utterance, for instance, may be perceived differently by different participants, or it may have multifaceted meanings which cannot be captured by a single code determined by external observers. This deficiency is increasingly addressed by recent research. Jacquet (2017), for instance, has explored why some citizens agree to participate in deliberative mini-​publics while others refuse. Rather than focusing on survey-​based evaluations, he concentrates on the diversity of meanings that citizens attribute to participating in a mini-​public. The major finding is that the motives for deliberative activity seem to be much more varied than conventional and survey-​based questionnaires suggest:  (non-​)participation in mini-​publics is driven by basic attitudes and perceptions of what democracy is and how it functions. More research of this kind is needed, especially in order to analyze opinion and preference transformations. Nonetheless, it seems misleading to put all our eggs in the qualitative basket. Following Bevir and Bowman (this volume, Chapter 43), a “problem-​based” approach to studying deliberation puts us in a better position to deal with the complexities of deliberation in various contexts than a one-​sided qualitative or quantitative approach, especially when it comes to studying deliberative action in a systemic context. While a purely quantitative approach will never be able to unravel the perceptions and meanings that participants attach to deliberative and other communicative acts, a purely qualitative research strategy might be blind to deliberative dynamics as well as to complex transmissions in deliberative systems which participants may not always see through. Here, we need computer-​assisted tools and big data analyses to understand transmissions and dynamics which happen at a supra-​individual level. Notice, however, that for a long time there was general agreement that a complex construct such as deliberation could only be assessed by human interpreters and manual coding. Yet recent years have seen major advances in computer-​assisted coding. Gold et al. (2017), for instance, have developed novel tools that combine linguistic and statistical cues to analyze the deliberative quality of communication automatically. To date, there are still very few empirical examples of studying deliberative systems empirically (a noteworthy exception is Stevenson and Dryzek 2014). This may not be so surprising, since the systemic approach poses new challenges to understanding and measuring deliberative quality (see also Ercan, Hendriks, and Boswell 2017). If deliberative acts can occur in distributed ways across space and time, then “indexing” deliberative quality becomes a demanding exercise. As mentioned before, when studying deliberative capacities and dispositions at an individual level, a measurement instrument such as the DQI is not well suited to capturing the qualities of distributed

A Preface to Studying Deliberation Empirically    661 deliberation. Under such conditions, deliberative researchers might need to develop new tools or borrow methodological tools from other disciplines—​such as network analysis—​in order to capture deliberative quality at the level of democratic systems (Bächtiger and Parkinson forthcoming).

References Baccaro, L., Bächtiger A., and Deville, M. (2016). Small Differences That Matter: The Impact of Discussion Modalities on Deliberative Outcomes. British Journal of Political Science, 46: 551–​66. Bächtiger, A. and Parkinson, J. (forthcoming). Mapping and Measuring Deliberation: Micro and Macro Knowledge of Deliberative Quality, Dynamics, and Contexts (Oxford:  Oxford University Press). Bevir, M. and Ansari, N. (2012). Should Deliberative Democrats Eschew Modernist Social Science? Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, March 22–​24, 2012, Portland, Oregon. Black, L. W., Burkhalter, S., Gastil, J., and Stromer-​Galley, J. (2011). Methods for Analysing and Measuring Group Deliberation. In The Sourcebook for Political Communication Research: Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques, ed. E. P. Bucy and R. L. Holbert (New York: Routledge), 323–​45. Dryzek, J. S. and Niemeyer, S. (2006). Reconciling Pluralism and Consensus as Political Ideals. American Journal of Political Science, 50: 634–​49. Ercan, S., Hendriks, C., and Boswell, J. (2017). Studying Public Deliberation after the Systemic Turn: The Crucial Role for Interpretive Research. Policy and Politics, 45: 195–​212. Esterling, K. M., Neblo, M. A., and Lazer, D. M. (2011). Means, Motive, and Opportunity in Becoming Informed about Politics:  A Deliberative Field Experiment with Members of Congress and Their Constituents. Public Opinion Quarterly, 75: 483–​503. Esterling, K. M., Fung, A., and Lee, T. (2018). Modeling Persuasion within Small Groups, with an Application to a Deliberative Field Experiment on U.S. Fiscal Policy. http://​dx.doi.org/​ 10.2139/​ssrn.2528273 Gerber M., Bächtiger, A., Shikano, S., Reber, S., and Rohr, S. (2016). Deliberative Abilities and Influence in a Transnational Deliberative Poll (EuroPolis). British Journal of Political Science, online, https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S0007123416000144. Gerring, J. and Yesnowitz, J. (2006). A Normative Turn in Political Science? Polity, 38: 101–​33. Gold, V., El-​Assady, M., Hautli-​Janisz, A., Bögel, T, Rohrdantz, C., Butt, M., Holzinger, K., and Keim, D. (2017). Visual Linguistic Analysis of Political Discussions: Measuring Deliberative Quality. Digital Scholarship Humanities, 32: 141–​58. Hibbing, J. and Theiss-​Morse, E. (2002). Stealth Democracy:  Americans’ Beliefs about how Government Should Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Holzinger, K. (2001). Verhandeln statt Argumentieren oder Verhandeln durch Argumentieren? Eine empirische Analyse auf der Basis der Sprechakttheorie. Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 42: 414–​46. Jacquet, V. (2017). Explaining Non-​Participation in Deliberative Mini-​Publics. European Journal of Political Research, 56: 640–​59. King, M. (2009). A Critical Assessment of Steenbergen et  al’s Discourse Quality Index. Roundhouse, 1: 1–​8.

662   André Bächtiger Neblo, M. A., Esterling, K. M., Kennedy, R. P., Lazer, D. M. J., and Sokhey, A. E. (2010). Who Wants To Deliberate—​And Why? American Political Science Review, 104: 566–​83. Niemeyer, S. (2011). The Emancipatory Effect of Deliberation: Empirical Lesson from Mini-​ Publics. Politics and Society, 39: 103–​40. Ryan, M. and Smith, G. (2014). Defining Mini-​Publics. In Deliberative Mini-​Publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process, ed. K. Grönlund, A. Bächtiger, and M. Setälä (Colchester: ECPR Press), 9–​26. Schäfer, A. (2015). Zwischen Repräsentation und Diskurs:  Zur Rolle von Deliberation im parlamentarischen Entscheidungsprozess (Wiesbaden: Springer). Siu, A. (2009). Look Who’s Talking:  Examining Social Influence, Opinion Change and Argument Quality in Deliberation. PhD dissertation, Stanford University. Steenbergen, M. R., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli M., and Steiner J. (2003). Measuring Political Deliberation: A Discourse Quality Index. Comparative European Politics, 1: 21–​48. Stevenson, H. and Dryzek, J. S. (2014). Democratizing Global Climate Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Stromer-​Galley, J. (2007). Measuring Deliberation’s Content:  A Coding Scheme. Journal of Public Deliberation, 3: Article 12. Thompson, D. (2008). Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 497–​520. Warren, M. E. and Mansbridge, J. (2013). Deliberative Negotiation. In Negotiating Agreement in Politics: Report of the Task Force on Negotiating Agreement in Politics, ed. J. Mansbridge and C. J. Martin (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association), 86–​120. Westwood, S. J. (2015). The Role of Persuasion in Deliberative Opinion Change. Political Communication, 32: 1–​20.

Chapter 42

Deliberati on a nd Ex perimenta l  De si g n Kevin M. Esterling

Like much of the research on small group dynamics in social psychology, researchers in the field of empirical deliberation wish to understand the determinants of group discourse. Deliberation research is specifically motivated, however, by a normative goal of discovering ways to make group discussion approximate ideals for rational communication (Lupia 2008). There are many reasons why we would want to know about the causes of rational discourse. Knowledge of the circumstances that induce rational deliberation can guide philosophical debates regarding how ideals can inform practice and vice versa; can be valuable for empirical researchers interested in understanding the cognitive and social underpinnings of small group communication; and can guide nonprofits and government agencies interested in creating citizen forums that can help to inform the public agenda with considered public opinion. Researchers in the field of empirical deliberation have studied a number of factors that can explain the nature of discussion within small groups, and in particular institutional and group contextual features that can induce constructive and rational discourse (Caluweerts and Ugarizza 2012; Hangartner et al. 2007). These features include institutional factors such as the voting or decision rule, the amount and nature of information provided through background reading materials, or the presence of trained moderators who can guide discussion and set normative expectations. Other factors include group and contextual features such as the demographic or ideological composition of the group membership or the policy-​based or emotional frames that provide context to the discussion. This chapter describes the logic of when and how one can make a causal inference regarding the impact of alternate institutions and group contexts on deliberation. To describe this logic I rely on the potential outcomes framework (Rubin 1974; Holland 1986), which focuses attention on the research design of a study and the assumptions that are necessary to state a causal inference given a particular design (Morgan and Winship 2007; Gerber and Green 2012). The potential outcomes framework can be applied to

664   Kevin M. Esterling both randomized experimental designs and to quasi-​experimental or natural experimental designs (Dunning 2008). Reference to the potential outcomes framework will not in and of itself make causal statements regarding one’s research findings compelling. Indeed, the main benefit of the framework is to show how especially hard it is to identify causal effects when doing experimental research on human subjects. And this is especially true for deliberation research that by necessity must rely on group-​based interventions. In a standard experimental design, a single person is administered a specific treatment. In a deliberation experiment, by contrast, the treatment is administered to groups of people who must interact with each other to determine the nature of the intervention, and some of them may seek to alter or even evade the treatment or the administration of the research design. Sometimes deliberation experiments are conducted in collaboration with a non-​ academic partner who may have their own agenda and might not share an interest in adhering to an experimental protocol. The potential outcomes framework helps to expose just how strong a researcher’s assumptions must be in order to credibly claim the discovery of a causal effect for deliberative interventions.

Why Experiments? One can plan and conduct research intended to identify the empirical conditions for deliberation in two canonical ways. In the first approach, researchers investigate the causes of an effect, which for simplicity I will label the “associational” approach; in the second, which I will label the “experimental” approach, researchers investigate the effects of a cause (Holland 1986). The associational approach makes use of a measurement strategy to distinguish deliberative from non-​deliberative outcomes within a specific setting, perhaps among those discussions that occur in the everyday practice of democracy, and then conducts a set of tests to distinguish the contextual features associated with the former but not the latter. This approach is interested in identifying the (perhaps many) causes of deliberation; that is, it focuses on the causes of an effect. This associational approach to identifying the conditions that foster deliberation is extremely valuable for generating hypotheses regarding the empirical circumstances for deliberation. One limitation, however, is that without including or exploiting a manipulation in the research design, associational methods can only identify those factors that are correlated with deliberation: they cannot identify the causes of deliberation. For example, they cannot rule out the possibility that people with an (unmeasured) inclination to engage in deliberative exchanges are attracted to some institutional settings or group compositions but not to others, and would deliberate just the same under any circumstances. In other words, under associational methods, we generally do not know how participants in one context would have deliberated if they had been exposed to a different context.

Deliberation and Experimental Design    665 In the experimental approach, which looks at the effects of a cause, the researcher is primarily interested in whether a specific manipulation is causally related to deliberation. As in the associational approach, the researcher compares the nature of discussions that occur under varying conditions, but focuses on those settings where the participants cannot themselves choose which of the specific conditions will structure their discussion. If the procedures that assign participants to conditions are such that the participants who are exposed to each condition are otherwise similar to each other, and if deliberation is observed in one condition but not in the other, then the observer may have compelling evidence of a causal effect of deliberation.1 This method likely does not identify the specific mechanism or mediating factors that drive the causation for a given manipulation within an experiment, but it can identify the manipulated group composition or institutional setting as a “black box” cause of deliberation (Imai et al. 2011). For simplicity, I am grouping quasi-​experimental methods, which rely on interventions that are not under the researcher’s control, with traditional experimental methods where the researcher has control over assignment of participants to the intervention, but only for those studies where the naturally occurring assignment has arguably the same properties as a randomization (Dunning 2008). A more inclusive term might be “design-​based” methods, where the analysis leverages an exogenous manipulation to identify causal effects.2

Examples The experimental approach to identifying the causal effects of deliberation requires a research design that in some way can ensure that participants exposed to different conditions are otherwise similar to each other. The most common design-​based approach to causal inference relies on random assignment, since a randomized assignment process can ensure that participants assigned to different settings are otherwise similar, at least in expectation. Randomized experimental designs might be face-​to-​face interactions in the laboratory or in naturalistic settings such as public forums used in the practice of everyday democracy, or they might involve virtual interactions via online platforms. The experimental logic also can apply to non-​randomized or quasi-​experimental settings where the assignment process is somehow unrelated to the characteristics of participants. I give a formal statement for the identification of causal effects using the potential outcomes framework in the next two sections, but examples here will lend some concreteness. For an excellent summary of recent deliberation experiments, see Karpowitz and Mendelberg (2011). One common interest of empirical deliberation is the effect of an institutional rule on discourse (e.g. Morrell 1999). For example, Baccaro, Bächtiger, and Deville (2014) randomly assigned participants to three different types of discussion modalities or procedural rules similar to the kinds found in Robert’s Rules of Order. In one of these,

666   Kevin M. Esterling participants were asked to formulate and publicly justify their opinions before the discussion began, while in the others participants were not asked to make public justifications for their predispositions. Sharing justifications might enhance information sharing among the group members but at the same time might lead participants to begin the discussion with relatively more-​entrenched positions. The study recruited 122 students in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss topics related to an extension of political rights of foreigners: participants were assigned to one of twelve discussion groups, with four groups for each treatment condition. Each discussion lasted about seventy-five minutes. Another topic of interest for those who study empirical deliberation includes group contextual or group compositional effects. For example, Farrar et al. (2009) examine whether the balance of opinions within a group on two discussion topics, the Iraq war and free trade/​NAFTA, affects participants’ post-​discussion preferences. This study was a part of the Deliberative Poll project entitled “By the People” sponsored by McNeil/​ Lehrer Productions. The researchers randomly assigned participants to discussion groups of about ten people each; through sampling variation to these small groups participants were randomly assigned to different compositions of pre-​discussion group opinions. Participants came from ten communities across the US; they were recruited using survey research methods and were offered $75 to participate. Each participant was provided background reading material. About 150 participants were recruited to each of 10 sites and about one half attended at each site. Similarly, Esterling, Fung, and Lee (2015) evaluated the impact of group ideological composition on indexes of process satisfaction and of policy satisfaction at a large-​ scale town hall event on healthcare reform hosted by AmericaSpeaks. Participants were seated at tables with ten participants: assignment to groups was again a result of sampling variation, although this was due to natural experimental design rather than by random assignment. The authors provide an extensive appendix comparing the properties of the table assignments to what would have been realized had the assignment been truly random. AmericaSpeaks provided background reading material, hosted expert presentations, and supplied a trained moderator at each table. The statistical model tests for the presence of an expected nonlinear relationship between disagreement and satisfaction with deliberation. Some studies consider the interaction between different features or conditions. For example, Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and their co-​authors (e.g. Mendelberg, Karpowitz, and Goedert 2014; Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker 2012)  have investigated the conditions that enhance or reduce gender inequality in deliberation, and in particular whether the gender composition of the discussion group interacts with the institutional decision rule to enhance or suppress women’s participation in deliberation. In an experiment with a two-​factor, between-​subjects design, 470 participants were recruited and randomly assigned to ninety-four groups of five discussants each having one of six gender compositions (from zero to five women in a five-​person group) and one of two decision rules (either unanimity or majority rule). In the experiment, each group was instructed to conduct a “full and fair” discussion and choose the “most just” principle of redistribution of the earnings that participants received from performing experimental

Deliberation and Experimental Design    667 tasks. The discussions were audio-​recorded and the study outcomes include the proportion of the conversation that women accounted for and the frequency with which women were nominated as the most influential person in a group. Likewise Druckman and Nelson (2003) examine how interpersonal conversations can affect the well-​known framing effect in survey research. In this study, the elite frames came from information the researchers provided to participants in the form of newspaper articles, and the study investigated whether this information interacts with group compositions when participants are allowed to discuss the issue with each other prior to filling out a survey response. This small-​group interaction was only partially a deliberative exercise, in that the discussions were not moderated nor did the researchers establish norms for regulating the discussion; the sessions nevertheless offer a strong contrast with ordinary procedures of survey research which require respondents to consider issues within a social vacuum. Participants were randomly assigned to small groups to discuss the issue of campaign finance reform. In some of the groups everyone read articles with the same frame (homogeneous groups) and in others some were exposed to one frame and others to a competing frame (mixed groups). Comparison between these types of groups test conditions for whether deliberation can enhance or eliminate framing effects. A number of researchers have evaluated whether and how deliberation can function in online platforms (Lupia 2008), which offer the potential for enabling more representative distributions of participants (Neblo et  al. 2010). For example, Price and Capella (2005) study the effect of varying the mix of expert and non-​expert participants on participants’ satisfaction with the discussion and with the policy outcomes, as well as their substantive views on healthcare reform. Similarly a series of papers (Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer 2011a; 2011b; Minozzi et al. 2015; Lazer et al. 2015) study the effect of participation in an online deliberative town hall led by the participants’ member of Congress, where the outcomes include political knowledge, efficacy, and policy attitudes compared to those randomized only to receive reading material and to those randomized to receive no discussion or reading material. Bächtiger, Steenbergen, Gautschi and Pedrini’s study of deliberation in Swiss direct democracy had a similar design, where participants were randomized to true control, background reading material, and to a discussion group that also included reading material (Bächtiger et al. 2011).

The Potential Outcomes Framework In each of these examples, the researchers made use of a research design that included a manipulation that assigned participants to conditions as a way to evaluate the effect of the manipulation on deliberative outcomes. The potential outcomes framework provides the formal reason for how a research design can identify a causal effect (Morgan and Winship 2007). This framework is most closely associated with the work of the

668   Kevin M. Esterling statistician Donald Rubin (1974) and is sometimes referred to as the Rubin Causal Model (Holland 1986). To introduce the potential outcomes framework, it helps to assume for now that we can run an ideal experiment to investigate an outcome of interest; by “ideal” I mean that the experimental administration goes as planned and the participants always behave exactly according to the experimental protocol. Further assume there is a manipulation with only two possible conditions, which for illustrative purposes will be a mixed discussion groups condition (condition M) and a homogeneous groups condition (condition H). This is a “two-​cell” or “two-​arm” experiment; often, researchers will label one condition a “treatment” and the other a “control.” Rubin defines a causal effect at the individual level—​specifically as the difference between the outcome one would observe if a participant were exposed to condition M and the outcome one would observe from that same person if exposed to condition H. Rubin’s key insight is that, before the experiment is run, each participant could be assigned to either condition, and hence potentially has an outcome that would be realized in each condition, that is, whether exposed to a mixed group or a homogeneous group. Hence, the difference in the participant’s potential outcomes is, in a conceptual sense, the causal effect for that individual. And one can define the causal effect for groups of participants by taking an expectation, such as an average, across these individual-​level potential causal effects. Before the experiment is run the potential outcomes exist for each participant, one potential outcome for each of the two conditions in the ideal experiment comparing H to M, and the causal effect is conceptually well-​defined both for individuals and for collections of individuals. The problem for research is that, once the experiment is run, the participant only reveals one outcome, that of the condition to which they were exposed, and not the outcome in the other condition, which remains only a counterfactual. Since it is not possible for the participant to be in both condition M and condition H simultaneously we can never directly observe a counterfactual comparison for any individual or groups of individuals. So an experimenter fundamentally must begin any analysis lacking at least half of the information needed to determine the effect she or he is interested in. Within the potential outcomes framework, the purpose of an experiment is to find some way to fill in the missing potential outcomes credibly in order to identify the counterfactual, and to be clear about the procedures and assumptions one must use in order to fill in the missing data. Through an experimental design, the researcher is able to identify an alternate participant or participants similar to those in condition M among those in condition H, and vice versa, and use the observed outcomes to fill in the missing outcome data for each. If the participants in condition M had identical counterparts in condition H, then the responses of these counterparts would equate to the potential outcomes of the participants exposed to condition M had they themselves been assigned to condition H. Generally, however, the random assignment process can only ensure that the two groups of participants are similar on average across the two conditions, not that each individual has an identical counterpart. Hence an experiment can define the counterfactual in terms of

Deliberation and Experimental Design    669 expectations across the two groups but not for any specific individual. For the example of the ideal two-​cell ideal experiment, the averages of the outcomes for participants in each group are well defined, and the difference between these two averages is known as the average treatment effect (ATE). Stating the causal effect in terms of potential outcomes is sometimes not intuitive for those trained in associational methods. Usually, researchers steeped in associational methods only consider, and indeed can only conceive of, the existence of one outcome for each participant. But the potential outcomes framework has the benefit of making explicit a definition of causality and what procedures and assumptions are required in order to identify a causal effect within that definition. The purpose of design-​based inference is not to find the state-​of-​art econometrics model to estimate correct model parameters and errors, but to develop an identification strategy that explicitly states the procedures and assumptions required to identify a causal effect, and in particular, the assumptions required to treat the revealed outcomes in the control condition as the counterfactual outcomes for those in the treatment condition.

Identification Assumptions and Strategies I introduced the potential outcomes framework within an example of an idealized experiment that required only the assumption that on average the participants in the M condition were similar to those in the H condition. But it is often the case that deliberation experiments depart from the ideal (Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer 2011a). This is largely because of the unfortunate necessity that to understand how people deliberate, we must use people as the participants in our research. People have agency in a way that plants, particles, or bacteria do not; plants, particles, and bacteria do not purposefully evade the treatments to which they are assigned, reassign themselves from one treatment condition to another, communicate the treatment to those in the control group, or get hurt or upset if they were assigned to condition H rather than M. Because of the many ways that humans can act contrary to a research design, many assumptions are required even to make the two-​cell, treatment-​control comparison appropriate. These assumptions are set out and described in Angrist, Imbens, and Rubin (1996). They are required for all types of experiments, human or non-​human, field or lab. In experiments where the researcher has full control over the participants, such as in a laboratory, many of these assumptions remain in the background, but they become more obviously important and binding in field experiments and other settings where the researcher has relatively little control. The first assumption is randomization of participants to treatment condition assignment. Randomization is the most compelling way available to create comparison groups that are arguably similar to each other. If one uses random assignment in the

670   Kevin M. Esterling experimental design this assumption can be met relatively easily, although it is always possible to do the randomization incorrectly through administrative error. The randomization assumption is more contentious in a quasi-​experiment or natural experiment, however, for example if the experiment involves a non-​academic partner who implements a different assignment method—​as was the case at an event hosted by the non-​profit organization AmericaSpeaks, at which the organization’s representatives assigned participants to discussion groups in the order that they arrived at the event, not by a randomization method. Esterling, Fung, and Lee (2015) examine the effect of small group ideological composition, and in an appendix set out the assumptions and evidence required to treat this assignment procedure as if it were random. The second assumption is known as the stable unit treatment value assumption, or SUTVA. Recall that the idealized experiment above had only two potential outcomes, one for the individual in condition M and one for condition H. SUTVA requires that the treatment the participant receives depends on their own random assignment, and not on the treatment assignment of anyone else in the experiment. If SUTVA is violated there is a different set of potential outcomes for each possible combination of assignments: the number of potential outcomes would grow exponentially with the size of the study group, and in any study of a worthwhile size would be too many to identify within a finite data set. SUTVA can be violated in many ways in a deliberative experiment. For example, if participants assigned to a mixed group walked across the room at a public forum and communicated with those in a homogeneous group, then there would be a spillover from the treatment to the control group or vice versa. If possible, it is best to physically design a deliberative experiment to reduce spillover: for example, by holding the discussions in different rooms or at least at tables out of earshot from each other. More problematic is that any discussion in a group is inherently an interaction between the participants. Because the conversation is constructed among the specific participants who happen to be assigned to the group, these participants determine the treatment to which the others in the group are exposed. Thus while participants might be comparable in expectation between treatment and control arms, in any given randomization there might be some participants who are especially persuasive, or especially charismatic, and so can determine the size of the treatment effect. So while the treatment effect is well-​defined for a given randomization, the effect itself will vary across randomizations, and so the best remedy for this is to conduct replications to get a sense of the distribution of treatment effects across samples. The third assumption is known as the exclusion restriction, which requires that assignment to treatment conditions has no effect on participants’ potential outcomes other than through the treatment. This assumption would be violated if, for example, a participant assigned to an information-​only condition became sad or upset not to have been assigned to a condition offering the chance to interact with others in a discussion group, and in consquence treated the reading material less seriously. In clinical studies the exclusion restriction is often met with blinding, where the subjects assigned to a control condition are given a sugar pill or its equivalent so that none of the subjects know

Deliberation and Experimental Design    671 their treatment arm assignment. Blinding is generally not possible in a deliberation experiment since it is not possible to mask whether one is assigned to a discussion or not, or to a mixed or homogeneous group. These three assumptions (randomization, SUTVA, and the exclusion restriction) need to be considered even in an experiment (such as in a laboratory setting) where the researcher has considerable control over the behavior of participants, since it might still be possible to incorrectly randomize from an administrative error, or might not be possible to prevent participants from affecting each other or reacting emotionally to the study. Many deliberative experiments are conducted in the field, however, and so take place in settings where the researchers do not have full control over participants’ compliance with the protocol. Indeed, it is generally either impractical or unethical to compel participants in a field experiment to conform to the study protocol. In the field, researchers typically are able only to encourage participants to engage in their assigned discussion groups, and there is considerable scope for problems to arise. For example, someone assigned to read discussion materials and participate in a deliberative session might read the materials but then not show up to the session, thus evading the deliberative treatment. Or a person assigned to a mixed group discussion table might be conflict averse and decide to move to a discussion table of like-​minded others.3 In the field of experimental deliberation, researchers typically address these additional complications over non-​compliance in one of two ways. First, under randomization participants who are assigned to each condition can be treated as equivalent to each other, even if with non-​compliance some in each condition may not have had the full exposure to the intended treatment. Since by randomization the mix of participants conforming and not conforming to the protocol should be the same in each condition, the “as-​assigned” comparison, known as the intention-​to-​treat (ITT) estimand, is a valid comparison. Since not everyone will have received the full exposure to the treatment, generally (but not always4) the ITT will underestimate the true effect of the treatment and hence can be taken to be a lower-​bound estimate of the causal effect. The second approach makes use of the instrumental variables (IV) method or its extensions (Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer 2011a).5 The IV approach makes two additional assumptions to identify a causal effect (Angrist, Imbens, and Rubin 1996). To state these assumptions, however, requires that we make a distinction among four possible types of participants: (1) compliers, who always participate in the experiment according to their assignment; (2) never takers, who participate only in the control but not the treatment; (3) always takers, who participate only in the treatment but not the control; and (4) defiers, who participate in the treatment only when assigned to the control and in the control only when assigned to the treatment. Given these four possible types of participants we can state two additional assumptions and give a precise interpretation of the meaning of the IV estimator. Monotonicity requires that there be no defiers, and relevancy requires that there be at least one complier.6 In the IV method, using these assumptions we can identify the causal effect for compliers (the complier average causal effect or CACE, also known as

672   Kevin M. Esterling a local average treatment effect or LATE) by reasoning through how each of the four types of participants (compliers, never takers, always takers and defiers) contribute to the magnitude of the (usually well-​defined) ITT effect. First, participants who are never takers are never exposed to the treatment, and so they have zero treatment effect and make no contribution to the ITT; always takers are always exposed to the treatment and so make zero contribution to the ITT as well. Under monotonicity, defiers do not even exist. Thus, the ITT effect is entirely due to the effect of the treatment on compliers, and the size of the ITT is simply the size of the CACE times the proportion of compliers in the sample. Under randomization, we can estimate the proportion of compliers very easily by observing the proportion of participants assigned to the treatment condition who actually participated and the proportion of participants assigned to the control condition who did not participate. Thus, under instrumental variables, the CACE (which is unknown) is simply equal to the ITT (which is identified in the data) divided by the observed proportion of compliers in the sample (which is also identified in the data). The CACE estimand does not indicate the effect of the treatment on a random person drawn from the population, but is instead the effect of the treatment on the subpopulation of people who comply with experiments.7 Deliberation experiments, particularly those administered in real-​world settings outside of the lab, are especially vulnerable to deviations from ideal experiments. And so we often must rely on strong assumptions and careful designs in order to do our work.

Validity and Generalizability Generally, those who are motivated to study empirical deliberation harbor a hope of discovering circumstances that can be shown to be effective, and can be extended to the everyday world of political interactions in order to make our democratic discourse more rational. As is clear in the above discussion, researchers have much greater control over participants in the laboratory and so lab experiments tend to have high internal validity. However, the artificial setting raises a concern about external validity and whether the findings in the lab really would be replicated if put into the practice of everyday politics (McDermott 2011). And it is possible that participants behave differently in the lab than they would in a public forum or congressional town hall. Field experiments such as those reported by Farrar et al. (2009), Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer (2011b), and Esterling, Fung, and Lee (2015) offer a closer approximation to everyday politics but at the cost of less control. Even if one conducts a well-​designed experiment that can identify a causal effect, deliberation experiments generally must struggle with the issue of self-​selection in a way that is often more severe than is found in survey research (Luskin, Fishkin, and Jowell 2002; Fishkin and Luskin 2005; Fishkin 2009).8 The reason is that deliberation usually requires more time and effort than responding to a survey, and so the people who do

Deliberation and Experimental Design    673 participate in a deliberative experiment are the ones that enjoy deliberating enough to make a commitment of their time and effort. Thus, when comparing the policy views or knowledge gains of those who participated in a deliberation to those who did not, even when the counterfactual is well-​identified, we generally do not know if the intervention would have had the same effect on non-​deliberators had they only been somehow compelled to participate. Because of this self-​selection, in an experiment we often can identify only the sample average treatment effect (SATE) rather than the population average treatment effect (PATE) (Imai, King, and Stuart 2008). However, on the assumption that if and when deliberation were more broadly adopted then those who showed up to an experiment would likely be the same types who would show up to a real-​world deliberation, the SATE could turn out to be substantively the most interesting quantity. Finally, in addition to internal and external validity, researchers in empirical deliberation have to pay particular attention to epistemic validity, or the consistency of the manipulation with substantive theories of deliberation (Caluweerts and Ugarizza 2012). The substantive match between deliberative theory and experimental design is particularly urgent for empirical deliberation since, in contrast with much of the social psychological research on small group dynamics, deliberation experiments wish to evaluate conformity with a deep and elaborated philosophical ideal. If the manipulation, however, compares settings neither of which is an epistemically valid instance of deliberative circumstances, then it is not clear whether the results speak at all to the practice of deliberation. As Lupia (2008, 63) writes, “the key is not simply putting people in a place where others speak, it is putting them in situations where they want to pay attention to information.” Thus, arguments on whether deliberation does or not does not work in practice (Sunstein 2000; Sanders 1997) are less helpful than a focus on discovering what circumstances work better in practice than others. An assessment of epistemic validity largely depends on the formal properties of the discussion format itself, and in particular on whether the intervention is designed to recruit diverse participants, to help them gain knowledge and the capacity to engage the topic constructively, and has sufficient structuring through stated norms and active moderation to reasonably induce deliberation. But simply identifying the formal properties of a discussion and its context does not establish whether or not deliberation occurred. To address this, one can code the discussion itself to assess the extent to which discussion in a deliberative condition approximated normative ideals. In addition, in studies that compare discussion across deliberative institutional designs, this content coding can serve as an assessment of the merits of each design. There are a number of coding schemes available for this substantive assessment of the quality of deliberation, most notably the Discourse Quality Index (DQI) of Steiner et al. (2004), who developed a set of rules to code the individual speech acts that participants make within a discussion. The coding rules consider, among other things, the extent to which the speaker offers justifications for her or his statements; whether the justification is stated in terms of the common good rather than in group interests; and whether the speaker demonstrates respect to other groups and engages counterarguments. Stomer-​ Galley (2007) develops a coding scheme for speech acts that measures, among other

674   Kevin M. Esterling things, the extent participants engaged in reasoned opinions, offered evidence and authoritative sources to support their statements, engaged in disagreement, and directly engaged other participants. Esterling (2011) develops a coding to classify statements by whether they are evidence-​based or analytical falsifiable statements, as opposed to anecdotal and opinion statements.

Conclusion Using experimental design to evaluate the causes of deliberation holds great promise. Indeed, identifying institutions to induce more constructive or rational discourse in our politics may stand as one of the most pressing problems in applied political science and communication studies. Deliberation requires groups of people, however, and as a result there are many challenges to designing deliberative experiments so that they simultaneously approximate both normative and experimental ideals. The potential outcomes framework is especially useful not only as a guide to improving research designs but also as a constant reminder of the number of assumptions required in order to state a causal effect, and hence of how hard causal effects are to demonstrate in this context.

Notes 1. Note that this is an oversimplification in that there are other assumptions required for a causal effect to be identified, which I describe below. 2. There are alternate ways of identifying causality using qualitative methods such as ethnographic process tracing or interpretive methods, but these are outside of the scope of this chapter. 3. Non-​compliance of this sort in a deliberative experiment can badly undermine the study. Just one person switching from their randomly assigned group to one they self-​selected, would destroy not only their own randomized assignment but also all those at the group they migrated to, and all at the group they avoided. If there were 10 people in each group, a single non-​compliant participant could therefore destroy the randomization of 20 participants. This form of non-​compliance is especially easy at a public forum where participants are seated at adjacent tables. 4. If the exclusion restriction is violated, the ITT estimate can overstate the treatment effect (Hirano et al. 2000). 5. There are other identification strategies available (Morgan and Winship 2007; Keele and Minozzi 2013). For example, one can make use of matching methods (Sekhon 2009; Diamond and Sekhon 2007), where the researcher relies on observed covariates to make similar or “balanced” treatment and control groups. In this method, one can find units in the control group that are similar on observed covariates to each of the participants in the treatment group; then the comparison between the treatment units and the reconstructed control units identifies the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT). The matching approach requires an assumption of selection on observables, however, and has not widely

Deliberation and Experimental Design    675 used in deliberation research, perhaps because to date we have not discovered strong observable predictors of the propensity to deliberate. 6. Montonicity and relevancy are ensured in a lab experiment since in the lab the researcher has full control over participants’ compliance behavior. 7. In practice, deviations from the ideal experiment can create many complications that can require a modeling approach (Esterling, Neblo, and Lazer 2011a). 8. The standard Deliberative Poll (DP) uses random sampling from a population as a way to generalize to a larger population, and so can effectively measure considered public opinion in a way that is not possible in random dial surveys. The DP is not based on an experimental research design, however, and so does not identify the causal effect of deliberation treatment compared to a non-​deliberative control. As Luskin, Fishkin, and Jowell (2002) explain, DPs are typically accompanied by a separate random sample telephone interview done in parallel to the DP post-​deliberation survey to create a comparison group that is not exposed to deliberation. Since both those who are recruited to the DP and those who only receive the survey are drawn at random from the population, these two groups are randomly assigned and hence comparable. The standard DP design, however, only compares the post-​deliberation survey responses of those who participated to the control survey, but not those who were invited to a DP but did not show up, and hence only focuses on a non-​ randomly selected subgroup of the initial DP random sample. As a result, the treatment group and the control group are not comparable.

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676   Kevin M. Esterling Esterling, K. M., Neblo, M. A., and Lazer, D. M. J. (2011b). Means, Motive, and Opportunity in Becoming Informed about Politics: A Deliberative Field Experiment Involving Members of Congress and Their Constituents. Public Opinion Quarterly, 75: 483–​503. Esterling, K. M., Fung, A., and Lee, T. (2015). How Much Disagreement Is Good for Democratic Deliberation? Political Communication, 32: 529–​51. Farrar, C., Green, D. P., Green, J. E., Nickerson, D. W., and Shewfelt, S. (2009). Does Discussion Group Composition Affect Policy Preferences? Results from Three Randomized Experiments. Political Psychology, 30: 615–​47. Fishkin, J. S. (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fishkin, J. S. and Luskin, R. C. (2005). Experimenting with a Democratic Ideal: Deliberative Polling and Public Opinion. Acta Universitatis Szegediensis de Attila Jozsef Nominatae: Acta Juridica et Politica, 40: 284–​98. Gerber, A. S. and Green, D. P. (2012). Field Experiments: Design, Analysis, and Interpretation (New York: W.W. Norton). Hangartner, D., Bächtiger, A., Grünenfelder, R., and Steenbergen, M. R. (2007). Mixing Habermas with Bayes:  Methodological and Theoretical Advances in the Study of Deliberation. Swiss Political Science Review, 13: 607–​44. Hirano, K., Imbens, G. W., Rubin, D. B., and Zhou, X.-​H. (2000). Assessing the Effect of an Influenza Vaccine in an Encouragement Design. Biostatistics, 1: 69–​88. Holland, P. W. (1986). Statistics and Causal Analysis. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 81: 945–​60. Imai, K., Keele, L., Tingley, D., and Yamamoto, T. (2011). Unpacking the Black Box of Causality:  Learning about Causal Mechanisms from Experimental and Observational Studies. American Political Science Review, 105: 765–​89. Imai, K., King, G., and Stuart, E. A. (2008). Misunderstandings between Experimentalists and Observationalists about Causal Inference. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, 171: 481–​502. Karpowitz, C. F. and Mendelberg, T. (2011). An Experimental Approach to Citizen Deliberation. Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science, ed. J. Druckman, D. P. Green, J. H. Kuklinski, and A. Lupia (New York: Cambridge University Press), 258–​72. Karpowitz, C. F., Mendelberg, T., and Shaker, L. (2012). Gender Inequality in Deliberative Participation. American Political Science Review, 106: 533–​47. Keele, L. and Minozzi, W. (2013). How Much Is Minnesota Like Wisconsin? Assumptions and Counterfactuals in Causal Inference with Observational Data. Political Analysis, 21: 193–​216. Lazer, D. M., Sokhey, A. E., Neblo, M. A., Esterling, K. M., and Kennedy, R. (2015). Expanding the Conversation:  Multiplier Effects from a Deliberative Field Experiment. Political Communication, 32: 552–​73. Lupia, A. (2008). Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success. In Online Deliberation:  Design, Research, and Practice, ed. T. Davies and S. P. Gangadharan (Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information), 59–​69. Luskin, R. C., Fishkin, J. S., and Jowell, R. (2002). Considered Opinions: Deliberative Polling in Britain. British Journal of Political Science, 32: 455–​87. McDermott, R. (2011). Internal and External Validity. In Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science, ed. J. N. Druckman, D. P. Green, J. H. Kuklinski, and A. Lupia (New York: Cambridge University Press), 27–​40.

Deliberation and Experimental Design    677 Mendelberg, T., Karpowitz, C. F., and Goedert, N. (2014). Does Descriptive Representation Facilitate Women’s Distinctive Voice? How Gender Composition and Decision Rules Affect Deliberation. American Journal of Political Science, 58: 291–​306. Minozzi, W., Neblo, M. A., Esterling, K. M., and Lazer, D. M.  J. (2015). Field Experiment Evidence of Substantive, Attributional, and Behavioral Persuasion by Members of Congress in Online Town Halls. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112: 3937–​42. Morgan, S. L. and Winship, C. (2007). Counterfactuals and Causal Inference:  Methods and Principles for Social Research (New York: Cambridge University Press). Morrell, M. E. (1999). Citizens’ Evaluations of Participatory Democratic Procedures: Normative Theory Meets Empirical Science. Political Research Quarterly, 52: 293–​322. Neblo, M. A., Esterling, K. M., Kennedy, R. Lazer, D., and Sokhey, A. (2010). Who Wants to Deliberate—​and Why? American Political Science Review, 104: 566–​83. Price, V. and Cappella, J. N. (2005). Constructing Electronic Interactions Among Citizens, Issue Publics, and Elites: The Healthcare Dialogue Project. In Proceedings of dg.o2005, the 6th National Conference on Digital Government Research, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A., May 15–​18, 2005 (Marina del Rey, CA: Digital Government Research Center), 139–​40. Rubin, D. B. (1974). Estimating Casual Effects of Treatments in Randomized and Nonrandomized Studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 66: 688–​701. Sanders, L. M. (1997). Against Deliberation. Political Theory, 25: 347–​76. Sekhon, J. S. (2009). Opiates for the Matches: Matching Method for Causal Inference. Annual Review of Political Science, 12: 487–​508. Steiner, J., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M., and Steenbergen, M. R. (2004). Deliberative Politics in Action: Analyzing Parliamentary Discourse (Cambridge:: Cambridge University Press). Stromer-​Galley, J. (2007). Measuring Deliberation’s Content:  A Coding Scheme. Journal of Public Deliberation, 3(1): Article 12. Sunstein, C. R. (2000). Deliberative Trouble? Why Groups Go to Extremes. Yale Law Journal, 110: 71–​119.

Chapter 43

Qua litative As se s sme nt of Deliberat i on Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman

Introduction One of the most striking features of the literature on deliberative democracy is the diversity of academic disciplines and subdisciplinary fields that have contributed to it. As John Dewey (1938, 508) had already observed in the 1930s, “One of the chief practical obstacles to the development of social inquiry is the existing division of social phenomena into a number of compartmentalized and supposedly independent non-​ interacting fields.” We agree. The social sciences remain deeply divided.1 In this context, the inter-​or trans-​disciplinary character of the burgeoning deliberative democracy literature is a hopeful development. One thing that can help to explain the emergence of this fruitful dialogue is, we think, the broad commitment to “problem-​driven” (as opposed to “method-​driven” or “theory-​driven”2) research that is shared by many of those who have contributed to it. Deliberative democracy is, after all, a political project, and many of those who have contributed to the literature have done so out of a genuine interest in the desirability and viability of that project. Hence, in searching out and executing research projects related to it, they have, it seems to us, generally adopted whatever methods or approaches have appeared most suited to the substantive problems that interest them. In the spirit of such problem-​driven research, we’d like to consider three approaches to the assessment of deliberative participation: speech analysis, ethnography, and comparative case studies. (These are loose categories, corresponding to matters of emphasis.) In contemporary social-​science parlance, each of these would typically be termed “qualitative methods.” For convenience, we’ll stick with the “qualitative” label, but drop the “methods” label, speaking of qualitative “assessment” instead. Briefly, this is because all social research involves “qualitative” judgments and distinctions, and so we are content to use the “qualitative” label here. However, we’d like to avoid certain tendencies

Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation    679 sometimes associated with professional discussions of qualitative “methods”—​for example, the attempt to legitimate case-​study research by an appeal to its potential role in cumulative “theory-​building,” in the manner suggested, for instance, by Alexander George and Andrew Bennett (2005).3 So, we drop the “methods” label. Before proceeding, however, we enter a number of further observations, meant to clarify our reasons for making these choices. To begin with, it might be thought that there is some special affinity between “problem-​driven” research and “qualitative” approaches to social inquiry. Thus, it might be thought that our focus on qualitative approaches in this chapter is explained by our recognition of this affinity. As stated, however, the inference is too quick. As we construe it, problem-​driven research has no a priori commitment to any (kind of) “method,” whether “qualitative” or “quantitative.” Moreover, we regard “qualitative” and “quantitative” forms of research as “entangled”: what we have here are categories that are interdependent, which cannot be neatly separated from one another. In short, this is because all “quantitative” research entails categorization of one kind or another, and categorization is a “qualitative” exercise; it involves, as we said, “qualitative” judgments and distinctions. Likewise, much, perhaps even most or all, “qualitative” research entails that we render at least some (tacit) “quantitative” judgments.4 So, while we do focus on “qualitative” approaches to the study of deliberative participation here, we do not thereby wish to imply that problem-​driven research is, in some general sense, best conducted through the use of such “methods” as opposed to what would typically be denominated “quantitative methods.” Nevertheless, there are, indeed, obvious reasons to expect that exemplary “problem-​ driven” research will involve the use of what are typically denominated “qualitative methods”—​including, quite often, some combination of those we consider here. The all-​ too-​brief explanation for this is that, as the name intimates, problem-​driven research is committed to the following central ideas. To understand the problems of social life in a more adequate fashion (and, in some cases at least, to contribute to a better understanding of how to resolve them), these problems should “drive” our research, in at least two principal ways. First, the problems that actually arise in social life should drive the selection and articulation of the problems to be investigated in the first place. Second, the problems that actually arise in social life should drive the formulation and execution of the research plans that we develop to address those problems. What is more, the selection and articulation of those problems, qua genuine “problems,” demands that we develop a knowledge of the contexts in which they arise, just as the formulation and execution of research plans for addressing them does too. And, what is still more, a familiarity with those contexts is typically generated through the use of (something akin to) what are conventionally denominated “qualitative methods,” including, inter alia, those considered here: speech analysis, ethnography, and comparative case studies. For the problems of social life are often identified: by listening to, and trying to understand, relevant agents’ discursive presentations of their own “problems,” i.e. through at least a kind of “proto-​speech analysis”; by directly observing the relevant agents in their respective milieux and by trying to understand their own reasons for acting as they do, as

680    Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman well as their own interpretations of those reasons, i.e. through at least a kind of “proto-​ ethnography”; and by looking into particular instances of the problems in question, considering what is similar and/​or different about those cases, i.e. through at least a kind of “proto-​comparative case study analysis.” Again, however, recognizing this should not lead us to conclude that “problem-​driven” research is best conducted through the use of “qualitative methods” as opposed to “quantitative methods.” Instead, problem-​driven research holds that the problems at hand should, so to speak, dictate the research strategies to be used. And while the problems at hand might dictate the use of ethnographic research (“qualitative research”), they equally might dictate the use of survey research (“quantitative research”). These all-​too-​brief comments go some way to explaining why, in the present context at least, we prefer to avoid the “methods” label. Often, the notion of a “method” carries with it the connotation of a fixed “rule” or “procedure” for generating some valued outcome regardless of the context. Here, various mathematical examples suggest themselves. For instance: You want to arrive at the sum of a series of numbers (the valued outcome)? Well, there is a “method” to follow. First, recall the commutative property of addition. Addition is the same regardless of the order in which one adds the numbers, i.e. forwards addition is the same as backwards addition. Indeed, the numbers may be ordered as one wishes, or randomly; this has no bearing on the outcome. Moreover, the “rule” may be invoked, and so this “method” followed, regardless of the context. However, the kind of fixity that can be found in mathematics cannot be found in the social sciences: here, there are no hard-​and-​fast “rules” or “procedures,” and so “methods,” for generating our desired outcomes, e.g. “a knowledge of the context.” For again, in one case the pursuit of this outcome may demand a survey, while in another case it may demand ethnographic research. And so the pursuit of fixity in this area has consequently generated various intellectual pathologies. These sometimes take the form of methodological prescriptions or proscriptions concerning how to conduct valuable or legitimate “social science.” Witness, for instance, Mattei Dogan and Dominque Pelassy’s (1990, 121) declaration that “one can validly explain a particular case only on the basis of general hypotheses. All the rest is uncontrollable, and so is of no use.” We can think of this declaration as resulting from the pursuit of “fixity” in that Dogan and Pelassy are here postulating a general view about what constitutes “valid explanation” in comparative politics, independent of context. For them, such explanation can only be “valid” where it appeals to “general hypotheses”—​a formulation which suggests that, regardless of the details of the case and context at hand, the “explanation” for the outcome(s) witnessed in that “case” can best be articulated by an appeal to “general” (as opposed to, for instance, “case-​specific”) hypotheses. But why think this? What reasons do we have, based on experience and observation, for thinking that “valid explanations,” qua “explanations,” are always and everywhere best articulated by an appeal to “general hypotheses”? Surely it is the case that, in reference to many social outcomes, we can make “explanatory statements” that appeal to “analogous,” “comparable,” or, for the purposes at hand at least, “equivalent” cases, which help us to understand the case at

Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation    681 hand. But why presume that the most compelling, plausible, or valid explanation in any given case will always and everywhere necessarily take this form? (Doesn’t the appropriate level of generality for our explanations depend in part on the level of detail that we wish to explain? Aren’t explanations aimed at different levels of detail more and less appropriate for different “valid” intellectual aims?) The presumption, we think, is little more than dogma. In sum, because the notion of a “method” often carries with it the connotation of a fixed “rule” or “procedure” for generating some valued outcome regardless of the context (e.g. “valid explanation”), and because the pursuit of such fixity generates certain intellectual pathologies, we will drop the “methods” label. Again, we will instead speak of “approaches” to “qualitative assessment” of deliberative participation.

Three Approaches to Qualitative Assessment of Deliberative Participation We turn now to the three approaches.5 In considering them, we look at exemplars of problem-​driven research. In each case, the discussion is fairly detailed. Briefly, this reflects our belief that, as a general matter, illustrative examples are more useful for relaying exemplary research practices than are strict methodological prescriptions and proscriptions.6

Speech Analysis Real-​life group deliberations involve multiple forms of communication, including multiple forms of verbal communication. There are various ways of studying these forms of verbal communication and their impact on the quality of a deliberation. For simplicity, we group them under the umbrella of “speech analysis.” Speech analysis looks at how verbal communication is used to “say things” as well as to “do things.” It includes, but is not limited to, the analysis of speech styles, narrative frames, the illocutionary and perlocutionary force of our speech acts, narrative content and structure, speaker meaning and expression, and conversational dynamics and implicature. Jürg Steiner (2012, c­ hapter 2) provides an example of a study involving various instances of speech analysis.

Starting with a Problem Steiner begins with an apparent controversy in the literature on deliberative democracy. The controversy, he says, is about “whether in deliberation only rational arguments are allowed or whether personal stories can be told” (Steiner 2012, 88). The analysis is

682    Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman based on a series of deliberative experiments that he and his collaborators conducted in various countries, as well as other studies.

Exploring Informed Conjectures To begin with, Steiner (2012, 84) cites evidence indicating that, at both the “mass” and the “elite” levels, storytelling is not uncommon in (ostensibly or actually) “deliberative” settings. For instance, Steiner cites Jennifer Stromer-​Galley’s (2007) study of 23 online discussion groups, which focused on what to do with underutilized schools in Pittsburgh. Stromer-​Galley tracked the different sources that participants explicitly used to support their opinions. Personal stories or anecdotes constituted the most common source; some 33% of all “opinion claims” were supported by “personal stories or anecdotes” (Stromer-​Galley 2007, 10, 15). Likewise, there is some evidence that storytelling is not uncommon with elected officials as well (Steiner 2012, 84). Steiner points to a study of parliamentary debates in Switzerland by Bächtiger et al. (2010). In a debate concerning a language article in the constitution, 19% of the speech acts in the relevant committee sessions contained a personal story (Bächtiger et al. 2010, 217). What, though, of Steiner’s own deliberative experiments? Consider the Colombia experiments. Steiner’s collaborators ran 28 experiments there, with a total of 342 participants (Steiner 2012, 16). The participants were ex-​combatants from the internal armed conflict between guerrilla groups and paramilitary forces. The question for discussion was: “What are your recommendations so that Colombia can have a future of peace, where people from the political left and the political right, guerrillas and paramilitaries, can live peacefully together?” (Steiner 2012, 18). Here, “no briefing material was handed out on the topic to be discussed,” and the “moderators did not intervene to encourage deliberative behavior” (Steiner 2012, 18). The “discussion was free-​floating within a broadly formulated topic” (Steiner 2012, 19). As we note below, Steiner’s analysis suggests that storytelling was an important component of the discussion in response to this topic. Interestingly, however, so was explicit reason-​giving. In an earlier cross-​national study of parliamentary debates, Steiner et al. (2004, 129) found that 94.2% of the speech acts in the plenary debates that they analysed contained some level of “justification,” while 78.9% of the committee-​debate speech acts did too. But even in the “free-​floating” Colombia discussions, participants frequently stated opinions and attempted to justify them. We might have expected that ex-​combatants [many of whom are traumatized and have little formal education7] would be reluctant to express any opinions at all. Thus, it is not too bad that 59 percent of the speech acts contained an opinion and that it was in about two-​thirds of these speech acts that the opinions were justified in some way or another (Steiner 2012, 78).

Now, it is one thing to suggest that some mixture of storytelling and deliberation is apt to occur in a broad range of circumstances (at both the “mass” and the “elite” levels), quite

Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation    683 another to indicate why this may or may not be a good thing. Let us see how, here too, Steiner’s analysis can help. Steiner points to a study by Francesca Polletta and John Lee (2006). Here, the authors present findings from an online discussion of New York City residents concerning how to rebuild the World Trade Center site after the 9/​11 attacks. Polletta and Lee (2006, 707–​ 8) coded every opinion or preference that was advanced as either a “narrative claim” or a “non-​narrative claim.” The former term refers to “an opinion or preference that was advanced by way of a story” (Polletta and Lee 2006, 707). The latter refers to “those opinions [or preferences] that were combined with [an explicit] reason rather than a story” (Polletta and Lee 2006, 708). The authors first considered which participants used stories. There was no variation in storytelling by income, education, or race in this regard. Women, however, were 1.72 times as likely as men to make narrative rather than non-​narrative claims (Polletta and Lee 2006, 710). Interestingly, Polletta and Lee also found that “participants who saw themselves as having opinions or experiences that were not shared by others were more than five times as likely to make a narrative claim as were those who did not” (711). And they comment: That men and women, indeed, members of all demographic groups, used stories to advance unconventional opinions suggests that personal storytelling was seen as legitimate for such use. . . . For disadvantaged groups, then, there seems to be good precedent for using personal stories to convey marginalized needs and priorities—​since all groups are already using personal stories for just that purpose (Polletta and Lee 2006, 711).

Second, the authors analyzed how participants used stories. Their qualitative assessment revealed that The narrative character of people’s accounts . . . involved people imaginatively in experiences quite unlike their own. Especially when speakers saw their positions as controversial, personal stories served to illustrate the ramifications of a plan, authorize the speaker’s perspective where he or she lacked conventional expertise, challenge the universality of ostensibly universal principles, and push for the inclusion of new issues on the deliberative agenda (Polletta and Lee 2006, 713).

Thus, Polletta and Lee conclude that while deliberators did use stories to express their differences, “they also told stories to advance the mutual understanding that deliberative democrats want to see” (712). Third, Polletta and Lee analyzed how participants responded to stories, observing that narrative claims were 1.6 times as likely as non-​narrative claims to elicit a response (714). Participants were also more likely to “engage” narrative claims: [A]‌narrative claim was three times as likely as a non-​narrative claim to be responded to with agreement or disagreement, a request for clarification or elaboration, doubt

684    Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman about the claim’s generalizability or relevance, corroboration, or alleged misinterpretation. While a narrative claim that was responded to had an 85 percent chance of being engaged, a non-​narrative claim that was responded to had a 66 percent chance of being engaged (Polletta and Lee 2006, 714).

Now, what does Steiner’s analysis add to these authors’ findings?8 Here we stress just one insight from the Colombia experiments. “A necessary precondition for any deliberation,” Steiner (2012, 73) notes, “is that a dialogue takes place in which the participants engage with each other. When the participants speak only in a monological way,” as they sometimes did in the experiments, “one cannot talk of deliberation.” But personal stories can help participants move from a monological way of talking to a dialogical one. “Often, it was a personal story with a human touch that broke the ice. After such a story, ex-​combatants tended to be more willing to engage each other and to recognize each other’s identity and problems” (Steiner 2012, 84). In [one] particular experiment, the change from a monological to a dialogical pattern occurred with the sixth speaker, Javier, who presented his personal story of why he had joined the guerrillas. . . . Javier’s story of why he ultimately joined the guerrillas does not seem to have a clear point for the discussion topic assigned to the participants of the experiment. When he tells his story, he does not put forward any argument as to what his definition of the Colombian conflict is or what he thinks the solution should look like. . . . [But Javier’s personal story did precipitate an exchange with one other participant, Fernando,] who was the first one to refer to a previous speaker. . . . [S]‌omehow this exchange between Javier and Fernando broke the ice. From then on, participants talked with each other, taking up arguments that others had brought up (Steiner 2012, 73–​4).

Here, the telling of just one personal story shifted the discursive environment from one in which “the two sides talked across each other, not reacting to what previous speakers had said,” to one in which “participants talked with one another, taking up arguments that others had brought up” (Steiner 2012, 73–​4). This exchange “was a transformative moment, building up trust so that the monological talking could change into a dialogical pattern” (74). In our review of Polletta and Lee’s study, we saw that narrative claims were 1.6 times as likely as non-​narrative claims to elicit a response and that participants were also more likely to “engage” narrative claims. Bearing these findings in mind, we can see that Steiner’s account gives us a better “feel” for how storytelling can encourage greater communicative interactivity, even across deep divides.

The Value-​Added of the Qualitative Assessment To conclude, we return to the problem with which Steiner began: the apparent controversy about “whether in deliberation only rational arguments are allowed or whether personal stories can be told” (Steiner 2012, 88).

Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation    685 Empirically, the studies suggest that there is good reason to expect storytelling and explicit reason-​giving across a broad range of contexts, including even those with deep hostilities in the background. Normatively, they suggest that there is good reason to maintain that, in general, storytelling is compatible with, even helpful for promoting core values associated with, the deliberative-​democratic tradition (Steiner 2012, 84). Indeed, there is evidence that, in some circumstances at least, storytelling can be better than explicit reason-​giving at generating the kind of interactive dialogue without which “deliberation” is less likely to be meaningful or constructive. These findings give support to a normative position in which deliberation (understood as involving explicit reason-​ giving) has an appropriate role for stories, narratives, and testimonies (which do not necessarily involve such reason-​giving). What is more, observe the indispensable role of qualitative judgments and distinctions in the development of this position. For instance, recall that it was on the basis of their coding of participants’ opinions and preferences as being advanced either as “narrative claims” or as “non-​narrative claims”—​a qualitative distinction—​that Polletta and Lee (2006, 712) were able to conclude that participants “told stories to advance the mutual understanding that deliberative democrats want to see.” Likewise, recall how Steiner’s qualitative assessment of the Colombia experiments provided a basis for his conclusion that “ex-​combatants tended to be more willing to engage each other and to recognize each other’s identity and problems” after the telling of a “personal story” (Steiner 2012, 84). In other words, observe that Steiner was able to arrive at this conclusion on the basis of his collaborators’ direct observations of the “quality” (the live dynamics) of participants’ various discursive engagements.

Ethnography A second approach is ethnography. As we just saw, speech analysis may, of course, involve first-​hand observation of participants’ interactions. A  distinctive strength of ethnography, however, is that it permits researchers to engage in such observation in a sustained manner, allowing them to give particular attention to “questions of meaning, intention and purpose, [and] implicit rules” (Baiocchi 2005, 166). An example is Gianpaolo Baiocchi’s (2005) study of participatory budgeting (or Orçamento Participativo, OP) in Porto Alegre, Brazil during the period 1990–​2000.

Starting with a Problem The yearly OP decision-​making cycle is composed of a first plenary meeting in each of the city’s 16 districts, a series of intermediate meetings in each district, a second plenary, and the meetings of the Municipal Budget Council (Baiocchi 2005, 74–​7). At the first regional plenary, which is open-​entry, participants elect delegates to represent specific neighborhoods at the district-​level Budget Council. At the intermediate meetings of the Budget Council, the delegates learn technical criteria and discuss the needs and priorities in each district. These meetings come to a close when, at a second plenary meeting, the regional delegates vote on priorities and specific projects and select their

686    Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman two councilors to the Municipal Budget Council. The Municipal Budget Council reconciles the demands from each district with the available resources, proposes and approves a municipal budget, and submits it to the municipal legislature. “The OP,” as Baiocchi (2005, 19) describes it, “is part of an empowered participatory regime marked by a degree of openness to societal demands, few constraints on civil society, and bottom-​up empowered participation as a way to process societal demands” (emphasis added). Accordingly, Baiocchi’s research problem was: What is the pattern of state–​civil society interactions that occurs within this new regime, and how do these interactions impinge on the functioning of the state and of civil society?

Exploring Informed Conjectures Baiocchi’s ethnography is of “three districts that have distinct [civic] configurations during the period of the empowered participatory regime” (Baiocchi 2005, 20). His “argument is that each of these configurations sets the stage differently for civic practices within the overall empowered participatory regime” (Baiocchi 2005, 20). To see this, we first look at certain similarities across the three districts, then at the important differences. Regarding the similarities, Baiocchi (2005, 76) found that in all three districts, “deliberative discussions actually took place, with participants debating principles of distribution, sometimes shifting preferences and signaling these preferences in their questions and concerns.” But deliberation “was not a smooth process, and the crucial presence of ‘respected activists’ who created compromises that permitted it to continue helped make it happen” (139). Indeed, “there is a great deal of work at the edges of the meetings that help official deliberations function smoothly; these include informal discussions and negotiations, the recruitment of new participants and the coordination of activities between neighborhoods” (86). Baiocchi also reports that, in the course of his fieldwork, it became clear that OP meetings “were important sites for wider community discussions than simply deliberating on the city budget”; there were “many examples . . . of meetings becoming sites for open-​ended discussion of community problems over and above the stated agenda and the allocation of budgeting priorities” (97, 94). The “OP fostered a sense of the ‘public,’ defining ‘needs’ as collective problems and creating a common language in which to discuss them” (94). Indeed, in the three districts, the Budget Council “became a place in which citizens could discuss community affairs, plan and coordinate political and civic actions, debate district-​level and national political events, demand justification of government, and ultimately create lasting bonds with other activists” (95). Now consider the differences among the districts. “Each district was differently endowed with civil society organizations, and these were configured differently vis-​à-​vis the OP” (87; emphasis added). This impacted both the quality of the deliberations in each district and the extent to which activists made use of meetings “to conduct a variety of community activities beyond strictly budgeting matters” (23).

Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation    687 The Partenon district, the “highly organized and cohesive district,” “had a highly developed autonomous network in civil society, and one of its key organizations, the Popular Council, played a crucial role in coordinating demands, protecting smaller neighborhoods, and ‘working behind the scenes’ to prevent conflicts” (87). This district “clearly stands out from the other two districts . . . because of the Popular Council’s autonomous but constructive engagement with the OP” (87). The Popular Council worked “to improve the quality of discussions in the OP by increasing awareness of the needs and issues of the whole district” (87). “Respected activists also monitored meetings, with the objective of improving the quality of discussion and allowing the meetings to run smoothly” (88). This included “reminding participants of the rules” and “proposing compromises between different positions” (88). It also included the enforcement of “certain unspoken rules to prevent interruptions that might otherwise derail meetings” (105). For instance, “discussions that were deemed ‘overly personal,’ such as those having to do with particular complaints or personal intrigue, were usually interrupted” (107). These were treated as “open-​ended discussions deemed to be occurring ‘at the wrong place’ ” (107). “In the other two districts, the situation was rather different” (88). In Nordeste, the “cohesive but weakly organized district,” “individual neighborhood activists have far fewer district-​level networks and no parallel venue like the Popular Council to coordinate interests between neighborhoods outside of the OP” (87). As one delegate put it, “the OP is the only place in the district where everyone meets” (87). This fact “made it a setting of great importance to local activists. It was there that it was thought appropriate to air grievances and there that individuals’ reputations in the community were determined” (108). Thus, while “participants [in all three districts sometimes] interrupted meetings for discussions that were not public-​minded and sometimes ‘staged’ them for a private purpose rather than for public-​minded discussion,” this “took place most often in the Nordeste district, where there were no other places where the district as a whole could come together” (108). Furthermore, as compared to Partenon, delegates in Nordeste “had a more difficult time coordinating demands between neighborhoods” (89). “But there were,” at least, “conscious efforts by community activists to improve the quality of meetings in their district” (89). Finally, in Norte, the “highly organized and divided district,” “developed district-​ level networks do exist,” including a Popular Council (87). “However, here, because of their ties to other parties, these civil society actors [were] more often than not in direct conflict with the OP” (87). “Instead of promoting coordination with the OP, respected Popular Council activists from organized civil society networks created mistrust by derailing OP meetings”; “it was in this setting that deliberative breakdowns happened most frequently” (91). Furthermore, the noticeable absence of key local activists meant that the forum did not always assume the character of a “master public” for the district and that participants did not use it to coordinate activities and protests as effectively as in other districts (Baiocchi 2005, 107).

688    Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman

The Value-​Added of the Qualitative Assessment To recall, the research problem that drove Baiocchi’s ethnography was: What is the pattern of state–​civil society interactions that occurs within the new state–​civil society regime initiated by the OP, and how do these interactions impinge on the functioning of the state and of civil society? Summarizing, Baiocchi writes that his ethnography of the three districts shows that civic configurations matter, although not simply in terms of sheer “stocks of social capital.” The presence and alignment of civic networks are both crucial. Having an organized civil society that is integrated with participatory governance [Partenon] made for the most successful outcomes, but a civil society that is split and oppositional made for the worst [Norte]. Having virtually no civil society at all did not prevent the routinization of the OP, although the lack of an organized associational counterweight to the OP was detrimental to the meetings in Nordeste in comparison (Baiocchi 2005, 141).

Thus, “one insight from [Baiocchi’s] book is that whether participatory sites involve certain downsides or patterns of communication may have as much to do with the surrounding civil society as with the institutional participatory rules” (Baiocchi 2005, 147). To conclude, we again highlight the role of qualitative judgments and distinctions in generating these results. Recall that Baiocchi first stressed the similarities across the three districts, then the dissimilarities. Regarding the similarities, we note the crucial role of Baiocchi’s ethnographic observations in generating the conclusion, for instance, that, in all three districts, “deliberative discussions actually took place, with participants debating principles of distribution, sometimes shifting preferences and signaling these preferences in their questions and concerns” (2005, 76). Regarding the dissimilarities, we note the crucial role of Baiocchi’s ethnographic observations in generating the conclusion, for instance, that “each district was differently endowed with civil society organizations, and these were configured differently vis-​à-​vis the OP” (Baiocchi 2005, 87; emphasis added). More specifically, we note the role of his ethnographic observations in documenting how these different configurations impacted both the quality of the deliberations in each district and the extent to which activists made use of meetings “to conduct a variety of community activities beyond strictly budgeting matters” (Baiocchi 2005, 23). In sum, sustained, first-​hand observations of live meeting dynamics provided the basis for Baiocchi’s conclusions regarding, first, how civil society networks were configured vis-​à-​vis the OP and, second, how these configurations bore on the “deliberativeness” of the Budget Council meetings and on the extent to which community activities beyond strictly budgeting matters were conducted in those meetings.

Comparative Case Studies A third approach is to conduct comparative case studies.9 As we saw, Baiocchi’s ethnography involved a comparison of how the OP operated in three districts in Porto Alegre.

Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation    689 For present purposes, however, we use “comparative case studies” to refer to studies involving different cases of (actual or ostensible) “deliberative” participation in different contexts. Benjamin Goldfrank’s cross-​national study of three participatory experiments in three Latin American cities is an example.

Starting with a Problem “Much of the literature on participation programs in Latin America is limited to individual success stories that ignore the politics of participation, that is, the motivations and strategies of the key actors advocating and resisting participatory institutions” (Goldfrank 2011, 2). Accordingly, Goldfrank’s research problem was: “why do participatory experiments aid in deepening democracy in some cities but not in others?” (2) To shed light on it, Goldfrank compared “three initially similar participation programs that eventually yielded widely different results” (1–​2). At the head of “each experiment was a party that had won the mayor’s seat for the first time with the explicit promise of participatory reforms in order to deepen democracy”: the Workers’ Party in Porto Alegre, Brazil; the Broad Front in Montevideo, Uruguay; and the Radical Cause in Libertador, which is the largest municipality of the metropolitan area of Caracas, Venezuela (2). Each of these parties “promised to deepen democracy through new channels of citizen participation” (6). The reforms they pursued “bore a striking resemblance” (6). Specifically, there was a focus on holding public assemblies to encourage debate over community priorities for investments in public works projects and social programs, investments that represented between 10 and 20 percent of the budget in all three cities. Each administration included measures to decentralize administrative functions as well. To facilitate widespread citizen involvement, each city was divided into a roughly equal number of districts: sixteen in Porto Alegre, eighteen in Montevideo, and nineteen in Caracas. The new institutions eventually included both open public assemblies and also smaller district-​level forums for which participants were selected through some established procedure as representatives (Goldfrank 2011, 6–​7).

However, “while the participation programs originally looked quite similar and the [three respective parties basically] shared the same goals, the eventual design of the new institutions as well as the effects on the quality of democracy differed dramatically” (Goldfrank 2011, 8).

Exploring Informed Conjectures Above, we saw that the goals of the three parties were basically the same, and that the reforms they pursued “bore a striking resemblance.” However, two “crucial differences  . . .  changed the trajectory of the participation programs in the three cities” (Goldfrank 2011, 34). The first was “the degree of national decentralization of authority and resources to municipal government” in each country, the second “the level of institutionalization of the opposition parties in each city” (7, 66). “These factors strongly

690    Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman shaped the ability of the progressive incumbents to design meaningful participatory institutions that could attract sustained citizen involvement” (7). First, Goldfrank observes that “the national governments in Brazil and Uruguay had transferred more resources, responsibilities, and authority to the municipal level by the 1980s than had Venezuela’s government” (66). Hence, in Caracas “the municipal administration lacked the jurisdiction and the budget necessary to address the most important needs of local residents”; “the municipal government’s nearly empty coffers made it difficult to respond to citizen demands, thus reducing the power of participation” (72–​ 3). By contrast, in Porto Alegre and Montevideo “the incumbents benefited from an encompassing jurisdictional scope and a relatively large budget” (73). This “meant that the design of the participation programs could theoretically allow participants input over a wide range of issues and that the municipal governments had the resources to carry out these decisions, which would give the participants a taste of real power” (73). However, while this did eventually occur in Porto Alegre, it did not occur in Montevideo (73). To explain why, we need to turn to the second factor, “the level of institutionalization of the opposition parties in each city.” In Goldfrank’s terminology, “parties are considered to be more institutionalized the more they create ties of loyalty with their members, voters, and interest groups and the greater their organizational complexity” (73–​4). Now, The new incumbents in Montevideo and Caracas faced two historically dominant parties with roots in the early nineteenth and twentieth century, respectively, that had long-​established patron-​client networks, deep partisan identification among members and voters (creating distinct party cultures), and a custom of power sharing to exclude challengers. . . . In Porto Alegre, by contrast, the newly incumbent [Workers’ Party] represented just one more party within an array of weakly institutionalized parties. There were no historically dominant parties with robust party organizations, but rather several parties founded within the past decade, displaying little coherence or discipline despite one or more popular leaders (Goldfrank 2011, 75).

Accordingly, when the Broad Front in Montevideo and the Radical Cause in Caracas tried to introduce participation programs, “their opponents had more to lose” than did the opponents of the Workers’ Party in Porto Alegre, “and many more weapons at their disposal” (Goldfrank 2011, 75). “The opposition parties’ resistance was thus much stronger in Montevideo and Caracas, and it prevented the [Broad Front] and the [Radical Cause] from designing their participation programs as they originally intended” (75). Thus, the different trajectories in the three cities were as follows. The “weakly institutionalized parties in Porto Alegre, combined with Brazil’s high degree of decentralization, allowed the development of an open design” (8). This design “let participants engage in genuine deliberation, debating and voting on the most important city services and the most needed public works projects in their neighborhoods” (8). The open design of the city’s participatory budgeting

Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation    691 produced a virtuous cycle of deepening democracy. Participants saw the extension of the services they had prioritized, participated again, and revitalized old civic associations or formed new ones. Furthermore, the participants demanded greater transparency and more decision-​making power, supported higher taxes, obtained greater service provision, and intensified their involvement, thus continuing the cycle (Goldfrank 2011, 9).

Of the three cities, it was here that “the range of issues open to debate was . . . widest” (Goldfrank 2011, 9). In Montevideo, the pattern was significant decentralized authority in the context of a “strongly institutionalized opposition” (8). This “yielded a regulated design” (8). Here, the Broad Front “was essentially forced by the opposition to regulate participation” (8). Though “the range of issues [open to debate] was fairly broad, the role of citizens in decision-​making was limited”; “seats on district boards were set aside for party members, some to represent the incumbents and others reserved for the opposition” (8). “With this regulated design, participants saw little connection between their attendance at meetings and actual policy outcomes” (8). Accordingly, “residents had little incentive to become involved in the program, either individually or collectively” (8). Yet, the case was a “partial success”; though the Broad Front’s “participatory decentralization program failed to sustain a large number of diverse, representative participants, its municipal administrations did achieve substantial improvements in providing local infrastructure and services” (162). Finally, the pattern of “nationally centralized authority” with “strongly institutionalized opposition parties led to a restrictive design” in Caracas (8). Here, “the range of issues debated was narrow, the participants lacked decision-​making power, and the structure privileged district boards, controlled by political parties, over the arenas for volunteer participation” (8). What resulted was a “vicious cycle”: citizens’ lack of influence over important issues and the continued dominance of party representatives discouraged participation as well as the formation of new civic associations. In turn, the limited jurisdictional scope of the local government, paucity of municipal funds, and sabotage by the opposition impeded the government’s ability to respond capably to citizen demands, thereby diminishing the incentive to participate (Goldfrank 2011, 8).

“One of the key discoveries of [Goldfrank’s] study is,” then, “the potential for strongly institutionalized parties to undermine the democracy-​enhancing benefits of decentralization” (Goldfrank 2011, 9).

The Value-​Added of the Qualitative Assessment To recall, Goldfrank’s research problem was: “why do participatory experiments aid in deepening democracy in some cities but not in others?” (Goldfrank 2011, 2) To address this problem, Goldfrank compared “three initially similar participation programs that

692    Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman eventually yielded widely different results” (1–​2). As before, we conclude by highlighting the role of qualitative judgments and distinctions in the analysis. To begin with, recall that Goldfrank began by recounting what the three cases had in common. Here, Goldfrank obviously relies on qualitative assessments throughout. For instance, each city was headed by “a party that had won the mayor’s seat for the first time with the explicit promise of participatory reforms in order to deepen democracy,” and, indeed, eventually pursued participatory reforms that “bore a striking resemblance” (6). Next, however, he describes two “crucial differences . . . [which] changed the trajectory of the participation programs in the three cities”: again, “the degree of national decentralization of authority and resources to municipal government” in each country and “the level of institutionalization of the opposition parties in each city” (7, 66). Here, too, qualitative assessments suffuse the account. For brevity, though, just recall selected aspects of his characterization of “the level of institutionalization of the opposition parties in each city.” In Montevideo and Caracas, the new incumbents “faced two historically dominant parties” with “long-​established patron-​client networks,” “deep partisan identification among members and voters,” and “a custom of power sharing to exclude challengers,” while in Porto Alegre, “the newly incumbent [Workers’ Party] represented just one more party within an array of weakly institutionalized parties” (75). Finally, Goldfrank characterizes the different design formats that emerged in the three contexts and the dynamics they helped to produce. Again, qualitative assessments suffuse the account. Just recall the characterization of Porto Alegre’s format. The “weakly institutionalized parties in Porto Alegre, combined with Brazil’s high degree of decentralization, allowed the development of an open design” (8), with participants engaging in “genuine deliberation, debating and voting on the most important city services and the most needed public works projects in their neighborhoods” (8). In sum, qualitative assessments suffuse the account of the important commonalities across the cases, the important dissimilarities across the cases, and the eventual outcomes that emerged in them. They are, in short, an indispensable part of the comparative-​historical narrative.

Conclusion We have discussed three qualitative approaches to the assessment of deliberative participation: speech analysis, ethnography, and comparative case studies. In doing so, we have looked at what we regard as exemplars of “problem-​driven” research. Here, we conclude by briefly indicating why we regard them as such. As we saw, the authors of the above studies begin their investigations with clear substantive problems in mind. And those problems plainly drive the research. We can see this, for instance, in the statement of their research problems; the clear explication of the approach to addressing those problems; and the way in which, in carrying out those approaches, each provides a “qualitative” assessment of their case(s), while also interpolating “aggregate” data throughout. Furthermore, at no point do any of the authors state

Qualitative Assessment of Deliberation    693 or exhibit a general preference for “qualitative” over “quantitative” research or vice versa. Nor does it ever appear that a research problem is being pursued primarily because it is methodologically tractable. Lastly, while each of the authors directly engages with relevant “theory,” none gives priority to “theory-​building” as such. Instead, the primary emphasis is on learning from historical experience to make future action more successful and intelligent. These, then, are exemplars of problem-​driven research—​of the kind of research that we think could greatly benefit the political project of deliberative democracy.

Notes 1. For discussion, see Gerring (2012, ­chapter 1). 2. The terms are borrowed from Ian Shapiro (2007), who provides various illustrative examples. 3. Among other things, we find problematic the way in which George and Bennett (2005, 69)  enjoin case-​study researchers to follow “the method of structured, focused comparison,” given some of the prescriptions that accompany this “method.” For instance: “First, the investigator should clearly identify the universe—​that is, the ‘class’ or ‘subclass’ of events—​of which a single case or a group of cases to be studied are instances.” If taken as a general prescription about how to conduct case-​study research, the prescription would arguably hamstring research into novel, innovative, anomalous practices, which may be difficult to meaningfully or usefully classify in this way (especially at the outset of research). 4. To appreciate the import of these simple observations, it is well to observe how much the alleged “divide” between “qualitative” and “quantitative” research has indeed structured debates in the social sciences. See Gerring (2012, 3–​4). 5. One interesting question asked in the studies that we consider is: When does deliberation actually happen when citizens participate? So, more accurately, the three approaches are approaches to the study of participation, with a central question being: When does “deliberation” happen? But, for convenience, we refer simply to “deliberative participation” throughout. 6. For discussion, see Flyvbjerg (2006). 7. See Steiner (2012, 77–​8). 8. See Polletta and Lee (2006, 15–​18) for an analysis of participants’ views about the appropriate contexts for storytelling as well. 9. See Gerring (2017) for a useful survey of various case study approaches.

References Bächtiger, A., Pedrini, S. and Ryser, M. (2010). Prozessanalyse politischer Entscheidungen: Deliberative Standards, Diskurstypen und Sequenzialisierung. In Jahrbuch für Handlungs-​ und Entscheidungstheorie, vol. 6:  Schwerpunkt Neuere Entwicklungen des Konzepts der Rationalität und ihre Anwendungen (Wiesbaden:  VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften), 193–​226.

694    Mark Bevir and Quinlan Bowman Baiocchi, G. (2005). Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: H. Holt). Dogan, M. and Pelassy, D. (1990). How to Compare Nations: Strategies in Comparative Politics (2nd edn, Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers). Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five Misunderstandings About Case-​Study Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12: 219–​45. George, A., and Bennett, A. (2005). Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Gerring, J. (2012). Social Science Methodology: A Unified Framework (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gerring, J. (2017). Case Study Research:  Principles and Practices (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press). Goldfrank, B. (2011). Deepening Local Democracy in Latin America:  Participation, Decentralization, and the Left (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Polletta, F., and Lee, J. (2006). Is Telling Stories Good for Democracy? Rhetoric in Public Deliberation after 9/​11. American Sociological Review, 71(5): 699–​721. Shapiro, I. (2007) The Flight from Reality in the Human Sciences (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press). Steiner, J. (2012). The Foundations of Deliberative Democracy:  Empirical Research and Normative Implications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Steiner, J., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M. and Steenbergen, M. (2004). Deliberative Politics in Action: Analyzing Parliamentary Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Stromer-​Galley, J. (2007). Measuring Deliberation’s Content:  A Coding Scheme. Journal of Public Deliberation, 3(1): Article 12.

Pa rt  V

P R AC T IC A L A P P L IC AT ION S

Chapter 44

De l iberative De mo c rac y as a Reform Mov e me nt Lyn Carson, Janette Hartz-​K arp, and Michael Briand

Over the past thirty-five years, since the term “deliberative democracy” was coined, deliberative conceptions of democracy have found increasing acceptance among theorists, though less so among political elites who are engaged full-​time in efforts to devise, influence, implement, administer, or alter public policies. It has been fifteen years since John Dryzek confidently remarked that, at least among scholars, “the essence of democracy itself is now widely taken to be deliberation, as opposed to voting, interest aggregation, constitutional rights, or even self-​government” (Dryzek 2000, 1). It was not academics working in isolation, though, that helped deliberative democracy achieve its present pre-​eminence. Indeed, the work of theorists has been a response to political events and conditions throughout the Western world over the past half-​ century that have seen the steep and continual decline in citizens’ trust in public officials and political institutions of democratic countries. This disaffection, even alienation, has arisen from citizens’ belief that they have been sidelined by institutional actors, pushed out of the public arena, and disrespected as consumers of policymaking rather than its authors (Harwood 1998; Mathews 1999). Deliberative democracy offers a potential remedy for distrust, discontent, and displeasure. The question is: to what extent is this hope realistic?

A Deliberative Democracy Movement? After analyzing interview and survey data from almost 250 social movement organizations in Europe, della Porta (2013) concludes that people who participate in contemporary social movements tend to organize themselves and conduct their internal affairs

698   Carson, Hartz-Karp, and Briand using a variety of participatory and deliberative methods, and are committed to participatory and deliberative ideals of democratic governance generally. Anti-​globalization groups, for example, have responded to the contemporary democratic problems of political inequality and exclusion by developing for internal use a range of practices for decision-​making that revolve around consensus, more equal communication, and participation (Fung 2013). Della Porta argues that social movements could become important actors in the effort to strengthen democracy. However, it is questionable whether such groups alone could spark a social movement on behalf of deliberative democracy. In this chapter we consider a range of organizations, actors, and alliances across the globe that have advocated for the adoption of deliberative democratic principles and methods, and we reflect on whether they might contribute to the advent of a sustainable movement in support of deliberative democracy. Specifically, we consider the prospects for successful application of these principles and methods in novel policy, political, and national settings. A key problem for democracies—​ especially populous ones like India and the United States (but in practice for all whose populations run into the millions)—​is the individual’s inability to believe that their participation in politics matters. Most citizens do not expect to have a direct say in crafting policy, nor do they seek it. But they do expect that their perspectives will be well articulated and that their “voices” will be heard and heeded. Most of all, they want to be able to trust that public officials will not “game the system” for the benefit of those who already enjoy immense advantages. Influential political scientists such as Hibbing and Theiss-​Morse (2002) argue that so long as ordinary citizens can trust elites not to game the system for personal advantage, they are quite happy not to be involved in politics (let alone deliberation). They suggest that much of the American public desires “stealth democracy”—​a democracy run like a business by experts with little deliberation or public input. However, Neblo et al. (2010) have convincingly refuted this. Similarly, in the experience of the authors, willing citizens have readily accepted an invitation to deliberate if they can be assured their input will be considered seriously (see, for example, Carson et al. 2013). Accordingly, within the extended deliberative democracy family the emphasis has shifted from ensuring that no one is excluded from opportunities to participate to “empowering” those who do participate to exert a discernible influence on decision-​ making. Organizations such as the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), Involve in the UK and Europe, and the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation in the US have made efficacy a key element of their missions and operations. Carrying this requirement into a greatly expanded sphere of activity would set the stage for a push by citizens to secure a seat at the policymaking table. Another consideration suggesting that deliberative democracy’s time might have arrived can be summed up with the adage, “nothing succeeds like success.” Deliberative democracy initiatives have proliferated in both developed and developing democracies, and even in institutional settings of some non-​democratic countries, such as China (He and Warren 2013; Zhou 2012). If we include participatory budgeting initiatives, then in recent years growth has been substantial. Even small and partial successes are generating

Deliberative Democracy as a Reform Movement    699 opportunities as word spreads of deliberative democracy’s benefits. It is possible that we are seeing the first signs of a nascent movement. Considering that existing democratic institutions and practices seem unable to respond to major challenges, if deliberative democracy can deliver on its promise, its reach and momentum could well increase. Additionally, deliberative democracy may benefit from its image as “anti-​politics,” especially with younger voters. Within a society, political change occurs chiefly in response to younger voters coming of age politically and altering the political landscape with their new beliefs, dispositions, and priorities. Around the world, there is a generational shift away from traditional institutional forms of political participation, such as voting, membership in political parties, and unions. Because young people want to feel they are “making a difference,” they are looking for participatory experiences where they can see tangible results of their efforts, and that in turn afford them a sense of personal agency (Collin 2008). Deliberative democracy is suited to the political needs and aspirations of young people. If young people can be enticed to gain direct experience through participation, deliberative democracy could become one of their preferred avenues for political expression and action. Deliberative democracy may grow along with young people’s political influence as they progress toward political seniority. Finally, the gulf between the powerful, wealthy few and the majority of citizens has fueled public perceptions that the wealthy few rule in their own interests (Gastil 2000). Notably, the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is greatest among democracies. In the US, it is greater than since the late nineteenth century (see, for example, Bartels 2008; Judis 2000; Lessig 2011). Globally, all ten nations with the highest inequality are democracies, including the US, UK, Italy, Australia, and New Zealand.1 Public mistrust that the wealthy few make decisions without due regard to the interests of others bolsters the case for deliberative democracy as a way to enhance public trust in democratic government (Gastil 2000; Fung 2013).

The Track Record We turn now to a brief description of some of the most important examples of deliberative democracy, the organizations and actors that championed or funded them, and the innovations they heralded. In 1987, the Danish Government created the Danish Board of Technology (DBT), which pioneered Consensus Conferences (CCs) for the purpose of taking into account the public’s views concerning potentially contentious technological issues. Although Conferences did not have statutory authority, their findings figured substantially in the crafting of many new laws. Consensus Conferences were the first form of participatory deliberation to be institutionalized and the first to be used as a matter of course in developing legislation involving complex factual issues (Klüver 1995). Assembling randomly selected citizens as a stand-​in for the public as a whole provided one answer to the challenge of participatory deliberation in mass society. As a result, since their first

700   Carson, Hartz-Karp, and Briand appearance, the Conferences have stimulated discussion and further experimentation by proponents of deliberative democracy around the world. The DBT, however, fell victim to the pressure to reduce government spending and was abolished in 2011, resurfacing as an NGO, the DBT Foundation, in 2012. Under the leadership of deliberative process designer Lars Kluver, the Danish Board of Technology Foundation in 2009 initiated an ambitious global experiment:  World Wide Views (WWV). The purpose of WWV is closely related to that of the Consensus Conferences:  to bring the views of ordinary citizens to bear on the development of policy. With the assistance of partners in other countries, WWV has organized regional and national deliberative events, each attended by approximately 100 demographically diverse participants, to deliberate environmental issues of global importance. These include global warming (2009), biodiversity (2012), and climate and energy (2015). (On biodiversity, see Rask and Worthington 2015.) In each instance, the findings were submitted to the relevant UN Convention that followed. WWV stands alone as an example of successfully “scaled-​out” public deliberation. Its ability to secure support from organizations around the world testifies to the value people discern in bringing the views of ordinary citizens into policy discussions. The Jefferson Center (Minneapolis, US) is one of only a few organizations whose sole purpose is to advocate for and financially support deliberative democracy initiatives. It was established in 1974 by Ned Crosby, who developed the Citizens’ Jury, a deliberative process for which participants are drawn randomly from a larger population. The Center became the home for refining and promoting the Citizens’ Jury method, which has been used throughout the world in both its original and sometimes-​modified form (Carson and Hartz-​Karp 2005). More recently, Crosby and others (such as Healthy Democracy, a grantee of the Democracy Fund) have developed the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR). Local and state-​ wide initiatives and referenda give citizens the opportunity to vote directly on legislation, but voters often lack the information they need to make informed choices. For example, in the US state of Oregon the CIR brought together panels of residents to prepare a non-​partisan evaluation of proposed legislation that qualified to appear on the ballot in an upcoming election. Panelists spent three and a half days together, hearing from subject matter experts as well as proponents and opponents of the measure in question. They then developed the pro and con arguments that appeared alongside both the official description of the proposed legislation and assessments provided by interest groups in the Oregon Voters’ Guide.2 Independent evaluation has shown that the CIR is highly visible and widely respected (Gastil 2013). It has given the public a voice that is independent of the partisan and highly selective information distributed by groups and persons with an interest in seeing a measure succeed or fail. The CIR shows the political feasibility of intensive deliberation and the public’s appreciation of neutral information developed by peers (Gastil and Knobloch 2010). Importantly, the CIR was written into Oregon law in 2011, and has been implemented in three other states: Colorado, Arizona, and Massachusetts. The CIR could be the catalyst that brings deliberative democracy into genuine partnership with existing democratic institutions.

Deliberative Democracy as a Reform Movement    701 Although now defunct after almost 20 years of operation, AmericaSpeaks was an important early advocate of deliberative democracy. It convened large-​scale events, such as “Listening to the City” (a 21st Century Town Meeting) with around 5,000 participants, held in the wake of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. It also contributed citizen voices to the development of a recovery plan for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. The 21st Century Town Meeting has been used in its original or modified form in other countries as well, including Australia, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Italy (Goldman 2014). The Charles F. Kettering Foundation has for more than three decades conducted research and supported the National Issues Forums (NIF), a network promoting public deliberation in the US. Ad hoc groups meet to discuss critical public issues, considering a range of choices, weighing the pros and cons, and identifying common concerns and interests. In Australia, The newDemocracy Foundation (nDF) is an independent and non-​ partisan self-​funded organization established by businessman Luca Belgiorno-​Nettis. (One of the present authors, Carson, was a co-​founder and is a current director.) Belgiorno-​Nettis had grown frustrated with political parties and with the confinement of citizen participation to the act of voting for candidates. The newDemocracy Foundation’s sole mission is promoting, funding, and testing deliberative democratic methods, usually commissioned by local, state, and national governments. It has supported numerous Citizens’ Juries and deliberative forums.3 One of the noteworthy efforts supported by nDF is the 2009 Australian Citizens’ Parliament (ACP), a national research project funded in part by the Australian Research Council. Among the The newDemocracy Foundation’s distinctive contributions are its experiments modifying the Citizens’ Jury method and nDF’s insistence on a written agreement with government agencies concerning the nature and extent of influence or authority that the outcomes of citizen deliberations will have. Notably, obtaining the public support of renowned former government officials in nDF’s work has helped attract the attention of current elected officials and allay their doubts and concerns.

Institutionalizing Deliberative Democracy Perhaps the greatest challenge facing deliberative democracy today is to integrate it with the processes and institutions of representative government. Only rarely have elected representatives been the champions, organizers, promoters, or key supporters of deliberative democracy initiatives. Mostly, they have been wary of associating themselves too closely with a process designed to elicit the considered voice of the public, the outcome of which they can neither control nor predict, especially given their accountability to key constituents, voters, and interest groups.

702   Carson, Hartz-Karp, and Briand Community involvement in decision-​making, if not deliberative democracy, has been institutionalized on different scales: in cities (Gdansk, Montreal, Paris, Toronto), in regions (California, Catalunya, Luxembourg Province, Tuscany), and in nations (e.g. the US Office of Public Engagement). Some ad hoc offices, departments, or independent authorities (such as the French Commission Nationale du Débat Publique, CNDP) have been established. Some forms have become routine practice locally and sometimes regionally and nationally in the case of participatory budgeting, described below, and nationally in the case of the Brazilian “national conferences.” Unfortunately, the institutionalization of deliberative democratic structures and processes can be precarious. Consider the example of Western Australia, where a State Minister, Alannah MacTiernan MLA, who was responsible for the substantial Planning and Infrastructure portfolio, implemented deliberative democratic processes over a four-​year period. (She was aided by one of the authors, Hartz-​Karp, who was employed specifically to pioneer innovative ways to engage the community in joint decision-​making with government.) After four years, however, the WA Planning and Infrastructure portfolio retreated to the form of community engagement that leaves government officials in control of the process, agenda, and findings. In part, this occurred because deliberative democracy processes became too difficult to sustain with the Minister constantly being criticized by the media, the opposition, and her own party for “too much democracy.” This was exacerbated by the departure of the process designer—​the chief external advocate. Another promising example of public deliberation being joined with governmental decision-​making authority occurred in the western Canadian province of British Columbia. In 2003, the provincial government established the “Citizens’ Assembly,” which was composed of 160 citizens selected randomly. The Assembly’s task was to evaluate the existing provincial electoral system and, if warranted, propose a new one. After meeting together over the course of more than a year, the Assembly voted 146–​7 in favor of replacing the existing electoral system with a single transferable vote model, which lets voters rank candidates within multi-​representative districts4 (Levine, Fung, and Gastil 2005, 277). The Citizens’ Assembly demonstrated that public deliberation can fit with institutional structures and processes in a way that affords citizens the opportunity to exercise genuine authority on issues as fundamental as the electoral process itself. This process was later repeated in a second Canadian province, Ontario, and has been used in Iceland, Ireland, Estonia, Luxembourg, and Romania (Reuchamps and Suiter 2016). Porto Alegre, a city of four million residents in Brazil, has achieved worldwide recognition for its innovative and highly-​successful practice of “participatory budgeting” (PB), in which a broad range of community groups play a key role in shaping at least a proportion of the municipal budget (Heller 2001). This is a bottom-​up process. The chief innovation is the creation of district and city-​wide budget councils with delegates elected in open assemblies. Over the years, the councils have come to play an increasingly substantial role in negotiating both the general aims and the details of budgetary allocations (Abers 1996, 39). The sustained relationship between popularly chosen

Deliberative Democracy as a Reform Movement    703 council delegates and Porto Alegre administrators has helped bridge the divide between the competing values of technical knowledge and citizen participation. City officials have addressed the relative lack of technical capacity and skills possessed by council representatives and their constituents by aggressively educating them and by assigning responsibility for learning and understanding the details of the budget to the representatives (Abers 1996, 45). Government officials interviewed by Abers commented on how quickly participants became proficient in mastering the details of the budget. They explained further that constant scrutiny and questioning by citizens had forced officials to improve their budgeting process. Participatory Budgeting (PB) has increased citizen participation in public affairs generally (Baiocchi 2001), generating new opportunities and incentives for citizens to participate in public life. Before PB, budget allocations mostly reflected patronage and were more or less fixed from year to year. The introduction of PB brought with it the principle of community-​defined priorities, and in each year since, adjustments have been negotiated to meet redistributive criteria and to expand representation at every level of the budget-​making process. In consequence, the range of services now provided by the municipality of Porto Alegre has widened significantly. It has been argued that PB is not a genuinely deliberative experience (see, for example, Ryan and Smith 2014). However, as Sintomer, Herzberg, and Röcke (2005) suggest, if participatory budgeting is not deliberative, it is not genuine PB. More recently, Röcke, Hertzberg, and Sintomer (2016) explain how PBs can become a key contributor to the deliberative democracy movement. Finally, an Australian model we discuss below shows how participatory budgeting can be deliberative in practice (see Thompson 2012; and Weymouth and Hartz-​Karp 2015). In 1996, Kerala, a southwestern Indian state, pioneered bold and comprehensive decentralization that has produced a high level of direct participation, built on the state’s tradition of popular mobilization (Heller 2001). The People’s Campaign for Decentralised Planning, with the support of the State Planning Board, and assisted by community-​based organizations, invested in encouraging participation in Grama Sabhas, political entities for involving citizens in governance that exist throughout India. In the ward-​level meetings of Kerala’s Grama Sabhas, citizens discuss and prioritize development needs, prioritize eligible beneficiaries, and then elect sectoral development committees charged with preparing an overall plan. In turn, the development committees elect task forces that are charged with the actual design of projects. Statistics from 2000 onwards show around 8% of the Kerala population participate annually in Grama Sabhas. The extended scope of decision-​making power of the Grama Sabhas resulted in a shift in power from the bureaucratic state to local institutions, enabling people to meet local needs such as housing, sanitation, and drinking water (Thomas 2002, ­chapter 4; Sudhakaran 2006, 113–​15). The passing of legislation to create and regulate public involvement in decision-​ making is the clearest indication that it is being taken seriously and has strong support. This is the case in the Tuscany region of Italy, which in 2007 passed Law no. 69 defining “Rules on the Promotion of Participation in the Formulation of Regional

704   Carson, Hartz-Karp, and Briand and Local Policies.” This legal provision institutionalized citizen participation in government decision-​making about issues of public interest by intentionally drawing on principles from deliberative theory.5 It was one of the first attempts to translate the normative principles of deliberative theory into institutional practice (Floridia 2008). Law 69 made Tuscany a “laboratory” for studying institutionalized deliberative participation.6 It offered a specific model that enables representative government to co-​exist with empowered citizen participation—​indeed, to become mutually reinforcing, an example of how any democratic government might successfully institutionalize citizen participation. The Law is the first of its kind passed at the regional level of government7 to pro-​ actively promote citizen participation in decision-​making, rather than on a specific topic such as budgeting or urban planning. Importantly, the Law was formulated with the aid of deliberative public participation that paralleled the formal legislative process. Equally importantly, its administration was entrusted chiefly to an independent authority. Law 69 was specifically intended to offer an alternative to the many single-​issue interest groups and other more adversarially inclined forms of interaction between citizens and government (della Porta 2013). Developing a law through a deliberative democracy process was highly innovative. A large number of local authorities, professionals, members of grassroots groups, associations, and interest groups, as well as academics and ordinary citizens across Tuscany contributed to defining the Law’s goals, contents, and features.8 Law no. 69 was passed after a protracted two-​year process.9

The Prospects for Deliberative Democracy: Reasons for Optimism Despite the cultural and historical advantages enjoyed by the Tuscany region and the state of Kerala, the successes they have enjoyed in moving toward deliberative democracy required the foresight and commitment of people—​government officials not least of all. This gives us an opportunity to reflect on how any democratic government might successfully institutionalize empowered citizen participation. The same is true of Porto Alegre and the approximately 3,000 PBs convened around the globe (Sintomer, Herzberg, and Röcke 2012; also see Boutall 2009). PB is one of the few public decision-​ making initiatives that has caught on worldwide and persisted over time in many locales, despite the political leanings of the political party in power. A new model of PB, used in Australia, utilizes mini-​publics to deliberate 100% of a city’s budget. This model has demonstrated how a mini-​public can assist when local government revenue is severely stretched by rising costs and there is understandable reluctance to raise rates and taxes10 (Thompson 2012; Weymouth and Hartz-​Karp

Deliberative Democracy as a Reform Movement    705 2015). Such PBs have enabled government officials to share responsibility—​and hence authority—​with their constituents for figuring out how to make ends meet. Microcosms of the population deliberating have shown their ability to clearly indicate which of the hard decisions will be most palatable to the broader public. Constitutions, the foundation of most democracies, provide an ideal showcase for the role deliberative democracy can play in democratic renewal. The Irish Constitutional Convention in 2013, although conducted independently of any governmental institution, brought citizens together with elected officials of all political parties. A group called “We the Citizens” organized a Deliberative Poll®11 in the hope that the resulting data would demonstrate that a Citizens’ Assembly-​type approach would work in Ireland. Of the event’s one hundred participants, sixty-six were citizens selected from a stratified random sample, and thirty-three were politicians, with the Chair appointed by government. To date, the government has accepted several of the Convention’s recommendations, with referenda on three. The Convention has been credited with helping amend the Irish constitution to grant equal status to same-​sex marriages (Farrell, Harris, and Suiter  2015). (Subsequently, the elected officials who participated in the Convention became advocates for the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2016 to present). The Assembly is working on (among other things) the issues of abortion and climate change. It is chaired by a Supreme Court judge and is supported by a senior civil servant seconded form the Prime Minister’s office. Significantly, the Prime Minister now has the ability to request a considered public judgment from randomly selected citizens as a counterweight to organized interests. The Assembly highlights the strength of institutionalizing deliberative practice in public office and its capacity to open up politically fraught debate in a considered, evidence-based setting.) The so-​ called crowd-​ sourced constitution—​ Iceland’s recent experiment in redrafting its constitution—​presented another challenge to the assumption that citizens cannot participate constructively in the process of adopting or revising a constitution. In 2013 Iceland came close to passing into law the world’s most inclusively and transparently written constitutional text. This experiment should prove inspirational for people around the globe intent on writing, or rewriting, their own social contract (Landemore 2015). The Belgian G1000 exemplifies an entirely grassroots deliberative democratic process. It was instigated in response to Belgium’s 2010–​11 democratic crisis, when the country was without a government for 541 days because no coalition could be formed. Twenty-​ seven Belgian citizens from a range of backgrounds partnered with the Foundation for Future Generations and raised funding from more than 3,000 donors. More than 10,000 people signed the organizing group’s manifesto outlining the deficits of current democracies and declaring that “the future of democracy” lies with citizen participation and deliberation. After an agenda-​setting process conducted online, about 1,000 citizens chosen from a random sample assembled in a “Citizens’ Summit.” At the conclusion of deliberations, a citizens’ panel of volunteers prepared and presented the proposals at a final closing ceremony (Caluwaerts and Reuchamps 2012).

706   Carson, Hartz-Karp, and Briand

Conclusion Despite encouraging examples such as those cited above, scarcely any government has a good track record of involving citizens in the development and implementation of public policy. The institutionalization of demonstrably effective deliberative participation has seldom been achieved and sustained, but instead has mostly remained peripheral to complex government systems that continue to be run by elected and appointed officials. Most such officials have little desire to collaborate routinely with descriptively representative citizens—​even if the latter have formed sound policy views through joint exploration and deliberation. Because power and authority increase as one ascends the ladders of administrative and elective levels of government, the gateways to decision-​ making are jealously guarded. Our history makes clear that persons, groups, classes, and institutions seldom give up or share their power. For this reason, if reform is to be broad and deep enough, social movement organizations and government officials must work together to bring it about. Social change is a process by which a previously rare phenomenon—​a belief, disposition, desire, or action—​becomes increasingly widespread. Usually driven by some combination of internal and external factors, the process eventually reaches a tipping point: a moment in time when events cross a threshold, a point of no return. Change then accelerates and pervades a community or society unless halted or greatly slowed by a determined counter-​force. If we conceive the current state of liberal representative democracy as one of pernicious decline from some healthier, more desirable prior state, and if we believe deliberative democracy is, in whole or in part, the remedy for decline, then we ought to encourage, advocate, support, and promote that remedy. However, we must first ask, how much desirable change can we expect, and how rapidly can we expect it to occur if we act only in ways that reflect the values and principles of deliberative democracy: inclusion, mutual respect, open-​mindedness, listening and understanding, reason-​giving, cooperation, and so forth? Secondly, are there factors beyond our control that will determine whether communities and societies reach the tipping point at which current political practice yields to a more beneficial deliberative form? Responses to these questions are unknowable. But one thing is clear: we need to broaden active support for deliberative democracy to include citizens who explore deliberative democracy together, understand it, weigh its strengths and weaknesses, discover common ground, find a way forward that everyone can live with, and then seek to work with government. As long as public officials hear inconsistent messages, conflicting demands, and incompatible goals, they will remain as divided as the public. The public must articulate its will before asking government to execute it. Governments then have a significant inducement to listen and respond accordingly.

Deliberative Democracy as a Reform Movement    707

Notes 1. http://​247wallst.com/​special-​report/​2011/​12/​06/​countries-​with-​biggest-​spread-​between-​ rich-​and-​poor/​3/​. 2. http://​healthydemocracy.org/​colorado-​citizens-​initiative-​review/​how-​it-​works/​. 3. For a list of case studies, see www.newdemocracy.com.au/​our-​work. 4. The Assembly’s recommendation was submitted to voters in a referendum held concurrently with the 2005 provincial election. The vote in favor fell short of the 60% by 2.3%. Another referendum on adopting the STV system was held and defeated during British Columbia’s 2009 provincial election. 5. According to Carson and Lewanski (2008, 82), it is possible to relate the Law to the four core principles of the Brisbane Declaration, considered a best practice description of deliberative democracy, characterized by integrity, inclusion, deliberation, and influence. 6. This has since been followed by Law no. 18 of February 9, 2010, enacted by the Emilia-​ Romagna Region. In Italy engagement has been promoted by several other Regions through policy initiative (Puglia) and resource allocation (article 50 of Law no. 4/​06 of Latium, promoting participatory budgeting in municipalities). 7. There are examples of legislation at the national level, such as the “Framework Law on Participatory Budgeting,” passed in 2003 by Peru requesting local governments to carry out participatory budgeting. 8. The influence of deliberative theory came in particular from an international conference held in May 2006, the first and most comprehensive official meeting held in Italy on the topic, which was attended by major experts in the field such as L. Bobbio, L. Carson, Y. Mansillon, E. Negrier, Y. Sintomer, and N. Wates. Their speeches are available at www. regione.toscana.it/​partecipazione. 9. http://​w ww.regione.toscana.it/​regione/​export/​RT/​sito-​RT/​C ontenuti/​sezioni/​diritti/​ partecipazione/​rubriche/​piani_​progetti/​visualizza_​asset.html_​1746852500.html The section on participation also contains all the documents regarding the process undertaken for the formulation of the Law, including texts and video recordings of events to which reference is made in this article. 10. Also see nDF’s website (www.newdemocracy.com.au) for more examples, including Melbourne City Council’s PB covering its 10-​year $4 billion budget. 11. The “Deliberative Poll®” was developed by Stanford University scholar James Fishkin. See Gastil (2008, 201–​4) and Fishkin and Farrar (2005, 68–​77).

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708   Carson, Hartz-Karp, and Briand Caluwaerts, D. and Reuchamps, M. (2012). The G1000: Facts, Figures and Some Lessons from an Experience of Deliberative Democracy in Belgium. Re-​Bel. Carson, L., Gastil, J., Hartz-​ Karp, J., and Lubensky, R. (2013). The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of Deliberative Democracy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Carson, L. and Lewanski, R. (2008). Fostering Citizen Participation Top-​Down. International Journal of Public Participation, 21: 72–​83. Carson, L. (2007). An Inventory of Democratic Deliberative Processes in Australia: Early Finding. http://​www.activedemocracy.net. Carson, L. and Hartz-​Karp, J. (2005). Adapting and Combining Deliberative Designs. In The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-​ first Century, ed. J. Gastil and P. Levine (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-​Bass), 120–​38. Carson, L. and Hart, P. (2005). What Randomness and Deliberation can do for Community Engagement. International Conference on Engaging Communities, Brisbane, Australia, 14–​ 17 August. Collin, P. (2008). Young People Imagining a New Democracy:  Literature Review (University of Western Sydney, Whitlam Institute). https://jenna-beck-f8w5.squarespace.com/ publications/2017/10/15/young-people-imagining-a-new-democracy?rq=collin della Porta, D. (2013). Can Democracy Be Saved? Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements (Cambridge: Polity Press). Dryzek, J. (2000). Deliberative Democracy and Beyond:  Liberals, Critics, and Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Farrell, D., Harris, C., and Suiter, J. (2015). The Irish Vote for Marriage Equality Started at a Constitutional Convention. The Washington Post, June 5. Fishkin, J. and Farrar, C. (2005). Deliberative Polling®: From Experiment to Community Resource. In The Deliberative Democracy Handbook:  Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-​First Century, ed. J. Gastil and P. Levine (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-​Bass), 68–​79. Floridia, A. (2008). Democrazia deliberativa e processi decisionali:  la legge della Regione Toscana sulla partecipazione. Stato e mercato, 82: 84–​110. Fung, A. (2013). Review of Can Democracy Be Saved? Participation, Deliberation and Social Movements, by Donatella della Porta. Contemporary Sociology, 44: 50–​2. Gastil, J. (2000). By Popular Demand:  Revitalizing Representative Democracy through Deliberative Elections (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Gastil, J. (2013). Guest Post: The Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review. Democracy Fund, February 26. http://​www.democracyfund.org/​blog/​entry/​guest-​post-​the-​oregon-​citizens- ​initiative-​review. Gastil, J. and Knobloch, K. (2010). Evaluation Report to the Oregon State Legislature on the 2010 Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review. http://​www.la1.psu.edu/​cas/​jgastil/​CIR/​ OregonLegislativeReportCIR.pdf. Gastil, J. (2008). Political Communication and Deliberation (Thousand Oaks, CA:  SAGE Publishing). Goldfrank, B. (2012). The World Bank and the Globalization of Participatory Budgeting. Journal of Public Deliberation, 8(2): Article 7. Goldman, J. (2014). A Farewell to AmericaSpeaks. Democracy Fund, January 2. http://​www. democracyfund.org/​blog/​entry/​farewell-​to-​americaspeaks. Heller, P. (2001). Moving the State: The Politics of Decentralisation in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre. Politics and Society, 29: 131–​64. Harwood, R. (1998). Citizens and Politics:  A View from Main Street America (Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation).

Deliberative Democracy as a Reform Movement    709 He, B. and Warren, M. E. (2013). Authoritarian Deliberation: The Deliberative Turn in Chinese Political Development. Perspectives on Politics, 9: 269–​89. Hibbing, J. R. and Theiss-​Morse, E. (2002). Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs about how Government Should Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Judis, J. B. (2000). The Paradox of American Democracy: Elites, Special Interests, and the Betrayal of Public Trust (New York: Pantheon). Klüver, L. (1995). Consensus Conferences at the Danish Board of Technology. In Public Participation in Science:  The Role of Consensus Conferences in Europe, ed. S. Joss and J. Durant (London: Science Museum), 41–​9. Landemore, H. (2015). Inclusive Constitution-​Making: The Icelandic Experiment. Journal of Political Philosophy, 23: 166–​91. Lessig, L. (2011). Republic, Lost:  How Money Corrupts Congress—​and a Plan to Stop It (New York: Twelve). Levine, P., Fung, A., and Gastil, J. (2005). Future Directions for Public Deliberation. In The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-​ First Century, ed. J. Gastil and P. Levine (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-​Bass), 271–​88. Mathews, D. (1999). Politics for People: Finding a Responsible Public Voice (2nd edn, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press). Neblo, M. A., Esterling, K. M., Kennedy, R. P., Lazer, D. M., and Sokhey, A. E. (2010). Who wants to Deliberate? American Political Science Review, 104: 566–​83. Putnam, R. D., Leonardi, R., and Nanetti, R. (1993). Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Rask, M. and Worthington, R. (eds) (2015). Governing Biodiversity through Democratic Deliberation (London: Routledge). Reuchamps, M. and Suiter, J. (eds) (2016). Constitutional Deliberative Democracy in Europe (Colchester: ECPR Press). Röcke, A., Hertzberg, C., and Sintomer, Y. (2016). Participatory Budgeting in Europe: Democracy and Public Governance (London: Routledge). Ryan, M. and Smith, G. (2014). Defining Mini-​Publics. In Deliberative Mini-​Publics: Involving Citizens in the Democratic Process, ed. K. Grönlund, A. Bächtiger, and M. Setälä (Colchester: ECPR Press), 9–​26. Sintomer, Y., Herzberg, C., and Röcke, A. (2005). Participatory Budgeting in Europe: Potentials and Challenges. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32: 164–​78. Sintomer, Y., Herzberg, C., and Röcke, A. (2012). Transnational Models of Citizen Participation: The Case of Participatory Budgeting. Sociologias, 1430: 70–​116. Sudhakaran, M. N. (2006). People’s Campaign for Planning in Kerala:  A Study of the Participatory Methodology of Planning and Implementation. PhD thesis, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam. Thomas, E. M. (2002). Decentralised planning and transfer of development functions: A study of Thrissur district. PhD thesis, University of Calicut. Thompson, N. (2012). Participatory Budgeting—​ the Australian Way. Journal of Public Deliberation, 8(2); Article 5. Weymouth, R. and Hartz-​ Karp, J. (2015). Deliberative Collaborative Governance as a Democratic Reform to Resolve Wicked Problems and Improve Trust. Journal of Economic and Social Policy, 17(1): Article 4. Zhou, W. (2012). In Search of Deliberative Democracy in China. Journal of Public Deliberation, 8(1): Article 8.

Chapter 45

De l iberative De mo c rac y and Public Di spu t e Resolu t i on Lawrence Susskind, Jessica Gordon, and Yasmin Zaerpoor

Although deliberative democracy and alternative dispute resolution (ADR), especially public dispute resolution (PDR), share many normative goals, they developed along separate tracks. Deliberative democracy emerged from a tradition of political philosophy, while alternative dispute resolution grew out of a separate legal tradition (Muhlberger 2011). Public dispute resolution is part of ADR, but draws extensively on international relations, communicative planning theory, and other applied social science ideas about problem-​solving in the public policy field (Susskind and McKearnan 1999; Menkel-​Meadow 2006; Healey 1997; Innes and Booher 2010; Forester 1999). ADR gained traction in the 1970s as a less costly approach to settling legal disputes. The presumption was that if the litigants and their lawyers could settle with the help of a mediator or an arbitrator, both money and time could be saved (Menkel-​Meadow 2006). The primary objective was to reduce the burden on court dockets. Many studies have shown that ADR did just that (Sander and Goldberg 1994; Ury, Brett, and Goldberg 1988; Muhlberger 2011). PDR proponents recognized the potential of applying this same structured but informal problem-​solving approach to public resource allocation disputes, particularly those involving issues of land use and environmental protection (Mayer et  al. 2012; Bacow and Wheeler 1984; Susskind and Weinstein 1980; O’Leary and Bingham 2003). Since then, PDR practitioners have worked on the most politically charged issues of their day—​where to site industrial facilities, how to rebuild cities post-​disaster, even issues like abortion (Susskind 2008; 2009). While ADR was developed for resolving legal disagreements, often with the help of a professional mediator, PDR involves more complex and extended conversations among numerous ad hoc stakeholder representatives.

Public Dispute Resolution    711 Given that public policy is being formulated and public resources are being used, the implementation of PDR agreements needs to be approved and enforced by elected or appointed officials. This often involves embedding informally negotiated agreements inside government-​issued permits or transforming the language of such agreements into binding contracts (Bacow and Wheeler 1984). Deliberative democracy and public dispute resolution have the same overarching goal—​to inform and determine the public interest. But they begin with very different assumptions about what the public interest is and how it should be determined. They also involve different skills and practices.1 Our objective in this chapter is to show that PDR, or mediated problem-​solving in the public arena, can enhance the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.

Deliberative Democracy and Public Dispute Resolution Some scholars suggest that deliberative democracy and PDR can learn from each other (Menkel-​Meadow 2006). Both have similar theoretical foundations and emphasize the importance of dialogue in democratic processes. Muhlberger (2011) argues that deliberative democracy and alternative dispute resolution (and, by definition, PDR) are distinct from traditional democratic theory since both view democracy as a potentially cooperative enterprise rather than simply a battle over fixed goods or opposing values. One source of their legitimacy is related to decision-​making by an informed public (Muhlberger 2011). More recently, Hampshire (2000) has emphasized the need to commit to a process of determining just outcomes and fairness to maintain political legitimacy. He argues that only the formality of the rule of law can provide such results, and that conflict can never be eliminated. He urges a focus on procedural means to address political conflict. In our view, PDR offers a practical way of bridging the gap between the philosophical aims of deliberative democracy and Hampshire’s assertions about political conflict resolution. Deliberative democracy is a theory of politics and civil engagement in which discourse among representatives and among citizens is structured to lead to recommendations, and ultimately decisions, that are either in the “public interest” or structure conflict in a way that illuminates the issues more clearly to facilitate a fair solution (Cohen 1989; Chambers 2003; Mansbridge et al. 2010). Fung (2007) argues that the success of democratic decision-​making should be measured in terms of meeting the desires of every citizen through deliberation. Early deliberative democracy advocates measure success in terms of the quality of the discourse they can achieve. If ideas are well debated, dialogue is open (not unfairly manipulated), and social learning occurs, they are content (Gutmann and Thompson 2004; Ackerman and Fishkin 2002).

712    Susskind, Gordon, and Zaerpoor PDR professionals, on the other hand, measure success in terms of implementable agreements that maximize joint gains.2 They seek to produce proposals (or packages of ideas) that stakeholder representatives and convening officials agree to implement. Unless these commitments are spelled out in writing, and stakeholder representatives can show that they have allowed their “constituents” a chance to review the penultimate version of whatever agreement is signed, most dispute resolution professionals would view the dialogue as having fallen short (Cruikshank and Susskind 1987). In summary, PDR facilitates public engagement that generates a consensus agreement.3 This does not refer to a lowest-​common-​denominator compromise; rather, it aims to satisfy (as much as possible) the most important interests of all sides by packaging multiple commitments on a range of issues that the parties value differently. Well-​documented PDR case studies in a great many contexts bear out the success of this approach.4 In the following section, we describe two approaches to decision-​making in the public arena: an aggregative democratic approach (that relies on voting) and a deliberative democratic approach (that requires public discourse). We follow this with a brief discussion of a third approach, deliberative democracy supplemented with elements of PDR. We then describe three key elements of PDR—​reliance on an independent mediator, stakeholder assessment as a means of ensuring fair representation, and joint fact-​finding—​before discussing how these elements can contribute to more robust democratic decision-​making.

Two Approaches to Public Decision-​M aking Imagine the following: a small city of about 30,000 must decide whether to allow construction of a controversial industrial facility. The plant will generate jobs and tax revenue, but it may pose serious environmental and public health risks. A decision must be made about whether or not to allow construction and what conditions, if any, will be imposed if permission to build is granted. Various administrative agencies and elected boards will be involved. There is a possibility that a court will end up as the final arbiter. The question for our purposes is to what extent the final decision will reflect the interests of the citizens in and around the city (i.e. the public interest).

Aggregative Democratic Approach Under normal circumstances in the US, the developer is required to undertake a set of technical studies that multiple city departments must review before a permit can be granted. Along the way, the city government—​on the assumption that it has every intention of representing the public’s interest—​might try to gauge public opinion using

Public Dispute Resolution    713 online polling, town hall meetings, or focus groups. The city council might call for a non-​binding referendum and vote on its own, going beyond normal zoning, planning and city development requirements. At some point, either proponents or opponents of the project might go to court to contest a decision made by one of the municipal agencies involved or even a vote of the council. The presumption behind all of these maneuvers is that the council should act in the “public interest” by voting, using an aggregation of the concerns of average citizens.

A Deliberative Approach A deliberative democratic approach may also involve polling and town hall meetings, but the goal extends beyond informing the public and aggregating the views of average citizens. A technique called Deliberative Polling, devised by political scientist James Fishkin, involves drawing a random sample of citizens, polling them on their initial views, and giving them “balanced” information packages, access to experts, and a chance to deliberate. Ultimately, these “informed” citizens are polled a second time and both the final poll results and the differences between pre-​and post-​deliberation results are passed along to all the elected and appointed officials involved prior to official voting (Fishkin and Luskin 2005). In the end, the final decision remains in the hands of elected and appointed officials who, in some cases have given a prior commitment to implementing the outcome but in most cases simply take account of the Deliberative Polling results before making a decision. While this approach is arguably more representative of the public interest than merely aggregating votes, and moves beyond “adversary” democracy (Mansbridge 1983), some key questions remain unanswered: How can officials ensure that all of the relevant stakeholder groups are consulted? How can they ensure a timely process that leads to an actionable agreement? How can they move beyond the inevitable data gaps and scientific uncertainty that often undermine “rational” discourse? We believe that a third approach—​deliberation using elements of PDR—​can answer these questions.

A Third Approach to Public Decision-​M aking This third approach starts with the city council hiring an independent mediator to meet privately and confidentially with increasingly wider circles of relevant stakeholder groups, both in and outside of the city, to learn about their concerns regarding the proposed project (Susskind and Thomas-​Larmer 1999). Along with the developer of the proposed facility and appointees from a range of city and regional departments, ad hoc

714    Susskind, Gordon, and Zaerpoor representatives selected by the stakeholder groups (identified by the independent mediator) would be invited to participate in a problem-​solving process that the groups themselves would design and approve (Susskind and Cruikshank 2006). The parties would then engage in a time-​limited joint fact-​finding process to ensure that all stakeholders are informed by a mutually-​agreed upon set of experts or body of knowledge (Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-​Larmer 1999). After a period of publicly transparent and mediator-​facilitated negotiations, the fairly large group of stakeholder representatives would seek to reach a consensus that meets the underlying interests of almost all the parties involved (Cruikshank and Susskind 1987). If a written agreement is produced, and signed, it would commit everyone involved to fulfilling a series of voluntary commitments (which could include compensatory payments or other contingent promises from the developer, the city, and perhaps even the state and federal government, that go well beyond what the city has a statutory right to require).5 The agreement, assuming one is reached within the time frame that everyone agreed to at the outset, would then be presented by the mediator to the city council or other appointed bodies for final ratification. Details of the agreement would probably be incorporated, as conditions, in the formal permits ultimately granted to the developer. Such agreements usually call for the creation of a joint monitoring group to ensure that everyone who participated has a chance to oversee implementation. There is rarely litigation when a process like this is followed.

Key Elements of Public Dispute Resolution The previous descriptions of the three processes highlight several elements of public dispute resolution that go well beyond what deliberative democracy usually entails and can help overcome some of the practical challenges raised in implementing the ideals of deliberative democracy.6 PDR is based on the assumption that dialogue, on its own, is insufficient. For it to succeed, it is important to ensure that (1) all the relevant stakeholders are represented in the conversation; (2) the parties engage in joint fact-​finding rather than merely exchanging partisan or unsubstantiated claims; (3)  a neutral, independent mediator (acceptable to all the key stakeholders) manages the conversation; (4) everyone involved in the dialogue accepts responsibility for working toward a consensus; and (5) elected and appointed officials, while retaining their statutory right to make final decisions, agree to explain why they have not accepted consensus proposals presented to them, if that happens (Susskind and Cruikshank 2006; Cruikshank and Susskind 1987; Carlson 1999). In addition, we argue that the advantages of PDR can be fully realized only when the relevant stakeholders engage in face-​to-​face problem-​solving to produce an actionable consensus-​ based proposal.

Public Dispute Resolution    715 In this chapter, we focus primarily on three essential elements of PDR—​the independent mediator, stakeholder assessment, and joint fact-​finding—​which we believe could address some of the challenges inherent in deliberative democratic efforts.

Independent Mediation The role of a neutral, independent mediator, with dispute resolution skills and specialized knowledge about the problems under discussion, is essential to collaborative problem-​solving in the public arena. It is the mediator’s responsibility to manage the process from the pre-​negotiation phase to ratification by officials of any agreement reached (Podziba 2012; Cruikshank and Susskind 1987; Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-​Larmer 1999; Susskind and Ozawa 1983). The mediator plays a central role in (i) identifying the stakeholders; (ii) facilitating agenda-​setting; (iii) clarifying and enforcing ground rules; (iv) facilitating conversation informed by shared information and joint fact-​finding; (v) helping stakeholders prepare for negotiations so that they can adequately represent the interests of their groups throughout the process; (vi) reminding participants of their commitments; (vii) facilitating understanding and discussion even outside of the formal consensus building process; (viii) keeping track of stated positions and summarizing them accurately; and, in rare cases, (ix) suggesting possible mutual gains options if the stakeholders are unable to think of trades or packages that allow them to reach a consensus.7 Mediators are not expected to take the place of public officials. Indeed, none of what we have described is meant to suggest that the “ad-​hocracy” suggested here is better than representative democracy. Rather, PDR advocates suggest that prior to decision-​ making by elected or appointed officials, self-​selected stakeholder representatives be given a chance to engage in an effort to produce proposals that meet the most important interests of all the groups involved. The proposals that emerge from this kind of “ad-​ hocracy” still must be acted upon by elected and appointed officials. Mediation has been a particularly effective means of resolving environmental disputes.8 Under the 1998 Environmental Policy and Conflict Resolution Act, Congress created the US Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution. This organization keeps a roster of trained and experienced mediators to assist federal agencies and other affected stakeholders in addressing public environmental disputes (Alexander and O’Leary 2013). There is no reason why this model cannot be extended to other public policy domains.

Stakeholder Assessment Stakeholder assessment is a second critical component of PDR and could be used to overcome the practical difficulty of ensuring that affected stakeholders are represented during a decision-​making process. A stakeholder assessment starts with the mediator

716    Susskind, Gordon, and Zaerpoor (having been invited by a convening agency, like a city council) meeting privately with each of the “known” stakeholder groups to learn about their interests, priorities, and concerns. This helps all the groups understand each other’s concerns, saving time if the parties decide to engage in a joint problem-​solving effort. This first “known” circle includes individuals and groups who are easily identifiable because they have already been vocal on the issue. Those in the first circle are usually asked to suggest a second circle of possible stakeholders who may be less visible to outsiders. The fact that this process is underway should also be noted publicly so that any interested party (i.e. a “third” circle of stakeholders) can contact the mediator and asked to be included (Susskind and Thomas-​Larmer 1999; Susskind 2008). This process results in an assessment report, drafted by the mediator, that includes (without attribution) a list of the issues that will need to be discussed, a possible work plan and timetable, including joint fact-​finding, if required (Podziba 2012). It also includes a suggestion for the smallest number of relevant categories of stakeholders that will need to be involved, as well as ways in which certain diffused categories of stakeholders might be asked to caucus with the help of the mediator to identify a spokesperson. Everyone interviewed is usually given a chance to provide comments or corrections on the draft assessment before it is submitted to the convening agency. Even in a highly contentious dispute, it is possible to identify a relatively small number of stakeholder representatives to participate in a carefully planned and managed problem-​ solving effort.9 The independent mediator can provide the key elected body (or some other convening entity) with a clear analysis of whether or not it is desirable to move ahead with a consensus-​building process and, if so, who should be involved and how the problem-​ solving effort ought to be structured. When invitations are then sent by the convener to all the groups that are being asked to designate spokespeople, everyone has already played a part in setting the agenda, framing the work plan (timetable), approving the list of parties being invited and acknowledging the ground rules. They will also have met (and have reason to trust) the person likely to serve as the mediator if the consensus building process proceeds.

Joint Fact-​Finding One of the most formidable challenges in political decision-​making concerns the many “unknowns” that result from either complexity or scientific uncertainty (Karl, Susskind, and Wallace 2007). As a result, group representatives have to rely on facts, predictions, or analyses that are often in dispute. Joint fact-​finding, a third key element of PDR, can be used to address this issue. Stakeholders with different interests can work together with outside experts (of their choosing) to identify common assumptions, gather information together and formulate and clarify opinions (Ehrmann and Stinson 1999; Matsuura and Schenk 2017).

Public Dispute Resolution    717 Joint fact-​finding involves delineating issues of concern that require technical analysis, agreeing on an expert (or group of experts) to conduct whatever technical assessments are required, identifying the limitations of any analytical methods that will be used, and agreeing on how to proceed once the technical analysis is completed. The benefits extend beyond avoiding a battle between hired guns working for various sides, and can include agreeing on ways to integrate “local” and “expert” knowledge (Ehrmann and Stinson 1999; McCreary, Gamman, and Brooks 2001). Joint fact-​finding fosters trust, enhances communication, and builds understanding, which in turn can lead to improved relationships and, presumably, better agreements.10

Advantages of Supplementing Deliberative Democracy with PDR We believe that deliberative democracy supplemented with, not supplanted by, elements of public dispute resolution can lead to fairer, wiser, more stable, and more efficient outcomes (Cruikshank and Susskind 1987) by providing the conditions for better representation, a more manageable deliberative process, pressure to create more “value,” and effective conflict resolution.

Better Representation Early deliberative democratic theory assumes that in many cases the “common good” can be discovered through deliberation by average citizens who may or may not be affected by, or informed about, a policy decision that needs to be made. Although the decision can be enhanced by ensuring diversity in the deciding group (Landemore 2013), we argue that stakeholder groups (i.e. groups who will be directly affected by the decision) should have a hand in identifying representatives who will speak on their behalf during the deliberative process. If conducted properly, a formal stakeholder assessment ensures better representation because it identifies all parties affected by a decision, including those who do not yet have explicit representation or leadership (e.g. future generations, marginalized communities). An independent mediator plays an active role in engaging these parties and ensuring that they are included in the process, starting with setting the agenda.

Clearly Defined and Manageable Process Deliberative democracy advocates believe that deliberation inherently has several benefits, such as increasing tolerance and understanding among various groups (Gutmann

718    Susskind, Gordon, and Zaerpoor and Thompson 2004; Cohen 1989; Dryzek 2000; Chambers 2003). Despite these benefits, it is not guaranteed that consensus will be reached, even under ideal circumstances. In the absence of consensus, some deliberative democracy advocates are satisfied if the process ends with a “majority-​rule” vote, noting that the alternative (i.e. political gridlock) may be more harmful, at least in some cases.11 We argue that this approach to deliberation (i.e. limited to clarifying the conflict and then simply voting) will always fall short. The goal of deliberation should instead be to reach a consensus by creating more value through joint problem-​solving (Susskind 2014), or negotiation (Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2016). Consensus, defined here as a set of commitments that almost all the parties agree would be better than no agreement, is more likely to resolve disputes in a lasting way than a vote of a legislative body, a decision by an administrative agency, or a court decree. This is because such a negotiated consensus is more likely to serve the underlying interests of the parties (Cruikshank and Susskind 1987). In some cases, deliberation will not necessarily bridge competing values or perspectives but may instead lead to group polarization and hardening positions (Mansbridge 1994; Sunstein 2002; Shapiro 2003). Several elements of PDR can help move parties beyond such entrenched positions. First, although the convener (e.g. government official) may start the process, the independent mediator is explicitly tasked with facilitating a fair process by ensuring that no one dominates the conversation12 (Stitzel and Forester 1989). A trained mediator also plays a crucial role in continually reminding stakeholders to be creative in their problem-​solving and pursue mutually beneficial outcomes. Second, one of the many advantages of using a stakeholder assessment to begin is that it allows various stakeholders to be combined into a single “stakeholder group” with shared concerns. This helps reduce the number of people “around the table” without sacrificing important dimensions of representation, thereby making the deliberative process logistically more manageable. Third, the involvement of relevant stakeholders and an independent mediator in designing the process ensures that the agenda will touch on the most important concerns of all the parties. We have not seen in practice instances in which a commitment to joint problem-​solving (i.e. PDR)—​even when consensus has not been reached—​has reduced levels of trust or made it more difficult for parties to work together in the future.

Value Creation In public dispute resolution, no one is pressed to change their interests; instead, they are encouraged to think of ways to meet their interests and the interests of others. They can accomplish this goal by creating more value, that is, by generating options (or packages of options) for mutual gain. This requires moving away from a zero-​sum approach to deliberation, in which gains by one party are presumed to necessitate concessions by others, to a positive-​sum view. This may mean adding new issues that were not on the agenda at the outset, linking issues from one agenda with issues under

Public Dispute Resolution    719 discussion in other forums, or imagining innovative ways of achieving certain outcomes that are not addressed in law or current practice. This is often achieved in PDR by giving the parties flexibility to invent new options—​promoting cooperation and shared problem-​solving (Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-​Larmer 1999). In addition, bundling issues and sub-​issues allows stakeholders to trade options or items they value differently, leading to agreement rather than compromise (Raiffa 1982; Lax and Sebenius 1986; Fisher and Ury 1981). Among deliberative democracy theorists, several have recently developed a theory of “deliberative negotiation” that reaches related conclusions regarding adding issues and expanding the range of options (Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2016). For example, in a development controversy in Oregon, mediation expanded the list of options under discussion beyond blocking new development to recommendations that would meet the dual objectives of managed growth and conservation. This ultimately led to a settlement, which included stricter enforcement of existing regulations, the formation of a new institution (i.e. a land trust) to undertake mutually advantageous actions, and new payments for riparian landowners (Susskind, van der Wansem, and Ciccarelli 2000).

Conflict Management Much deliberative democracy theory embraces the Habermasian ideal of “communicative rationality” (Shapiro 2003; Fung 2007; Cohen 1989; Gutmann and Thompson 2004; Dryzek 2000). Habermas argues that under “ideal speech” conditions, a socially optimal solution can be constructed through rational discourse (Habermas 1984). However, Foucault and other skeptics argue that power, not rationality, determines the outcome of deliberation (Foucault 2001). The role of power may be particularly influential in cases where “rationality” may be hindered due to scientific uncertainty or in the case of widely disparate values. As a result, many deliberative democracy advocates argue that the goal of deliberation should not be to promote the “common good,” but rather to diminish the domination of the most powerful (Shapiro 2003). We believe that a deliberative approach enhanced with elements of PDR can ensure a more even playing field and address acute power differentials. For example, the use of a mediator in more deliberative settings can help ensure that the interests of the least powerful stakeholders are tended to, and that they have the help they need to present their views effectively. A  mediator can also help convince the most powerful stakeholders to join and stay at the table (Susskind and Cruikshank 2006) by reminding these stakeholders that participating in the deliberative process can lead to a more stable outcome and reduce the likelihood of litigation as well as lower the cost of conflict. Finally, a mediator can argue that the mutual-​gains focus of PDR (or deliberative negotiation) can provide an opportunity for the most powerful stakeholders to be involved in creating packages that are of little cost to them, but provide sufficient benefits to other stakeholders to win public support for what is being proposed.

720    Susskind, Gordon, and Zaerpoor There might also be ways of incorporating joint fact-​finding into some deliberative processes. Joint fact-​finding provides an important basis for reducing conflict. If the stakeholders agree on what data should be gathered (and by whom) and what methods of analysis should be used, they may still disagree on how the findings should be interpreted, but will no longer challenge the source or reliability of the data.

Conclusion Deliberative democracy, independently of PDR, can “deepen” democracy by adding to the legitimacy (and perhaps the quality) of whatever is decided. But in most of its current legislative and citizen forms, deliberative democracy usually forgoes the added value that collaborative problem-​solving can generate. PDR can yield results that are fairer (in the eyes of the parties), more efficient (in the eyes of an independent analyst), more stable (in retrospect), and wiser (Cruikshank and Susskind 1987) if the right parties are at the table, have a hand in generating the agenda and choosing their own spokespeople, and engage in joint fact-​finding. Such efforts should be managed by an independent mediator, and the parties should take responsibility for meeting not only their own interests but also the interests of others (through value creation). While elected and appointed officials retain the final say in a representative democratic context, experience has shown that such officials are eager to find out how they can deal with controversial issues in a way that will generate a positive response (and political support) from all stakeholders. Such an approach calls for facilitative, rather than top-​down, leadership. It is essential to take account of the particulars in each case in deciding whether some form of deliberative democracy, PDR, or a mixture, should be used. Neither deliberative democracy in the form of randomly selected citizen forums nor PDR can be used if elected and appointed officials do not see a need to involve the public or organized interests in decisions that must be made. In many places around the world no form of “direct democracy” is allowed. There may be legal and constitutional constraints or norms of political practice that prohibit the use of deliberative democracy or PDR. In places where interest groups are poorly organized and civil society is poorly developed, and therefore responsible stakeholders are hard to find, PDR is probably not going to work. Timing can also be an issue. If legal requirements or political pressures demand an immediate response from elected officials, there may be no way for them to consult or engage citizens or stakeholders.

“Fitting the Forum to the Fuss” In 2006, a group of PDR professionals produced a summary of the tools and techniques used most often in PDR processes around the world (Table 45.1). Deliberative

Table 45.1 Spectrum of processes for collaboration and consensus-​building in public decisions1 Explore/​Inform

Consult

Advise

Decide

Implement

Outcomes2

• Improved understanding of issues, process, etc. • Lists of concerns • Information needs identified • Explore differing perspectives • Build relationships

• Comments on draft policies • Suggestions for approaches • Priorities identified • Discussion of options • Call for action

• Consensus or majority recommendations, on options, proposals, or actions, often directed to public entities

• Consensus-​based agreements among agencies and constituent groups on policies, lawsuits or rules

• Multi-​party agreements to implement collaborative action and strategic plans

Sample Processes

• • • • • • •

• • • • • • • •

• Advisory Committees • Task Forces • Citizen Advisory Boards • Work Groups • Policy Dialogues • Visioning Processes

• Regulatory Negotiation • Negotiated settlement of lawsuits, permits, cleanup plans, etc. • Consensus meetings • Mediated negotiations

• Collaborative Planning processes • Partnerships for Action • Strategic Planning Committees • Implementation Committees

Use When

• Early in projects when issues are under development • When broad public education and support are needed • When stakeholders see need to connect, but are wary

• Want to develop agreement among various constituencies on recommendations, e.g. to public officials

• Want certainty of implementation for a specific public decision • Conditions are there for successful negotiation

• Want to develop meaningful on-​going partnership to solve a problem of mutual concern • To implement joint strategic action

Focus Groups Conferences Open houses Dialogues Roundtable Discussions Forums Summits

Public meetings Workshops Charettes Electronic Town Halls Community Visioning Scoping meetings Public Hearings Dialogues

• Want to test proposals and solicit public and stakeholder ideas • Want to explore possibility of joint action before committing to it

(continued)

Table 45.1 Continued

Conditions for Success

Explore/​Inform

Consult

Advise

Decide

Implement

• Participants will attend

• There are questions or proposals for comment • Affected groups and/​ or the public are willing to participate

• Can represent broad spectrum of affected groups • Players agree to devote time

• Can represent all affected interests and potential “blockers” • All agree upfront to implement results, incl. “sponsor” • Time, information, incentives and resources are available for negotiation

• Participants agree to support the goal for the effort • Participants agree to invest time and resources • Conditions exist for successful negotiations

1 Developed by Suzanne Orenstein, Lucy Moore, and Susan Sherry, members of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Future of Collaboration and Consensus on Public Issues,

in consideration of and inspiration from the spectra developed by International Association for Public Involvement (http://​www.iap2.org/​associations/​4748/​files/​IAP2%20 Spectrum_​vertical.pdf) and the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (http://​www.thataway.org/​exchange/​files/​docs/​ddStreams1-​08.pdf). 2 While all types of processes have intrinsic value on their own, outcomes from the various types of processes on the left side of the spectrum tend to be incorporated into

the outcomes of the processes to the right. For example, information sharing and option identification usually occur as early stages in decision-​focused processes.

Public Dispute Resolution    723 democracy advocates tend to rely on the first three columns (from left to right), emphasizing ways of informing the public, consulting the public and inviting the public to advise officials on how certain decisions should be made. The fourth and fifth columns describe additional tools and techniques that PDR advocates use when the goal is to involve the public (i.e. mostly organized interest groups) in collaborative and consensus decision-​making. On the left side of the spectrum there is an emphasis on getting information out and reactions back. On the right, there is a focus on ways of reaching joint decisions and making sure they are implemented. We do not advocate the use of all of these tools in all situations, but rather, emphasize that one should “fit the forum to the fuss” (Sander and Goldberg 1994). The now well-​developed processes of PDR allow a democracy to move beyond simply consulting with and advising the public. They require a carefully mediated process of joint problem-​solving involving ad hoc representatives of all relevant stakeholder groups assisted by a professional neutral (moving toward the right side of the spectrum in Table 45.1). The goal of PDR is to generate actionable proposals that must then be acted upon by elected and appointed officials. Our presumption is that it will be difficult for officials to ignore proposals reached by consensus in a transparent way, although they certainly have the authority to do so. In this way, PDR addresses some of the shortcomings of the “first generation” of deliberative democracy theory and overcomes the practical difficulties posed by democratic decision-​making in highly pluralistic contexts (as highlighted in the “second generation” of deliberative democracy theory) by offering clearly defined tools to ensure that the products of deliberation shape political decisions in a manner responsive to the public interest.

Notes 1. Susskind and Cruikshank (2006) provides a more extensive description of PDR in theory and practice. 2. Also see Warren and Mansbridge et al. (2016) for a discussion of deliberative negotiation which, unlike early deliberative democracy theory, recognizes the applicability of a mutual gains approach to deliberation. 3. We feel the need to clarify between “consensus” as it is often understood in early deliberative democracy theory and our use of “consensus agreements” as they apply to PDR. Early deliberative democracy theory refers to consensus as meaning unanimous agreement around the “common good” that can be reached through rational discourse (Habermas [1962] 1989). This is widely contested, even among deliberative democracy advocates (see Mansbridge 1983; Mouffe 1996; Mouffe 2000; Young 1996; Mansbridge et al. 2010). By “consensus agreement” we mean that even parties with conflicting interests are able to come to an agreement that is better for all of them than no agreement at all. This is done, as we will argue, through a well-​managed process. 4. See the following:  Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-​Larmer 1999; Susskind, van der Wansem, and Ciccarelli 2000; Emerson and Nabatchi 2015; Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000. 5. In 2013, a consensus-​building approach was used to site new energy facilities in New Hampshire. The state legislature used the resulting reports and agreements to pass reforms on the siting process (Raab Associates 2013).

724    Susskind, Gordon, and Zaerpoor 6. For example, Warren and Mansbridge et al. (2016) note the inclusion of all affected parties is a deliberative democracy ideal that helps ensure more fair and just processes but that there are “many practical difficulties in actually bringing to the literal table all those who might in any way be affected” (148). 7. See Table 5.1 “Tasks of the Mediator” in Cruikshank and Susskind (1987) for an extended description of the mediator’s role in each stage of negotiation. 8. See Susskind and McKearnan (1999) for more on the evolution of public dispute resolution in environmental disputes. 9. See Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-​Larmer (1999), Part 3 for examples. 10. See Section 3 of Susskind, McKearnan, and Thomas-​Larmer (1999) for examples of joint fact-​finding that successfully led to shared agreements. 11. For example, Warren and Mansbridge et al. (2016) argue that failed negotiations “freeze existing patterns of inclusion and exclusion,” may lead to failure to act on what would otherwise be “collective will,” carry efficiency costs and may reduce mutual trust, which could then affect future agreements. 12. Fishkin and Luskin (2003) emphasize the importance of moderators in Deliberative Polling for the same reason.

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Public Dispute Resolution    725 Fishkin, J. S. and Luskin, R. (2005). Experimenting with a Democratic Ideal:  Deliberative Polling and Public Opinion. Acta Politica, 40: 284–​98. Forester, J. (1999). The Deliberative Practitioner: Encouraging Participatory Planning Processes (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Foucault, M. (2001). Power [vol. 3 of The Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–​1984], ed. J. B. Faubion, trans. R. Hurley and others (New York: New Press). Fung, A. (2007). Democratic Theory and Political Science:  A Pragmatic Method of Constructive Engagement. American Political Science Review, 2007: 443–​58. Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (2004). Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere:  An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. T. Burger and F. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) [orig. German edn 1962)]. Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press) [orig. German edn 1981]. Hampshire, S. (2000). Justice Is Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Healey, P. (1997). Collaborative Planning:  Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies (Vancouver: UBC Press). Innes, J. E. and Booher, D. E. (2010). Planning with Complexity: An Introduction to Collaborative Rationality for Public Policy (London: Routledge). Karl, H., Susskind, L., and Wallace, K. (2007). A Dialogue, Not a Diatribe: Effective Integration of Science and Policy through Joint Fact Finding. Environment:  Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 49: 20–​34. Landemore, H. (2013). Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Lax, D. and Sebenius, J. (1986). The Manager as Negotiator: Bargaining for Cooperation and Competitive Gain (New York: The Free Press). Mansbridge, J. (1994). Using Power/​Fighting Power. Constellations, 1: 53–​73. Mansbridge, J., with Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Estlund, D., Føllesdal, A., Fung, A., Lafont, C., Manin, B., and Martí, J. L. (2010). The Place of Self-​Interest and the Role of Power in Deliberative Democracy. Journal of Political Philosophy, 18: 64–​100. Mansbridge, J. J. (1983). Beyond Adversary Democracy (new edn, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press). Matsuura, M. and Schenk, T. (eds) (2017). Joint Fact-​ Finding in Urban Planning and Environmental Disputes (London: Routledge). Mayer, B., Stulberg, J., Susskind, L., and Lande, J. (2012). Panel Discussion—​Core Values of Dispute Resolution: Is Neutrality Necessary? Marquette Law Review, 95: 805–​28. McCreary, S. T., Gamman, J. K., and Brooks, B. (2001). Refining and Testing Joint Fact-​ Finding for Environmental Dispute Resolution: Ten Years of Success. Mediation Quarterly, 18: 329–​48. Menkel-​Meadow, C. (2006). Deliberative Democracy and Conflict Resolution: Two Theories and Practices of Participation in the Polity. Dispute Resolution, 12: 17–​22. Mouffe, C. (1996). Democracy, Power, and the “Political.” In Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press), 245–​56. Mouffe, C. (2000). Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism? Political Science Series 72 (Vienna: Institute for Advanced Studies).

726    Susskind, Gordon, and Zaerpoor Muhlberger, P. (2011). A Deliberative Look at Alternative Dispute Resolution and the Rule of Law. Journal of Dispute Resolution, (1): 145–​63. O’Leary, R. and Bingham, L. (eds) (2003). The Promise and Performance of Environmental Conflict Resolution (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future). Podziba, S. (2012). Civic Fusion:  Mediating Polarized Public Disputes (Chicago, IL:  ABA Publishing). Raab Associates (2013). New Hampshire’s Energy Facility Siting Process: Report on Stakeholder and Citizen Feedback. https://​www.nh.gov/​osi/​energy/​programs/​documents/​sb99reporton stakeholderandcitizenfeedback.pdf, December 31, 2013. Raiffa, H. (1982). The Art and Science of Negotiation (Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press). Sander, F. E. A. and Goldberg, S. B. (1994). Fitting the Forum to the Fuss: A User-​Friendly Guide to Selecting an ADR Procedure. In Practice, 10: 49–​68. Shapiro, I. (2003). The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Stitzel, J. and Forester, D. (1989). Beyond Neutrality: The Possibilities of Activist Mediation in Public Sector Conflicts. Negotiation Journal, 5: 251–​64. Sunstein, C. R. (2002). The Law of Group Polarization. Journal of Political Philosophy, 10: 175–​95. Susskind, L. (2008). Keynote Address: Consensus Building, Public Dispute Resolution, and Social Justice. Fordham Urban Law Journal, 35: 185–​203. Susskind, L. (2009). Deliberative Democracy and Dispute Resolution. Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 24: 395–​406. Susskind, L. (2014). Good for You, Great for Me: Finding the Trading Zone and Winning at Win-​ Win Negotiation (New York: Public Affairs). Susskind, L. and Cruikshank, J. (2006). Breaking Robert’s Rules: The New Way to Run Your Meeting, Build Consensus, and Get Results (New York: Oxford University Press). Susskind, L. and McKearnan, S. (1999). The Evolution of Public Policy Dispute Resolution. Journal of Architecture and Planning Research, 16: 96–​115. Susskind, L., McKearnan, S., and Thomas-​Larmer, J. (eds) (1999). The Consensus Building Handbook:  A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement (Thousand Oaks, CA:  SAGE Publications). Susskind, L. and Ozawa, C. (1983). Mediated Negotiation in the Public Sector:  Mediator Accountability and the Public Interest Problem. American Behavioral Scientist, 27: 255–​79. Susskind, L. and Thomas-​Larmer, J. (1999). Conducting a Conflict Assessment. In The Consensus Building Handbook:  A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement, ed. L. Susskind, S. McKearnan, and J. Thomas-​Larmer (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications), 99–​136. Susskind, L., van der Wansem, M., and Ciccarelli, A. (2000). Mediating Land Use Disputes: Pros and Cons (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy). Susskind, L. and Weinstein, A. (1980). Towards a Theory of Environmental Dispute Resolution. Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 9: 311–​57. Ury, W. L., Brett, J. M., and Goldberg, S. B. (1988). In Practice: Designing An Effective Dispute Resolution System. Negotiation Journal, 4: 413–​31.

Public Dispute Resolution    727 Warren, M. E. and Mansbridge, J., with Bächtiger, A., Cameron, M. A., Chambers, S., Ferejohn, J., Jacobs, A., Knight, J., Naurin, D., Schwartzberg, M., Tamir, Y., Thompson, D., and Williams, M. (2016). Deliberative Negotiation. In Political Negotiation: A Handbook, ed. J. Mansbridge and C. J. Martin (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press), 141–​96. Wondolleck, J. and Yaffee, S. L. (2000). Making Collaboration Work: Lessons from Innovation in Natural Resources Management (Washington, DC: Island Press). Young, I. M. (1996). Communication and the Other:  Beyond Deliberative Democracy. In Democracy and Difference:  Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. S. Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 120–​36.

Chapter 46

De l iberative Ne g ot iat i on Daniel Naurin and Christine Reh

This chapter focuses on deliberative negotiation. The concept, which was introduced by Mansbridge (2009) and Mansbridge et al. (2010) and developed further by Warren and Mansbridge (2013), covers a range of social decision procedures situated in the middle ground between pure deliberation and pure bargaining. The scholarly work on deliberative negotiation has grown out of a productive marriage between deliberative democratic theory and negotiation theory. It recognizes that democratic decision-​making needs to be able to deal with reasonable disagreement and competing legitimate claims, and aims at defining realistic means of attaining legitimate collective action. Deliberative negotiation would have been close to a contradiction in terms in early deliberative democratic thought, given the sharp distinction between “arguing” and “bargaining” and the identification of different behaviors suitable for “the market” and “the forum” (Elster 1986; Manin 1987; Cohen 1989). Recognizing that negotiations based on self-​regarding conflicting interests may also have deliberative qualities, when they are pursued on fair terms and with mutual respect, is an important development of deliberative democratic theory. It brings the latter somewhat closer to everyday decision-​ making in modern democracies. This development also introduces a stronger emphasis on the second part of the concept of democracy, kratos (rule), compared to much of previous democratic theory. The interest in deliberative negotiation is motivated by the significance not only of how, but also of the conditions that determine whether at all, social interaction can lead to agreement on collective action. It recognizes that the problems of gridlock and joint decision traps in the political systems of the United States and the European Union harm democracy, when action is needed in order to solve pressing policy problems and to realize the will of the people (demos) (Warren and Mansbridge 2013, 87). The chapter has three main parts. First, we discuss what deliberative negotiation means, and what is particular about it. The concept includes describing the “grey zone,” largely unexplored by deliberative democratic theory, between the ideal types of consensus-​seeking deliberation and power-​based bargaining. Thereafter we ask under what circumstances deliberative negotiation is more or less probable. We define a set of

Deliberative Negotiation   729 conditions—​institutional, social, and substantive—​that are likely to influence the extent to which political negotiations in democratic systems contain deliberative qualities. Finally, we consider what deliberative negotiation may bring to democratic politics, in terms of producing effective, stable, and legitimate outcomes.

What is Deliberative Negotiation? The concept of deliberative negotiation challenges the sharp contrast made in early deliberative democratic theory between the market and the forum, as two distinct spheres of society with opposing regulatory ideals regarding social interaction (Elster 1986). In the market, according to the earlier idea, people were expected to act on the basis of self-​interest, striving to get as good a deal as possible for themselves, without any obligation to recognize the preferences or values of others. If such preferences were taken into account this was purely for strategic reasons, to strengthen one’s position in the bargaining process. When entering the forum, on the other hand, which in this context is a metaphor for the democratic collective decision-​making arena, people were expected to transform from sellers and buyers into citizens. Virtuous citizens sought solutions based on the common good, while deliberation (or arguing) served the purpose of defining that common good. Subsequent deliberative theorists often defined bargaining as “a form of interest-​aggregation that builds on the exchange of threats and promises,” while deliberation “is based on claims of validity” (Zürn 2000, 192). Distinctions with some similarities to the arguing–​bargaining divide had previously been made in negotiation theory. Walton and McKersie (1965) describe two modes of bargaining where the parties approach the task of getting to agreement in different ways. Parties engaged in “integrative bargaining”—​which may have been what deliberative theorists had in mind when referring to exchanging “promises”—​have a cooperative attitude, trust each other with information about facts and preferences, and recognize that their own preference satisfaction depends on finding solutions that are satisfying also to the other parties. In integrative bargaining the parties perceive the situation as positive-​ sum. Brainstorming, rich information sharing, and participants candidly speaking their minds about what they want improve opportunities for finding creative solutions to conflicting positions, including package deals and log rolling (Naurin 2010, 37). In “distributive bargaining,” on the other hand, parties enter negotiations with the notion of having a fixed sum of utilities to allocate, making one participant’s gain a loss to the others. The negotiations are characterized by strategic action, mistrust, and information asymmetry. A distributive bargaining process involves manipulating information about the utilities and costs of policy alternatives, making strong commitments and using threats of sanctions and exiting, in order to pressure the opponent into concessions. Integrative and distributive bargaining are the terms used by Walter and McKersie. Other terms with similar connotations in negotiation theory are “claiming and creating

730    Daniel Naurin and Christine Reh value” (Lax and Sebenius 1986), while Schelling speaks of the “efficiency” and the “distributional” “aspects of bargaining” (Schelling 1960, 21). These concepts capture different modes of negotiation that have been found to exist empirically. However, they have rarely been analyzed with any deeper normative ambitions than to finding effective ways of “getting to yes” (Fisher, Ury, and Patton 1991). The scholarly work on deliberative negotiation has contributed to negotiation theory by bringing the normative legitimacy perspective to the categorization of different modes of negotiation. It has contributed to deliberative democratic theory by drawing on the negotiation literature in order to nuance the conception of bargaining as a purely competitive game. Generally, negotiation is a method for reaching a solution “[w]‌hen a group of equal individuals are to make a decision on a matter that concerns them all and the initial distribution of opinion falls short of consensus” (Elster 1998, 5). Defining deliberative negotiation implies acknowledging the complexity of the social interaction space in which negotiators exist, where different forms of relationships, assumptions concerning common interests and underlying conflict structures, modes of communication, and perceptions of oneself and the others are intertwined. The concept goes further than recognizing that deliberation and bargaining may empirically co-​exist side by side in negotiations, which the previous literature had repeatedly pointed out. The concept of deliberative negotiation is based on the possibility that some forms of bargaining are in fact deliberative, and thus that deliberation and bargaining are normatively compatible under certain circumstances. Deliberative negotiation is distinguished from “pure bargaining” (Warren and Mansbridge 2013) primarily in relation to the use of coercion in the process. Coercion is broadly defined. It includes the threat of sanctions on the basis of unequal access to relevant power resources, and threats of exiting the negotiations, but also manipulation of perceptions of the conflict structure and of factual and process-​related information, with the purpose of luring the other side into agreements that are more favorable to their own side. While the purpose of deliberative negotiation normally is to produce an outcome that is costly and potentially coercive for the parties to the agreement—​a binding contract, treaty, or law—​coercion must be absent from the deliberative moments in the decision process itself. Deliberative negotiation is distinguished from “pure deliberation” by relaxing the assumption made in early deliberation theory that the actors must be oriented towards finding consensus, in the sense of reaching a deeper agreement on the right course of action. In a pure deliberative process actors seek to find the truth, and “the right thing to do.” They are willing to be persuaded to change their positions by the force of the better argument and validity claims, even if these claims can remain contested. Deliberation may also result in a clarified perception of irreconcilable (at least for the time being) conflict, based on legitimate competing claims. Deliberative negotiation, on the other hand, is a way of overcoming legitimate disagreement, based on integrative solutions and fair compromise, and without any assumptions concerning the transformation of underlying motivations and preferences. Such transformations may occur as a side effect—​and may be welcomed from

Deliberative Negotiation   731 a deliberative perspective—​but are not defining characteristics. Deliberative negotiation recognizes the possibility of conflicting interests based on self-​regarding preferences. Its aim is not to question the conflict structure as such, but to identify legitimate ways of reaching agreement given the preconditions. These processes may or may not include actors that are prepared to change their minds about what they want in the process. Deliberative negotiation includes mutual justification and mutual respect. This implies several key deliberative features, and in particular reciprocal fairness and perspective-​taking. “In the process of mutual justification, participants should treat one another with mutual respect. They should give reasons to one another that they think the others can comprehend and accept. They should aim at finding fair terms of cooperation among free and equal persons. They should speak truthfully” (Mansbridge 2009, 2). Warren and Mansbridge (2013) identify three forms of deliberative negotiation in the range between pure deliberation and pure bargaining: fully and partially integrative solutions, and fair compromise. A fully integrative solution refers to the (less common) situation where an initial conflict of interest is dissolved when the parties realize—​through a process of mutual justification—​that the conflict was only apparent. The classic example is given by Follett ([1925] 1941), where one person wants the library window closed to avoid a draft, while another person wants it opened to get more air in the room. The solution—​opening the window in the next room—​satisfies the preferences of both parties. A partially integrative solution does not dissolve all of the conflict, but forces the participants to prioritize on their wants. Both fully and partially integrative solutions make use of variation in the salience attached to different aspects of what is being negotiated. Bringing to the table a new issue that is more important to participant A than to participant B could make a package deal possible. Such creative solutions are easier to find when the negotiations are characterized by trust and openness about preferences. A fair compromise may be the outcome of a process where the parties do not find ways of introducing additional issues to achieve integrative solutions, but still engage in communication based on mutual justification and respect. Fair compromise is possible when both parties are prepared to give reasonable concessions, rather than strategic and minimal ones, in order to find an agreement that satisfies all sides. Parties giving justifications for their positions that all can accept, rather than just forwarding bids and making claims, make these negotiations deliberative rather than just generally fair. Although the labeling of these three procedures refers to the outcomes they produce, in our view deliberative negotiation is primarily defined by the process through which it is conducted. Common to the forms of agreement-​seeking in the middle ground between pure deliberation and pure bargaining are the recognition of the possibility of legitimate conflicting self-​interests, on the one hand, and the willingness to use mutual justification and refraining from coercion in the process of overcoming that conflict, on the other hand.

732    Daniel Naurin and Christine Reh

How Can We Achieve Deliberative Negotiation? So far, we have argued that democracies—​where competing but legitimate claims co-​ exist—​cannot rely exclusively on pure deliberation or pure bargaining. Following Mansbridge, we therefore conceptualized deliberative negotiation as a communicative process between actors motivated by the common good, by self-​interest, or by a combination of the two. If deliberative negotiation—​characterized by mutual justification, the absence of coercion, and mutual respect—​plays a key role in reaching or preparing the ground for agreement in democratic politics, we next need to identify the conditions under which a “compromising mindset” (Gutmann and Thompson 2012, 204) is more likely. When do actors feel “safe” enough to openly reveal their positions to enlarge the zone of possible agreement? When do they consider generous concessions worthwhile making? When will they refrain from using coercive power? The following introduces sets of (1) formal institutions, (2) social conditions, and (3) issue-​characteristics that facilitate deliberative moments in negotiations.

Formal Institutions Formal institutions set the parameters in which political conflict—​and the search for political solutions—​is played out; as Sunstein argues:  “[o]‌ne of the key goals of democracy’s constitution is to solve the problem of enduring disagreement” (2001, 9). Formal institutions—​electoral systems, executive–​legislative relations, the balance between law and politics, the organization of societal interests, (de-​)centralization—​vary greatly across political systems; the question is whether they incorporate the need for cooperation, compromise, and negotiation “as a matter of course” (Martin 2013, 122). At the most general level, democracies differ in their emphasis on majoritarianism versus consensual rule. The former is “simple and straightforward”: government should be “by the majority and in accordance with the majority’s wishes” (Lijphart 1999, 2); a consensus democracy, by contrast, “seeks to maximize . . . majorities. Its rules and institutions aim at broad participation in government and broad agreements on the policies that the government should pursue” (Lijphart 1999, 2; Andeweg 2000). Consensual democratic institutions do not mean that deliberative negotiation will necessarily happen: stalemate and gridlock are distinct possibilities. However, it does mean that inclusiveness and justification are preconditions for agreement. Consensual democracies are based on proportional electoral systems with multiple parties. Proportional systems ensure a wider “breadth of participation” than winner-​ takes-​all majoritarianism (Lijphart 1999, 90; Martin 2013, 128–​9): in political debate, in parliament, and in coalition government. Such broad participation, with all its ensuing complexity, has direct implications for deliberative negotiation. Coalition partners need

Deliberative Negotiation   733 to argue, cooperate and accommodate across party lines, often over extended periods of time and successive governments (Bächtiger and Hangartner 2010, 612–​14; Steiner et al. 2004). Accordingly, actors are constantly exposed to interests, values, and policy solutions that differ from their own; the knowledge that governing will always require partners should temper the public display of adversity and increase mutual respect vis-​à-​vis potential future partners in government; and mutual justification is key in the search for political agreement, because the complexity of power sharing and the multiplicity of legitimate interests make both pure deliberation and pure bargaining problematic. It is contested whether multi-​party systems also improve political argumentation. On the one hand, consensual systems showcase more arguments in public debates, while bipartisan systems tend to juxtapose government and opposition in parliamentary debates, potentially reducing the incentives to deliberate (Scharpf 1997; Bächtiger and Hangartner 2010). On the other hand, two-​party systems may have a moderating effect, because catch-​all parties need to reach out to the median voter (Lijphart 1999, 63); indeed, bipartisanism has been shown to enhance real argumentation in parliamentary debate in the US Congress (Esterling 2011). Yet, where citizens are consistently exposed to a range of arguments, can observe deliberation, and perceive a commonality of interest they are, themselves, more likely to both appreciate and sustain a political culture based on compromise and accommodation (Gutmann and Thompson 2012, 216–​ 18). For instance, British citizens, socialized into the values of majoritarianism, choices between adversarial agendas, and clearly visible responsibility often cannot easily relate to the EU’s consensual political system with its high levels of accommodation but blurred lines of accountability (Schmidt 2006). Second, binding agreements can be adopted according to different decision-​ rules: under unanimity, all parties have to agree; under majority rule, (coalitions of) actors can be outvoted. These rules of the game influence actors’ willingness to be generous and cooperative. For example, Austen-​Smith and Feddersen (2006) and Mathis (2011) analyze formally the conditions under which rich information-​sharing is more likely under unanimity or majority rule. Yet, how exactly formal decision-​rules matter is contested. On the one hand, unanimity may foster non-​cooperative, concession-​ extracting tactics, because all actors can credibly threaten to veto, delay, or exit from an agreement; under majority rule, such threats require (sizeable) coalitions to be credible (McKibben 2013, 416). On the other hand, unanimity can create inclusive group norms, because with every vote being pivotal (Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker 2012, 535), actors need to engage constructively and “communicate more and better” to be persuasive (Naurin 2015, 731). Majority rule, by contrast, where agreement does not hinge upon the accommodation of all parties, may encourage conflict and attempts at dominance (Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker 2012; Mendelberg 2002). According to this line of reasoning, unanimity should thus be conducive to mutual justification and mutual respect, and, given the equal distribution of credible threats, make the use of coercive power less likely. Scholars have provided empirical support for both views. Naurin has shown evidence that EU member states are significantly less cooperative under majority rule than under unanimity (Naurin 2015, 739), whereas McKibben reaches the

734    Daniel Naurin and Christine Reh opposite conclusion (2013, 424). Unanimity decision rules have been shown to improve the voice and influence of “minority women” in small-​group deliberation (Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker 2012), to promote the participation and perceived influence of “minority faction members” in juries as well as “overall satisfaction” and the “perceived thoroughness of deliberation” (Hastie, Penrod, and Pennington 1983, 32, 29–​32, 79), and to increase and improve argumentation in parliamentary debates (Steiner et al. 2004).

Social Conditions In response to the increasingly adversarial American political climate, congressional observer Norm Ornstein recently suggested to change the schedule of Congress to “three weeks on, one week off ” so as to give members more opportunities to interact and deliberate (Gutmann and Thompson 2012, 169). Indeed, both negotiation scholars and democratic theorists have argued that the social context of negotiations matters. “Partition” is viewed as the enemy of open justification, mutual respect, and non-​ coercion; familiarity with one’s adversaries, by contrast, should make it easier to distinguish between their tactically evoked and real political constraints, bolster trust in reciprocity, improve judgments about when (not) to compromise, and reduce distributive bargaining games, where actors hold out for maximum individual payoffs and thereby produce sub-​optimal outcomes (Gutmann and Thompson 2012, 170). Recent empirical studies of EU decision-​making show that the impact of the “consensus norm” on generous cooperation has been overestimated (McKibben 2013; Naurin 2015). Yet, repeated and long-​term interaction can foster deliberative negotiation, making actors more willing to exchange and justify their positions, developing collective understandings in the long run, and building up trust “to support risky but collectively beneficial choice” (Martin 2013, 125); repeated interaction and a long shadow of the future also make recourse to manipulation and coercion less appealing, because stable long-​ term cooperation relies on trust in reciprocity (Wendt 1994; Lewis 1998; Johnson 2001; Martin 2013, 125–​6). Furthermore, deliberative negotiation can be fostered by intense, highly institutionalized interaction over related sets of issues (e.g. in the context of international regimes). Beyond establishing connections between different bargaining rounds, regimes “may legitimize focal principles because [they] . . . bear legitimacy as the concrete products of visions of world order” (Fearon 1998, 298): intense institutionalized negotiation makes the collective understanding and issue-​linkages behind integrative agreement possible. Second, “regimes may lessen the bargaining problem by raising the political costs of failure to agree, since a failure to agree can now have adverse implications for the regime” (Fearon 1998, 298). In addition to raising the political costs, long-​term cooperation can thus become a shared political value and “meta-​preference,” disagreement between actors on individual issues notwithstanding.

Deliberative Negotiation   735 Finally, negotiations can play out in open public or in closed private settings, generating different incentives to display the openness, perspective-​taking, and respect that are key to deliberative negotiation. Transparency is a normative benchmark in democratic politics:  it is a precondition for accountability (King 2007, 59), crucial for the public explanation of political choice (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010), and allows “losers” to know “what justifications for existing decisions they will need to counter if they are to argue themselves into the majority” (Lord 2013, 1059). Yet, to thrive in a political context of well-​organized interests, close media monitoring and the “permanent campaign” (Gutmann and Thompson 2012, 4), deliberative moments may be more likely behind closed doors. Sheltered from publicity, posturing and demagoguery in defense of narrow (national) interests become rarer, and actors enjoy more leeway to communicate freely and to make the offers and generous concessions necessary for integrative agreements (Chambers 2004; Stasavage 2004; Martin 2013, 126–​7; Warren and Mansbridge 2013, 106–​12). Studies of the (secluded) US Federal Convention and the (public) French Assemblée Nationale (Elster 1995), of the Swiss parliament (Steiner et al. 2004), and of EU lobbying (Naurin 2007) back this argument empirically. Interestingly, McKibben finds that highly publicized negotiations in the EU make both non-​cooperative and most cooperative behavior more likely; in line with Gutmann and Thompson’s argument about the importance of “compromise cultures” (2012, 217), she suggests that “[d]‌ifferent state leaders may . . . feel different pressures,” because different domestic constituencies favor different bargaining tactics (McKibben 2013, 424).

Issue Characteristics Deliberative negotiation can play an important role in identifying underlying dimensions of conflict as well as the values attached to particular outcomes; key to this process are participants who openly communicate their preferences and priorities, and who are willing to engage with and respect each other’s demands. Whether actors feel “safe” enough to be open, to concede generously, and to refrain from coercion will not least depend on the issue under negotiation and on the problem-​structure. First, different types of issues entail different risks; for negotiators, such risks include the loss of domestic (electoral) support, or the perceived betrayal of a core community norm. Open cooperative behavior may be considered particularly “unsafe” or “risky” on issues challenging an actor’s core values and most deeply held beliefs, imposing concentrated costs on a representative’s constituency while delivering only diffuse benefits, opening a dilemma of timing—​because costs will be imposed long before benefits can be reaped—​or touching upon a country’s “high politics”: security, sovereignty or a salient national interest (Bellamy 1999, 103–​11; Lowi 1964; Jacobs 2011; McKibben 2013, 413). By contrast, where the costs of accommodation can be borne by the agreement itself, deliberative negotiation towards an integrative solution becomes more likely. For instance, to allow compromise on EU treaty reform, countries with high domestic

736    Daniel Naurin and Christine Reh constraints—​Denmark, Ireland, the UK—​have been given opt-​outs from certain areas of cooperation; such accommodation is much more difficult on visibly distributive issues such as weighted votes, or on questions touching on the EU’s founding principles, such as the free movement of workers. Second, different problem-​structures provide different opportunities. As argued above, through open justification actors can uncover the variation in the relative salience they attach to the different dimensions of the negotiation: revealing such variation, or bringing in a new issue to “expand the pie,” can prepare the ground for linking issues into an integrative package (Aksoy 2012). Deliberative negotiators may agree to disagree; but only a multi-​issue or expandable constellation gives them the structural opportunity for open exchange and accommodation. Finally, an actor’s willingness to be open, respectful, and non-​coercive in a negotiation will depend on whether the outcome is binding and enforceable. Cooperation theorists have argued that a long shadow of the future and institutionalized enforcement make commitments credible and international cooperation more likely (Stein 1982; Snidal 1985). By contrast, distinguishing clearly between the bargaining and enforcement stages in international negotiations, Fearon argues that actors who clearly realize an agreement’s future costs and payoffs will aim to drive a hard bargain (Fearon 1998; Naurin 2010): where the stakes are high and the shadow of the future is long, the chance of deliberative negotiation will decline.

What Does Deliberative Negotiation Do? Following Mansbridge et al. (2010), we suggest that deliberative negotiation can play two roles in democratic politics. First, deliberative negotiation can prepare the ground for a later decision by non-​deliberative methods, such as voting or adjudication; second, deliberative negotiation can, itself, lead to agreement. Given that the process is characterized by open, inclusive and non-​coercive exchange and justification, we argue that (elements of) deliberative negotiation may not only return the capacity to act to a democracy in gridlock (Warren and Mansbridge 2013, 87–​90) but can also contribute to making political outcomes more efficient, more stable, and more legitimate. When parties are gridlocked and unable to move beyond the status quo in spite of pressing policy problems and public demands for action, deliberative negotiation can contribute to reducing the “negotiator’s dilemma,” and, thus, increase the efficiency of decision-​making. Given participants’ commitment to openness and mutual justification, deliberative negotiation has the potential to clarify the underlying conflict structure, which may have been deliberately or accidentally obscured (Mansbridge 2009; Mansbridge et  al. 2010; Warren and Mansbridge 2013, 93). In addition, an open exchange, explanation, and consideration of all positions will generate new and necessary

Deliberative Negotiation   737 information on sub-​issues (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 73). Based on such additional information and a better understanding of each other’s interests and their underlying reasons, negotiators will be able to identify variations in salience attached as well as joint gains; they will also be better equipped to find creative solutions to their bargaining dilemma—​e.g. by identifying possible issue-​linkages, by “expanding the pie” through the introduction of new or related issues, by introducing different temporal and territorial derogations to the agreement, or by including public explanatory statements in the deal. Such inclusive negotiation may slow down the speed of decision-​making and may only operate effectively under some or all of the conditions identified above, but in the “right” context it can lead to (or towards) an agreement which would be impossible to reach through either pure deliberation or pure bargaining. Furthermore, injecting deliberative negotiation into the preparation or decision stage can increase an agreement’s stability. Compromises have been criticized, because they “are temporary, are tied to the particular circumstances in which they were made, and can be reopened at the next opportunity” (Hirschman 1994, 214); genuine consensus, by contrast, will have a strong compliance pull, because pure deliberation not only leads to changed positions but also to convergence on an agreement’s underlying principles, values, and causal claims. However, for a number of reasons deliberative negotiation will make fully or partially integrative solutions and fair compromises more stable (Bellamy 1999; Bellamy and Schönlau 2004; Reh 2010, 187–​91). First, all parties to the agreement will have had the chance to justify their positions, to explain their specific (national) sensitivities, and to identify expected problems, including those related to implementation and compliance. Second, where communication is based on mutual respect and non-​coercion, all views will have been heard, weighted fairly, and considered equally; such a process will, in turn, increase commitment to honoring the deal. Finally, negotiators know that reopening the agreement would make them worse off: with no gains left on the table, the costs of unraveling an inclusive package are high. In the context of the EU’s multilevel governance, for instance, member states’ compliance with supranational law has been ascribed to the consensual decision-​making between national ministers (Neyer 2004). Indeed, deliberative negotiation can contribute to legitimacy, beyond shoring up an individual agreement’s stability. At the most general systemic level, consensus democracies—​measured on the executives–​parties dimension—​have been shown to “outperform” their majoritarian counterparts on “the quality of democracy and democratic representation” (Lijphart 1999, 301). In micro-​level decision-​making too, deliberative negotiation can increase an agreement’s acceptability. Inclusive, open, and respectful communication not only lets participants express and explain their concerns, and, in doing so, better judge constraints and zones of possible agreement; such interaction also gives all participants the assurance of being listened to with empathy and respect. Second and closely related, where negotiators refrain from using coercive power, thus signaling non-​domination and generosity, they confer “legitimacy on the point of view of the other side,” and suggest “a semblance of equality between nonequals” (Margalit 2010, 40, 41). Such signals should increase actors’ trust: in the “benevolence”

738    Daniel Naurin and Christine Reh of the agreement (Gutmann and Thompson 2012, 208); in being accommodated—​ regardless of individual coercive potential—​where the (domestic) stakes are high; and in the preservation of core (constitutional) choice, even where parties eventually recur to a vote (Reh 2012, 431). Finally, when strong negotiators—​benefiting from a permanent advantage of size or material capability, or from issue-​specific exit options—​do not extract maximum benefits, parties underline the high value they attach to their lasting and successful cooperation (Margalit 2010, 43; Reh 2012, 432). Similar principles have been shown at work in EU decision-​making, when ministers refrain from voting in spite of being formally entitled to do so (Hayes-​Renshaw, van Aaken, and Wallace 2006), and when informal governance arrangements are used to accommodate genuine domestic concerns (Kleine 2013); their violation—​prominently in the July 2015 Greek bail-​out or the September 2015 outvoting of a Central and Eastern coalition on refugee allocation—​ has deepened contestation over the underlying norms of European integration.

Conclusion Democracies and international organizations regularly handle competing legitimate claims, whether these are self-​regarding or other-​regarding. In order to solve pressing policy problems, and realize the will of the people, they need to find procedures that help them overcome potential gridlock. Deliberative negotiation—​characterized by mutual justifications, mutual respect, and the absence of coercion—​suggests that this can be accomplished in a normatively legitimate way. This view combines insights developed in deliberative democratic theory and negotiation theory. It contributes by offering more normative content to the latter, while bringing the former somewhat closer to everyday problems of political collective action, and to the way problems can be solved if preferences continue to diverge. The promise of deliberative negotiation is that it potentially can achieve both the necessary collective action capacity and the legitimacy needed for agreements to remain stable. Deliberative negotiation may increase the efficiency of agreements by introducing new information and making actors aware of mutually beneficial issue-​ linkages and package deals. It may also strengthen the subjective legitimacy of the outcome by providing the participants with a process characterized by fairness and respect. Deliberative negotiation is a valued, but limited, resource in democratic politics and international relations. We have suggested a number of institutional, social, and substantive factors that impact on the likelihood of deliberative moments during negotiations. This is by no means intended to be an exhaustive list, but rather reflects the status of the empirical research on collective action, through deliberation and negotiations, as we read it. Furthermore, several of the causal claims made in the literature remain contested, or have only been partially tested. The concept of deliberative negotiation may help in guiding empirical research in terms of specifying the research questions and operationalizing the key concepts for their studies. Clearly, further research is needed

Deliberative Negotiation   739 regarding how the compromising mindsets characteristic of deliberative negotiations may be activated.

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Chapter 47

De liberation i n De e ply Divided So c i et i e s Ian O’Flynn and Didier Caluwaerts

There are many reasons why democracy is difficult in societies deeply divided along ethnic lines.1 But of those reasons, one of the most troubling is outbidding—​ethnic divisions tend to produce ethnic parties each of which seeks to portray itself as the true defender of the group while at the same time portraying its rivals as weak or as selling out. Claim and counterclaim result in an “ethnic auction” that leads even moderate parties to adopt an increasingly hard-​line stance, which in turn makes compromise across ethnic lines all the harder to secure (Barry 1975, 505; Gormley-​Heenan and MacGinty 2008; Horowitz 1985, 349–​60; Rabushka and Shepsle, 1972, 86). What generally goes unnoticed, however, is that outbidding can occur only if voters generally like their politics as hard-​line or uncompromising as possible (e.g. because they think that other groups will be more fearful of them) or if they are so fearful of what other groups might do to them that ethnic parties can easily play upon their insecurities (e.g. because they are in a minority and feel they might be overrun). Neither assumption must inevitably hold. But if either does hold, the prospects for democracy will be severely diminished. In response, comparative scholars have spent a great deal of time examining how different electoral systems affect the incentives ethnic parties face and, as part of that, the ways in which different electoral systems make outbidding more or less rewarding.2 Yet while the choice of one electoral system over others can have a profound effect on the prospects for democracy, there is obviously more to democracy than elections and the parties that contest them. Accordingly, in this chapter, we want to consider, and indeed defend, the claim that deliberation also has a vital role to play—​not just in terms of shaping relationships between ethnic parties, but also between ethnic parties and the ordinary citizens they seek to represent. Of course, we do not think that deliberation is a panacea. But nor do we think that deliberation is simply wishful thinking, as one prominent comparative scholar has opined (O’Leary 2005, 10). In making this argument, we draw on and contribute to a small but growing body of literature that seeks to examine how, when, and where deliberation can help ethnic

Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies    743 groups in conflict to deal democratically with their divisions. More specifically, the chapter begins by considering how a concern for deliberation might shape the power-​ sharing institutions within which ethnic parties have to work. Yet while the comparative literature has much to say about institutions and parties, it has relatively little to say about ordinary citizens—​in particular, about their role in reducing the scope for outbidding. Granted, to presuppose that citizens can have such a role is to presuppose that deliberation between citizens is actually possible in divided societies. In the second section, we therefore consider some recent experiments that seek to test the scope for deliberation among citizens from different ethnic groups. As we will see, ordinary citizens are able to discuss divisive issues rationally and respectfully and, moreover, demonstrate an openness towards changing their minds on these issues. Admittedly, experiments of this sort merely prove that, under the right conditions, citizens can meaningfully deliberate together. What they do not prove is that deliberation between citizens can influence or even “tame” the behavior of ethnic parties and elites, especially when it comes to outbidding. In the final section, we therefore highlight two recent proposals for creating influence of this sort. At the time of writing, it is an open question as to how much traction, if any, these proposals will eventually gain. But that, in itself, suggests further important questions for deliberative scholars to pursue.

Deliberative Consociation Consociation is the dominant institutional approach to managing conflict in societies deeply divided along ethnic lines (Lijphart 1977, 2004).3 In a consociation, the leaders of the different ethnic parties come together to form a grand governing coalition for the sake of maintaining political stability. Yet while elite cooperation is the most obvious feature of consociation, it has three further defining characteristics: proportionality (especially in the electoral system but also right across the public administration), mutual vetoes (to ensure that, for example, majorities cannot dominate minorities within the grand governing coalition), and segmental autonomy (to enable each group to govern itself on matters of exclusive concern to it). It is important to note, however, that consociation is not a model of democracy per se. Its four defining features can, in fact, be instituted in different ways, depending on what one takes the political equality of democracy to entail (O’Flynn 2010, 573). Otherwise put, actual consociations can be criticized not just in terms of their failure to deliver political stability, but also because of their failure to live up to one’s preferred democratic ideals. In recent years, a small number of theorists have argued that consociations should be designed through a deliberative lens or with deliberative principles in mind (e.g. Drake and McCulloch 2011; O’Flynn 2006; 2010; 2017; Steiner 2009; Steiner et al. 2004, 8–​15; but see Dryzek 2005; Hayward 2014). Hence, the term “deliberative consociation” (O’Flynn 2010). One way of appreciating the importance of that case is to consider the charge that consociation has uncertain implications for moderation (Horowitz 2003).

744    Ian O’flynn and Didier Caluwaerts Consociations tend to be highly inclusive institutions. But since that means that the grand governing coalition is likely to contain parties from many different points on the political spectrum, deadlock can easily become the norm. Moderate parties may wish to compromise, but they will also know that hard-​line rivals from within their own ethnic group are likely to decry any concessions as betrayals. Moderates may conclude, therefore, that their own survival (electoral or physical) depends on their not giving ground. In short, the trouble is that while consociations may be inclusive, and while inclusion may be important from a democratic point of view, it may result in precisely the sort of outbidding that we described in our introductory remarks. Of course, deadlock is not inevitable (Mitchell, Evans, and O’Leary 2009). The fact that power is shared means that all sides have a stake in the political system and hence a genuine incentive to preserve that system. Yet the weight of evidence clearly suggests that consociations are prone to deadlock. To take one striking example, following the 2010 Belgian general election, the various parties struggled for 541 days to form a government (Deschouwer and Van Parijs 2013, 112). At one point or another, Bosnia, Burundi, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland have each been similarly deadlocked. Deliberative consociation promises to help. While the topic is extremely broad, the following points indicate how a deliberative consociation might reduce the scope for outbidding and other, similar problems that have their roots in ethnic parties and ethnic voting.

Grand Governing Coalition Any serious discussion of consociation must address the question of government formation. In some cases, seats in government are reserved for particular ethnic groups (as in the case of the Bosnian House of Peoples) whereas in other cases seats are automatically allocated to parties in proportion to the seats they hold in parliament (as in the case of the Northern Ireland Executive). In other words, grand governing coalitions can be either “pre-​determined” or “self-​determining” (Lijphart 1995; O’Leary 2005). Either way, however, ethnic parties will have no particular incentive to care about how they are perceived by those outside the group. All that matters is how they are perceived by those within the group, since that is where their votes will predominantly come from. By contrast, deliberative consociation requires a formation process which encourages or obliges parties on all sides of the ethnic divide to listen seriously to one another and weigh competing arguments about which policies the coalition ought to pursue (or “programme for government,” as it is usually termed) on their merits. One way in which this might be achieved is by making government formation depend on voluntary agreement rather than on automatic appointment, with government ministers having to secure weighted majority support from across the parliament before taking office (Wilson and Wilford 2003). Prospective coalition partners from across the ethnic divide might engage in a fair deal of bargaining behind the scenes, as they jockey for position within the executive. But, just like any other coalition, they will also know that they will

Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies    745 eventually have to work together in order to preserve the system. Just as importantly, since any cracks or weaknesses will be exploited by their respective (i.e. intra-​group) rivals, ministers have the strongest possible incentive to present a united front and defend their decisions broadly.4

PR Electoral Systems Proportional representation (PR) electoral systems come in different shapes and forms. Some scholars of consociation favor party-​list PR on the grounds that it “can encourage the formation and maintenance of strong and cohesive political parties” (Lijphart 2004, 101). Since political leaders get to determine who ranks where on the list, they can exercise tremendous control over party members. Yet although party cohesion may be necessary to stability, the fact that voters can only vote for one party means that voting will almost inevitably break down along group lines. But since, once again, that means that parties need only be concerned about how they are perceived by their own ethnic group, outbidding remains a likely outcome. From a deliberative perspective, the Single Transferable Vote (STV) form of PR is a far more attractive option (James 2004, 164–​7, 172–​6). STV is a preferential system that operates in multimember constituencies. As such, voters vote for candidates rather than for parties; they also get to rank the candidates in order of their preference (Taagepera and Shugart 1989, 27). While voters may rank candidates from their own ethnic group first, it is at least possible for them to place candidates from another ethnic group somewhere lower down the ballot. In marginal seats, lower-​order preferences may make a real difference to a candidate’s chances of success. As such, STV offers candidates an incentive to broaden their appeal and hence to couch their arguments in terms that anyone could accept.

Mutual Vetoes On the face of it, mutual vetoes have an important role to play in maintaining political stability—​knowing that their vital interests are protected can give groups the confidence to engage politically with one another (Lijphart 1977, 36–​7). Yet instead of giving groups the confidence to pull together, it seems equally likely that vetoes may instead result in deadlock. With this worry in mind, Anna Drake and Allison McCulloch (2011, 396) suggest that (a) vetoes should be restricted to decisions that stand to affect a group’s vital interests and (b) the group in question should be responsible for justifying why this is so. It matters, however, not just how vetoes are exercised but where. Many deliberative democrats argue that deliberation should be conducted in full public view. Yet as Jon Elster (1998) points out, publicity can also make it hard for political leaders to back down from a position once they have stated it openly. Hence, it may actually be better to make decisions behind closed doors.

746    Ian O’flynn and Didier Caluwaerts In this same spirit, there is a good case for arguing that vetoes should be placed not in the parliament but within the decision procedures of the grand governing coalition, to be used behind closed doors (but see Steiner et al. 2004, 120). Doing so would allow ministers from one side of the ethnic divide to veto decisions proposed by ministers from the other side. This much will be widely known. Accordingly, when a minister finally goes public with a decision, the justification that he or she provides will have to be couched in terms that are accessible to everybody and could in principle be accepted by anyone. Otherwise, the members of the other ethnic group will be bound to ask why their ministers did not veto the decision. Sine that might easily lead to outbidding, the incentive to deliberate will be clear.

Segmental Autonomy Segmental autonomy has an important role to play in managing ethnic conflicts. Since it gives groups the authority to govern their own internal affairs, especially in the areas of education and culture, it can help them to maintain their own distinct identity. Moreover, since it delegates a certain level of power and resources to the political leaders of those groups, it encourages them to support the political system as a whole (Lijphart 2004, 97). The worry, however, is that segmental autonomy may also encourage groups to think of themselves as living in separate worlds, which reinforces demands for autonomy (Erk 2009). The more that segmental autonomy locks ordinary citizens into the groups to which they happen to belong (e.g. by compelling them to send their children to a certain type of school or to speak a certain language), the fewer the chances they will have to engage with others in society or, indeed, to challenge group assumptions from within. Yet in principle the more that citizens can treat segmental autonomy as a voluntary matter, the more comfortable they may feel about looking beyond the boundaries of their own ethnic group. Since that also means that those on the outside may have greater opportunities to see or hear what is going on within the group, the pool of arguments to which everyone is exposed enlarges accordingly. Unfortunately, matters are not as straightforward as all of this suggests. In theory, a well-​ designed deliberative consociation may be sufficient to deal with fundamental problems such as outbidding. But in reality there will usually be a great deal that can go wrong. A grand governing coalition designed with deliberative principles in mind might deny hardliners the place in government that they would otherwise have under an automatic formation process. But in response they might simply seek to “spoil” the institutions from outside (Stedman 1997). In marginal seats, STV may encourage candidates to take a broader view. Yet where groups are geographically concentrated, that incentive will simply not exist. Placing vetoes behind closed doors may encourage a sense of collective responsibility. But that will only happen if the parties can reach collective agreements in the first place (see Hayward 2014). Finally, voluntary segmental autonomy may facilitate conversations among citizens from different ethnic groups. Yet the fact that those same

Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies    747 citizens are likely to have spent their entire lives within their own communities may mean that they lack the requisite capacities. In what follows, we challenge this last assumption. We do so for one very good reason. As we noted in our introductory remarks, outbidding assumes either (a) that ordinary citizens are more hard-​line than the parties that claim to represent them or (b) that ordinary citizens are vulnerable to ethnic parties willing to play the ethnic card for the sake of their own aggrandizement. But if neither assumption were to hold—​if ethnic voters were actually (a) less extreme and (b) more balanced in their views—​the threat that outbidding poses to democracy might correspondingly decline. If that could be shown to be the case, then many of the other concerns and contingencies attaching to deliberative consociation might also fall away.

Deliberation among Diametrically Opposed Citizens Comparative scholars tend to reduce democratic politics in divided societies to elite bargaining (Horowitz 1985). As such, they tend to see little point in encouraging citizens to deliberate across ethnic lines. Indeed, from the outset, consociational theory has assumed that if political stability is to be maintained, citizens should simply defer to their respective leaders in matters of collective decision-​making (e.g. Lijphart 1975, 111). Involving citizens might make a complicated situation even more difficult to handle—​a cacophony of different voices and opinions, both frightened and ill-​informed, is hardly likely to aid the cause of either compromise or political stability (e.g. O’Leary 2005, 10). The question arises, therefore, as to whether this skepticism is warranted—​do ordinary citizens really lack the capacity for deliberation? Even if it were possible to get citizens from opposing sides in the same room, would they really listen with an open mind? Or would they simply become more entrenched in their prior views? In recent years, there has been a surge of research documenting the possibility of, and favorable conditions for, citizen deliberation in divided societies. More specifically, the methodological innovations that paralleled the increased use of deliberative mini-​publics made it possible for the first time to validly and reliably test the capacity for such deliberation. In one of the first studies on the potential for citizen deliberation across deep divides, Caluwaerts (2012) finds that discussion on polarizing political issues does not have to exacerbate political conflict. Instead, his findings indicate that the quality of deliberation in inter-​group—​and, specifically in Belgium, multilingual—​settings is actually better than that in ethnolinguistically homogeneous groups. Citizens do not retreat to their ethnolinguistic enclaves, but actively engage with the other side. The limits of deliberation thus extend much further than comparative scholars are wont to acknowledge. Moreover, Caluwaerts not only focuses on the effect of group composition, but also on the favorable conditions for deliberation in divided groups. He concludes that

748    Ian O’flynn and Didier Caluwaerts imposing supermajority or unanimity rules in deliberative settings fosters high-​quality deliberation, no matter what the group composition. Deliberation thus creates transformative opportunities to turn adversarial discourses into more moderate forms of communication (see also Bächtiger and Gerber 2014). These findings parallel the results from a deliberative experiment conducted in Colombia in 2008. Unlike in Belgium, Colombia has no problems of multilingualism, but it does have a long history of armed conflict and physical violence. Despite these differences, however, the Colombian case suggests that “highly deliberative behavior could be expected, even in contexts of deep hostility and serious disagreement” (Orozco and Ugarriza 2014, 79). In a more recent study, however, Ugarriza and Nussio (2016) are somewhat more pessimistic about the potential for citizen deliberation in divided societies, and contend that deliberation in situations of protracted violence has to be preceded by efforts at increasing inter-​group trust. Deliberation can therefore work, but only if a necessary threshold of inter-​group trust is already met. In the same study, Ugarriza and Nussio (2016) identify four main drivers for good deliberation in contexts of deep division:  institutions such as decision-​making rules (Caluwaerts and Deschouwer 2014; Mansbridge 1983; Ugarriza 2012); psychological factors such as cognitive biases and strong emotions (Dickson, Hafer, and Landa 2007); ecological characteristics of the deliberative setting such as the physical location, hot versus cold deliberative settings, etc. (Fung 2003); and socio-​demographics such as gender and education. These experiments focus primarily on the process of deliberation, and find that the levels of moderation that genuine deliberation might be thought to presuppose are not beyond the realms of possibility, even when the discussions deal with “mutually contradictory assertions of identity” (Dryzek 2005, 219). However, some studies have gone one step further, by focusing on the possible effects of deliberation between diametrically opposed groups. There is a long tradition of thinking that deliberation has directional effects, i.e. that it leads to the adoption and incorporation of more collectivistic and cosmopolitan perspectives, and to less nationalistic orientations (Gastil, Bacci, and Dollinger 2010). However, for a long time the question remained as to whether these effects would also manifest themselves in high-​conflict settings, or whether deliberation on divisive issues would only act as a catalyst for further polarization (Dessel, Rogge, and Garlington 2006; Grönlund, Herne, and Setälä 2015; Sunstein 2002, 2009; Vasilev 2013). Caluwaerts and Reuchamps’s (2014) study of two deliberative events tackles this issue. Building on Allport’s (1954) contact hypothesis, their conclusion is that inter-​group deliberation—​even in very “hot” deliberative settings, discussing polarizing political issues—​is able to foster more positive inter-​group attitudes. More especially, inter-​group deliberation potentiates a democratic process that leads to mutual respect and the acknowledgment of the validity of others’ claims, indicating that ordinary citizens’ views on divisive issues may be less intractably conflicting than expected. Similar results were found in Northern Ireland, where Catholics came to see Protestants as more open to reason and trustworthier, and Protestants came to see Catholics as more open to reason, after deliberating together about the vexed question of how best to reform Northern

Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies    749 Ireland’s troubled education system (Luskin et al. 2014). These findings echo the results from earlier studies, conducted on campuses in the United States, on inter-​group dialogue on the Middle East. These earlier studies found that dialogue between American Arab and American Jewish students fostered mutual respect (Norman 1992) and led them to “recognise multiple perspectives, and to clarify their own beliefs and identities” (Khuri 2004, 244). It remains the case, however, that the conditions for such attitudinal changes are much stricter in divided societies than in more normal societies. Indeed, one might be tempted to assume that citizen deliberation in divided societies can only work on non-​contentious issues. Yet studies have shown that transformative opportunities present themselves only when “conflicting issues and needs, mutual and exclusive perceptions of justice, and a shared vision of the future” are discussed (Abu-​Nimer 2004, 418). Thus, in line with agonistic assumptions (Mouffe 1999), merely discussing non-​ pressing issues cannot be expected to yield any immediate benefits for inter-​group relations. This is contrary to the commonly held assumption that the most controversial issues should be discussed last in peace negotiations or treated as the exclusive preserve of group leaders. Another important condition is that all groups should be regarded equally. That is, there cannot be any power differences or status inequalities between the different participants in the deliberations. This condition was first developed by Allport in 1954 but it remains valid to this day. To take a fairly clear example, Abu-​Nimer (2004) discusses an instance where deliberation in Israel between Arab and Jewish participants was conducted solely in Hebrew, meaning that one of the groups had to adapt to the other group’s language. This symbolically indicated that one of the groups involved purportedly had a higher status, which hindered the discussion and lowered the openness of the Arab participants to other views (Abu-​Nimer 2004, 412). Treating all groups equally in terms of status is therefore a necessary condition for generating positive deliberative effects. For this reason, Caluwaerts (2012) over-​recruited French-​speaking participants in his Belgian experiment in order to avoid having an imbalanced group composition of six Dutch speakers versus four French speakers. Despite the generally positive appreciation of the effects of inter-​group deliberation on attitude change towards a more moderate, mutually receptive perspective, other studies do find some polarization effects. For instance, contrary to the above, Wojcieszak (2012) finds that people with strong attitudes and opinions who take part in deliberations in divided societies become more polarized in their opinions and more prejudiced in their feelings towards others when discussing divisive issues. These findings directly contradict Hodson’s findings, which indicate that “[c]‌ontact works well, if not best, among those higher on prejudice-​prone individual-​difference variables” (Hodson 2011, 155). While we should therefore be cautious or circumspect in drawing conclusions about the potential for deliberation in divided societies, the balance of evidence to date suggests that ordinary citizens have the capacity to deliberate—​and moderate—​across group lines. However, it is true that more research is needed to determine under which circumstances citizens can realize their deliberative potential in high-​conflict settings.

750    Ian O’flynn and Didier Caluwaerts

Citizens and Leaders in the Study of Deliberation in Divided Societies Even though these experimental findings are, on balance, encouraging, their broader implications for resolving deep divisions remain unclear. Despite a growing academic literature on deliberation under the most adverse of circumstances, very little work has hitherto been done to study the long-​term effects of deliberative experiences on inter-​ group relations; nor have the macro-​social effects of inter-​group mini-​publics been assessed. For instance, does the organization of deliberative mini-​publics in high-​conflict settings produce ripple effects across the wider public sphere? How do the positive effects of inter-​group dialogue spread among those who were not around the deliberation table? Would democracy in divided societies benefit from these safe spaces of deliberative opposition? And to what extent can self-​interest and group interests be accommodated deliberatively in divided societies? These questions remain as yet unanswered. However, the biggest challenge in the study of deliberation in divided societies is bridging the gap between citizens and elites. The reduction of tension between citizens through deliberation might potentially affect elite behavior in the longer term. As we noted above, parties can only play the ethnic card when citizens are susceptible to polarization. The empirical results discussed in the previous section show that citizens are capable of ethnic moderation through deliberation—​albeit under the most favorable of circumstances. Consequently the spread of deliberative principles and practices throughout the entire political system could fundamentally alter the electoral incentives for ethnic outbidders. There are, however, two conflicting hypotheses on this issue. On the one hand, one could hypothesize that deliberation between diametrically opposed groups has the potential to “tame” polarizing party leaders, but this will only work when citizens and leaders are somehow institutionally connected. To date, only two of these linkage mechanisms have been identified. The first one is the proposed federal electoral district in Belgium (Deschouwer and Van Parijs 2013). Presently, Belgian political parties only field candidates on one side of the linguistic border, which means that there is no electoral incentive for parties to reach out to the other ethnolinguistic group. A nationwide electoral district could force party leaders to enter into a dialogue with leaders from the other linguistic group, which in turn might bring a halt to the disintegrative tendencies of Belgian politics. Interestingly, some Belgian opinion-makers and politicians openly embraced this idea, and the proposal gained political momentum, albeit briefly. The other linkage mechanism has recently been proposed by John Garry (2016). In this proposal, contentious issues that Northern Ireland’s grand governing coalition failed to resolve could instead be devolved to a Citizens’ Assembly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, while about half the elected politicians surveyed said that an assembly of this sort would result in proposals that were good for Northern Ireland as a whole, zero per cent thought that a final decision should be left to such a body to decide (Garry 2016, 5).

Deliberation in Deeply Divided Societies    751 These two ways of connecting the parties and citizens assume that moderation among the general public could incentivize moderation among political elites. The opposite argument, however, would be that the risk of polarization is such that ordinary people are themselves likely to deliberate well only if parties set the right example. Conflict management should thus be initiated from the top before it trickles down to the mass level. This argument resonates to some extent with traditional elite theories in that the impetus for solving ethnic conflicts remains with the leaders of the different ethnic groups. However, it differs from these theories in that it still acknowledges that citizens might also contribute to processes of conflict mitigation. After all, traditional elite theories posit that citizens should remain passive if the conflict is to be managed or resolved, but this hypothesis assumes that citizens can play a constructive role as long as group leaders lead the way in accommodating conflict. These arguments remain speculative, and either hypothesis on the direction of the moderating relationship, whether from party leaders down or from ordinary citizens up, at this time remains little more than conjecture. In all likelihood the effect could well be recursive, with the spirit of elite accommodation in institutional settings and the spirit of citizen deliberation at the mass level mutually reinforcing each other. Despite this current scholarly void, the prospects for answering these questions are favorable. After all, the growing literature on deliberative systems (Dryzek 2011; Mansbridge et al. 2013; Niemeyer 2014) has the potential to shed light on the transmission of deliberative norms throughout even the most divided of political systems. By focusing on the interaction between different institutional and societal sites of deliberation, the deliberative systems approach could map instances of enclave deliberation as well as inter-​group deliberation in divided societies. It could even do so in a dynamic way by exploring how changes in the institutional infrastructure of a country (e.g. the freeing of the courts from governmental interference) affect the processes of discursive engagement in the broader public sphere, and how the emergence of new sites for citizen deliberation (e.g. the emergence a more open and diverse press) alter the institutional status quo. As we have said, ideas of this sort remain speculative. However, the fact that deeply divided societies generate some of the most pressing problems that we face today means that the imperative to pursue those ideas is both urgent and patently clear.

Notes 1. We use the term “ethnic” in its now widely accepted sense of embracing any ascriptive identity regarded as a natural boundary marker between members of different groups, defined inter alia terms of race, language, religion, culture, or nationality. 2. For an overview, see Diamond and Plattner 2006. 3. Consociation’s main rival is the centripetal or incentives-​based approach (Horowitz 1985; 2014; Reilly 2001). For a deliberative perspective on this rivalry, see O’Flynn 2007. 4. For further discussion, see O’Flynn 2010, 584–​5; cf. Drake and McCulloch 2011, 385.

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Chapter 48

De l iberative De mo c rac y and the Env i ronme nt Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett

Deliberative democratic practices are especially well suited to the challenges of environmental governance, particularly under the conditions associated with the concept of the Anthropocene. Before advancing the leading edge of this claim, we first examine its underlying premises and their conceptual history. We revisit the environmental promise of democratic deliberation (Gundersen 1995) and discuss the perils of deliberation—​ both as a form of politics generally and as a strategy for environmental protection. We concentrate our attention on the past ten years but we point out significant conceptual developments regardless of when they have occurred, and bring them up to date as best we can. We describe the progress that deliberative environmental democracy has made, and assess what further progress particularly needs to be made in our understanding of this marriage of democratic theory and real-​world, global-​to-​local problem solving in a world that is getting smaller while some political and social distances increase (Baber and Bartlett 2005; 2009; 2015).

Promise The environmental promise of deliberative democracy was born, and continues to be borne, by the realization that under purely aggregative mechanisms of democracy, environmentalists do their cause little favor when they frame it in moral or ethical rather than political terms (Gundersen 1995). The moral insight that “we are all in this together” is obviously a valid one and certainly implies a level of mutual environmental obligation (Feinberg and Willer 2013). But nothing about that obligation suggests that nominally democratic forms of interest aggregation (polling, referenda, representative elections) either capture its normative content or identify its most appropriate

756    Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett institutional form. Deliberative environmental democracy, however, is more promising in several specific ways. First, as a general matter deliberative democracy is thought to have both an inclusive and rationalizing influence on environmental politics. Its open and participatory character promises a form of knowledge mobilization that is potentially inclusive of all knowledge systems and that, through reciprocal dialogue, allows for the negotiation of knowledge quality in terms of credibility, salience, and legitimacy (Baber and Bartlett 2005; Bremer 2013). Even though the most diverse deliberative body is unlikely to contain within its participant group the entire range of potentially meaningful discourses regarding any given environmental issue, the presence within a deliberative body of a variety of individuals provides a far wider conduit for the complexities of the real world to influence policy outcomes than can any form of elite decision-​making (Baber and Bartlett 2015). The poster child for this promise is the prevalence of deliberative partnerships in the area of watershed management (Baber 2010; Hardy and Koontz 2009; Leach and Pelky 2001; Lubell et al. 2002). In this context, deliberative democracy’s potential for giving voice to historically neglected populations has been commented upon in particular (Cronin and Ostergren 2007). It is important to note that this aspect of deliberative democracy’s promise is centrally related to the fact that it conceives of political representation in discursive terms rather than as a matter of demographics, interest groups, or ideology (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008)—​a feature of deliberative environmental democracy to which we shall return. Second, deliberative environmental democracy offers an opportunity for environmental decisions to profit from the uptake of local knowledge. Especially in the international context (Baber and Bartlett 2009; 2015), it is vitally important that centrally adopted policies reflect the understandings of the people living in the ecosystems that those policies are intended to protect. In the area of climate adaptation, for example, local communities are likely to be uniquely valuable sources of information regarding issues such as land and water management, physical infrastructure, livelihood strategies, and social institutions (Lebel 2013). This insight about the capacity of deliberative environmental democracy to provide for a decentered form of policy-​making has been deployed in the rangelands of Arizona (Arnold and Fernandez-​Gimenez 2007), the Mangrove forests of Brazil (Glaser and Oliveira 2004), the plains of Kenya (Mburu and Birner 2007), the coastal zones of the Asian Pacific (Lebel 2013) and the global climate arena (Bäckstrand 2011). Moreover, this form of deliberative environmental democracy is potentially self-​reinforcing, because decentered democracy is strengthened when multiple linkages are created to connect local forms across time and space (Hayward 2008). The decenteredness of deliberative environmental democracy, which can be thought of as a second form of inclusiveness, also leads naturally to a third promise of deliberative environmental democracy—​that it produces policies that are more just than those of mere aggregative democracy. As a third potential advantage to environmental deliberation, the idea of justice carries considerable freight. For example, environmental policies are sometimes a form of

Deliberative Democracy and the Environment    757 normative pre-​commitment, employing a deliberative procedure to specify in advance the just course for a society to take if certain environmental challenges arise. For instance, the US Endangered Species Act uses a species listing procedure to trigger a robust standard for species protection when the threat level reaches a specified threshold (Baber and Bartlett 2005). But more frequently, the question of justice in environmental politics arises as the result of an inequitable distribution of environmental goods or harms. Whether environmental injustices arise from racsim or poverty, the strongly inclusive character of deliberative environmental democracy makes it an especially welcoming form of governance for those who would seek to redress such grievances (Baber and Bartlett 2009). Advocates for environmental justice are able to exploit the dialogic character of deliberative environmental democracy by using their “storylines” to shift the dynamics of deliberative systems and to advance their own interpretations of environmental problems and policymaking processes. Specifically, these storylines can be used to to set (or reset) the agenda on environmental hazards, to construct the form of public deliberation, to change the rules of the game, to construct the normative content of public deliberation, to shape meanings related to environmental policy, and to couple or align forums, arenas, and courts across the system (Dodge 2014). A fourth important promise of deliberative environmental democracy is, to put it bluntly, better environmental decisions. Elite decision-​makers sometimes flatter themselves to think that they produce the best environmental decisions when they can pursue their highly sophisticated work without much interference from others. This ignores two fundamental problems. The first is that environmental policies that fail to enjoy broad-​based support cannot achieve ecological sustainablity because they will fail to be politically sustainable (Baber and Bartlett 2005). Perhaps more important, the underlying premise of elite environmental decision-​making is mistaken. Elite decisions are, often as not, inferior to decisions made by deliberative environmental democracy, as an example will show. Environmental politics increasingly faces human-​made risks in many domains (technology, environment, energy, food, health, security, etc.) that pose new challenges of risk governance—​involving as they do variables whose values are irreducibly indeterminate. The resulting conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity impose evaluative, cognitive, and normative problems. Solving those problems requires a new interplay between the state, experts, stakeholder groups, and the public at large. This new environment of risk governance confronts us with a question: how can societies develop political institutions and processes for governing risk more effectively and how can members of a society be better involved in risk governance? A deliberative system (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012) with a functional division of labor that assigns specific tasks to and recognizes the specific competencies of experts, stakeholder groups, and citizens can facilitate an appropriate integration of scientific and experiential substance. The integration of expertise and experience can be promoted by such a process of differentiated deliberation by experts, stakeholders, and the public, which can produce better outcomes than the classical risk analysis approach found in many regulatory systems (Klinke and Renn 2014).

758    Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett Finally, deliberative environmental democracy holds the promise of environmental decisions that are more consensual and, for that reason, more legitimate. The relationship between consensus and legitimacy has long been a topic of contention within the community of deliberative democratic theorists (Baber and Bartlett 2015). Some have argued that consensus is an essential byproduct of epistemic deliberation, in cases where the issues at stake are epistemic, and that we have reason to regard a broad range of political issues as epistemic because doing so is crucial to explaining the value of deliberative contestation about political matters (Fuerstein 2014). Others have suggested that the defining objective of democratic deliberation should be “meta-​consensus,” which is to say a consensus about the nature of the issue at hand and an agreement on the domain of relevant reasons or considerations (involving both beliefs and values) to be taken into account in the decision process (Niemeyer and Dryzek 2007). Still others have argued that the ideal of consensus (as agreement based upon reasons that all could accept) should be abandoned in favor of a form of deliberation guided by a framework of civility that takes account of the complexity of every tradition and of every actual person’s views in pursuit of tenets that all believe will provide a basis for agreement (Bohman and Richardson 2009). This debate can be counted on to continue, because the concept of consensus is central to the deliberative democrat’s understanding of what it means to claim that governance decisions are legitimate because they represent the consent of the governed (Moore and O’Doherty 2014; Baber and Bartlett 2015).

Perils We characterize dissents from the deliberative democracy orthodoxy as “perils” because outright rejections of this form of democratic practice are few (consisting mainly of agonistic democrats and democracy rejectionists). Critics of deliberative democracy find it difficult to defend aggregative democracy as somehow preferable to the more deliberative forms of governance. With the growing literature on successful deliberative democracy experiences, rejectionist arguments sound increasingly like claims that bees should be aerodynamically incapable of flight. For our purposes at least, little is lost by ignoring the rejectionist fringe, because few of their substantive arguments have found their way into more measured appraisals of deliberative democracy. Perhaps the most central peril of deliberative environmental democracy is that public deliberation can turn out to be less inclusive than it hopes and pretends to be. At the simplest and least theoretically interesting level, subgroups within the population whose views are substantively important to the issue under deliberation can be excluded in some way. This is the same problem of group representation that plagues both polling and aggregative voting, but it cuts the deliberative democrat more deeply because his or her aspirations are higher. As an example, many have argued that political discourse generally privileges the beliefs, experiences, and speaking styles of Western, white, well-​educated men at the expense of others. Moreover, by associating ideal

Deliberative Democracy and the Environment    759 deliberative procedure with the virtues of autonomy, self-​determination, rationality, and a clear boundary between public and private life, deliberative environmental democracy has adopted a masculinist perspective (Lövbrand and Kahn 2014). Empirical research, however, suggests a somewhat more complex picture. For instance, using experimental data with many groups to investigate the links between individuals’ attitudes and speech, Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker (2012) find a substantial gender gap in voice and authority. But the gap disappears under circumstances of a unanimity rule and the presence of a few women participants, or under majority rule with many women participants. Deliberative design can, therefore, avoid inequality by fitting institutional procedures to the social context of the situation. Thus the gender inequities of which we are all aware do not present an insurmountable obstacle for deliberative environmental democracy. In fact, deliberative theory provides a procedural solution for precisely that sort of problem, a solution inherent in the realization that the point of inclusiveness in deliberative democracy is discursive rather than demographic. People are empowered, not by being in a particular room in particular numbers, but by seeing their own stories told (and heard!) within a larger narrative. A second form of deliberative peril has to do with the promise of integrating local knowledge into environmental decision-​making. There is evidence to suggest that technical experts are prone to a particular pattern of conceptualizing the value of public knowledge. In the context of local air quality management, for example, expert understandings of the potential benefits of technological citizenship and what status they accord to lay knowledge relative to their own roles suggest a continuing expert-​deficit model of lay knowledge. Experts suspect that the public misunderstands environmental issues. Although they recognize the need for public “buy-​in” to the solutions to problems such as air pollution, this does not translate into a more proactive engagement of lay knowledge in the assessment of such issues. In fact, experts seem to be personally challenged by such notions (Petts and Brooks 2006). This obvious need for a cultural shift in expert understanding of the value of lay knowledge, supported by a move away from an oversimplification of the need for (and value of) public participation, is not a product of deliberative environmental democracy. It is, rather, a reflection of pre-​ existing attitudes that have actually been picked up and problematized by deliberation. As orthodox approaches to environmental decision-​making (relying solely on ecological expertise) continue losing legitimacy, greater attention will be given to integrated and participatory approaches (which draw on multiple sources of knowledge in order to accurately describe complex socioecological processes). There is growing recognition that environmental management requires a strategy that can accommodate the multiple and often competing needs of contemporary and future stakeholders. These conceptual advances suggest a number of cognitive criteria that deliberative environmental democracy must meet, including (1) accurately understanding complex socioecological system processes, (2) focusing on “slow” variables, (3) integrating multiple scales of analysis, (4) integrating multiple stakeholder perspectives and values, (5) ensuring that future generations are fairly represented, (6) ensuring that less powerful stakeholders are fairly represented and (7) integrating local and scientific knowledge (Whitfield, Geist, and

760    Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett Ioris 2011). Deliberative democracy’s critics do not argue that aggregative, agonistic, or participatory forms of democratic politics stand a better chance than deliberative environmental democracy of achieving this degree of embeddedness in environmental decision making. A third criticism of deliberative democracy claims that it does not live up to the normative standards of political equality and fairness—​environmental justice—​because members of socially disadvantaged groups (even though represented) are often incapable of effectively participating in deliberations. It is often suggested that deliberative democracy reproduces inequalities of gender, race, and class by privileging calm rational discussion over passionate speech and action. But this criticism ignores the considerable extent to which passionate argument is already an integral part of deliberative democracy practice (Hall 2007). Empirical data from a study of six citizen conferences fails to support the thesis that deliberative practices invariably replicate social inequalities (Lin 2014). Investigators used six dimensions of discursive interaction to measure deliberative inequality. These included frequency and time of speech, dialogic capacity, initiating new topics, making rational arguments, and influencing conclusions. They found that, because of procedural factors instituted to approximate the ideal situation of speech, deliberative inequalities were not significant in the deliberative dimensions of making rational arguments and influencing conclusions. Inequities in the four other dimensions of discursive interaction depended on the nature of issues under discussion. For less complex issues that had greater impacts on citizens’ daily lives, most citizens showed that they possessed the “situated knowledge” needed to participate effectively in discursive interactions. Deliberative inequalities were not significant for these kinds of issues (Lin 2014). To the extent that additional studies indicate that members of previously disadvantaged groups are able to participate effectively in appropriately structured deliberations, the complaint that deliberative environmental democracy will merely replicate social and economic inequities may lose much of its force. This is a question that requires significantly greater attention, however, because the environmental justice narrative is a critical element of environmental citizenship. It offers a twofold path toward transformation of environmental governance—​providing both a vocabulary for political opportunity, mobilization, and action and a policy principle that environmental decisions must not disproportionately disadvantage any particular social group (Agyeman and Evans 2006). To the extent that environmental decisions are genuinely democratic, they will only prove sustainable if they are also equitable. A fourth peril facing deliberative environmental democracy is the risk that its effectiveness (and, ultimately, its legitimacy) will be undermined by elites who view deliberation not as a form of public participation but, rather, as a technique of political co-​optation. For instance, in their study of the approach of the US Department of Defense (DOD) to public participation in the cleanup activity of contaminated military facilities in Fort Ord, California, Szasz, and Meuser (1997) contrasted the concepts of policy design and policy implementation and related them to democratization and co-​optation. The authors studied the implementation of cleanup activity through

Deliberative Democracy and the Environment    761 observation of the community Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) meetings and interviews with the community representatives. They found that democratization was often cited but the practice of co-​optation was clearly applied. Murphree, Wright, and Ebaugh (1996) found, however, that early success at co-​optation by elites can be undone. In their study of a waste siting decision, co-​optation eventually failed when local environmental activists (who had not been part of making the original decision) lost confidence in the negotiating process and accused participants of “selling out” to corporate interests and compromising the interests of the community. As a result of protests and citizen awareness campaigns, the opposition forces successfully convinced a regulatory agency to intervene. Although co-​optation theory helps to explain the short-​lived success of corporate co-​optation during the early stages of negotiations, it must also account for the dynamics of failure in the long run. As Dryzek (2000) has observed, co-​optation of dissent by elites predates the advent of deliberative democracy, and the difference democrats who are among those most concerned about the problem show no confidence that deliberation’s aggregative complements or alternatives offer a better option for dealing with the problem. In fact, in the new environment of post-​ normal risk governance, co-​optation is not a rational strategy for anyone in the long run—​the resulting loss of policy effectiveness serves the interests of no one (Klinke and Renn 2014). Finally, a criticism that could be made of deliberative environmental democracy is that it can be, in a peculiar way, too successful. The gist of this argument is that a paradox lies at the heart of deliberative democracy practice. This paradox involves a tension within deliberative democratic theory: the fact that deliberative opinion formation ideally aims to reach consensus, yet a consensus (once established) will be likely to degrade the conditions for further rational public discourse (given the limitations of human reasoning with which we should all be familiar). Therefore, over time, deliberative democracy, to the extent it prizes consensus, actually risks undermining both its own theoretical justification and the quality of the decisions that it produces. Proponents of this view suggest that there are at least three cognitive and socio-​psychological mechanisms by which consensus might hamper the rationality of public discourse. First, after an agreement, participants cease to develop and evaluate new arguments because none appear to be needed. Second, subscribers to a consensus tend to forget the existing arguments for it—​and their limiting conditions. Third, there is a natural fear of deviating from the social norm that promotes conformism over critical reasoning (Friberg-​Fernros and Schaffer 2014). To the extent that existing research has neglected to study how consensus in decision-​making affects future public deliberation, the seriousness of this peril is unknown and deliberative environmental democracy remains insecure both in theory and in practice. It is clear that in order to avoid undermining its own effectiveness, deliberative consensus must be equivocal to a certain degree. Its decisions must remain open-​ended from a procedural point of view and open-​textured substantively—​allowing for the possibility that its norms can be revisited, its policy designs revised, and its requirements reinterpreted at the stage of implementation.

762    Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett

Progress The available evidence supports the view that the environmental promise of deliberative democracy far outweighs its attendant perils. But further progress needs to be made in our understanding of this marriage of democratic theory and real-​world problem solving. After all, democracy, including deliberative democracy, can be fully adequate from a political perspective and still produce ecologically irrational results (Goodin 1992). As we have already suggested, the most ecologically sophisticated policies imaginable will prove unsustainable if they fail the test of democratic legitimacy. So deliberative democracy is a necessary (though not sufficient) element of environmental sustainability. The discussion above suggests clearly why this is so. Questions regarding inclusion and representation abound in deliberative democracy. The discursive character of deliberative practice suggests that what it is important to include is the narratives of all, rather than the votes of all. The point of inclusiveness is, ultimately, individual empowerment. Because there is no discursive-​theoretic reason to weight narratives according to how many peoples’ lived experiences they describe, few things could be more empowering for the individual than to say that deliberation is fully democratic to the extent that everything worth saying is said. In pursuit of that goal, it will often make sense to violate—​contingently and in the context of a larger system of deliberation—​many of deliberative democracy’s operating rules of thumb. For instance, a diverse range of participants is thought to be vital to produce deliberative results of value. But where politically disadvantaged populations are concerned, the effective development of their narratives may require (at least preliminarily) enclave deliberation that allows participants to develop, assess, and refine their own narratives in a relatively homogenous environment before exposing them to the rigors of the marketplace of ideas (Karpowitz, Raphael, and Hammond 2009). Likewise, with regard to the importance of integrating local knowledge into environmental decision-​making, the last word has not been said—​nor is it ever likely to be. To be deliberatively effective, knowledge (lay or expert) must be not merely local, but fully embedded. Recent field research suggests that the development of democratic deliberation depends more on whether participants situate and link their knowledge than whether the knowledge is local or expert in origin. This suggests that, for scholars who wish to better understand which ways of knowing enable environmental deliberation in participatory processes, a useful concept is grounded knowledge—​embedded knowledge actively linked by participants with other sources of knowledge (Ashwood et al. 2014). This kind of embeddedness is imperfectly understood—​in part because what it requires is, and is likely to always be, context specific to a considerable degree. As with empowerment and embeddedness, the demands that equity places on deliberative environmental democracy also need to be explored more thoroughly. The pursuit of environmental justice introduces both problematic participants and problematic relationships to deliberative environmental democracy (Baber and Bartlett

Deliberative Democracy and the Environment    763 2005). As already discussed, the use by environmental justice advocates of their own unique storylines can be an important mechanism for shaping policy meanings and for improving deliberative quality, although these effects are tempered by discursive and material forms of power and the competition among alternative storylines (Dodge 2014). A new challenge in this regard will be to discover deliberative mechanisms for extending deliberative environmental democracy techniques to the analysis of international equity problems for which they were not originally intended (Baber and Bartlett 2009; 2015), such as the stubborn gridlock surrounding global climate politics (West 2012). Another such frontier is the development of deliberative environmental democracy principles and practices that will allow both scholars and citizens to explore problems of intergenerational justice in ways that are both more practical and defensible (Cotton 2013). The peril posed to deliberative environmental democracy by the risk of elite co-​ optation suggests that additional thought needs to be given to what it means to call environmental policy effective. If environmental decision making meets the criteria we have identified (if it is empowering, embedded, and equitable), then it would seem that its effectiveness could only be degraded if it were co-​opted by self-​serving elites. This will strike many environmentalists as deplorably anthropocentric. In many ways, it is. But that very accusation is growing increasingly untenable. The concept of the Anthropocene (Brondizio et al. 2016) suggests that no part of the natural world today is untouched by humans and, therefore, no solution to environmental problems can avoid placing humans near its center. Even this may understate the case. Humanity today is so omnipresent that the very nature of nature has been altered (Wapner 2014). The distinction between the human and nonhuman components of nature that environmentalists have used to justify both conservationist and preservationist policies is no longer tenable. Today, there is only a distinction between the human and the much-​ more-​than-​human environments. So, in the Anthropocene, environmental protection “involves attuning ourselves to the hybrid character of ecosystems and helping to shape them in ways in which the human voice is deliberately one among others fashioning socio-​ecological arrangements” (Wapner 2014, 46, emphasis added; Dryzek 1995). Deliberative democracy’s historical commitment to consensus may have been too narrow rather than over-​broad. It is entirely plausible, at least theoretically, that consensus-​oriented political practices will eventually fall victim to the same sort of political decay that plagues their aggregative relatives (Fukuyama 2014). Although the symptoms of political decay in these two cases might appear quite similar, the underlying causes would be very different. Samuel Huntington’s (1965) original conception of political decay was based on the insight that political and socio-​economic modernization leads to the mobilization of new social groups over time whose new demands cannot be accommodated by existing political institutions. In the case of deliberative environmental democracy, however, other factors would be at work. The danger would be that effective environmental policies would eventually have their effectiveness undermined precisely because they were empowering, embedded, and equitable. About this danger, at least two observations are

764    Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett possible. First, Huntington’s analysis suggests that our concerns about political decay should not lead us to abandon deliberative environmental democracy—​because none of its competitors are capable of producing institutional arrangements that are more lasting. Second, to the extent that deliberative environmental democracy does produce decisions that are genuinely consensual, the problem of political decay has been significantly simplified. If the source of political decay is not to be found in our political stars, but in ourselves, then the remedy for decay is within us as well. What may be required in part is a more equivocal understanding of consensus itself, which we have explored at length elsewhere (Baber and Bartlett 2015).

Back to the Future (Already in Progress) The inescapable equivocality of democratic environmental governance means that discussions are never closed, they are merely transformed as old problems and concerns give way to new. This means, of course, that the experimental quality that effective environmental governance possesses is not a transient quality but, rather, a permanent feature of the landscape of democratic decision-​making. For these processes to take place without distortion and without posing systemic disadvantage on minority parties, equal access to decision-​making and equitable allocation of fundamental capabilities are essential prerequisites. And, these are prerequisites that can only be ensured by institutional arrangements that provide for the empowerment of those who are ill-​favored by the political and economic status quo and the embeddedness of environmental decision-​making in the local communities of fate, where people actually determine their shared life experiences. No one has yet imagined practices better suited than those of deliberative democracy for addressing the challenges that environmental governance must continue to confront given the circumstances that constitute the Anthropocene, and, in particular, those parts of the future that are global.

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766    Walter F. Baber and Robert V. Bartlett Hardy, S. and Koontz, T. (2009). Rules for Collaboration:  Institutional Analysis of Group Membership and Levels of Action in Watershed Partnerships. Policy Studies Journal, 37: 393–​414. Hayward, B. (2008). Let’s Talk About the Weather: Decentering Democratic Debate About Climate Change. Hypatia, 23: 81–​98. Huntington, S. (1965). Political Development and Political Decay. World Politics, 17: 386–​430. Karpowitz, C., Mendelberg, T., and Shaker, L. (2012). Gender Inequality in Deliberative Participation. American Political Science Review, 106: 533–​47. Karpowitz, C., Raphael, C. and Hammond, A. S. (2009). Deliberative Democracy and Inequality: Two Cheers for Enclave Deliberation among the Disempowered. Politics and Society, 37: 576–​615. Klinke, A. and Renn, O. (2014). Expertise and Experience:  A Deliberative System of a Functional Divison of Labor for Post-​Normal Risk Governance. Innovation: The European Journal of the Social Sciences, 27: 442–​65. Leach, W. D. and Pelky, N. W. (2001). Making Watershed Partnerships Work: A Review of the Empirical Literature. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 127: 378–​85. Lebel, L. (2013). Local Knowledge and Adaptation to Climate Change in Natural Resource-​ Based Societies of the Asia-​Pacific. Mitigation and Adapation Strategies for Global Change, 18: 1057–​76. Lin, K.-​ m. (2014). Deliberative Inequality:  Discursive Interactions in Taiwan’s Citizen Conferences. Taiwanese Sociology, 27: 1–​50. Lövbrand, E. and Kahn, J. (2014). The Deliberative Turn in Green Political Theory. In Environmental Politics and Deliberative Democracy: Examining the Promise of New Modes of Governance, ed. K. Bäckstrand, J. Kahn, A. Kronsell, and E. Lövebrand (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar), 47–​64. Lubell, M., Schneider, M., Scholz, J. T., and Mete, M. (2002). Watershed Partnerships and the Emergence of Collective Action Institutions. American Journal of Political Science, 46: 148–​63. Mburu, J. and Birner, R. (2007). Emergence, Adoption, and Implementation of Collaborative Wildlife Management or Wildlife Partnerships in Kenya: A Look at Conditions of Success. Society and Natural Resources, 20: 379–​95. Moore, A. and O’Doherty, K. (2014). Deliberative Voting: Clarifying Consent in a Consensus Process. Journal of Political Philosophy, 22: 302–​19. Murphree, D. W., Wright, S. A., and Ebaugh, H. (1996). Toxic Waste Siting and Community Resistance: How Cooptation of Local Citizen Opposition Failed. Sociological Perspectives, 39: 447–​63. Niemeyer, S. and Dryzek, J. S. (2007). The Ends of Deliberation: Metaconsensus and Inter-​ Subjective Rationality as Ideal Outcomes. Swiss Political Science Review, 13: 497–​526. Parkinson, J. and Mansbridge, J. (eds) (2012). Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Petts, J. and Brooks, C. (2006). Expert Conceptualisations of the Role of Lay Knowledge in Environmental Decisionmaking: Challenges for Deliberative Democracy. Environment and Planning A, 38: 1045–​59. Szasz, A. and Meuser, M. (1997). Public Participation in the Cleanup of Contaminated Military Facilities:  Democratization or Anticipatory Cooptation. International Journal of Contemporary Sociology, 34: 211–​33.

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Chapter 49

Deliberati on a nd Catastroph i c  Ri sks Ryan Gunderson and Thomas Dietz

Global catastrophic risks challenge our capabilities for fair and competent governance in the twenty-​first century. In the past, local human groups and even nation states have sometimes faced existential threats as a result of warfare, genocide, epidemics, and disastrous environmental change (Butzer and Endfield 2012; Diamond 2005). But since the industrial revolution and especially since World War II, the scale and influence of human action, ranging from changes in genomes to changes in the biosphere, have increased massively (Rosa and Dietz 2010). As a result, human actions entrain risks that are properly described as catastrophic. By catastrophic risk we mean the risk of events that will be of sufficient scale that much of the globe will be affected, that the changes that occur will be massive in most places, that they will transform socio-​economic and ecological systems and, by broad normative consensus, that they will be disastrously bad for many. Describing these as risks implies that we do not know with any certainty if they will occur (Dietz, Frey, and Rosa 2001; Rosa, Renn, and McCright 2013). At best we can assign probabilities to them. In many cases there is meta-​uncertainty—​we cannot assign probabilities and are not even sure of all the processes that may be at play in creating the adverse effects that might unfold. Some catastrophic risks, such as “super-​vulcanism” (e.g. a reoccurrence of massive volcanic eruptions such as of the Yellowstone caldera) are beyond human control with current technologies (Plag et al. 2015; Rampino 2008; Shapiro and Koulakov 2015). Some, such as a major asteroid strike, are not caused by humans but might be averted if action is taken far enough in advance (Napier 2008). But most others, such as climate change, are caused largely by human action. Those risks can be substantially reduced by effective governance. And for all catastrophic risks, governance can reduce vulnerability and increase resilience and adaptation. Thus finding mechanisms for governance of such risks is critically important. To ease explication, we will restrict our discussion to risks that are substantially caused by human action. We will focus primarily on climate change as the potentially catastrophic risk whose governance has been most carefully

Deliberation and Catastrophic Risks    769 examined. The lessons from such risks likely can inform efforts for dealing with catastrophic risks that are outside human control. Climate change is the prototypical catastrophic risk (IPCC 2013; US National Research Council 2010). The burning of fossil fuels and the conversion of a substantial portion of the earth’s surface to human ends have transformed global biogeochemical cycles. Both increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and changes in the albedo (heat absorbing capability) of the earth’s surface have led to an increase in global average temperature, acidification of the oceans, and a variety of other changes in the biosphere. Those changes are beyond the range of what humans have adapted to since the emergence of agriculture. Indeed, some of the changes anticipated are beyond the experience of our species. These substantial and rapid changes to biogeochemical systems and thus to coupled human and natural systems will disrupt the bases for human well-​being in many parts of the world. They also increase the risks of “runaway” changes in the climate and the biosphere (Drijfhout et al. 2015). For example, warming in regions such as the Arctic could lead to rapid release of more greenhouse gases, creating positive feedback effects that could put at risk nearly all the ecological processes on which humanity depends (Schuur et al. 2015). And some proposed efforts to reduce the magnitude of climate change, grouped under the title of “geoengineering” or “climate engineering” have the possibility of incurring substantial and perhaps catastrophic risks as well. There has been increased attention to the legal, political, and ethical dimensions of geoengineering (e.g. Burns and Strauss 2013; Cusack et al. 2014; Stevenson and Dryzek 2014; Elliot 2016; Gunderson, Petersen, and Stuart 2018; Hamilton 2013; Herzog and Parson 2017; Macnaghten and Szerszynsk 2013; Parson 2014; Parson and Ernst 2013; Payne, Shwom, and Heaton 2015; Preston 2012; 2016; US National Research Council 2015a, c­ hapter 4; 2015b, c­ hapter 4; Whyte 2012). While this literature is too complex and too rapidly changing to review in detail, it forms an important underpinning to our thinking. One tempting option for making decisions about catastrophic risks is via a strong authoritarian state run by technically competent elites. When discussed as a solution to environmental governance, this position is called “eco-​authoritarianism” (for review, see Shahar 2015). The claim is that an authoritarian state can more efficiently and quickly address environmental risks and problems than a democratic one. However, as Baber and Bartlett argue in this volume (Chapter 48), environmental decisions that lack public support and political legitimacy are not politically sustainable and, thus, are ultimately ecologically unsustainable. Further, the actual track record of authoritarian states is dubious, there are a number of normative and theoretical reasons to avoid this route (Shahar 2015), and the examples sometimes given of eco-​authoritarian success (such as the low-​carbon policy in China) are questioned (Lo 2015). As discussed below, deliberative democratic governance of risks and environmental problems has a strong track record from local to national levels and a number of compelling normative reasons for implementation (cf. Baber and Bartlett, this volume, Chapter 48). However, there is a problem of scale: how might deliberative processes be scaled up to effectively and fairly govern catastrophic risks? After discussing global governance and the benefits of the

770    Ryan Gunderson and Thomas Dietz deliberative risk governance, we clarify some of the complexities related to the problem of scale as well as provide direction for future research and practice. We also note that current mechanisms of environmental governance are in some sense deliberative. Scientists deliberate to produce international assessments of the state of the science, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA). Representatives of national governments deliberate to form and implement international agreements. Corporations, industry groups, and non-​governmental organizations representing public interests of various kinds all engage in deliberation in some sense. Thus the issue we take on is not whether or not deliberation should be used to address catastrophic risk, but rather what the features of a desirable deliberative practice might be and how catastrophic risks pose special challenges for such practices. Following much of the literature on geoengineering, we note that these ongoing processes, and new ones that emerge, constitute tests of various approaches to deliberative governance, and, if properly designed and studied, can both help build trust in and knowledge of evolving approaches (Parson 2014; Parson and Ernst 2013; Payne, Shwom, and Heaton 2015)

Global Commons and Global Governance The climate is a global commons: emissions and land use change anywhere in the globe affects the climate everywhere (Dietz, Ostrom, and Stern 2003; Ostrom 2010a). As a result, any effort to limit the magnitude of climate change will be effective only if action is taken by all nations that are making substantial contributions to causing climate change. Many other catastrophic risks also seem to require global governance. Risks from artificial intelligence, biological engineering, cyberwarfare, nanotechnology, nuclear war, weaponized robots, and many other potentially catastrophic risks are not likely to be mitigated by the actions of one or a few nations. Once such technologies are developed, global patterns of trade, human mobility, and information transmission seem to ensure that these technologies will spread rapidly, requiring global governance. Given that catastrophic risks are global commons their assessment and governance will ultimately depend on global actions and arrangements with global reach, though this does not necessarily imply a single overarching global institution. Although a contested term (Paterson et al. 2003), global governance usually refers to intergovernmental regimes and organizations that include both states and non-​state actors such as “non-​ governmental organizations (NGOs), citizens’ movements, multinational corporations, and the global capital market,” to assess and manage issues and problems that affect multiple states and publics (Commission on Global Governance 1995, 2–​3). The literature on global governance is vast, covering not only environment and technology but also grades and standards for products and technology, human rights, migration, trade, warfare, even the governance of athletic competitions, as well as myriad other issues. A useful starting

Deliberation and Catastrophic Risks    771 point is to consider the global governance of environmental issues, since it provides a reasonable basis for thinking about catastrophic risks resulting from technological change and human intervention in the environment. In an environmental context, “governance” refers to “regulatory processes, mechanisms and organizations through which political actors influence environmental actions and outcomes” (Lemos and Agrawal 2006, 298). We emphasize that the concept is inclusive of non-​governmental actors and of actions outside the formal regimes (treaties, standards, etc.) by which states interact. Indeed some scholars strongly emphasize the importance of non-​governmental actors in the international regulatory regime (Finger and Princen 2013; Longhofer et al. 2016). Major formal initiatives in global environmental governance are usually traced to the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm and its Declaration on the Human Environment, although bilateral and regional agreements are much older (Young 1989; 2016). The Stockholm Declaration was followed by major actions such as the founding of the United Nations Environment Programme (1972), the IPCC (1988), and the MEA (2001) and the creation of key treaties including the Vienna Convention on Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985), the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), and the Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992), among many others. We note that to a greater or lesser degree these formal agreements and processes among government nearly always involve non-​governmental actors (Ciplet, Roberts, and Khan 2015; Newell, Pattberg, and Schroeder 2012) There is consensus that international efforts to stave off ozone depletion have been successful (Canan et al. 2015; Parson 2003). Evaluating the success of other global environmental governance mechanisms remains complicated and the subject of much scholarly effort (Biermann and Pattberg 2008; Miles et al. 2002; Speth and Haas 2006; Young 2010; 2011). But it seems clear that few other global environmental governance mechanisms have achieved the success of the ozone agreements. This limited success in turn has led to a number of diagnoses and suggestions for more effective environmental governance (Brondizio, Ostrom, and Young 2009; Cash et al. 2006; Ivanova and Esty 2012; Lemos and Agrawal 2006; Orsini, Morin, and Young 2013; Ostrom 2010a; Speth and Haas 2007; Young 2002). Here we follow the lead of a number of scholars who discuss the possibility of democratizing global environmental governance (e.g. Baber and Bartlett 2009; Bäckstrand 2006; Stevenson and Dryzek 2014; Smith and Brassett 2008; for overview of deliberative approaches to transnational democracy in general, see Smith, Chapter 55 in this volume). In particular, we consider the possibility of scaling up the principles and processes of analytic deliberation from the local level, where it has been most applied and studied, to the global level necessary for addressing catastrophic risks.

Analytic Deliberation As much of this volume attests, a substantial body of research and practice demonstrates that deliberative approaches can be highly effective at producing fair and competent modes of governance. For several decades, scientific analysis linked to public

772    Ryan Gunderson and Thomas Dietz deliberation—​called by the shorthand term “analytic deliberation”—​has been proposed for dealing with environmental and technological risks (Dietz 1984; 1987; Payne, Shwom, and Heaton 2015; Renn, Webler, and Wiedemann 1995; US National Research Council 1996). While details vary, the core of an analytic deliberative process is an iterative interaction between scientific analysis and deliberation of interested and affected parties. The “analytic” in analytic deliberation signifies the explicit acknowledgment that in some contexts scientific expertise is needed to achieve competent decision-​making. That is certainly true for making decisions about global catastrophic risks and for environmental issues in general, which nearly always involve uncertainty about facts. A substantial body of evidence attests to the effectiveness of such processes when deployed at the local, regional, and national scales (US National Research Council 2008). As a result, the merits of analytic deliberation have been widely acknowledged and the practice has been recommended for a diverse set of environmental and sustainability problems (IRGC 2005; 2017; Rosa, Renn, and McCright 2013; US National Research Council 1996; 1999; 2008; 2011). Granted, not all deliberative processes are well designed and carefully implemented. But, when done well, efforts that link scientists, policymakers, and interested and effected parties in carefully designed deliberations “[improve] the quality and legitimacy of decisions and builds the capacity of all involved to engage in the policy process” (US National Research Council 2008, 226). Analytic deliberation is based on Habermas’s (e.g. 1984; 1990; 1993)  communicative theories and discourse ethics (e.g. Dietz 1994; Renn 2008, c­ hapter 8; Webler 1995). Habermas argues that when the public is making a decision, affected parties, regardless of economic or political power, should have an equal chance to speak, interpret, justify, problematize, and explain any claim without coercion and manipulation (Webler 1995, 46–​7).1 Rather than arbitrary power, disagreements and conflicts ought to be resolved through deliberation, where “no force except that of the better argument is exercised” (Habermas 1975, 108). In modern, pluralistic societies, Habermas (1996, 107) maintains that the right thing to do ought to be based on a “discourse principle”: “Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses.” In analytic deliberation, decision-​making should achieve procedural and substantive fairness as well as competence in facts and values (e.g. Dietz 2003; 2013b; Renn 2008, ­chapter 8; Webler 1995). Echoing Habermas, procedural fairness means (1) that affected and interested parties can participate in a decision-​making process that (2) strives, to the greatest extent possible, to equalize power relations so decisions are based on the reasonableness of validity claims. A validity claim is raised in a functional and understandable utterance (speech act), “namely to represent something in the world (truth), to establish legitimate intersubjective relations (rightness) and to express my intentions (truthfulness)” (Thomassen 2010, 66), which can be dialogically contested or accepted by others (see Habermas 1984, 75 ff.). The point is for decisions to be based on the deliberations that are responsive to these validity claims as opposed to arbitrary power. Substantive fairness, or fairness in outcome, is closely linked to procedural fairness because fairness in outcome depends on careful planning that can emerge from processes

Deliberation and Catastrophic Risks    773 that exhibit procedural fairness (Dietz 2003). Competence in facts means the use of the best methods available for validating empirical issues (Webler 1995)2 and competence in values means acknowledging and deliberating upon diversity and uncertainty in participants’ values (Dietz 2003). By linking scientific analysis and public deliberation and following the principles of fairness and competence, analytic deliberation is well suited for making decisions about questions central to catastrophic risks: the technical-​ scientific, “What will happen?” and the politico-​ethical, “Is it a good idea?” (Dietz 1994). The ideas labeled analytic deliberation place special emphasis on the need for deliberative processes to develop norms, rules, and procedures for dealing with both facts and values. The emphasis on the role of scientific input to the process acknowledges a respect for the scientific process, itself a form of deliberation, as a means for assessing facts but also an awareness that the application of scientific understanding to decision making about environmental and many other issues involves high degrees of uncertainty that cannot be resolved, as they would be in scientific discourse, by simply waiting for definitive evidence (Dietz 2013c; Rosa 1998; York 2013). Rather decisions will have to be made in the face of that uncertainty. The analytic deliberative process also acknowledges that formal scientific expertise needs to be tempered with local understandings, with expertise on values, ethics and modes of deliberation, and with understanding of institutions and politics in play in implementing decisions. That is, while scientific expertise is viewed as in some sense central in analytic deliberative processes, it is only one form of required expertise. Further the process, in order to move towards decisions, must engage normative commitments. A first step is acknowledging a diversity of interests and values, but, for a decision to emerge, the deliberation must facilitate the evolution of mutual agreement about valid normative claims and the identification of compromises, side agreements, and other mechanisms to arrive at decisions that are acceptable to all interested and affected parties. This is of course a substantial challenge. There is good evidence that such processes can work well at the local to regional level; the challenge is to find approaches that work at larger scales. Despite its potential merits for global assessment and governance, a number of questions arise when considering the analytic deliberative model as a potential candidate for reforming current global environmental governance structures. We address those here, following recent work by Gunderson (forthcoming) and Payne, Shwom, and Heaton (2015). We turn to the special challenges of an analytic deliberative assessment and governance of catastrophic risks in the next section.

Deliberative Processes in Global Governance Identifying and addressing the social and economic structures that present barriers to public deliberation in global decision-​making marks one challenge for analytic

774    Ryan Gunderson and Thomas Dietz deliberative global governance. For instance, is it really possible to approximate a leveling of power relations in decision-​making when considering the large influence of corporate interests in, and the neoliberalization of, contemporary global governance (e.g. Ciplet and Roberts 2017; Levy and Newell 2005; Newell 2008; White, Rudy, and Gareau 2016)? Gould (2014) stresses the need to examine the social and economic conditions that would make a more inclusive and transnational democracy possible and argues that global justice and expanded participation are interdependent. Recognizing democratic participation as a human right requires that we concurrently recognize as human rights the social and material conditions (“positive freedoms,” including basic survival necessities) that enable such participation. Thus, calls for the democratization of global institutions are “also calls for turning these institutions, first, away from their contemporary deference to the interests of powerful nation-​states and global corporations and, second, toward the task of minimizing exploitative economic conditions and achieving more egalitarian distributions of wealth and income” (Gould 2014, 268). Yet moves toward global-​level deliberation for these aims would likely need to be broadened to other global governance institutions. For Downey (2015), reducing environmental harm and global inequality would mean struggling to democratize the elite-​controlled and undemocratic institutions and networks that cause widespread environmental harms and global inequality, such as commodity chains that minimize value capture by smallholders and problematic policies by the International Monetary Fund/​World Bank complex. In short, it is crucial to examine the social and economic enablers of, and barriers to, global democratization.3 A second concern for scaling up these processes for addressing global catastrophic risk involves identifying the institutions that would need to be formed or reformed to adhere to deliberative democratic practices. Gould (2014) argues that focus should be placed on democratizing already existing global environmental governance institutions. Stevenson and Dryzek (2014) contend that we should focus on deliberative systems (cf. Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012) instead of deliberative forums to democratize global environmental governance, specifically for climate governance. Smith (Chapter 55 in this volume) also emphasizes the importance of transnational deliberative systems. A deliberative system refers to a number of dispersed locations and practices—​both formal and informal—​from everyday talks among interested citizens to forums of negotiation. Instead of focusing on independent deliberative forums, or single sites or organizations where deliberations occur, a deliberative system is “a set of distinguishable, differentiated, but to some degree interdependent parts [encompassing a talk-​based approach to political conflict and problem-​solving], often with distributed functions and division of labour, connected in such a way as to form a complex whole” (Mansbridge et al. 2012, 4–​5). The idea resonates with Ostrom’s calls for polycentric governance (Ostrom 2010a; 2010b). No one forum can or should be the only site of deliberation. The goal is to figure out what a good deliberative system would look like, including the goodness of its parts (Mansbridge et al. 2012). For Stevenson and Dryzek (2014), an important part of a deliberative system for environmental governance is the “mini-​public”: “Bodies comprised of ordinary citizens chosen through near random or stratified selection from a relevant

Deliberation and Catastrophic Risks    775 constituency, and tasked with learning, deliberating, and issuing a judgment about a specific topic, issue, or proposal” (Warren and Gastil 2015). (For an overview of various proposals for embedding mini-​publics in models of transnational democracy, see Smith, Chapter 55 in this volume.) Mini-​publics include citizen juries, consensus conferences, and deliberative polling (Mackenzie and Warren 2012). For example, Baber and Bartlett’s (2009) model for “juristic democracy,” where citizen jury judgments, formed in various countries, would be used to establish legitimate and transparent global common laws. The application of mini-​publics to climate change has been discussed by Reidy and Herriman (2011) and by Blue (2015). Focusing on deliberative systems also highlights the possibility of enlarging virtual public spaces for deliberative global governance (see also, Dietz 2013b; 2013a; Gould 2014; Rask, Maciukaite-​Zviniene, and Petrauskiene 2012). Whatever the answer—​democratizing already existing global governance institutions, forming dispersed systems of offline and online mini-​publics, or an integrated approach—​the questions of institutional feasibility and formation require more attention and thought. A third challenge for analytic deliberative global governance is clarifying who should participate and thus the criteria for participant selection. This is an especially difficult task because making decisions about catastrophic risks, such as climate change, affects everyone or at least a very large fraction of the human population (i.e. nearly everyone is the “directly affected public”). Because it is not technically feasible for all voices to be heard, a proxy global public would be selected, perhaps using scientific sampling that insures representativeness, based on some set of criteria (e.g. ecosystem type, biotic province, national origin, prevalent discourses, preferred lifeways). This follows the arguments for deliberative polling that balance the representativeness of a well-​designed sample survey with the potential for thoughtful conversation across viewpoints (Fishkin and Luskin 2005; Fishkin 2009; 2014; List et al. 2013). We can only briefly comment on the complexity of this challenge. If the chosen criterion is national origin, for example, how should the voices of Indigenous communities be respected and included? In the governance of early research on solar radiation management, Whyte (2012, 173) argued Indigenous peoples should be viewed as “members of distinct peoples whose preferred lifeways are encumbered by [nation states like Australia and Canada].” Or, if the criterion for representation is ecosystem of origin, do nonhuman “interests” count? If so, how would they be represented (e.g. Dryzek 1995; Ecksersley 1999)? One way forward in deciding how to sample, as noted above, might be through identifying multiple forms of expertise, including but not limited to scientific expertise, that must be engaged for competent risk management (Dietz 2013c; Harding 2015; York 2013). Thus the process would include scientific expertise of the traditional sort, diverse expertise about local contexts (traditional ecological knowledge), expertise about existing political institutions, traditions and conflicts that might facilitate or impede implementation, expertise in ethical and effective ways of structuring the deliberation itself, and so on. Within this diversity, it will be important to find an adequate way of sampling values and ethical stances, and perhaps including in this category of expertise those who might speak for the interests of future generations and of nonhuman species.

776    Ryan Gunderson and Thomas Dietz Fourth, in what way, and at which points, should the proxy global public deliberate? Many environmental governance mechanisms involve both formal assessments of the state of the science and multi-​stakeholder deliberations about the appropriate course of action. Reports of the IPCC and the meetings of the Conference of Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change provide a prominent example of linked but independent assessment and decision-​making processes.4 Should the proxy global public contribute to the assessment process only, or also to consequential decision-​making? Analytic deliberative approaches have been used extensively in scientific assessments, where the goal of the process is to produce a fair and competent summary of current factual understanding (US National Research Council 2007). Such assessments can include consideration of the diversity of values held by interested and affected parties since those values can be studied scientifically. Even though science alone cannot resolve the value conflicts, it can provide insight into the nature of those conflicts and the potential of resolving them. It has always been clear that assessments summarizing the state of knowledge are intended to inform decision-​making. So it is common for assessments to include analysis of the effects of alternative courses of action and it is possible for assessments to identify preferable courses of action conditional on some accepted normative criteria (e.g. “if one wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions the most economically efficient way to do so is to put a market price on such emissions”). But to come to a decision requires consensus about how values should be applied in choosing across options, which is more challenging than simply assessing the state of knowledge. Some approaches to assigning values, such as utilitarian cost-​benefit-​risk analysis, are well developed but are founded on a particular set of ethical assumptions that not all share (Dietz 1994; Fischhoff 2015). And even conditional statements must be viewed with caution. Stating, based on scientific analysis, that carbon pricing is an economically efficient way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions leaves unvoiced concerns with equity and human well-​being, reasonable goals that are not addressed in efficiency analysis. However, practical approaches to implementing other ethical theories are less well developed. At the opposite end of the spectrum from deliberation focused on summarizing knowledge is deliberation used for ongoing governance. Again, this approach has led to successful mechanisms for governance, especially at the local level (Dietz, Ostrom, and Stern 2003; McCay 2002; McCay et al. 2014). But it is especially challenging at the global level. Progress will clearly require innovative institutional designs, with careful diagnostic evaluation to determine what works best in which contexts (Johnson and Gastil 2015).

Challenges in Using Deliberation to Address Catastrophic Risks Theory and evidence suggest that deliberative processes should be at the heart of risk governance. What special challenges to analytic deliberation do catastrophic risks raise?

Deliberation and Catastrophic Risks    777 The strength of deliberative practices for environmental assessment and decision-​ making emerged primarily around the governance of ecosystems at the local to regional level and around exposure to toxic substances, again largely at the local to regional level. We have noted some of the challenges to deploying deliberative approaches at the global level. Catastrophic risks add further challenges. Here we identify three: complexity and deep uncertainty, diversity in impacts, and global scope.

Complexity and Deep Uncertainty Catastrophic risks entrain substantial complexity and deep uncertainty. The complexity emerges because these risks involve interactions of social, ecological, and technological systems that are rapidly evolving. Scientific progress in the twentieth century was based in large part on isolating processes to study them in detail. But ecology and kindred fields increasingly emphasized that “everything is connected to everything else” and thus the need for a more integrated science that examined complexity and evolutionary dynamics (Holland 1995; Liu et al. 2007). Uncertainty follows. We are only beginning to learn the nature of the risks we face and how the systems involved interact and evolve. The risks initially addressed by linked analysis and deliberation, such as exposure to toxic chemicals or ecosystem management, emerged from relatively well-​understood processes. In many cases uncertainty in these risks can be quantified or at least estimated qualitatively. Variation in time scales and non-​linearity adds to the problems of uncertainty (IRGC 2017). For some risks, such as volcanism or asteroid strikes, we may or may not be able to predict when an incident will occur, but when it does, events unfold quickly. Other risks build slowly but are persistent over time and thus could become normalized and ignored (Beamish 2002). For still others, changes may at first seem minimal but suddenly become very rapid when a critical threshold is reached. More attention must be given to the implications of these time patterns for deliberative governance processes. Climate change probably is the best understood of the anthropogenic catastrophic risks, and some aspects of climate change risk can indeed be quantified. There are relatively sophisticated approaches to clarifying the degree of uncertainty in climate change science, and major assessments make use of those tools (Kunreuther et al. 2013; Moss and Schneider 2000; Moss 2004; Yohe and Oppenheimer 2011). But even here, when we consider positive feedbacks in the climate system and abrupt shifts in biogeochemical processes, we must deal with “meta-​uncertainty”: we are unsure about what we need to know in order to characterize the dynamics of the system. The complexity and high levels of uncertainty make it difficult to ensure that a deliberative process is competent with regard to the facts, since they are uncertain. A substantial body of literature makes it clear most people have a great deal of difficulty processing information about uncertainty; indeed, that is one of the motivations for linking scientific analysis to public deliberation (US National Research Council 1996). In the case of catastrophic risks, tools that have been developed for handling uncertainty in deliberations are a starting point,

778    Ryan Gunderson and Thomas Dietz but much more work will be needed (Arvai et al. 2012; Bessette, Campbell‐Arvai, and Arvai 2015; Fischhoff 2015; Renn and Klinke 2015).

Diversity in Impacts Catastrophic risks have myriad impacts that differ widely across regions of the world, industrial sectors, human livelihood strategies, types of ecosystems, and social groups. The diversity in these impacts and in their distribution is much greater than for those that flow from the risks related to toxic materials and ecosystems. In order to be competent in taking account of the diverse values of interested and affected parties, analytic deliberation around catastrophic risks will require very broad participation and wide sampling of views. As we have noted, the need for this diversity is a special challenge in designing a process that is fair across the globe. For deliberations intended to assess current understanding, and especially those that go on to propose actions, it also means that evaluating fairness in outcomes will be unusually challenging. To the extent that such processes seek to identify preferable courses of action, or at least compare alternatives, the burden of making value trade-​offs will be especially difficult because the need to apply diverse values to diverse impacts must be addressed.

Global Causes and Effects Catastrophic risks are global in at least two ways. First, as we have noted, they pose a global commons governance problem since no single group or nation, or even a modest-​ sized collaboration of nations, can adequately address such risks. Second, their effects will play out in very different ways in different parts of the world. At the same time, because of the teleconnected nature of ecological, social, economic, and political systems, impacts in one part of the world will have ripple effects in others (Liu et al. 2013). For example, intensified drought in one region can lead to a global flow of migrants (Hunter, Luna, and Norton 2015). The diverse, local and yet globalized nature of these effects means that science which was developed to be highly abstract and generalizable has to be applied to specific local circumstances. This increases uncertainty and suggests that local knowledge, including traditional ecological knowledge, must inform analysis and thus be engaged in deliberation (Dietz 2013c; Whyte 2013; Whyte, Brewer, and Johnson 2016; Baber and Bartlett, this volume, Chapter 48).

Ways Forward The closest approximations to global deliberative processes to date seem to be large-​scale assessment processes such as those of the IPCC and the MEA. While those processes are

Deliberation and Catastrophic Risks    779 intended only to assess the state of the science, they do deal with highly complex issues of global scope. And some of them, such as the IPCC, are linked on an ongoing basis to international deliberations intended to produce policy agreements. So there may be something to be learned from them in designing deliberative approaches for dealing with catastrophic risks. In addition, initial efforts to govern not just geoengineering applications but also research on geoengineering may provide an important testbed for developing processes and norms that can be applied to both geoengineering policies and other domains (Parson 2014; Parson and Ernst 2013; Payne, Shwom, and Heaton 2015). Here we sketch a few basic principles that might be applied. First, we must acknowledge that we don’t know what to do. Deliberative governance of catastrophic risks will emerge as a result of experimentation with differing approaches and thoughtful and rigorous evaluation of those experiments (Campbell 1969; 1998; Dewey 1923). A small literature attempts to assess the successes and limits of global assessments (Carpenter et  al. 2009; US National Research Council 2007). Ongoing lessons from past experiences and evaluations of new approaches, including new assessments and governance of research, can build a cumulative pool of understanding that could be the basis for better approaches. A major obstacle to learning from experience is that assessment processes and other steps towards deliberative governance, and environmental and risk policy in general, have seldom been subject to evaluation, so the substantial machinery of evaluation research is deployed only as an afterthought (Coglianese and Bennear 2005). A reasonable question to ask about any attempt to initiate a deliberative process might be: “How will it be evaluated?” Second, we should acknowledge that there are no panaceas (Ostrom 2007). Catastrophic risks vary immensely in the kinds of processes that generate them, their effects, and the mechanisms that might be used to mitigate them or adapt to them. Indeed, one of the major challenges we face is the need to develop a comparative taxonomy of catastrophic risks (Rosa et al. 2012). Analytic deliberative processes are intended to link scientific analysis with the deliberation of interested and affected parties. But the goals of such processes can range from simply assessing the state of knowledge, through evaluating alternative courses of action to making decisions and the ongoing governance of risk. In all cases the intent is to have the science inform public deliberation and the deliberation inform the science. Such processes must be appropriate to the particular risk being considered, to the specific parties who are interested or affected, and to the goals for the process. Thus while each design can be guided by general principles, such as co-​design with interested and affected parties and explicit treatment of uncertainty, each design will be unique. There will be no overall process that applies to every circumstance. Rather, diagnostic questions and general design principles that emerge from the body of research on deliberative processes can guide process design and inform practice. Third, the approach must be polycentric. Paying proper attention to local effects around the globe will require processes that engage deliberations grounded at the local level. We draw inspiration from Gould’s (2014) idea for a “multidimensional” global democracy where even the governance of global issues such as climate change requires

780    Ryan Gunderson and Thomas Dietz “layers” of democracy (local, state, regional-​continental, and global) and should follow the principle of “subsidiarity”: “decisions should be taken at the most local level possible” (Gould 2014, 138). But locally focused deliberations need to be aggregated in more than one way. This leads to Ostrom’s arguments for polycentricism:  multiple interacting layers of governance design to adapt to changing circumstances (Ostrom 2010b; 2010a). One set of concerns, and thus one way of aggregating, would involve looking across risks and sectors at all the issues that affect a particular region. This approach is already followed in the regional reports of global and national assessments. Another aggregation is to look within a “sector,” typically defined around a set of natural resources or an industry, or within a means of livelihood but across regions. But one can also think of commonalities of interest and position across regions, for example a forum for indigenous peoples or for the global poor (Whyte 2012; Whyte, Brewer, and Johnson 2016). The nature of teleconnections means that strong links do not depend on geographic proximity, so another logical set of connections is via network connections based on trade, human migrations flows, shared geopolitical history, similar position in the world economy, common institutions and culture, etc. Adding to this complexity is the growing role of the private sector in environmental governance, with corporations often acting independently of formal public governance mechanisms (Vandenbergh and Gilligan 2017). Our point is that there is no single way of aggregating and so multiple overlapping deliberative processes must move forward in parallel.

Conclusion Catastrophic risks are global in nature and require global governance. We consider the prospects for deliberative global governance of catastrophic risks drawing on existing research on analytic deliberative environmental governance and risk management. Analytic deliberation attempts to link scientific analysis and public deliberation and is guided by the principles of fairness in both process and outcome and competence with regard to both facts and values. At local, regional, and national scales, analytic deliberation has been shown to be effective when done right (US National Research Council 2008). Any attempt to scale up deliberative approaches to the global level will face many challenges and questions, including decisions about who should participate and how global deliberative processes might operate. Catastrophic risks add further challenges, including, but not limited to, their complexity and deep uncertainty, diversity in impacts, and the global scope yet localized impacts of all catastrophic risks. Although there are many unanswered questions in developing deliberative approaches, we argue that there is a foundation for moving forward and that a global approach will only evolve through experimentation, will change depending on context and circumstance, and must be polycentric.

Deliberation and Catastrophic Risks    781

Notes 1. Analytic deliberative literature often draws from Dewey’s (1923) broader conception of the public as those who may be affected by or interested in the outcome of a given decision. 2. According to Webler (1995), Habermas does not give sufficient attention to the issue of fact competency in deliberative democratic situations because he would likely find the resolution to the problem coercive. However, Habermas did specify what communicative competency involved for the individual participants (the competent ability to use logic, form sentences, make validity claims, and engage in discussion) (Habermas 1970). In analytic deliberation literature, the argument is that it makes more sense to agree on rules that support competent action during deliberation instead of focusing on the participants’ characteristics (Webler 1995, 53–​4). For example, providing good reasons for a claim about an objective fact should conform to a rule: using the best available methods to validate truth. Analytic deliberation holds that a competent procedure is an important revision for deliberative democratic decision-​making about risks and/​or environmental issues because this process consistently moves between assertions of facts and values. 3. It is important to note that in recent years a great deal of environmental governance, and arguably some reductions in stress on the environment if the counterfactuals are business-​ as-​usual projections, have been achieved from private governance systems (Vandenbergh 2013, Vandenbergh and Gilligan 2017). In many cases these involve negotiations between NGOs and corporations or industry associations. The implications of these arrangements for deliberative processes have not been examined in detail. For a review of critical accounts of this approach, see Ciplet and Roberts (2017, 150-​51) and Vandenbergh and Gilligan (2017). 4. Some of the earliest efforts to regulate biotechnology have come from within the scientific community, demonstrating the importance of scientists as initiators even as we recognize the need for broader deliberation (Palmer, Fukuyama, and Relman 2015).

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P a r t   VI

DE L I B E R AT I V E DE M O C R AC Y A ROU N D T H E  WOR L D

Chapter 50

De l iberative De mo c rac y in East Asia Japan and China Beibei Tang, Tetsuki Tamura, and Baogang He

In increasingly complex modern societies, all political rulers need to engage the public and use a variety of public deliberation devices, if only for purposes of information and legitimation. Asia is not an exception. In the last decade, we have seen a variety of consultative and deliberative meetings take place in Asia. Among a variety of Asian countries which have adopted deliberative practices and devices, Japan and China offer two interesting case studies of this “deliberative turn.” On the one hand, they both use public consultation and deliberation, probably owing to the complexity of governance problems, combined with Confucian legacies that place a high value on consensus. On the other hand, the two countries represent different potential paths to deliberative democracy in Asia. In Japan, public deliberation promises to deepen democracy within a liberal democratic system, while in China deliberative processes may have the potential to introduce democratic moments into an authoritarian system. Japan is one of the most Westernized of non-​Western countries, with a political system similar to those of the Western developed democracies. China, in contrast, is an authoritarian system led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Nonetheless, the Chinese system has considerable flexibility at local levels to adopt differing forms of decision-​ making processes, including some with deliberative and/​or democratic characteristics. Despite these very different political systems, both countries have introduced deliberative processes such as mini-​publics, citizen juries, and deliberative polling to continue, improve, or deepen existing public consultations. Both countries tend to conceive of “deliberation” in the form of “sincere heart-​to-​heart discussion” (both use the same Han character 懇談, which is pronounced kentan in Chinese and kondan in Japanese). With regard to the translation of the term “deliberative democracy,” 審議民主主義 was used

792    Beibei Tang, Tetsuki Tamura, and Baogang He previously, and 熟議民主主義 and 討議民主主義 are now popular in Japan. In China, 协商民主 is common, while 审议民主 is favored by Chinese scholars. The emergence and development of deliberative practices in both countries have also faced constraints and challenges. A recent trend in the field of deliberative democracy study is to detach deliberative theory from its Western origins. Here we contribute to understanding how two key East Asian countries, Japan and China, are developing deliberative institutions. We examine their cultural, institutional, and historical features as they function to enable or constrain deliberative practices. We discuss the driving forces, characteristics, and patterns of deliberative institutions, and investigate deliberative culture, especially how Confucian cultures impact deliberative practice. We also apply the systematic approach developed by Western deliberative democratic theorists, examining the potential for deliberative capacity building, as well as assess the prospects for deliberative democracy in East Asia.

An Overview of Deliberative Practices in East Asia The introduction of deliberative practices to Asia, including in China, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and India, was influenced by the theory and practice of deliberative democracy in the West over the past few decades. Asian contexts were a good fit: economic, social, and political developments in the Asian region have produced conditions and practical needs for the development of deliberative practices. Taken together, the diffusion of these ideas and practices resulted a “deliberative turn” in East Asia. Japan, for example, has experienced emerging deliberative democratic practices for the last ten years (Tamura and Kobayashi 2014), beginning with the development of “mini-​publics,” mainly at the local level (Mikami 2012; Miyagi and Yagishita 2013; Yanase 2015). Since the first case, in Chiyoda ward, Tokyo (Shinoto 2012; Ide 2010), more than 350 Citizen Deliberation Meetings modeled on German planning cells have been conducted in various local government areas (Ide 2010; Shinoto 2012; Tsubogo 2014, 54–​5).1 Deliberative Polls (Fishkin 2009) have been also promoted and conducted since 2009. The first deliberative poll in Japan was held at Yokohama, and the second and third were at Fujisawa. At the time of writing, there have been seven deliberative polls in Japan (Yanase 2015, 91–​3). The development of mini-​publics has offered new opportunities for lay citizens to participate in politics, especially for those who had not participated in any political activities before other than voting (Ide 2010). At the national level, the central government introduced deliberative polling in August 2012, inviting citizens to join “The National Deliberative Poll on Energy and Environmental Policy,” and asking them to deliberate on the desirable amount of nuclear energy supply (Mikami 2015,

Deliberative Democracy in East Asia    793 Yanase 2015).2 The outcome of this deliberative poll seems to have had influence over the government’s nuclear policy making at least in the short term. In China, local deliberative democracy has been emerging, despite the fact that it seems like an unlikely place, given the authoritarian context (Fishkin et al. 2010; He and Warren 2011). In the past decade, the CCP’s attitude towards the development of deliberative democracy in China has progressed from initial hesitation to the point that it has been endorsed in the official document of “Strengthening Socialist Consultative Democracy” under Xi’s administration.3 In addition to the growing influence of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) on policymaking (Yan 2011), in recent years there has been consistent development of diverse deliberative experiments at different levels of government. Policy processes across a wide variety of issues have been opened to the public, including, for example, national-​level adjustment of the personal income-​tax threshold (Zhou 2012), a national health policy (Korolev 2014), price adjustments at the local level (Ergenc 2014), and local environment projects (Mertha 2009; Han 2014). The development of deliberative politics in China often combines with authoritarian decision-​making, to produce a “deliberative authoritarianism” in which political elites “respond to persuasive influences, generated either among participants, or in the form of arguments made by participants to decision-​makers” (He and Warren 2011, 274).

Driving Forces, Characteristics, and Patterns Why are countries as different as Japan and China developing deliberative institutions? A key driver has been the rise of protest movements with sufficient strength to disrupt existing governance structures. Although it is commonly said that protest movements are not familiar to Japanese people, various protest movements arose in the 2010s, such as the anti-​nuclear energy movement that emerged after the March 11, 2011 disaster of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. This demonstration mobilized some 200,000 people in front of the National Diet on June 29, 2012. In a second example, there were anti-​security policy movements against the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan government in the summer of 2015. Japan has also witnessed emerging extreme right-​wing movements especially targeting Korean-​Japanese, as well as demonstrations against these movements since the late 2000s (Higuchi 2014; Tominaga 2015). Such protest movements by themselves were not deliberative. But they produced macro-​deliberative effects which helped to induce society-​wide reflections on issues of nation, ethnicity, and hate speech regulation. There are micro-​level possibilities nonetheless, as protest movements themselves often embrace deliberative opportunities and activities. And because people engaged in these movements often do not share a common identity or goals, they need to deliberate with one another to achieve their purposes. Generally

794    Beibei Tang, Tetsuki Tamura, and Baogang He speaking, these drivers of deliberative politics in Japan look very similar to those in the Western democracies. China is more of an enigma because of its authoritarian political system. Like Japan, social protests and citizens’ resistance have played a significant role in establishing deliberative practice. China has faced an explosion of social conflicts since the rapid economic growth and the privatization of state enterprises in the 1990s (Cai 2010; O’Brien and Li 2006; Perry and Selden 2003). Collective contentions in China have become highly prevalent and routinized. For instance, the number of mass incidents grew sixfold between 1993 and 2003, with over 6,000 mass incidents involving 3.07  million people occurring per year by 2003. This number doubled by 2008 (Chen 2012; Perry and Selden 2003). In the last decade, many local governments in China have responded by developing formal deliberative institutions to manage and reduce social conflicts. A rigorously statistical test confirms a strong relationship between the number of social conflict events and the number of local official documents that aim to publicize, introduce, organize, regulate, and report a diversity of public hearing practices (He and Wu 2017). But a striking feature of deliberative practices in China is the dominant role of the authoritarian party-​state. Studies to date have shown that deliberative politics in China, especially the establishment of consultative institutions, have been motivated by political needs to collect or incorporate public opinion into the political decision-​making process without detracting from the CCP’s monopoly on political power. Therefore, it is not surprising to see the leading role of the state as the most significant “Chinese characteristic” in the existing deliberative practices. Important local officials normally play a decisive role in initiating, organizing, and facilitating deliberative forums, including participatory budgeting (Wu and Wang 2012), village assemblies (Tan 2006), and public consultations for selecting local leaders (He and Thogersen 2010). A notable example is the annual Zeguo deliberative poll in the city of Wenling, in which outcomes determine the local government’s policy choices of funding allocation for infrastructure projects (Fishkin et al. 2010). Despite their uneven development, deliberative institutions in China are probably helping to develop fairer and more legitimate decisions than the conventional (authoritarian) governance mechanisms. This said, they are developing under constraints that are specific to the Chinese political context. Most deliberations do not go beyond practical governance matters at local level. However, even with China’s rigid political controls, there is a certain degree of autonomy and flexibility with respect to local governance matters, which has enabled a surprising amount of political innovation, particularly with respect to deliberative processes. Deliberative approaches have been adopted by a number of local governments to resolve local labor disputes (Hess 2009) and citizen disputes (Tang 2015a; 2015b). In these cases, the deliberative approach has not only helped to resolve problems efficiently, but has also promoted an image of a more responsive and responsible local governments, thus enhancing their political legitimacy. The other significant feature of the Chinese context is the party-​state’s direct involvement in the functional operations of deliberative institutions. As empirical evidence has

Deliberative Democracy in East Asia    795 suggested (Tang 2015a; 2015b), the possession of comprehensive local information and rich administrative resources has helped local governments to set agendas. In addition, because party-​state officials tend to know what problems need to be discussed with whom, they can help to recruit participants from the relevant interest groups, which in turn helps to make the processes successful. They also underwrite deliberative events by providing information, facilities, and preparation. The leading role of local government in the deliberative events helps to ensure that deliberative outcomes are followed by practical policies and actions on the part of decision-​makers.

Deliberative Culture in Japan and China As in all polities, political cultures in Japan and China play a significant role in shaping the mechanisms and cultures of deliberative institutions. Different political cultures and institutions are critical for “the meaning, significance, and consequence of deliberation” (Sass and Dryzek 2014) in different societies. In Japan, although deliberative practices are associated with the Western democratic order, its non-​Western cultural traditions exert unique influences deliberative practices and institutions. For instance, in early twentieth-​century Japan, the introduction of the jury system into the Japanese criminal justice system could not last long because it conflicted with Japan’s highly rigid social hierarchies, divided by age, gender, and socio-​economic status (Sass and Dryzek 2014). Japan’s cultural norms regulating social interactions largely reinforced the rigidity of the hierarchical society in which low-​status individuals were unwilling to express their opinions. A potentially different kind of factor, however is Japan’s historically Confucian culture, which may support some kinds of deliberative norms and practices. The academic debates on Confucian influences on Japan’s deliberative culture focus on the complicated interactions between the state, public sphere, and private sphere. Some scholars identify features of a deliberative political culture in Japan even during its era of empire (Sass and Dryzek 2014). In pre-​imperial Japan, the public sphere differed in concept from its Western counterparts due to Japan’s unique configurations of power at the time. Before the rise of imperial fascism, the public sphere in Japan was the space where leadership was scrutinized and disciplined by criticism (Berry 1998). At that time the public sphere appeared to be too weak to confront the state directly, instead aiming at the integrity of public officials while still accepting the “subordination of ‘the people’ to the dictates of state sovereignty” (Sass and Dryzek 2014, 15). Yet many Japanese intellectuals have pointed out that strong conformism without deliberation has been the traditional way of doing things in Japan (Ishida 1970; Maruyama 1963; Shinohara 1968). Indeed, they note that reading people’s minds when they have not spoken, or understanding the unspoken “real” meaning of what they have said, has

796    Beibei Tang, Tetsuki Tamura, and Baogang He been considered as a virtue (Nakagima 1997), so much so that deliberation has not been familiar to the Japanese. Other scholars point out that the permeation of privatism is a strong characteristic of contemporary Japanese culture (Zenkyo 2013; Kato 1989): this too seems to support the view that deliberation is not familiar to Japanese. In contrast, other studies show the distinctiveness of Japan among Confucian countries: Japan is relatively more “secular-​rational” and “self-​expressive” (Inglehart and Welzel 2005). These findings do not necessary conflict, however: Japanese political culture seems to be privatized in a way that motivates people to seek self-​realization in the “private” sphere, channelling self-​expression away from deliberative practices. Thus, emancipation from the traditional collectivist culture has brought about self-​expression and self-​realization that do not entail public deliberative engagement. Such a unique privatism (Shiseikatsu Shugi) has been common among Japanese people at least since the 1960s (Kato 1989). In Japan, then, several distinct political cultures have shaped their hybrid deliberative institutions. The first is the traditional or Confucian culture, which can be either non-​deliberative or authoritarian-​deliberative as in China (He 2015). The most common view among Japanese scholars is that traditional Confucian culture is not deliberative (in contrast, Confucian practice of remonstration and college is deemed as deliberative by Chinese scholars: see He 2015). The second culture is the modernized but privatized (Kato 1989; Zenkyo 2013), individually expressive but publicly non-​deliberative. The third is an emerging deliberative culture driven by political conflict backed by social movements, and perhaps by latent deliberative strains of the other two. Scholars observing deliberative mini-​publics in Japan find deliberative effects among participants, such as the transformation of preferences and the acceptance of different opinions (Ide 2010; Miyagi and Yagishita 2013; Yanase 2015). In contrast to Japan, in China there seems to be more agreement on the cultural traits and historical traditions of public deliberation. Both official statements and academic research have identified the roots of political consultation in Chinese history and Confucian culture (Rosenberg 2006; Xinhua 2008; He 2015). Importantly, the cultural roots of political consultation were incorporated into the Maoist “Mass Line”—​“from the people, to the people,” which emphasized the gathering of ideas and concerns from the people, as well as decision-​making responsive to the people’s opinions. Deliberative democracy is continuous with these cultural traditions, insofar as it is considered to be a means of absorbing wisdom and strength from the Chinese people to improve governance and public policy. These continuities have certainly contributed to the now official view that deliberative democracy (xie shang min zhu [协商民主] in CCP Central Committee documents) is that distinct form of democracy most relevant to the country’s experience (Xinhua 2008). In Chinese political culture, there has been a particular emphasis on consensus-​based social stability in order to gain prosperity and reinforce regime legitimacy. In this respect, the CCP faces similar functional needs and challenges as the Confucian dynasties. Since China’s impressive economic development beginning in the 1980s, there have been increasing and intensified popular protests and collective resistance to challenge local-​level governance legitimacy (O’Brien and Li 2006; Lee 2007; Cai 2010). For local governments, it is “good performance” in achieving economic growth while

Deliberative Democracy in East Asia    797 maintaining local social stability that secures career advancement for government officials. This “performance legitimacy” has resulted in local officials being less interested than the central government in protecting the regime’s legitimacy, and being more concerned with policy implementation and fulfillment of responsibility (Tong 2011). This stability-​oriented and consensus political culture, driven by practical governance issues within the context of development-​driven change, is almost certainly the driving force for the authoritarian regime to adopt deliberative politics, particularly at the local level (Dryzek 2010; He and Warren 2011). Deliberative democracy is viewed by the CCP as a way of ensuring social harmony by providing space for the people’s problems and demands to be heard and channeled into the political system. This said, the high value that Confucian culture places on consensus and social harmony can suppress deliberative approaches to conflict. Sharp criticisms are not appreciated, and deliberation tends to be soft talk in a warm atmosphere. Participants can be superficially agreeable, carefully avoiding any aggressive disagreement. Participants in deliberative events can talk past one another. There are many situations where deliberation results in false unanimity because participants do not want to emphasize or even fully express their disagreements. Similarly to Japan, deliberative institutions in China are also the result of hybrid cultures, especially the combination of Confucianism with democratic values and practices (He 2007; 2015). The development of Chinese deliberative democracy in the last decade has drawn heavily on the Confucian tradition of public consultation blended with Western theories of deliberative democracy and, in many cases, social scientific methodologies for (near) randomly selecting deliberative mini-​publics, as in the deliberative polling design (Chen 2006). Take the example of Zeguo township at Wenling city, Zhejiang Province, which has held a series of public consultations, utilizing deliberative polling techniques whose results have direct input into the township budgeting process (He 2008). Such meetings are called kentan—​“heart to heart discussions”—​building on a deliberative practice from the Confucian tradition that we also find in Japan. In this mixed practice, Western deliberative democracy and Chinese Confucian elements are present and make their own distinct and unique contributions. It is thus difficult to claim that this practice of local deliberative democracy is either purely a Chinese local phenomenon or that it is merely the result of Western influence; it seems to us to be the result of both.

Potentials and Constraints of Deliberative Capacity Building: A Systemic Approach Although deliberative cultures and practices in Japan and China have their unique aspects, it is important to examine their characteristics within a broader framework which, despite individual differences, helps us to understand the general development

798    Beibei Tang, Tetsuki Tamura, and Baogang He of deliberative institutions and designs. The deliberative systems approach of deliberative democracy (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012; Dryzek 2010; Stevenson and Dryzek 2014; Tamura 2014) fits this need quite nicely. This approach seeks to understand diverse sites and kinds of deliberative practice and institutions within encompassing systems, such that even imperfectly deliberative moments can serve deliberative functions. Systems can thus include diverse (both formal and informal) deliberative gatherings, multiple kinds of actors, and a diversity of institutions. On the systems view, when one deliberative site is overshadowed by (say) purely strategic talk aimed to moving an issue onto the public agenda, another site could, in principle, provide the balance necessary for system-​level deliberative outcomes. The analytical focus of the systemic approach thus goes beyond a single practice such as protesting—​which, in itself, may have little deliberative quality—​to look at whether the interactions among the various parts make positive contributions to an overall deliberative system. In the case of Japan, the deliberative systems approach helps to explain the role of emerging protest movements in shaping the development of deliberative institutions. According to this systemic approach, even protest movements usually seen as non-​deliberative action can be viewed as having a role within the deliberative system. They can induce deliberative reflection on the macro level even through their non-​ deliberative action: the deliberative effect of non-​deliberative practice (Tamura 2014). Furthermore, some scholars find mixes of strategic and deliberative interactions within social movements (della Porta 2005; della Porta and Rucht 2013; Mendonça and Ercan 2015). Indeed, we can understand each protest movement as a deliberative system in itself, involving both macro-​deliberative and micro-​deliberative effects (Tamura 2014). A systemic approach of deliberative democracy is likewise helpful for understanding the development of deliberative democracy in China. The participatory governance institutions currently functioning under one-​party rule operate as structural anomalies within an endogenous system: the authoritarian state seems to be adopting deliberative institutions to legitimize its decision-​making (He and Warren 2011). However, they are driven by and produce exogenous, non-​institutional changes that are not part of the political practices and ideologies of authoritarian rule, such as a stronger and more autonomous public sphere, more functionally coordinated state–​society relations, and better-​quality citizen participation (Tang 2014). Interestingly, the CCP’s recent documents actually echo this approach, declaring that the long-​term goal is to develop not just deliberative democracy in a few places but rather a “multi-​institutional,” “complete system of deliberative democracy.”4 For both Japan and China, the systemic approach helps us to see processes of deliberative capacity building even when from a deliberative democracy perspective the cultural influences or political institutions are far from ideal. One key aspect of deliberative capacity building is the rising influence of diverse formats of deliberation in different venues in the public sphere. In the case of China, it is crucial to notice the growing autonomy of the public sphere and its generation of influential public opinion, despite the authoritarian nature of the political system. Deliberation is taking place not only within political institutions designed for deliberative purposes, but also among grassroots and

Deliberative Democracy in East Asia    799 social organizations; not only in deliberative forums, but also outside the forums; not only in deliberative assemblies, but also through the media and Internet. Taken as a whole, there is a considerable amount of deliberation in China, involving a wide range of participants who wish to bring their opinions to public attention. In Japan, a deliberative systems approach allows us to understand broader deliberative consequences of a diversity of political cultures, some of which tend to suppress deliberation. A country’s political culture is never a “unitary entity” (Dryzek 2006, 42), but always comprised of many different kinds of practices (Dryzek 1996; 2006).5 As we noted above, Japan’s plural political cultures conflict with one another. Hypothetically, however, we could say that some “deliberative” characteristics found in Japanese deliberation are the consequence of fusions of traditional non-​deliberative culture with deliberative ones, since traditional conformism in Japan often includes serious consideration and caring for others, although this kind of attentiveness to others is culturally mediated by social position and status. Uneven discursive constellations of cultures do not mean that transformations of the existing constellation are impossible. They can be driven by “creative reformers” who are working within these very constellations. Minor discourses might become the “major” ones. Even in a country where a non-​deliberative culture has been dominant, a previously minor deliberative culture might gain predominance. The other aspect of deliberative capacity building in the two countries resides in the connection between deliberative activities and decision-​making. The extent to which various forms of deliberation can contribute to the deliberative system as a whole is contingent upon whether there are sufficient corresponding formal and informal institutional arrangements conveying isolated discursive deliberative outcomes to empowered spaces. In China, the monopolization of decision-​making power in the hands of government makes this connection even more important than in a democracy, where deliberation can influence voters, who can then select a government. In China, deliberation has influence mostly when it is directly inserted into decision-​making structures, particularly those concerned with practical matters of governance. These connections do not always work: despite attempts to involve ordinary citizens’ voices in decision-​making, many public hearing meetings display a lack of public debate and reasoning. Sometimes they seem to function more as means of collecting people’s opinions than the deliberative process of opinion exchange and preference transformation (Ergenc 2014). In other cases, it was not clear whether and to what extent policy decisions followed the expression of public opinion. Although the government held many public hearings on local price adjustments on water, gas, and other facilities, for example, decisions resulted in raised prices, suggesting that the hearings were primarily held to provide a veneer of legitimacy for decisions that were made for other reasons. Of course, Chinese officials hardly have a monopoly on such attempts, as they can be found throughout the developed democracies. As we suggested above, in both countries the process of deliberative capacity building often involves non-​deliberative elements such as protest movements. With very practical and specific goals to achieve, protestors in China usually ask for intervention by a higher-​level state authority in their disputes, or publicize their concerns through the

800    Beibei Tang, Tetsuki Tamura, and Baogang He media or the Internet to attract the attention of higher-​level authorities (Cai 2008). As a result, deliberative capacity building is visible mostly when there is adequate, functional and coordinated institutional responsiveness to discursive influences. In Japan, because the traditional/​Confucian political culture tends to privatize discourse, deliberative capacity building is much more closely linked to either formal deliberative institutions or organizations that build on protest movements. These sites of deliberation have the potential to build deliberative capacities, despite the anti-​deliberative pressures of the dominant political cultures. The fusion of quite different cultures can be expected theoretically; it might be possible to interpret communication in some deliberative practices in Japan as a fusion of both deliberative and non-​deliberative cultures, in which deliberation is more “emotional” and difference-​oriented, building on a non-​deliberative culture that is supposed to include an inclination to understand others even without talk.

Prospects of Deliberative Democracy in East Asia In both Japan and China, deliberative democratic institutions and practices have been driven by functional needs to improve public policy and generate political legitimacy. In both cases, political culture plays a significant role in shaping institutional design and practices of deliberative democracy. Their political cultures not only influence the settings of their political institutions but, more importantly, shape the extent to which different forms of political institutions interact with each other, potentially producing more democratic governance. Certainly the liberal-​democratic system in Japan has been shaped by plural political cultures, and we should expect them to shape deliberative developments as well. Despite its monopolistic control of power, China’s party-​state tolerates a certain level of autonomy and flexibility at local level, which has enabled considerable innovation in deliberative politics. To date this has resulted in hybrid deliberative institutions which display features similar to those of deliberative institutions in the West but which also incorporate features of their political contexts, particularly the protest movements and Confucian cultures in both Japan and China and the role of the party-​state in China. Their significance lies in the extent to which they contribute to a functional deliberative system as a whole, and in how their culturally specific features interact and integrate into the process of deliberative capacity building. This said, there are generalizable features of these developments, which are probably a consequence of practical governance problems within contexts of political complexity. Liberal-​ democratic or authoritarian, countries across the Asian region have similar needs for more functional deliberative systems. They all need formal as well as informal deliberation among different social groups or actors. They also need effective institutional incorporation of communicative outcomes, including coordination among opinion and information expression channels, between policy making and policy implementation,

Deliberative Democracy in East Asia    801 and between deliberative and non-​deliberative activities. Asian countries all face their own social conflicts and have had to develop political conflict resolution management systems through a variety of institutions and methods, including public deliberation. Looking forward, the importance of the development of deliberative democracy in the Asian countries is closely related to more general issues for democratization: democracy is, in large part, about governments that are responsive to their people. This means that the communicative features of political systems must continue to improve, along with stronger democratic values and a more politically competent citizenry.

Notes 1. See also the website of the Citizen’s Discussion Promotion Network (in Japanese), http://​ cdpn.jp/​(accessed November 16, 2015). 2. See also the website of the Center for Deliberative Democracy, Stanford University: http://​ cdd.stanford.edu/​ 2 012/​ d eliberative-​ p olling-​ on-​ e nergy-​ and-​ e nvironmental-​ p olicy-​ options-​in-​japan/​ (accessed November 16, 2015). 3. Documents from the CCP Central Committee, February 9, 2015. 4. Documents from the CCP Central Committee, February 9, 2015. 5. Self is defined also as the cultural “multiple self.” It is the intersection of different cultures (Dryzek 2010, 47–​8). Deliberative institutions are supposed to trigger the re-​constellation of multiple cultures within the self.

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Chapter 51

De l iberative De mo c rac y in India Ramya Parthasarathy and Vijayendra Rao

India, as is well known, has a resilient democracy. Indian elections have been hotly contested, widely inclusive, well conducted, and integrated into a robust and active political sphere. The consistency and quality of Indian democracy is not only anomalous in the post-​colonial world, but also stands as rebuttal to much of Western liberal democratic theory, which posits a set of preconditions to democracy that India sorely lacks. As historian Sudipta Kaviraj has noted, “Viewed from the angle of conventional political theory, Indian democracy is inexplicable. It defies all the preconditions that theory lays down for the success of democratic government” (Kaviraj 2011, 2). These preconditions are defined by those that were present at the rise of Western democracy—​“namely, the presence of a strong bureaucratic state, capitalist production, industrialization, the secularization of society (or at least the prior existence of a secular state), and relative economic prosperity” (Kaviraj 2011, 2)—​but are relatively absent in contemporary India, where poverty and illiteracy are still widely prevalent. Despite these conditions, however, India has sustained democracy, and done so in ways that are distinctly Indian (Khilnani 1999). A large body of literature has sought to understand why democracy has thrived in the Indian context (Khilnani 1999; Kaviraj 2011; Keane 2009; Chatterjee and Katznelson 2012). One proposed and contested component of that explanation has been the long history of public reasoning and debate on the subcontinent—​an “argumentative tradition” that is intimately connected with the development of democracy (Sen 2005; Guha 2005). Indeed, deliberation has its roots in classic normative conceptions of democracy; it derives from the premise that “democracy revolves around the transformation rather than simply the aggregation of preferences” (Elster 1998). Whether or not this deliberative tradition has helped to sustain its democracy, the very presence of a robust deliberative sphere in India is itself puzzling. Contemporary articulations of deliberation, drawing largely on John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, see deliberation as rooted in equality, rationality, and the free exchange and weighting of ideas; deliberation, on

806    Ramya Parthasarathy and Vijayendra Rao this understanding, is a mechanism for resolving reasonable differences within a pluralistic society. These theories emphasize at least three necessary preconditions for deliberation:  first, parties in deliberation are formally and substantively equal; second, deliberation is based on reason rather than coercion, such that “no force except that of the better argument is exercised” (Habermas 1975, 108); and lastly, that the object of deliberation ought only to be the common good, rather than individual interests.1 On its face, contemporary India lacks these conditions too, and yet it boasts the most widely used deliberative institution in human history—​the village assembly, known as the gram sabha, which was instituted in 1992 as a part of the 73rd Amendment to the Indian constitution, and now affects 840 million people living in approximately one million villages in rural India. These bodies are only the most recent in a long tradition of deliberative institutions in India, which date back to at least the fifth century bce (Sen 2005). How does India, with its deep social and economic inequality, illiteracy, and entrenched identity politics, sustain a robust deliberative democracy? We argue that deliberation in India has taken equality and social inclusion as one of its objectives, rather than a precondition; that is, deliberative institutions have served as a medium by which communities and peoples have come to assert their dignity and demand their social equality. Backed by state policies aimed at inclusion, these institutions have become a mechanism by which to empower those who have been historically sidelined from politics. In this chapter, we trace the evolution of deliberative institutions in India—​in terms of their scope, participants, and objectives—​to understand the role of deliberation in democratic life as well as the ways in which deliberative bodies influence, and are influenced by, entrenched social inequality. We first unpack the historical roots of Indian deliberation in the pre-​colonial and colonial period, emphasizing the ways in which religious traditions fostered a culture of debate and dialogue. We then explore the interplay between Western liberal philosophers, most notably Henry Maine, and Indian political thinkers, including Gandhi and Ambedkar, on participatory democracy in India. After outlining the fraught debate around local village democracy at Independence, we highlight the continued dialogue between Indian and Western ideas in the push for greater participatory development. Finally, we probe the current incarnation of state-​sponsored deliberation in India—​namely, village assemblies known as gram sabhas under the constitutionally mandated system of Indian village democracy or Panchayati Raj—​and review the growing empirical scholarship about these village assemblies.

Historical Roots of Indian Deliberation While Indian electoral democracy was only instituted in its current form at Independence, the practice of public reasoning and deliberation is a much older phenomenon, dating back to Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu traditions as early as the fifth

Deliberative Democracy in India    807 century bce. Religious councils hosted by early Indian Buddhists, for example, often focused on resolving debates within and across religious traditions; importantly, they “also addressed the demands of social and civic duties, and furthermore helped, in a general way, to consolidate and promote the tradition of open discussion on contentious issues” (Sen 2005, 15). In the third century bce, such practices became celebrated under the reign of Ashoka, who sought to codify rules for public discussion that emphasized mutual respect and honor. By the sixteenth century, under the reign of Akbar, interfaith dialogues were explicitly aimed at the pursuit of reason rather than reliance on tradition. The priority given to equality and reason in deliberation echo standards in contemporary deliberative theory; perhaps even more significantly, their explicit sponsorship by the state reveals the extent of their importance to early Indian culture. Early deliberation, however, was not confined to state-​sponsored discourse; it was also used as a vehicle to criticize the state, particularly during the early colonial period, and established religious doctrine. After the arrival of Christian missionaries, for example, Muslim religious leaders published placards and pamphlets to rebut Christian attacks on the Prophet; “such works often contained covert critique of the Company as a secular ruler and were not limited to the veracity of the Koran and Bible” (Bayly 1996, 191). Similar debates took place between Hindu philosophers and missionaries, on matters both religious and worldly. This critical dialogue in the Indian ecumene is hardly surprising, given openness to debate within India’s religious varied systems—​ from Buddhism and Jainism to Hinduism and Islam (Bayly 1996). Within Hinduism, for example, discussions of apadharma, which outlined the conditions under which the Hindu moral order did not hold, and the Bhakti movement, which provided an individual path to spiritual fulfillment regardless of birth or caste, pushed people to question the prevailing social order, often using the systems of logic and argumentation prominent in the orthodox Nyaya tradition. Within Islam, religious leaders actively interrogated the sultan’s power and its limitations under Sharia law; moreover, the growth of Sufi mysticism in South Asia challenged the orthodoxy of mainstream sects. Even in this early period, participants in such public debates extended beyond just the intellectual, political, and religious elite. Early debates—​in sabhas, kathas, panchayats, and samajs—​often included both notable big men and peasants, in contestation with each other and in opposition to the state. Indeed, “the term sabha (association) itself originally indicated a meeting in which different qualities of people and opinions were tested, rather than the scene of a pronunciamento by caste elders” (Bayly 1996, 187). Evidence from collective literary biographies demonstrates this diverse body of peoples known to the critical public—​from washermen to tailors and even women. While much of this public discourse took place via written letters and placards, oral communication played a large role in constructing a “highly effective information order,” with gossip and news disseminated outside druggist stalls and mosques, analogous to the smoking dens and coffee shops in the Middle East. Beyond this explicitly political oral culture, cultural performances, such as skits, fables, and plays, provided yet another venue for elites and masses to link together to express political messages. Of course, the inclusiveness and accessibility of such public debates should not be overstated; like other emergent public

808    Ramya Parthasarathy and Vijayendra Rao spheres, India’s growing deliberative institutions were uneven in their reach and were still predominantly the province of the educated. Despite their limited scope, however, the presence of a bounded, but critical public sphere suggests an important foundation for future participatory and democratic politics.

In Dialogue with the West By the late nineteenth century, Western liberal philosophers had begun to articulate a vision of participatory democracy in which equal citizens could collectively make decisions in a deliberative and rational manner. Thinkers such as John Stuart Mill advanced theories of democratic participation in which deliberation came to be more than a mere method of decision-​making; it served an important educative function—​teaching individuals how to engage as public citizens. These ideas, among others, would profoundly shape and be shaped by the British presence in India. Of particular relevance for the trajectory of Indian deliberation was Henry Maine, who was sent to India in the 1860s to advise the British government on legal matters. While serving in the subcontinent, he came across several accounts by British administrators of thriving indigenous systems of autonomous village governments, whose structure and practice shared many characteristics of participatory democracy (Maine 1871). Maine had been influenced by J. S. Mill, who argued that universal suffrage and participation in a democratic nation would greatly benefit from the experience of such participation at the local level (Mill 1859). Observing Indian village governments, Maine came to articulate a theory of the village community as an alternative to the centralized state; these village communities, led by a council of elders, were not subject to a set of laws articulated from above, but had more fluid legal and governance structures that adapted to changing conditions while maintaining strict adherence to traditional customs (Mantena 2010). This argument had a profound impact on colonial administration: As India became fertile territory for experiments in governance, the liberal British Viceroy Lord Ripon instituted local government reforms in 1882 for the primary purpose of providing “political education,” and reviving and extending India’s indigenous system of government (Tinker 1954). The implementation of these reforms followed an erratic path, but an Act passed in 1920 set up the first formal, democratically elected village councils, with provinces varying widely in how councils were constituted, in the extent of their jurisdiction, and in how elections were held (Tinker 1954). Beyond influencing colonial policy, Maine’s description of self-​reliant Indian village communities came to shape the thinking of Mohandas Gandhi, who made it a central tenet of his vision for an independent India (Rudolph and Rudolph 2006; Mantena 2012). Gandhi’s philosophy of decentralized economic and political power, as articulated in his book Village Swaraj (Gandhi 1962), viewed the self-​reliant village as emblematic of a “perfect democracy,” ensuring equality across castes and religions and

Deliberative Democracy in India    809 self-​sufficiency in all needs. These villages would come to form “an alternative panchayat raj, understood as a non-​hierarchical, decentralized polity of loosely federated village associations and powers” (Mantena 2012, 536). Stressing non-​violence and cooperation, this Gandhian ideal elevated local participation—​not just for the political education of India’s new citizens, but as a form of democratic self-​governance. Gandhi’s proposal, however, was defeated during the Constituent Assembly Debates.2 The debates themselves, which reflected many deliberative ideals, instead led to the creation of a constitutional order that de-​emphasized village democracy—​largely out of B. R. Ambedkar’s concern that the hierarchical and largely illiterate society of rural India would not allow the downtrodden to exercise their voice, regardless of any constitutional guarantee of formal political equality (Austin 1966). Ambedkar,3 the principal architect of the Constitution and a fierce advocate for the rights of Dalits (formerly untouchables), was deeply skeptical of village democracy, arguing: “What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-​mindedness and communalism?” (Immerwahr 2015, 86). In many ways, his thinking was consistent with contemporary liberal theorists, who suggest that deliberation and participatory democracy are only possible when citizens see each other as equals, deserving of voice in decision-​making. Ambedkar’s recognition of entrenched social and economic inequality ruled out the possibility of a robust, participatory democracy in India; he suggested that India would enter democracy in a “life of contradictions”—​in which political equality would be in conflict with persistent social and economic inequality. This animated his belief that the constitution should guarantee more than just formal equality via the vote; it should also play a major role in the nation’s development agenda—​via the guarantee of education and employment, the abolition of caste and other social ills, and the provision of certain forms of group representation. Village democracy did not entirely disappear from the Indian constitution, however; Article 40 stated that “the State shall take steps to organize village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self government.” Though this article was a mere “directive principle,” or non-​ judiciable guidepost for policy, some state governments did set up formally constituted village democracies. In 1947, India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, pioneered the approach of instituting a deliberative body that it called a gaon sabha, which met twice a year to discuss and prioritize the concerns of the village (Retzlaff 1962; Tinker 1954). By the 1950s, a confluence of both domestic and international factors led to resurgent calls for a greater citizen voice in development. On the international stage, USAID and the Ford Foundation had taken up a strongly communitarian vision of human progress and had begun promoting participatory development programs throughout the developing world (Immerwahr 2015). India became a particularly fertile ground for such policies, not only because of Gandhi’s earlier vision for India’s village democracies, but because India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru himself had to contend with the failure of his state-​led, top-​down Grow More Food program. The resulting community development program, financed by a bilateral aid agreement with the United States, thus grew from a mere pilot to a national program within just one decade (Immerwahr 2015).

810    Ramya Parthasarathy and Vijayendra Rao A government committee, led by a senior politician, Balwantray Mehta, was formed to spearhead the initiative; it released a report in 1957 that set the foundation of Panchayati Raj, a government-​led plan to decentralize democracy into three tiers of local government, which would be empowered to direct the local development agenda (Mehta 1957).

Deliberation under Panchayati Raj As states came to adopt the panchayati structure, most were far from realizing the Gandhian ideal of egalitarian self-​governance. Deliberation and participation under this new structure was meant to elicit the “felt needs” of the village, which depended on the ability of the village to be a cohesive body capable of articulating a general will. In practice, however, “the tendency of the spokesmen for the village to come from the powerful, landed classes within rural life was widely acknowledged,” and any “actual felt needs that threatened village solidarity—​such as a desire for land reform, the abolition of caste hierarchies, or sexual equality—​were quickly ruled out” (Immerwahr 2015, 92). Even S. K. Dey, the first Union Cabinet Minister for Cooperation and Panchayati Raj, admitted that many villages had nominal success, with paper forms completed but no actual programs implemented (Immerwahr 2015, 94). The gradual adoption of panchayat implementation thus proceeded unevenly across the country, with relatively more success in some states than others. The modern gram sabha was pioneered by the Government of Karnataka, which passed an act in 1985 establishing democratically elected mandal panchayats (a mandal consisted of several villages), with clearly delineated functions and appropriate budgets. Gram sabhas played a central role in the Karnataka mandal panchayat system. All eligible voters in a mandal were members of the sabha, which would be held twice a year. The sabhas were tasked with discussing and reviewing all development problems and programs in the village, selecting beneficiaries for anti-​poverty programs, and developing annual plans for the village (Aziz 2007). In practice, the sabhas were resented by village councilors because they were subject to queries and demands for explanations from citizens, and their answers often elicited heated reactions. Consequently, gram sabhas were largely abandoned after the first year of the implementation of the 1985 Act. If the meetings were held, they were conducted without prior announcement, or were held in the Mandal office, which could not accommodate more than a few people (Crook and Manor 1998). Despite this, the Karnataka reforms were seen as an important innovation in village government and received wide support across the political spectrum. Consequently, a movement to amend the Indian constitution to strengthen Article 40 with the tenets drawn from the Karnataka Act gained momentum. This resulted, in 1992, in the passage of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment to the Indian constitution, which gave several important powers and functions to village governments. The three-​tier system of decentralization and its accompanying forum for deliberation, the gram sabha, were

Deliberative Democracy in India    811 formally codified. It mandated that all Indian villages would be governed by an “executive,” elected village council, and a “legislature” formed by the gram sabha, of which every citizen of the village would be a member, with meetings held at least two times a year. Lastly, the Amendment required that at least 33% of seats in village councils would be reserved for women, and a number proportionate to their population in the village reserved for disadvantaged castes. Following the passage of this Amendment, Kerala, India’s most literate state, which had a long history of progressive politics, initiated a radical program of participatory decentralization (Isaac and Franke 2002), where the gram sabha played a central role. The program rested on three pillars. It devolved 40% of the state’s development budget to village panchayats, gave substantial powers to these councils, and instituted a People’s Campaign—​a grassroots program to raise awareness and train citizens about how to exercise their rights and become active participants in the panchayat process, primarily by participating in gram sabhas. Gram sabhas have become central to Kerala’s village planning process, which is based on a set of nested piecemeal stages (Isaac and Heller 2003). Working committees and “development seminars” are held in conjunction with gram sabhas to make them practical spaces of deliberative decision-​making and planning. Instead of open deliberation, attendees are divided into resource-​themed groups or committees and the discussions within each group yield consensual decisions regarding the designated resource. This structure is geared towards increasing the efficiency of consensual decision-​making, and is facilitated by various training programs to instruct both citizens on deliberative planning and local bureaucrats on methods for turning plans into effective public action. Heller, Harilal, and Chaudhuri (2007) study the impact of the People’s Campaign in Kerala with qualitative and quantitative data from 72 gram sabhas, and find that the campaign has been effective, with positive effects on the social inclusion of lower-​caste groups and women in decision-​making. Furthermore, Gibson (2012) examining the same data argues that the key explanation for the effectiveness of gram sabhas in Kerala is the high level of participation by women. Over the last two decades, all other Indian states have implemented the various tenets of the 73rd Amendment, but with varying levels of intensity—​and none as effectively as Kerala. The effects of several aspects of the Amendment (including the strength of electoral democracy, the impact of quotas for women and lower-​castes, and the implications of elections for distributive politics and clientalism) have been the subject of a large body of research (e.g. Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004; Besley et al. 2004; 2005; Bardhan and Mookherjee 2006; Beaman et al. 2008; Ban and Rao 2008). A small and growing body of scholarship has examined the sabha itself, and whether it serves as a mere “talking shop,” or constitutes a true deliberative forum in which citizens are able to raise and resolve issues of public relevance. Besley et al. (2005) examine survey data from 5,180 randomly chosen households drawn from 537 villages in the four South Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. They find, like Crook and Manor (1998), that with the exception of Kerala, gram sabhas are often not held as scheduled; however, when they are held, governance sharply improves.

812    Ramya Parthasarathy and Vijayendra Rao Focusing on a specific policy administered at the local level—​access to a Below Poverty Line (BPL) card, which provides an array of public benefits—​they find that policies were more effectively targeted to landless and illiterate individuals when a gram sabha was held. And these effects were large, raising the probability of receiving a BPL card by 25%. The reason why gram sabhas result in better poverty targeting is related to one of their primary roles in village government. BPL lists are first determined on the basis of a census conducted by the government which identifies poor households with a given set of criteria. However, in many states these lists have to be ratified by the gram sabha, which allows the quantitative definitions of poverty to be deliberatively interrogated by the community. Rao and Sanyal (2010) examine transcripts of deliberation from 290 gram sabhas from a subset of villages studied by Besley et al. (2005) and find that this process acts as a vehicle for questioning governmental definitions of poverty and creating a shared, intersubjective4 understanding of what it means to be poor. They argue that gram sabhas “become sites for the joint production of an understanding of what it means to be officially classified as poor,” and that “these exchanges . . . foster the future capability of the poor to engage in a critical dialogue with the state on definitional matters.” Rao and Sanyal’s (2010) other contribution is to highlight the important role that gram sabhas play shaping the discursive styles of the poor. Since they are embedded within a democratic system that is also subject to electoral accountability, they are a relatively safe space for open speech. Things that cannot be said in private discourse become possible in a gram sabha, because political elites may face electoral costs by taking action against a citizen for something said in a gram sabha. This allows lower castes to use the space to transgress social norms and make claims for dignity; marginal groups voice their concerns and previously “hidden transcripts” become public—​forcing public discussion on sensitive social issues that people would rather avoid. While deliberation can thus become a tool for social inclusion, such dignity claims may simply reflect the low levels of literacy characteristic of rural India that result in low “oratory competence” (Sanyal, Rao, and Prabhakar 2015). As literacy increases to reach Kerala’s level, gram sabhas are likely to become spaces to have a dialogue on topics of public interest. Such publicly relevant discussions are most effective, of course, when citizens are well informed and can demand accountability from public officials. Limited information and media coverage, however, often leave citizens at a “disadvantage when negotiating with local governments” (Bhattacharjee and Chattopadhyay 2011, 46). Analyzing transcripts from sabhas in West Bengal, Bhattacharjee and Chattopadhyay find that villagers do try to use information from media to negotiate with elected officials and inquire about entitlements; these requests, however, are easily ignored or dismissed by Gram Panchayat (village council) members, who can evade requests by claiming that the media is misleading or incorrect. The authors attribute this to the “thinness” of news coverage, which does little to empower citizens to confront officials. Despite this troubling picture, however, the authors acknowledge that the very act of demanding entitlements—​ even seemingly small and selfish claims for rice or pensions—​reflects citizens’ “capacity to aspire” to a better life (Appadurai 2004).

Deliberative Democracy in India    813 Low literacy also results in emotions playing an important role in deliberative discourse (Sanyal 2015). They can play a constructive role as a form of “rude accountability” (Hossain 2009) but they can also disrupt the ability of gram sabhas to make rational collective decisions. In other words, deliberation in low literacy settings raises the possibility that gram sabhas are simply “talking shops” that bear no relationship to democratic dialogue. This hypothesis is explicitly tested by Ban, Jha, and Rao’s (2012) quantitative analysis of coded versions of the same gram sabha transcripts examined by Rao and Sanyal (2010). Deriving hypotheses from rational choice models of group decision-​making under uncertainty, they analyze the transcript data to test three competing hypotheses of the types of equilibrium that characterize gram sabha interactions: (a) “cheap talk,” in which discussions are not substantive even though they may appear equitable; (b) elite capture, in which discussion is dominated by the interests of landowning and wealthy citizens; and (c) “efficient democracy,” in which meetings follow patterns of good democratic practice. They find that in villages with more diversity in caste groups, and less village-​wide agreement on policy priorities, the topics discussed track those of interest to the median household. In villages with less caste heterogeneity, the priorities of landowners are more likely to dominate the discourse (consistent with elite domination). The authors conclude that gram sabhas are more than mere opportunities for cheap talk, that they more closely follow patterns observed in a well-​functioning “efficient” democracy. In addition to elite domination by landed and wealthy classes, scholars have also begun to examine whether deliberation in gram sabhas is gendered in nature, and how policies aimed at inclusion might mitigate gender biases. This question is explored in a series of working papers by Palaniswamy, Rao, and Parthasarathy (2017a; 2017b), who use text-​as-​data methods on an original sample of transcripts from Tamil Nadu to evaluate whether and how women participate in village assemblies. They find that despite the relatively high rates of attendance, women are the “silent sex” (Karpowitz and Mendelberg 2014); however, they also show that a state intervention which builds women’s networks and trains them to engage with village government dramatically increases both women’s presence and frequency of speech at the sabha. Though the authors are optimistic about the potential of such policies to make deliberative spaces more inclusive, they also caution that the intervention shifts the topic of conversation toward the program itself—​potentially crowding out organic demands and requests.

Conclusion The sheer scale of deliberation practiced through the Indian gram sabhas has been remarkable—​not only because these forums are vibrant despite illiteracy and inequality, but because they have been a key site where citizens can challenge entrenched social hierarchies and demand improved governance from elected officials. By providing an open space for citizens—​both men and women, high and low castes—​to exercise

814    Ramya Parthasarathy and Vijayendra Rao voice, the gram sabha has served an important role in the Indian democratic experiment. Moreover, these forums have underscored the idea that deliberation is not merely a Western democratic phenomenon, but rather, an integral part of the cultures all over the world. Particularly in India, the rich interplay between Western democratic ideas and local thinkers through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries truly “Indianized” deliberative democracy—​ultimately resulting in the 73rd Amendment’s constitutional mandate to create the gram sabha. Though the quality and integrity of implementation has varied considerably across the Indian states, the constitutional mandate has provided an invaluable blueprint for participation and deliberation over matters of public interest. At their best, as in Kerala, the sabhas have allowed citizens to generate consensual decisions on how the state should allocate resources; even in weaker incarnations, the sabhas capture aspects of “efficient” democracy, in which discussion centers around issues of broad public relevance. Despite these successes, however, the empirical scholarship also provides evidence for the concerns articulated by Ambedkar—​both the challenges of rural illiteracy and that of elite domination and gender bias. First, evidence shows that organic deliberation within the sabhas can be “noisy,” filled with identity claims, emotional rhetoric, and demands for individual entitlements. Second, discourse often reflects the existing patterns of social standing and hierarchy, with elites dominating discussion in less fractionalized villages, and women remaining relatively silent even when they attend en masse. While these inequalities are undoubtedly concerning, three sets of empirical findings reveal the ways in which deliberation in India still thrives. First, these inequalities have been challenged from within the deliberative forums, with lower castes using the open discursive space to make claims of dignity that cannot be ignored by those in power. The use of such dignity claims, while not traditionally considered “rational deliberation,” still plays a vital role in enabling citizens to generate credibility, create empathy, and trigger a sense of injustice (Mansbridge 2015). Second, state policies and intervention have been shown to help lessen the extent of inequality within the deliberative sphere. Programs to train and empower citizens, like the People’s Campaign in Kerala or the women-​centered Pudhu Vaazvhu Project in Tamil Nadu, suggest that facilitated deliberation can usher the sabhas closer to the deliberative ideal—​in which citizens of equal standing arrive at consensual decisions on matters of public interest. And third, literacy in India is on the rise; over the past decade alone, adult literacy has grown by roughly 10% to 74%, with the strongest gains in rural regions and among women (Census of India 2011).5 Given these gains, one could speculate that the quality of deliberation should improve. The Kerala’s People’s Campaign has not translated well in other, less literate, parts of India (Ananthpur et al. 2014); thus, secular improvements in literacy levels should improve the efficacy of attempts to make deliberative democracy a more practical tool for collective action. The deepening of democracy via deliberation, however, has also faced meaningful limitations. Perhaps most obviously, the 73rd Amendment only applies to rural India, leaving urban India devoid of any mandated deliberative institutions. This focus on rural rather than urban democracy is not surprising given the profound influence of

Deliberative Democracy in India    815 Gandhi’s Village Swaraj even on contemporary politics, but it remains a huge limitation for Indian democracy, especially as India rapidly continues to urbanize. Nevertheless, gram sabhas, with all their warts, provide an important counter-​ example to the notion that meaningful deliberation necessarily requires equality of voice. The Indian example shows, on the other hand, that deliberative institutions can help societies move toward greater equality of agency and social inclusion. Moreover, the sheer scale of the network of gram sabhas demonstrates that governments, when they are persuaded of the added value of deliberation, can help create deliberative institutions with intrinsic and instrumental value—​even in conditions of high inequality and poverty. None of this would have happened if gram sabhas were not constitutionally mandated. By being enshrined in the 73rd Amendment, they have become permanent structures that are difficult, if not impossible, to dislodge. Consequently, with time, gram sabhas are likely to become even more effective tools in India’s quest to give its citizens a better life. In this sense they demonstrate the potential value of deliberation for development and poverty reduction, a subject that is becoming increasingly important in the developing world (Heller and Rao 2015).

Notes 1. More recent work has challenged these preconditions, creating room within deliberative theory for other forms of argumentation (including, for example, story-​telling and emotional argumentation), for arguments based on particular, rather than common, interest, and even for deviations from the egalitarian ideal. See, for example, Mansbridge (2015), Dryzek (2002), and others. 2. See Constituent Assembly of India debates (proceedings), volume vii, November 4, 1948. http://​164.100.47.194/​Loksabha/​Debates/​cadebatefiles/​C04111948.html. 3. BR Ambedkar, along with Gandhi and Nehru, is considered one of the pre-​eminent figures of modern India. He was born into an untouchable caste, educated at the London Sschool of Economics and Columbia University, and was the Chairman of the committee that drafted the Indian constitution in 1949. 4. This term is used primarily in phenomenological sociology to refer to the mutual constitution of social relationships and reality. As the term has been used here, it means a mutually shared and constructed meaning of poverty. 5. According to the Indian census, rural adult literacy grew from 58.7 to 68.9% between 2001 and 2011, while urban literacy grew from 79.9 to 85.0%. National gains in male literacy during this period totaled 6.8%, while for females, the growth in literacy was 12.7%.

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818    Ramya Parthasarathy and Vijayendra Rao Sanyal, P., Rao, V. and Majumdar, S. (2015). Recasting Culture to Undo Gender: A Sociological Analysis of Jeevika in Rural Bihar, India. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 7411. Sanyal, P., Rao, V., and Prabhakar, U. (2015). Oral Democracy and Women’s Oratory Competency in Indian Village Assemblies:  A Qualitative Analysis. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 7416. Sen, A. (2005). The Argumentative Indian:  Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (London: Allen Lane). Tinker, H. (1954). The Foundations of the Local Self-​Government in India, Pakistan and Burma (London: Athlone Press).

Chapter 52

Af rica and De l i be rat i v e P oliti c s Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani

Introduction I argue that deliberative democracy is an important consideration for African nations, emerging, as most of them have, from experiences with colonialism and military rule, and considering the divisive effects of aggregative politics on democracies involving multi-​ethnic groupings. Existing proposals, such as Wiredu’s plea for democracy by consensus, are assessed, resulting in the conclusion that we need further research to determine where consensual mechanisms can be instituted in a modern democracy. Additionally, this chapter is a call for research on deliberation in Africa to go beyond philosophical discussions, and for empirical scholars to begin to test various arguments that have been made on different sides of the philosophical/​theoretical debates about deliberation. I then outline other contexts and areas of deliberation in Africa amenable to field research. It is argued that empirical findings could aid further theorizing.

Background One of the clearest ways to understand post-​colonial politics in Africa is with the aid of Peter Ekeh’s (2011) analysis of the clash between two publics: the primordial and the civic. The civic public refers to the sphere of the state, civil service, and the social and political life that these entail. The primordial public refers to the life of earlier social and political groupings: family (nuclear and extended), village/​community, tribe, language group, linguistic region, and so on. Here, we confront a challenge: Africa is the most culturally heterogeneous continent (with over 3,000 native languages). This is quite a lot of heterogeneity, and the (mostly arbitrary) amalgamation of many of these societies

820   Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani into modern states by colonial masters resulted in some of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world (Nigeria, for instance, has 526 languages, 519 living and seven extinct.1). Ekeh explains that the colonial experience produced a phenomenon that is historically unique, namely the emergence of two publics. Desiring political liberation (and to take over leadership from colonial masters) indigenous African bourgeois encouraged Africans to sabotage colonial governments through absenteeism, pilfering, strikes, and tax evasion (Ekeh 2011, 210). In doing this, African bourgeois set the stage for the undermining of their own post-​colonial rule, since they deprived their subjects of the opportunity to learn (through practice) that state (not just primordial) citizenship entails both rights and duties, as understood in the West. Whilst rights and duties go hand in hand both in the West and in primordial African publics, duties are not conceived in the African civic public, only rights (213–​14). This may explain why the two publics have their respective moral values: primordial life is highly moral while the civic life is amoral. What is termed “corrupt” and “evil” in the context of the the primordial community may not be interpreted similarly in the context of the civic community. Individuals are encouraged to think of what they can give to their primordial community (and this is where they receive their social worth) and what they can take from the civic (214–​17). These attitudes to the civic public did not stop at the time of independence but carried over into the post-​colonial period (214–​17). From all indications, these practices have persisted (Ani 2005, 199). Perhaps this is what Wiredu (2011, 1055) has in mind when he argues that colonialism ruptured the seamless relationship between the state and civil society, and that the integration of the civil with the political aspect of social life was one of the strong points of traditional society. Wiredu argues that while colonialism caused this rupture, the multi-​party system exacerbates it. This is because, he argues, majoritarian democracy is too adversarial, aggressive, and divisive (Wiredu 1996, 179, 186; 2011, 1059–​61, 1063). He writes that multi-​party majoritarianism has politicized and exacerbated pre-​existing dissensions, created new ones with deadly consequences, and is generally not appropriate for multi-​ethnic politics where minor ethnic groups are simply dominated by major ones (2011, 1064). How do we correct this historical misadventure, and bring the African to, at least, share some of his or her allegiance, and hence moral commitment, between the primordial and civic publics, the civil society and the state? Aggregative democracy has been unable to do this. Indeed, aggregation deepened pre-​existing preferences and primordial cleavages (Ani 2013, 208). Given that more homogeneous settings may mean less issues polarization and higher discourse quality, while greater diversity could mean more polarization and therefore lower discourse quality (Steiner et al. 2004, 131–​5), it is likely that we could have more flourishing deliberative practices at the local (primordial) compared to the national (and civic) levels of political organization. What we do in fact have is that deliberation often functions to foster the cohesion of many primordial societies while aggregative politics remains the only constitutional mechanism for bringing these societies together (Ani 2013, 207). But it is precisely at the level of

Africa and Deliberative Politics    821 national cohesion that we need deliberation in African countries. Deliberation presupposes diversity, and as such, while it may be true that deliberation naturally functions better in homogenous settings where issues are less polarizing, a heterogeneous society should be in more need of deliberation compared to a homogeneous one, precisely because of greater plurality. Could deliberative politics at a national level facilitate the commitment and cohesion that civic publics need? Note that deliberative politics was non-​existent for a long time. It did not exist during colonialism (a one-​way propaganda from government to people). It did not exist during the first post-​colonial encounters with aggregative democracy. And it did not exist in the decades of obey-​the-​last-​order military regimes. Political discussion is beginning to emerge in the last decades of return to aggregative democracy, but these discussions seem mostly effusions of pre-​existing preferences and in fact reflect how deep tribal cleavages are.2 The politics of the aggregation of numbers is not producing desired results even in nations that are seen as its chief custodians.3 African nations need to go beyond aggregative democracy but not necessarily drop the idea of aggregative voting. Deliberative democracy should be seen as a supplement rather than a replacement (Ani 2013, 208).

Existing Proposals (Consensus) The shortcomings of aggregative democracy is the reason Wiredu proposes a democracy by consensus inspired by traditional African consensual democracy. The major plank of Wiredu’s proposal is that he offers, as a point of inspiration, the supposed successful practice of a political system of consensus decision-​making by the Ashanti in traditional Akan, an African society. He does this by relying on the description of the Ashanti political system provided by K. A. Busia, and combining these descriptions with his personal experiences (Wiredu 1996, 184). Every lineage chose a representative by consensus to serve on town or city councils. Representatives from these councils formed the divisional councils presided over by “paramount chiefs,” who in turn sent representatives to the national council headed by the King of the Ashanti, the “Asantehene.” Choice of representatives as well as other decisions were made by consensus (185). Following these descriptions, Wiredu makes some major claims. He argues that consensus aligns with the communal values of many traditional African societies because it easily relates to the communalistic consciousness (2011, 1058). He points out that consensus does not always mean total agreement, but that where there is a will to consensus, dialogue can function to smooth edges, leading to compromises that are acceptable to all or at least not obnoxious to any, such as agreed actions without necessarily agreed notions (1996, 183). He also remarks (185) that consensus is aided by the Akan belief that “ultimately human interests are the same, although their immediate perceptions of those interests may be different,” and deeper perception (through rational discussion) could “cut through their differences to the rock bottom identity of interests.” Wiredu

822   Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani concedes that, today, representatives may not be elected by consensus, but elected representatives must consult with all tendencies of opinion in their constituencies and work out, as much as possible, a consensual basis of representation (190). These claims have provoked discussions. It has been suggested that the social structures of communalism (and common ancestry), which Wiredu links to successful practice of consensus democracy, are no longer prevailing today, and that therefore he needs to reformulate fresh arguments to support his proposal (see Eze 2000). Scholars also agree that human interests are not ultimately the same (see Eze 2000, 5–​6; Matolino 2009, 40). However, Matolino (2009, 40) argues that interests are adjustable, and we can thus have consensus in the form of compromise. Also, the notion of agreeing to action without necessarily agreeing in substance is praised as a tool for effectively sidestepping divergences in pluralist polities. But we cannot bypass notions to agree on common action for all issues, since certain disagreements, especially when subdued, can become dangerous and persistent (Ani 2014a, 312–​18). Wiredu (1996, 189) remarks that one of the greatest problems of majoritarian democracies is that “certain ethnic groups have found themselves in the minority both numerically and politically” and thus “consistently find themselves outside the corridors of power” resulting in “frustrations and disaffections, with their disruptive consequences for the polity.” This observation is, in my view, crucial, and Wiredu rightly envisages that a consensus system would empower the minority with some veto power. But the amount of veto to be possessed by minorities would need to be specified if we want to balance the powers of majority and minority rather than merely shift the power of tyranny from the majority to the minority. Attempts have been made to empower minorities in European consensus democracies, such as the Swiss and Belgian parliaments (see Steiner et al. 2004, 119–​22). We could study these systems and make recommendations based on our special contexts. Wiredu (1996, 189) asks us to consider a non-​party alternative, where governments are formed not by parties but by the consensus of elected representatives, and government becomes a kind of coalition, not of parties, but of citizens. Wiredu permits political associations, which would be “avenues for channeling all desirable pluralisms, but they will be without the Hobbesian proclivities of political parties” (189). Moreover, membership of these associations would “not necessarily determine the chances of selection for a position of responsibility” (189). Wiredu hopes that without the constraint of being a member of parties whose objective is to wrestle for and hold on to power, proposals can be genuinely treated instead of with ulterior considerations, and this could enhance consensus (189). Wiredu concludes that this kind of de-​politicization would be a way of “linking civil society with the state in a manner reminiscent of the continuity that existed between these two levels of social existence in traditional society” (2011, 1065). In response, Carlos Jacques (2011, 1017–​30) argues that Wiredu’s non-​party proposal, when examined in the light of the realities of power politics, is indistinguishable from a totalitarian one-​party system, and reminds us that African despots used the same communal and consensual non-​party arguments. Matolino (2013, 145–​51) questions the role and meaning of political opposition inherent in Wiredu’s proposal, and also concludes

Africa and Deliberative Politics    823 that Wiredu’s non-​party proposal is indistinguishable from a monolithic one-​party state. Notice, however, that Wiredu also suggests an idea similar to the grand coalition that we see in some European countries: “If political bodies of such a description operate under a constitution in which winning a certain number of seats or votes in a general election does not entitle a group to form a government to the exclusion of other groups, then conditions conducive to cooperation, compromise and, consequently, consensus should be at hand.” I think that the idea of a non-​party democracy is vague and unrealistic, but I would dwell more on Wiredu’s call for coalitions, since it seems to me that political coalitions may lessen the adversarial nature of the relationship between political parties, and where partisan politics follows ethnic lines, coalitions could also lessen the animosities between ethnic groups. Does Wiredu envision consensual democracy as a replacement for or a supplement to majoritarian democracy? It seems that he intends the latter, since he permits voting for elections (Wiredu 1996, 190; 2011, 1065), and this suggests that he leaves to further research the task of specifying where consensual mechanisms can precisely be instituted in a modern democracy. Wiredu admits that the traditional system, especially its kinship basis, cannot be a model for fabricating a contemporary consensus system (2011, 1063), but he offers up some kinds of contemporary organizations, such as university administrations, mutual aid organizations, and other such civil organizations, as models that the state can learn from (1066). The problem with these models is that they are what they are: voluntary groups and non-​political bodies that do not deal with the magnitude of money and power that running a government does. It is as such questionable how power-​ignorant or power-​reluctant their players would remain if they were vested with similar levels of power as seen at governmental level. But beyond the inadequacies of these proposals, Wiredu’s overall concern is clear: how can we reduce some of the power politics in African politics, and how could deliberation help? The idea of a consensual democracy does indeed have merit. Recall that the major problem identified with a majoritarian democracy is the impotence of minorities. A consensual system would mean that minorities have power to stop majority views from becoming the group decision. If a minority has veto powers (power to prevent proposals from gaining decisional status), then the majority would, as a matter of rule, adopt more respect for minority views (indeed for any differing views). Considering that respect for other participants and for arguments and counterarguments is crucial to ideal deliberation, this would be an important structural concept to consider. Indeed, empirical studies of parliamentary proceedings in four Western democracies between the 1970s and 1990s show that the consensus systems produced higher levels of respect and deliberation compared to the competitive systems, although it did not (necessarily) translate to higher levels of constructive politics or consensus (Steiner et al. 2004, 111–​ 19). One feature responsible for this is possession of the ability by minorities to veto group decisions: the ability of some actors to veto decisions forces others to deliberate. Nonetheless, we should not overlook the major challenges (or tasks) of embarking upon a consensus system, one of which is that we may not know when consensus is

824   Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani genuine or when participants to a deliberation had to compromise (sometimes against their true convictions) to reach consensus. This inaccessibility of the motives behind consensus, when combined with the inequalities in most real societies, theoretically permits a consensus system to accommodate the manipulation of participants into consensus, and thus can permit different forms of social conformity to potentially manifest in a consensus system.4 It is a loophole that still begs to be fixed, and theorists still need to work on how to solve this.

Clarifying the Role of Deliberation in African Politics: The Need for Empirical Research Beyond consensus, a broader concern in Africa is for scholars to begin to deliberate on what should be the proper role of deliberation in African politics and political affairs. In the course of doing this, we might still discover a role for consensus somewhere in the structure. One does not expect ethnicity to disappear from African politics, but one can expect that deliberation has the potential (or could have, under revised conditions) to push issue politics into a more decisive role than it currently enjoys. We have seen that there have been theoretical debates about the merits and procedures of consensus. Crucially, debates have also occurred about deliberation in Western academic circles (see Steiner et al. 2004, 16–​42 for a summary). In Africa, to the best of my knowledge only philosophers have so far engaged in these debates. But matters about these issues cannot continue to be debated at the theoretical level: it is time for empirical testing of the quality of political discourse in Africa. African political scientists, social and political psychologists, linguists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, constitutional experts, and communications scholars should join research on deliberation: to take up and to test arguments that have been made and concerns that have been expressed on both sides of the debate. Comparative research findings about deliberation across African countries could also be made available on online sites such as the Afrobarometer5 or, preferably, a website that is dedicated to both empirical research and deliberative polling in Africa. First, we need to test the discursive quality of African parliaments, and to compare this to more traditional and local deliberative activities. This could help us see what roles culture still plays in current African discursive transactions, whether (and if so, to what extent) the current deliberative practices of African political organizations are informed by their cultural peculiarities, whether the effects of culture are receding, and what the implications of all these are. Second, we need to make cross-​national comparisons. Comparing discursive quality across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and South Africa, for instance, could offer insights not only about the effects of institutions, but also of differences in cultural norms, on discourse quality and style. Third, these comparisons could provide a broader platform of comparison to Western and

Africa and Deliberative Politics    825 other parliaments around the world, a scope of comparison that should benefit deliberative theorists generally. This is because the comparative analysis of Western parliaments by Steiner et al. focused on legislatures that are probably “not worlds apart” (2004, 137), and there is need to comparatively study deliberation in societies with widely different cultural (including deliberative cultural) norms around the world, as well as deeply divided societies, societies freshly emerging from conflict, and societies with histories of conflict. The role of deliberation should be explored not only in the constitutional framework of the adversarial multi-​party systems, but in other systems with less adversarial politics, such as grand coalitions. Research should focus not only on the inclusive value of grand coalitions (reducing adversarial politics) but on possible perils as well (such as negative effects of too big coalitions on the epistemic value of decisions). More generally, we can, in Africa, begin to test discursive quality at the levels of interactions between public servants and people’s discussions about their public servants. This will enable us to see (1) how political deliberation is affected by the clash/​interaction of publics/​cultures, (2) whether deliberation does transcend polarization, (3) whether deliberation can transcend ethnicity and other sociological constraints, (4) whether deliberation affects politics and policy, (5) whether deliberation can aid account giving or political collusion, and (6) whether deliberation can generally affect social issues such as inequality. A distinction can be made between arguing and bargaining (Risse 2000; this volume, Chapter 32). Although, as we have seen, bargaining cannot be eliminated from deliberation (see Naurin and Reh, this volume, Chapter 46), it will be intriguing to see how much arguing, quite apart from bargaining, occurs in political discourse. Ekeh’s analysis of the moral difference between the two publics opens up the possibility that deliberation may work better in the primordial public, or at least that more arguing occurs in the primordial and more bargaining in the civic. We can however investigate the uses bargaining can possibly have in consensus building, and be generally more specific about the distinctions and their implications through testing. The moral difference between the two publics also means that we should expect the relative flourishing of some other deliberative virtues (such as respect-​related virtues) in primordial publics. An example is the Akan cultural taboo on verbal aggression. This ethnic group believes that conversation should be governed by the maxim of manner (Obeng 1994, 38), and it has developed an extensive network of norms that discourage verbal aggression. The Akan are concerned with not only what is said, but also how it is said (Obeng 1994, 41). In fact, “a person who uses blunt language instead of euphemism (presumably in potentially inflammatory situations) is regarded as not being able to speak well” (Saah 1986, 369). Invectives are tabooed, since they aim to denigrate, humiliate and condemn the target (Agyekum 2010, 1, 110). These taboos are raised to the level of sacred negativity, whose most important punishment is a social loss of face: uncomplimentary utterances make the speaker lose his respect before the public, disgracing him and possibly his whole family. The Akan expression for disgrace is animguaseɛ, literally “to lower the face” (Agyekum 2010, 13; Ani 2015, 152). The

826   Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani verbal taboos are also supplemented by an abundance of apologetic expletives to blunt the effect of critical suggestions, such as mepa wo kyɛw (I beg you), meserɛ meka (I beg to say), sɛbe (excuse me, please) and other disclaimers used to warn other interactants of an imminent (apparent or real) profanity or any possible impression of irrelevant or offensive intent in the use of language (see Yankah 1991, 56; Obeng 1994, 41). Of course, the Akan realize that there are situations where directness and candour may be preferred, but verbal indirections such as euphemisms, metaphors, innuendoes, proverbs, circumlocutions, and hyperboles are preferred to verbalizations that can threaten face (Obeng 1994, 42, 64). The Akan example shows that verbal norms can be built into culture or, in current context, into social policy, and we can link the consequences of their violation to social esteem (Ani 2015, 154). But we need to ascertain the strength of cultural norms via empirical exploration, as well as the conditions under which they thrived, and how we can achieve what culture had once achieved through our laws or social policies (directly or indirectly). Again, we may not yet be able to measure things like “levels of desire for national unity” versus “levels of tribalism,” but we can, courtesy of the Discourse Quality Index (DQI), scientifically observe the consensual and epistemic value of speech acts, and these findings could be crucial to deeper theorizing about politics in Africa.6 As such, it is only on the basis of empirical testing that further theorizing about deliberation may yield more revealing concepts for building social policy. The DQI is not an imposition: scholars may modify it or introduce components, if need be, with justification. But the DQI and other emerging testing tools are important steps in empirical research on deliberation, and thus, theory. Importantly, empirical researchers in Africa should not be too quick to conclude from initial findings that deliberation is intrinsically unproductive and even counterproductive, since their research findings, as negative as they may be, should help theorists to zero in on certain aspects and conditions of deliberation, and thus move to the next stage of theorizing about how to make deliberation better and more productive in selected and specific aspects. The most important task is to continue to investigate conditions in which deliberation is productive or unproductive, conditions that mitigate the effects of tribalism, inequality, and hierarchism on deliberation, comparative effects of varying social or cultural verbal norms on actual deliberation, and generally to keep finding techniques that improve deliberation. It would be good to know if better conditions for deliberation come at any costs, that is, if they undermine any other societal values already established. Most important of all, it would be good to know if certain or any (confirmed) desirable conditions can be applied to the democratic system as a whole and over time. It is obvious that findings in deliberation should have crucial educative value. The work of deliberative scholarship would find institutional fulfillment if, on appraisal of the merits of research findings and recommendations, tested virtues and skills needed in deliberation constitute curricula to be taught in primary, secondary, and tertiary education, much in the same way as we have basic principles in general subjects such as

Africa and Deliberative Politics    827 elementary English, logic, basic mathematics, social studies, basic physics, and so on. This idea is crucial in light of the alarming findings of Connovan, Searing, and Crewe (2002, 37) that people are more comfortable with private than public deliberation (37), and generally prefer congenial to contentious discussion (55). Eliasoph (1998) makes the same findings, but concludes that this is a result of a poorly developed sphere rather than an inherent aversion to politics. Education and culture are crucial, because Connovan also finds that teaching children to discuss politics contains the seed of taking society beyond present aversions to public deliberation, and schools can be influential in this regard (2002, 59–​60). It seems to me that rational and public deliberation is avoided because of society’s general lack of concern for the virtues and skills that it requires, and thus it seems that the acquisition of these skills by younger generations portends a better future deliberative culture. To begin with, the acquisition of these skills would gradually raise general social expectations about deliberative ability and maturity, and we can be sure that these would have their own socializing effects. Finally, theoretical and empirical research about deliberation could ultimately affect policy and constitutional review in Africa. There have been some hints in several African countries of constitutional conferences to address fundamental issues with African constitutions and democracies. Mature findings from researchers on deliberative democracy could culminate in the submissions of proposals about what roles deliberation can play in envisaged political systems of the future. Expert committees could be set up to examine and deliberate on the proposals of deliberation scholars and to make their recommendations to the larger conference bodies, if they see the light of day. Such deliberative bodies could deliberate on what roles deliberation could play in constitutional reviews of African democracies, and what institutional structures and designs would aid this.

Notes 1. See “Ethnologue” at: http://​www.ethnologue.com/​country/​ng. 2. This is from the author’s experiences with Facebook discussions about politics among Nigerians, especially regarding the last Presidential election for choosing between Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari, and similar experiences with political discussion in Ghana. 3. The United States for instance. 4. See Ani 2014 b. 5. http://​www.afrobarometer.org. 6. See Steenbergen et al 2003.

References Agyekum, K. (2010). Akan Verbal Taboos (Accra: Ghana Universities Press). Ani, E. (2005). How Cultural is Corruption in Nigeria and how Institutional is Its Cure? Kiabara: Journal of Humanities 11(2): 191–​208.

828   Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ani Ani, E. I. (2013). Africa and the Prospects of Deliberative Ddemocracy. South African Journal of Philosophy, 32: 207–​19. Ani, E. I. (2014a). On Agreed Actions without Agreed Notions. South African Journal of Philosophy, 33: 311–​20. Ani, E. I. (2014b). On Traditional African Consensual Rationality. Journal of Political Philosophy, 22: 342–​65. Ani, E. I. (2015). Conflict and Dialogue Perspectives to Social Change: Insights from an African Culture. Φιλοσοφία: International Journal of Philosophy, 16: 140–​57. Connovan P., Searing, D., and Crewe, I. (2002). The Deliberative Potential of Political Discussion. British Journal of Poliitcal Science, 32: 21–​62. Ekeh, P. (2011). Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement with an Afterword. In Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives, vol. I, ed. H. Lauer and K. Anyidoho (Accra: Sub-​Saharan Publishers), 200–​32. Eliasoph, N. (1998). Avoiding Politics:  How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Eze, E. C. (2000). Democracy or Consensus? Response to Wiredu. Polylog, http://​them. polylog.org/​2/​fee-​en.htm. Jacques, C. (2011). Alterity in the Discourse of African Philosophy: A Forgotten Absence. In Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives, vol. II, ed. H. Lauer and K. Ayidoho (Accra: Sub-​Saharan Publishers), 1017–​30. Matolino, B. (2009). A Response to Eze’s Critique of Wiredu’s Consensual Democracy. South African Journal of Philosophy, 28: 34–​42. Matolino, B. (2013). The Nature of Opposition in Kwasi Wiredu’s Democracy by Consensus. African Studies, 72: 138–​52. Obeng, S. (1994). Verbal Indirection in Akan Informal Discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 21: 37–​65. Risse, T. (2000). “Let’s Argue!”:  Communicative Action in World Politics. International Organization, 54: 1–​39. Saah, K. K. (1986). Language Attitudes in Ghana. Anthropological Linguistics, 28: 367–​77. Steenbergen, M. R., Bächtiger, A., Spörndli, M., and Steiner, J. (2003). Measuring Political Deliberation: A Discourse Quality Index. Comparative European Politics, 1: 21–​48. Steiner J., Bächtiger, A. Spörndli, M., and Steenbergen, M. R. (2004). Deliberative Politics in Action: Analyzing Parliamentary Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wiredu, K. (1996). Cultural Universals and Particulars: An African Perspective (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Wiredu, K. (2011). State, Civil Society, and Democracy in Africa. In Reclaiming the Human Sciences and Humanities through African Perspectives, vol. II, ed. H. Lauer and K. Ayidoho (Accra: Sub-​Saharan Publishers), 1055–​66. Yankah, K. (1991). Oratory in Akan Society. Discourse and Society, 2: 47–​64.

Chapter 53

De l iberative De mo c rac y i n L atin Ame ri c a Thamy Pogrebinschi

Latin America is a recurring reference among scholars of deliberative democracy, mostly due to participatory budgeting, which was created in Brazil and quickly spread around the region and to many other parts of the world. Participatory budgeting was deemed successful due to its positive social and political outcomes, but also because it has shown that deliberation can be an inclusive and effective means of democratic decision-​making. Yet, the participatory budgeting is one among hundreds of other deliberative practices which evolved in Latin America and which have become part of the region’s democratic systems. While a large volume of research has investigated the institutional and contextual factors leading to the success of participatory budgeting in several Latin American cities, few have asked why such an inclusive and effective deliberative practice was born and bred in Latin America. This chapter will tackle this question, and will answer it by casting light on a variety of deliberative practices that compose Latin America’s vast experimentation with democracy. Latin America is not exactly a thriving region. It is marked by persisting social inequality and political exclusion. Some countries still deal with poverty and hunger, as well as high rates of crime and violence. The authoritarian past is still alive in some political practices and institutions, including caudillismo and clientelism. Presidential systems engender strong executive branches and not rarely make room for populism. Latin America is also not a homogenous region. There are significant differences between rural and urban areas, South and Central America, as well as high ethnic diversity and indigenous populations within single countries. Add to this that many countries transited to democracy not long ago, and it could seem that deliberation would hardly find in Latin America a fecund soil to grow. Interestingly enough, Latin America’s many contradictions seem not to compromise the deliberative capacity of its countries. On the contrary, they may explain the strong political experimentalism of the region and its continual institutional innovation. In this chapter, I will focus on six factors which cross over these controversial social, political,

830   Thamy Pogrebinschi and cultural aspects, and which make it possible to construct a narrative of how deliberation became an important feature of Latin America’s democracy. Such a narrative is not linear, and its many parts overlap in time and differ in space. But it underscores the factors that enable and constrain deliberation in this region of many vicissitudes. A narrative of deliberation in Latin America must begin with democratization, although the indigenous populations of some countries have for a long time followed deliberative practices. Along with democratization, the five other factors that compose the narrative are constitutionalization, decentralization, development, left turn, and ethnical and cultural diversity. As there is no narrative without subjects, these six factors can be matched with a corresponding number of actors. Civil society, State, municipalities, international organizations, political parties, and minority groups all play relevant roles, and reveal the many voices seeming to agree that deliberation makes Latin America more democratic.

Democratization: The Role of Civil Society The transition from the authoritarian regimes and military dictatorships that shadowed most of Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century witnessed the “resurrection of civil society,” the “explosion of a highly politicized and angry society” (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, 48–​9), whose many layers revealed the first seeds of a deliberative culture that would blossom in coming years. The explosion of the grass-​ roots movements that preceded a popular upsurge in most transitional countries revealed a “multitude of popular forums in which the exercise and learning of citizenship can flourish in deliberations about issues of everyday concern” (53). The internal deliberative processes of these “quite often highly participatory and egalitarian” groups have had important implications not only for the political culture of the transition, as O’Donnell and Schmitter anticipated, but also for the democratic consolidation and deepening of Latin America. During the process of political liberalization, Latin America has undergone a strong surge of associativism. Numerous neighborhood committees, civic associations, social movements, and, later, NGOs have organized to claim access to rights and public goods. A quantitative and qualitative increase in associative life had already started to take place in the 1970s and 1980s in some countries, and gave rise to a new type of politics organized around demands for rights and accountability. Particularly relevant were human rights associations, which formed an associative network throughout countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Peru (Peruzzotti and Smulovitz 2006, 12). Urban social movements that sought to improve the life conditions of the poor have also played an important role by voicing demands for social rights like health and housing, and creating new mechanisms of accountability to oversee the delivery of public services. The collective action

Deliberative Democracy in Latin America    831 advanced through these many associative forms opened up a space for popular participation, leading to the emergence of “participatory publics,” which entail “mechanisms of face-​to-​face deliberation, free expression, and association” (Avritzer 2002, 7). The consolidation of the democratic order, different than some transitologists had expected (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, 26), has not depoliticized civil society. During the 1990s, neoliberalism was the challenge that galvanized social movements, this time especially concerned with the negative impact of globalization on the poor. From public debates denouncing governments’ submission to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deliberative practices integrated into public–​private partnerships, a new public space began to take shape. As neoliberal politics overlapped with democratic consolidation, “conventional political parties and institutions . . . sat uneasily with the empowering experience of grassroots participation” (Stahler-​Sholk, Vanden, and Becker 2014, 3). Democratization in Latin America ceases to be the institutionalization of political competition and becomes “a societal practice in need of institutionalization” (Avritzer 2002, 5). Such societal practice intermingles participation and deliberation. Its process of institutionalization will reveal instances where non-​electoral citizen engagement on public issues takes mostly a deliberative form. The notion of deliberation will expand together with democratization: it comprises the voicing and hearing of needs and demands, the give and take of arguments and opinions, the dynamic of persuasion and preference change, and the formation of political will through inquiry and convergence, always making room for difference and dissent. Alongside with social rights and accountability mechanisms, the renewal of civil society under authoritarianism and neoliberalism has pushed the expansion of at once participatory and deliberative practices. In order to be accomplished, democratization requires the transformation of those informal practices into institutional forms of decision-​making, which slowly began to be inscribed in new constitutions. Deliberative democracy requires an active and organized civil society, but also a State willing to share its power.

Constitutionalization: The Role of the State As a result of their transitions, most Latin American countries underwent a process of constitutional reform, and some of them enacted new constitutions. After years of authoritarianism and military rule, it was necessary to reconstruct the rule of law, and make sure democracy would not be obscured again. Social and political actors urged that the new legal order ensure comprehensive rights, and designed institutions to make them effective. Social claims for more participation and deliberation became in several countries a legal mandate.

832   Thamy Pogrebinschi Processes to draft the new constitutions have been deliberative in several countries. In Brazil, hundreds of public hearings were held during the 1987–​8 Constitutional Assembly, where social actors could express their preferences on a variety of matters, and together with legislators reflect on alternative arrangements, in addition to proposing “popular amendments” to the new constitutional text. The health movements, for example, held several debates that contributed to the implementation of health policy councils in all Brazilian municipalities. In Bolivia, although the 2006–​7 constitutional process was not free from conflicts and criticism, numerous peasant and indigenous organizations contributed with proposals. The final document incorporated a communal and participatory form of democracy, and institutionalized assemblies (asambleas) and native councils (cabildos), deliberative bodies that originate from indigenous and peasant traditions. Latin American constitutional processes inscribed deliberation both as a principle and as an institutional design feature of the new legal orders. This became even clearer at the turn of the century, when in addition to Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela also re-​ founded their legal orders and designed an institutional architecture that fostered deliberation. Besides several other new bodies, Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution devised a Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control, among whose functions it is to “promote public participation, and encourage public deliberation” (Article 208). This has been done through several mechanisms run by the Council, like sectorial citizens’ councils, citizens’ assemblies, consultative councils, and participatory budgeting. The deliberative component of these mini-​publics was further regulated in 2010 by the Organic Law of Citizen Participation, which proclaimed public deliberation as a principle of citizen participation, and defined it as “the public and reasonable exchange of arguments, and the dialogical processing of the relations and conflicts between state and society” (Article 4). Like Ecuador, several Latin American countries have enacted legislation promoting citizen participation and institutionalizing deliberative practices and bodies. Colombia’s Law 134 (1994) is the first of a series of laws that together devise more than thirty participatory mechanisms, several of which are deliberative; Peru’s Participatory Budgets Law provides a common framework so all the country’s municipalities adopt the process; Chile’s Law 20.500 grants citizens rights to participate in policymaking, and mandates that the state administration design channels to enable this; El Salvador’s 2005 reform of municipal legislation asserts that municipalities have an obligation to promote participation, and lists nine different institutional designs, among which are some clearly deliberative like open councils (cabildo abierto), local development committees, councils of citizen security, participatory investment plans, and participatory budgeting (Municipal Code 1986, article 116). Likewise, Paraguay’s 2010 Organic Municipal Law asserts that municipalities should promote citizen participation, and devises a set of new institutions, where citizens and government should come together and deliberate on local matters. From constitutions to municipal legislations, citizens’ right to participate became almost a duty for governments, charged with the responsibility of institutionalizing

Deliberative Democracy in Latin America    833 deliberative practices. Deliberation in Latin America has turned out to be State-​led, and top-​down. Most deliberative bodies are implemented by the State, and often take place with and/​or within its institutions. One could argue that this could lead to less authentic and inclusive deliberation, as the State could present some form of coercion and use its power to advance its own agenda. But this might also make deliberation more consequential, as the chances of the deliberative process impacting collective decisions and social outcomes are probably higher.

Decentralization: The Role of Municipalities Democratization and its new constitutional and legal orders brought decentralization together with them. Nearly all Latin American countries implemented decentralization reforms after their transitions (Campbell 2003). As resources, responsibilities, and authority have been transferred from central to subnational governments, municipalities emerge as a democratic hub of political innovations. In most countries, decentralization has opened the doors for citizen participation at the local level, and has prompted the design of new, deliberative institutions. Most Latin American countries have endured political, administrative, and fiscal decentralization processes (Falleti 2005). Political decentralization at first implied the devolution of public authority to subnational actors, reinstating elections and legislatures at the local level. As political competition has been restored, parties, mayors, and local leaders have quickly emerged as key actors in an intense process of institutional innovation aimed at fostering citizen participation beyond representative channels. Administrative decentralization has engendered the devolution of decision-​making authority over education, health, social welfare, and housing policies (Falleti 2005, 329). As the delivery of major public services has been transferred to local governments, novel ways of holding officials accountable have been designed. Local deliberative institutions become responsible for managing social policies and monitoring the delivery of public goods. A variety of policy management bodies have been created at the local level in most countries. Health Councils in Brazil, Vicinity Boards in Bolivia, Boards of Community Action in Colombia, Water Committees in Nicaragua, and Community Councils in Venezuela are just few among numerous new arenas of deliberation. In these new institutions, deliberation is what connects government officials, civil society organizations’ leaders, citizens, and private stakeholders in their common task of managing public policies. Many of these local bodies intervene at the agenda-​setting, formulation, or implementation stages of the policy cycle, and deliberation is the means by which concerned groups identify problems, propose solutions, weigh priorities, assess alternatives, and often come up with decisions—​which, though not always binding, are the outcomes of new, power-​sharing modes of governance at the local level.

834   Thamy Pogrebinschi Decentralization processes have also implied the transfer of revenues to subnational governments, which led some municipalities to receive up to four times more than they did before (Campbell 2003, 4–​5). This drastic increase in the spending power of local governments has also contributed to institutional innovation. Not only decision-​ making power has been augmented, but the state capacity to implement decisions and ensure concrete results has also expanded considerably. In addition to having a say on the formulation and implementation of local policies, citizens have been granted the opportunity to discuss the budgets of their cities. Participatory budgeting was created soon after Brazil’s 1988 Constitution provided municipalities with legal, political, and administrative autonomy. “Porto Alegre,” the “city where participatory democracy has become a way of life” (Baiocchi 2005, xi), is a product of decentralization—​just like the thousands of attempts to replicate participatory budgeting all over Latin America. Decentralization has deepened democracy at the local level, turning municipalities into the main focus of research on deliberative democracy. However, just as decentralization has not always increased the power of governors and mayors (Falleti 2005), the local level is not the only setting where participation has evolved, and where deliberation has proved to be effective. Many countries have institutionalized deliberative practices at the national level, and some of these have already proved to impact on democracy at the macro level (Pogrebinschi and Samuels 2014). Furthermore, many of the local participatory institutions in Latin America actually have a national scope, and are part of a larger, national deliberative system. Possibly because in some countries laws on participation and on decentralization have come into effect at the same stage of democratization, several local institutions (for example, health councils in Brazil, participatory budgeting in Peru, and organizaciones territoriales de base in Bolivia) are the result of a national mandate. Others, like the national public policy conferences in Brazil, involve multilevel deliberation, connecting local, regional, and national spaces. While decentralization has triggered citizen participation at the local level, it has also integrated the new democratic institutions into a larger, deliberative system.

Development: The Role of International Organizations Democratization and decentralization overlap in a third agenda, that of development. International development organizations are a major player when it comes to disseminating deliberation in Latin America. Many of the local deliberative bodies institutionalized by national governments have been promoted by international organizations, especially during the 1990s. Virtually all international organizations have supported projects in Latin America. The World Bank, United Nations Development

Deliberative Democracy in Latin America    835 Programme (UNDP), Inter-​American Development Bank (IDB), and USAID are among those that have offered governments funds under the condition that they adopt, advance and institutionalize participation and deliberation. In their efforts to fight poverty and inequality, international development organizations assume that participation and deliberation can make governments more accountable, and policies more effective. In their view, “consensus-​building, open dialog and the promotion of an active civil society are key ingredients to long-​term sustainable development” (Stiglitz 2002, 163). Out of the 557 projects carried out by the World Bank in Latin America between 1986 and 2015, there are 155 that seek primarily to support citizen engagement, while the remainder see participation as a means to implement the Bank’s social development strategy.1 Such a strategy involves mechanisms of “social accountability,” among which are participatory budgeting, citizen report cards, community scorecards, social audits, public hearings, and citizens’ juries. Although these practices entail deliberation in different ways, and it is debatable whether each of them comprises authentic deliberation, that is non-​coercive reflection upon preferences (Dryzek 2009), they do certainly play a role in the deliberative system. In fact, “voice” is a central notion in the vocabulary of international organizations. Social accountability is defined as a concept that “includes a wide range of institutional innovations that both encourage and project voice” (Fox 2015, 346), while participatory processes “must entail open dialog and broadly active civic engagement, and it requires that individuals have a voice in the decisions that affect them” (Stiglitz 2002). The World Bank describes its own work on social development as promoting and bringing “the voices of the poor and vulnerable into the development process.”2 In a context of widespread inequality like Latin America, the voices of the citizens are indeed often voices of the poor, the disadvantaged, the excluded, those who never had a voice at all. However, while deliberation is a potential means to address inequality, the latter may constrain and restrain deliberation. International financial organizations aim at increasing the efficiency of public services while franchising access to the poor through the implementation of state–​society interfaces, spaces where citizens and governments come together. Some scholars criticize those “invited spaces” (Cornwall 2004) where deliberation may be “induced” by a NGO or donor (Heller and Rao 2015, 3) may take place. Some believe citizens have been turned into service providers who supply the State and the market with information (Dagnino 2010), and who given their social dependency may tell donors what they want to hear, allowing that international organizations co-​opt participatory projects to generate support for their own agendas (Fischer 2012). On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence of how an experiment widely supported by international organizations—​participatory budgeting—​has successfully included citizens with low levels of income and education, enabled pro-​ poor social policies, enhanced well-​being, and fostered deliberation (Baiocchi 2005; Touchton and Wampler 2014). A number of international loans have been given to Latin American governments under the condition that citizens engage in processes aiming at formulating, implementing, and monitoring strategies of poverty reduction. The National Dialogues

836   Thamy Pogrebinschi in Bolivia, a multilevel deliberative process supported by the UNDP, have engaged tens of thousands of citizens and CSOs in the discussion of strategies for poverty reduction. First implemented in 1997, this extensive deliberative process was later institutionalized by the government, which in 2000 enacted a law committing to resume it every three years in order to “promote a consensual agreement (concertación) towards public policies aiming at the economic, social and institutional development of the country” (Law of the National Dialogue, article 33). The 2004 National Dialogue engaged over forty thousand organizations in the “pre dialogues” at the local level. Although since then the process has not been repeated, and it is not clear how effective the Dialogues were, they certainly contributed to reinforcing a deliberative culture in Bolivia. One cannot deny that international organizations have advanced deliberation in Latin America, and played a major role in the expansion and institutionalization of deliberative practices in several countries. Some institutional innovations initiated during neoliberal governments with the support of international organizations have been later expanded and redesigned by the left-​leaning parties that came to power at the turn of the century.

Left Turn: The Role of Political Parties By the end of the 1990s, Latin America was washed-​out from neoliberalism and market-​ oriented reforms. While neoliberal politics brought some economic stability for a certain time, they further deepened social divides and increased inequality. Voters drifted to the left, their support for liberalizing policies having eroded together with their hopes that development strategies would bring more social and political inclusion. The left-​leaning parties that from 1998 onwards slowly took over two-​thirds of national governments in the region promised not only to bring about more social equality, but offered new means to accomplish that. The already existing deliberative practices have been intensified and expanded, and many of the internationally induced experiences have been institutionalized and brought to a new, higher level. Deliberation also became relevant at the national scale, and has been incorporated into the decision-​ making process as leftist parties both designed new participatory institutions and revitalized existing ones. The left’s victories at the national level cannot be dissociated from their previous victories at the local level, where a vast experimentation with new forms of citizen participation and deliberation defined the first leftist governments, and were possibly in part a response acknowledging their good performance in many cities. Left-​leaning parties had taken the government of many important cities and several capitals before the turn of the century, and some of their experiments with participation and deliberation soon became recipes for deepening democracy at the local level (Goldfrank 2011).

Deliberative Democracy in Latin America    837 The participatory budgeting first implemented by the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) in Porto Alegre in 1989 is doubtless the flagship of the left’s local democracy. The role of PT behind effective implementation of participatory budgeting in different Brazilian cities has been repeatedly acknowledged by scholars (Wampler 2007). The success of participatory budgeting in achieving inclusion and redistribution through a deliberative process led to its replication in thousands of cities all over Latin America, and explains why deliberation is no longer a tool exclusive to left-​leaning parties. The crucial actors behind institutional innovations have proved to be not only parties of the left but political parties generally, regardless of their ideological orientation. While the left has played an important role in some countries (Brazil, Bolivia, and Venezuela), its programmatic commitment towards participation has not been enough to disseminate and institutionalize deliberative practices in others (Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay). Likewise, right-​leaning parties have become promoters of deliberative forms of citizen participation in some countries (Colombia and Mexico) at both local and national levels. Deliberative practices have been embraced by political parties at both ends of the ideological spectrum as means to restore trust and reinstate links with voters, given that participatory budgeting has proven that deliberation helps to hinder clientelism, generating more accountable and responsive governments. The implementation of deliberative practices turned out to be an efficient method for political parties to reinforce their legitimacy, build territorial bases, and expand their constituencies. While political parties are taken as a key factor for the success of participatory practices (Wampler 2007; Goldfrank 2011), they may also damage the authenticity and inclusiveness of deliberation when they co-​opt participants, impose their own agenda, manipulate funding, restrict participation to their supporters, or seek only electoral reward. For example, the community councils in Venezuela, which devolve power and resources to small local deliberative units and committees to formulate and implement policies, have been highly criticized for being instrumentalized and misused by Chavez and his partisans (Hawkins 2010). The international aid offered by development organizations has also led right and left parties to converge towards deliberative practices of governance. Nonetheless, left-​ leaning parties have a deeper commitment to deliberation, and some have institutionalized it as a method of government, as in the new constitutions of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Moreover, where right-​leaning parties instrumentally seek more transparency and efficiency, left parties use deliberation as a means to achieve social equality as well to provide recognition and inclusion to disadvantaged and unrepresented groups. Left parties in Latin America are not only ideologically committed to programmatic principles of democracy and participation, but they were also frequently born out of social movements and trade unions, and have brought to government their ties with the grass-​roots organizations from where they have emerged. This has certainly contributed to the design of more deliberative channels of communication between State and civil society.

838   Thamy Pogrebinschi

Ethnical and Cultural Diversity: The Role of Minority Groups Deliberative democracy’s principles have been long applied by the communitarian, Andean democracies. Indigenous communities in Ecuador and Bolivia have a long tradition of holding deliberative assemblies where common issues are discussed and decided, often by consensus. All members of the community are entitled to voice their opinions in an environment where wealth and power inequalities are small (van Cott 2008), turning it into an optimal setting for deliberation to test some of its normative conditions. The indigenous deliberative form of democracy consists in a process of “dialogue, learn the opinion of different sides, and take decisions by consensus” (Zegada et  al. 2011, 105). The traditional practices of peasants and indigenous groups in Bolivia and Ecuador encompass the deliberation of collective problems, often appealing to mutual values and to a conception of the common good in the process of arriving at solutions based on consensus. A “deliberative consensus,” the outcome of frequent and intense deliberations held by traditional groups, entails a collective decision that should be applied and respected also by local authorities (Zegada et al. 2011, 165). Although Bolivian indigenous and peasant communities display different levels of organization, they share similar political practices. The most typical is the assembly, an open forum for deliberation and collective decision-​making. The assemblies are open to all members of the community, who have an equal right to a voice. In these fora, decisions are constructed through consensus procedures, which “yields a tireless deliberation, which takes many hours, until the very last of those concerned agrees with the decision” (Zegada et al. 2011, 166). Interestingly enough, the goal of such long deliberations is not simply to achieve harmony but to enable the collective action of all members of the community. This communitarian conception of democracy shared by peasants and indigenous communities has to some extent been integrated into Bolivian political institutions. In addition to the integration of pre-​existing native deliberative bodies into legal orders, several countries have implemented new spaces where other ethnic and cultural minorities could voice their particular needs and preferences. The most frequent forms are policy councils, where minority groups address policies concerning their specific interests together with public officials. Irrespective of the consultative and non-​binding character of most of these bodies, many have been successful in protecting minority rights and advocating groups’ claims in parliaments and governments. Those councils comprise a range of cultural minorities including women, children, youth, elderly, people with disabilities, and LGBT. They exist in several countries, among them Brazil (Conselho Nacional de Igualdade Racial and others), Ecuador (Consejo Nacional para la Igualdad de Género and others), and Mexico (Consejo Consultivo de la Comisión Nacional para el Desarollo de los Pueblos Indígenas).

Deliberative Democracy in Latin America    839 While political parties and parliaments have long failed to represent the interests of cultural minorities, assemblies, cabildos, and policy councils open up new venues where these groups can strengthen their citizenship and redefine their identity through deliberation. Given their specific aim of providing under-​represented groups with a voice in the policymaking process, in these spaces deliberation and citizen representation frequently overlap. Groups are able to represent themselves:women can speak for women, young people speak for young people, and indigenous speak their own languages. For these groups, deliberation is a means to seek recognition through the representation of those who share the same ethnic or cultural values.

Conclusion: Latin America’s Experimentalist Vocation When the third wave of democracy hit Latin America in 1978, scholars expected that the institutions of representation would settle the political and social contradictions that had deepened after many years of authoritarian rule. However, where representative institutions were expected to consolidate, deliberative practices have subtly started to grow. Faced with high levels of social inequality, political exclusion, and cultural diversity, governments ended up eschewing the liberal logic and experimenting with new ways of making representation combine with participation and deliberation. While failing to follow the liberal script, democracy in Latin America has written a narrative of its own. This narrative can be read in different ways, but none could ignore the role deliberation plays on it. Taken together, the six factors and actors discussed in this chapter give an account of why and how deliberative practices evolved in Latin America, highlighting some constraining and enabling elements. At a closer look, some of them check known theoretical assumptions, while others provide insights that might prove useful in contexts other than Latin America. First, deliberation may play important roles during democratization processes. It allows civil society to get organized and to find a common discourse with which to fight authoritarian rule. Second, the institutionalization of deliberation into constitutions and laws may not ensure that deliberative practices take place, but it reinforces a deliberative culture and increases the chances that deliberative processes impact on political decisions and produce social outcomes. Third, decentralization triggers deliberation, as the local level and small scale allow deliberative bodies to proliferate. Devolution may also help in building multilevel deliberative systems, when it results from a national mandate and where local practices retain a national scope. Fourth, while social inequality is a known constraint to deliberation, deliberative practices prompt inclusion and redistribution. In highly unequal contexts, deliberation may offset the social selectivity typical of representative institutions. Fifth, political parties play a crucial role in turning democracy more deliberative. The positive effects that deliberation yields

840   Thamy Pogrebinschi in the representative system make it attractive to parties regardless of their ideology. Lastly, in contexts of high ethnical and cultural diversity deliberation allows minority groups to reinforce their identity and to obtain a citizenship not granted by representative systems alone.

Notes 1. This information has been gathered in the World Bank’s online database for social development projects and programs at http://​www.worldbank.org/​en/​topic/​socialdevelopment/​ projects Last checked February 8, 2016. 2. http://​www.worldbank.org/​en/​topic/​socialdevelopment/​overview#2, updated September 21, 2017.

References Avritzer, L. (2002). Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Baiocchi, G. (2005). Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Campbell, T. (2003). The Quiet Revolution:  Decentralization and the Rise of Political Participation in Latin American Cities (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press). Cornwall, A. (2004). New Democratic Spaces? The Politics and Dynamics of Institutionalised Participation. IDS Bulletin, 35: 1–​10. Dryzek, J. (2009). Democratization as Deliberative Capacity Building. Comparative Political Studies, 42: 1379–​1402. Dagnino, E. (2010). Civil Society in Latin America: Participatory Citizens or Service Providers. In Power to the People? (Con-​)tested Civil Society in Search of Democracy, ed. H. Moksnes and M. Melin (Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet), 23–​39. Falleti, T. (2005). A Sequential Theory of Decentralization:  Latin American Cases in Comparative Perspective. American Political Science Review, 99: 327–​46. Fischer, F. (2012). Participatory Governance: From Theory to Practice. In The Oxford Handbook of Governance, ed. D. Levi-​Faur (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 457–​7 1. Fox, J. A. (2015). Social Accountability:  What Does the Evidence Really Say? World Development, 72: 346–​41. Goldfrank, B. (2011). Deepening Local Democracy in Latin America:  Participation, Decentralization, and the Left (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Hawkins, K. A. (2010). Who Mobilizes? Participatory Democracy in Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution. Latin American Politics and Society, 52: 31–​66. Heller, P. and Rao, V. (eds) (2015). Deliberation and Development: Rethinking the Role of Voice and Collective Action in Unequal Societies (Washington, DC: World Bank Group). O’Donnell, G. and Schmitter, P. C. (1986). Transitions from Authoritarian Rule:  Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, MD:  Johns Hopkins University Press). Peruzzotti, E. and Smulovitz, C. (eds) (2006). Enforcing the Rule of Law: Social Accountability in the New Latin American Democracies (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press).

Deliberative Democracy in Latin America    841 Pogrebinschi, T. and Samuels, D. (2014). The Impact of Participatory Democracy: Evidence from Brazil’s National Public Policy Conference. Comparative Politics, 46: 313–​32. Stahler-​Sholk, R., Vanden, H., and Becker, M. (eds) (2014). Rethinking Latin American Social Movements: Radical Action from Below (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Stiglitz, J. E. (2002). Participation and Development: Perspectives from the Comprehensive Development Paradigm. Review of Development Economics, 6: 163–​82. Touchton, M. and Wampler, B. (2014). Improving Social Well-​Being Through New Democratic Institutions. Comparative Political Studies, 47: 1442–​69. Van Cott, D. L. (2008). Radical Democracy in the Andes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wampler, B. (2007). Participatory Budgeting in Brazil:  Contestation, Cooperation, and Accountability (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Zegada, M. T., Arce, C., Canedo, G., and Quispe, A. (2011). La democracia desde los márgenes: Transformaciones en el campo político boliviano (Buenos Aires: Muela del Diablo Editores/​Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales).

Chapter 54

Deliberat i on C onstra i ne d An Increasingly Segmented European Union Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum

A key aspect of the effort to forge European collaboration and unification after two devastating wars in the first half of the twentieth century has been the onus on fostering trust and inclusion through voluntary agreements. Executives and experts have driven these processes but the populations have been consulted at each major constitutional juncture. Each member state has a veto over treaty change. A decades-​long democratization effort notwithstanding, the EU remains democratically deficient. And yet, the pledge to form an ever closer Union steeped in constitutional-​democratic principles has long sustained the hope that this complex polity would eventually develop arrangements that its citizens would find democratically legitimate. Deliberation has figured centrally in the process of coming together, and in the workings of the EU decision-​making system (Eriksen and Fossum 2000). The supranational system that emerged at the European level has been configured as a consensus-​ seeking system. The EU’s own formal instruments of power have been weak. The EU has been set up as a consent-​based system, where unanimous voting procedures go together with more complex processes and procedures for deliberation and sounding out. Very substantial resources are expended to foster and ensure consensus (Lord 1998). Non-​agreement is difficult for such joint-​decision systems, as it leads to loss of control and reduces the “independent capabilities of action over their member governments” (Scharpf 1988, 258). It leads to loss in efficiency, as well as in legitimacy. This is not to say that deliberation is democratic or that agreements approximate rational consensuses, but that agreement through arguing is a structural feature of joint decision-​making systems.1 Many claim that the original permissive consensus was tacit and based on de-​ politicization and that deliberation was merely functional (Abromeit 1998; Majone 2005). Deliberation thus had epistemic and transformative value but was not necessarily moral in justificatory terms.

Deliberation and the European Union    843 Deliberation is more than discourse, discussion, and dialogue. It refers to the reaching of a collective decision through the give and take of arguments. But can deliberation bear the burden of political legitimation? Is it a substitute for democratic arrangements? Or does deliberation itself require institutional support? These issues have been the subject of extensive debate, as we will show. A question today concerns the prospects for deliberation after the Euro-​crisis, which was triggered by the financial crisis in 2008 and has since developed into a major institutional and constitutional crisis for the EU. The Euro-​crisis and the other challenging issues currently confronting the EU (refugee crisis, democratic back-​sliding, Brexit, to mention some) are transforming the EU. Two aspects stand out: one is that there is little assurance that integration will engender democratization in any way resembling what we witnessed prior to the crises. The other related development is that the EU has become increasingly differentiated (Leuffen, Rittberger, and Schimmelfennig 2012; Leruth and Lord 2015). States may come to occupy permanently different membership statuses. Further, integration is no longer simply a one-​way street; there may be patterns of differentiated integration and differentiated disintegration operating simultaneously (Fossum 2015). In this chapter, we start by outlining some of the cultural-​institutional factors that shape Europe and that are key factors variously fostering and constraining deliberation in Europe. Further specification is provided through outlining the two main positions on the role and nature of deliberative democracy in the EU context. The EU’s present crisis-​induced transformation alters the balance of those factors that condition and constrain deliberation. In the last section we show how the Euro-​crisis (and the other associated challenges) is transforming the EU into a segmented political order.

Europe as Context The point of departure is that the EU is a large-​scale experiment bent on establishing binding constitutional principles and institutional arrangements beyond the mode of rule entrenched in the nation state. In Europe, the EU seeks to domesticate state power by supranational law. An important objective has been to abolish the tit-​for-​tat measures of international relations. The EU is configured with the aim of preventing member states from taking the law into their own hands. There are historical roots for this: the legacy of Greek and Roman antiquity and its contribution to philosophical rationalism and jurisprudence; the experiments with democracy in small-​scale city-​states; the Christian and Jewish religions via the humanist legacy of the Enlightenment; the post-​war peace motive; and legal developments in the wake of the creation of the United Nations. The Enlightenment was not only marked by increasing empiricism and scientific rigor, but also by the belief in rational government underpinned by the ideas of liberty, dignity, progress, and tolerance. Here we find trust in written constitutions and judicial review as means of civilizing relations among people and nations. In the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 we find the idea that constitutions

844    Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum are arrangements for respecting the equality and freedom of individuals in the realization of popular self-​government. Democracy and human rights are fundamental leitmotifs, and Europe has always figured centrally in their institutionalization. The institutional forms should however not be taken as fixed, objective manifestations of the ideas; rather, the ideas should be seen as higher-​ranking justificatory principles and semantic codes, and institutional forms as approximations always subject to power constraints. Real democracy has never been realized: neither nation states nor federations have found a perfect democratic form.2 But there is an intrinsic link between the commitment to reason—​to reason giving and justification—​and the view of the person as entitled to respect. Underlying the processes of democratization is the higher-​ranking principle that people affected by rights and laws must be involved in determining the content of those rights and laws. Consequently, we should distinguish between the forms of institutionalization and their justifying reasons, and hence between democracy as a justification principle and as an organizational form. This distinction matters if we are to understand the normative potential in the European integration process: EU democracy is not simply about establishing a set of EU-​level democratic institutional arrangements akin to those that we are familiar with from established multilevel federations; it is about ensuring that those affected by laws can understand themselves as the authors of those laws. It is only by adhering to democratic procedures that power holders will justify their decisions and citizens be able to subject them to a justificatory test; only by employing these procedures can collective goals be achieved legitimately; only through these can laws be sanctioned, changed, and enacted correctly. In other words, democracy is not identical with a particular organizational form; rather it is a principle which specifies what it means to get political results right. The democratic principle is selectively institutionalized in modern states but is nevertheless operative as a justificatory code. This code sheds light on the handling of the cultural and institutional diversity, a hallmark of Europe—​that it does not result in chaos and disorder. In the EU there is disagreement about what democratic arrangements will fit the Union, but not about the democratic principle. The fear of slipping into never-​ending chaos and barbarism—​given ample credence by numerous devastating instances over the centuries—​has lent impetus to searches for dignified ways of approaching Europe’s diversity and chequered history. The searches fall into a broader pattern: Europe’s political and cultural makeup has over the centuries been the site of contestation over unity and diversity; of centripetal and centrifugal forces; giving rise to a complex tapestry of political and cultural coexistence. Medieval complexity has left its imprint on the distinct constellation of unity and diversity that marks the nation state. That imprint is often understated due to the nation state’s unitarian presuppositions, which induce us to overlook the more complex and multifaceted ethnocultural situation within and across states and communities in Europe. Moreover, consider the many sources of institutional complexity we find in the member states. They are vastly different in size. There are significant patterns of vertical institutional incongruence in the sense that the institutions at the EU level operate in a context made up of federal, quasi-​federal, and unitary arrangements at the

Deliberation and the European Union    845 member-​state level. There is also a great amount of institutional heterogeneity at the Union level through different systems of representation and accountability that vary with function. The most important difference is between, on the one hand, the Community (internal market) system, where the “ordinary legislative procedure” puts the European Parliament on a par with the Council of Ministers as a legislature and, on the other, the realm of foreign and security policy, where the European Parliament is only consulted and patterns of decision-​making are far less transparent. There is even greater institutional diversity across member states: the EU encompasses both parliamentary and presidential systems, and there are great variations in how power is shared and organized from one member state to the next. The complex multi-​level system that makes up the EU may perhaps best be labeled as a distinct quasi-​federal system. Joseph Weiler (2001) has characterized it as an upside-​ down federation. It has clear deliberative qualities. Not only the peculiar legal arrangements but also results from comitology (implementing committees) underpin the idea of deliberative supranationalism (Joerges and Neyer 1997). Comitology has been a vehicle for the member states to exercise control and oversight from the very start of European integration, and contributed to the formation of European identities and conceptions of the European bonum commune. Comitology brings together actors from the member states in forums where they have to find solutions to practical problems on a basis which is not fixed. The EU has a democratic vocation that has been embedded over time, in a stepwise and gradual manner. Key to this process has been a broad range of forums and procedures (consider for instance the Common Assembly—​later the European Parliament—​ and COSAC, the conference of MEPs and national parliamentarians), which have compelled argumentation and justification and which have further entrenched deliberation in supranational democratic institutions such as the European Parliament. The establishment of European citizenship has given rise to the hope that today’s transnational arrangement might eventually be reconfigured to serve as a master principle for democratic self-​organization in Europe.

Variants of Deliberative Theory There are two major schools of thought on the role of deliberation in the EU context: one is the transnationalist school, and the other is our institutional variant of deliberative theory. In the following we will briefly present how each conceives of the role of deliberation in shaping European developments.

The Transnational Variant The pragmatist approach which transnationalists such as Joshua Cohen, Charles Sabel (1997, 2003), and James Bohman (2007) have subscribed to is interesting because it is

846    Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum not confined to the nation-​state template and its presuppositions of sovereignty, demos, territory, and identity. A collective identity is held to be missing, and civic solidarity has often been in short supply in Europe. But this has not prevented the EU from growing in size and competence over time. In Europe, one must therefore look for another basis than pre-​political agreement on substantive values, we-​feeling and common interests to explain the integration process. The pragmatist approach turns on the regularized use of knowledge for solving common problems—​experimental inquiry combined with free and full discussion—​and offers an interesting perspective on transnational and supranational decision-​making systems. The argument is that experimental inquiry and political deliberation—​free opinion and will-​formation processes—​can ensure justification and sway actors to adopt a common position without a pre-​existing value consensus. Transnationalists claim that the EU has clear experimental features whose distinct polity traits have direct bearings on the Union’s democratic qualities. They see the EU as a multilevel, large-​scale and multi-​perspectival polity based on the notions of a disaggregated democratic subject and patterns of diverse and dispersed democratic authority. The Union’s democratic potential, in their view, emanates from its ability to deter domination and to develop democratic forms that differ from state-​based modes of representative democracy. The most suitable and promising form of democracy for such an innovative configuration is not representative government but rather direct-​deliberative polyarchy (Cohen and Sabel 1997) or a transnational multiple-​demoi mode of deliberative democracy (Bohman 2007). More specifically, their claim is that transnational civil society, networks and committees, NGOs, and public forums all serve as arenas in which EU actors and EU citizens from different contexts—​national, organizational, and professional—​come together to solve various types of issues and where different points of access and open deliberation ensure democratic legitimacy. Local problem-​solving, the institutionalization of links between units, and agencies to monitor decision-​making both within and between units make this structure conducive to experimentation and learning. James Bohman (2007) seeks to reconcile this notion of transnational deliberative democracy with the notion of the “democratic minimum.” The democratic minimum is intended to render a conception of democracy that is normatively viable yet not confined to the state. But, as Rainer Forst has noted, this is a minimum mostly in name, as its proper realization requires a comprehensive set of institutions (Forst 2007, 93). The democratic minimum required to sustain democracy presupposes stronger institutional supports than those Bohman assumes. Barring such institutional supports, Bohman’s conception of rule beyond the state cannot adequately deal with the challenge of weak coercive means. How can goals be realized and rights protected without the sanctioning capacity of the state? Would such a system be able to “deliver”? How can it bring about changes required by justice? Further, can it ensure equal access and public accountability in the complex multilevel constellation that makes up the EU?

Deliberation and the European Union    847

The Ideal Standard Deliberationists who praise deliberative governance trim down the criteria of popular sovereignty compared to the way it is conceived by discourse theory. The upshot is a gap between the ideals associated with the democratic minimum on the one hand and, on the other, the actual institutions that (for instance) Bohman relies on in his notion of transnational deliberative democracy. Discourse theory envisions the establishment of a rational consensus building on strong idealizations (Habermas 1996). Here, the question of what is just and the common good is premised on the presupposition that agreement can be reached in a rational discussion where all limitations on power and resources are suspended—​where there are no limitations on the public discourse with regard to themes, time, participants, or resources. An idealized public standard is necessary for normative and critical purposes: for deciding whether the outcome of the deliberation is legitimate. This requires a shift to a higher level of abstraction where the participants take a disinterested perspective to establish what is in the equal interest of all. The public debate, then, takes the shape of a democratic sovereign. This is an unavoidable standard in constitutional politics. It is through such a standard that the basic structure of society and the higher deontic norms, such as equality, freedom, and democracy, to which the constitutional essentials subscribe, can be approved. To be a recognized member of a communicative community requires the notion of a law-​based society, that is, the symbolic notion of an order based on equal rights. One crucial question that this debate brings forth is whether the state form and a state-​based collective identity are necessary preconditions for democracy to prevail, or whether a leaner structure made up of legal procedures and criss-​crossing public discourse can ensure democratic legitimation. In short, can democracy prevail without state and collective identity? However it is conceived, democracy requires some minimum institutional requirements, as deliberation in itself cannot bear the burden of democratic legitimation. In a sense we may say that European developments testify to this realization. If we look at the form EU democratization has taken, we find elements of stakeholder democracy in network structures, but the main thrust of EU democratization is in the institutional shape of representative democracy. That is also explicitly expressed in the treaties (cf. Article 10 TEU). Representative bodies—​strong publics—​at the various levels of governance in the multilevel EU (sub-​national, national and EU-​level) conduct and orchestrate deliberation and link the institutions in the political system with the EU’s general publics. This is not akin to saying that the representative-​democratic bodies have driven the integration process. It is rather the case that the process of democratization at the EU level has generally been a matter of representative-​democratic bodies seeking to catch up with an integration process driven by executives and experts (Crum and Fossum 2013). But the process of catching up has extended the scope for deliberation at the European level, which in turn has fostered European democratization.

848    Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum These observations have a bearing on how we understand the EU as a major political experiment. They compel us to query in what sense the EU is an experiment. What we see is that the effort of establishing a system of democratic governance at the EU level involves a significant element of borrowing from familiar forms of democratic governance. There are clear patterns of copying and emulation. Thus, we may say that many of the building blocks are well known at the national level but the overall pattern within which these are fitted together is exceptional or unique.

The Institutional Variant In the following we present our institutional variant of deliberative theory, which is particularly attuned to the degree of correspondence there is between the critical standard and the manner in which the multilevel EU is institutionally configured. Our institutional variant of deliberative theory starts from the prescription already mentioned that democracy is foremost a higher-​order principle, which sets out the requisite conditions for justification (Eriksen 2009; Eriksen and Fossum 2012a; 2012b; Eriksen 2014). On the most fundamental level, therefore, deliberation and not voting, is the foundation of democracy. One needs to argue for the use of other decision-​making procedures, and justifications can only be carried out with the help of reasons that others can understand. Democratic deliberation entails the act of justifying the laws to the people who are bound by them. Deliberative democracy in our reading, then, entails offering justifications to citizens, in light of agreed-​upon standards. But this does not do away with our capacity to question them in light of ideal standards. There is, so to say, a two-​level language game involved in deliberative practices (Eriksen 2009, 31–​3). Democratic systems usually contain provisions to make it likely that prior to aggregative procedures, extensive processes of discussion and opinion formation can take place (Dewey 1927). Such processes need to be domesticated by the formal procedures of will formation, representation, and decision-​making (i.e. voting). Without egalitarian procedures of law-​making there is no democracy (Brunkhorst 2004; Schmalz-​Bruns 2005). Deliberation in itself cannot bear the entire burden of democratic legitimation because it is impossible to meet the requirement of having the laws accepted by all affected parties in a free and open debate. Only with decision-​making through authorized political institutions in place can citizens effectively influence the laws that affect them, and determine whether the reasons provided are good enough. The democratic procedures are there to produce good and fair results, but results do not justify themselves. They rest on prior political decisions and are themselves in need of justification. Under post-​metaphysical conditions, only procedures can lend legitimacy to results. Such procedures link input, throughput, and output together (Eriksen 2005). The deliberative perspective thus comes with a set of legal-​institutional and procedural prerequisites. The most basic in the democratic Rechtsstaat of the modern era are (a) a constitution with a set of inalienable rights; (b) fora for public debate; and (c) institutional mechanisms to transform political initiatives into collective commitments in a representative manner.

Deliberation and the European Union    849 We accordingly understand democracy to combine a principle of justification with an organizational form for the handling of common affairs. Effective operation of the democratic principle has to take an organizational form that will be capable of sustaining a set of properly delimited legislative, sanctioning, and executive powers. This to a large extent makes up the very semantics of modern democracy. When the principles are not properly institutionalized we may end up with audit democracy (Eriksen and Fossum 2012a, 22) In the EU context this matters. A distinguishing feature of the process of democratization in the EU is that this process unfolds in a setting marked by a high density of democratic norms and principles—​institutionally entrenched at the member state level (and increasingly transferred to the EU level) (Fossum and Menéndez 2011). EU democratization takes place in a context of already-​established parliamentary democracies, where parliamentary democracy serves as the institutional template that the actors most readily associate with democracy; thus it is unsurprising that the parliamentary principle has been a key component (Eriksen and Fossum 2012b; Rittberger 2005). There are reasons for this internal to the parliamentary principle itself. It is not merely a practical device for the aggregation of votes or a customary way of life. Rather it is the embodiment of the modern legitimation principle of government by discussion. The parliamentary principle exerts normative pressure due to the fact that only parliaments have achieved the competence to speak for the people—​they represent the code for the institutional embodiment of popular sovereignty. Parliamentarism operationalizes the basic principles of popular sovereignty and political equality. When forms of representation are needed for democracy to prevail it is hard to establish viable alternatives. The EU reform process is propelled by the fact that the parliamentary organizational form is understood as a real-​life approximation to the democratic principle; thus the parliamentary principle represents a code of justification. The greater the normative thrust of the parliamentary principle, then, the easier it is for people to take it for granted that there is a close association between democracy and parliamentary democracy (as a specific institutional version of democracy). Representative (parliamentary) democracy has come to figure at the heart of modern democracy; this is certainly the case in the EU, where every member state is a constitutional representative democracy. Only democratic states will qualify for EU membership. The parliamentary principle is one of the agreed-​upon standards, according to which justifications to European citizens are offered. However it in turn forms part of a broader set of institutional–​constitutional arrangements in which deliberation plays a vital role. The process of coming together in a new supranational political order has had deliberation written all over it. The EU’s deliberative features are documented in many case studies of policymaking and in treaty-​making processes (cf. Sjursen 2002; Göler 2006). When applying statistical models to the 1997 Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference—​the Amsterdam Treaty—​Reinhard, Biesenbender, and Holzinger found that “arguing affects negotiation success significantly and positively” (2014, 283). In the EU, voting and threat-​based bargaining have historically been difficult to make use of, as the non-​majoritarian resources of democracy—​in the form of intermediate

850    Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum institutions and a collective identity—​are weak, and bargaining chips are few. To a large degree, and as mentioned above, the EU lacks forceful compliance mechanisms, as well as identitarian personification. Generally, international law’s self-​help system and its tit-​ for-​tat logic of reciprocity and countermeasures do not apply, transaction costs are low, and information and ideas are abundant and widely distributed among parties. Prior to the Euro-​crisis the general verdict was that the EU’s deliberative features served democratization. The question we are faced with now is whether the crisis has weakened or even undercut the democratizing thrust.

Europe Post-​C risis: A Segmented Europe? The Eurozone crisis was a shock that has been transforming the EU. It has led to new arrangements with their basis in international treaties, not the EU treaties, but that nevertheless rely on the EU institutions for their sustenance. It has had a general de-​ constitutionalizing effect across levels of governing. It has weakened the democratizing thrust, at the EU and member state levels; and has increased the scope of arbitrary power through weakening the legal basis of the integration process and the EU supranational structure. In order to understand how this transformed EU conditions and constrains deliberation we first need to look more closely at the nature of the crisis and what kind of structure it has wrought. Our argument is that the ensuing structure is increasingly segmented, thus limiting the scope and thrust of democratic deliberation.

The Crisis—​Implications An important question is why a crisis that started in the US housing market has come to haunt Europe—​to a far greater degree than the US. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, governments undertook massive capital interventions to prevent financial markets from completely collapsing, in many instances accumulating massive public debts. It was at this stage, when the crisis turned from a financial one to a public debt crisis, that it became clear that the repercussions would be far more profound for the European Union than for the US, where the crisis had originated. What set the EU apart was the manner in which a financial and fiscal crisis came to morph into a real amalgam of crises (Menéndez 2013; cf. Fossum and Menéndez 2014). In Europe, the crisis has taken on important political and institutional—​even constitutional—​dimensions, which testifies to the fact that it is not only something externally generated in the global financial markets but that it reflects and amplifies deeper structural faults built into the EU construct: a monetary union without a fiscal union is an inherently unstable construct. To this we need to add that the manner in

Deliberation and the European Union    851 which the crisis was handled has exposed, and also exacerbated, structural flaws in the EU (Scharpf 2010).3 The crisis and the manner in which it was handled by the EU have not only made analysts aware of the EU’s differentiated nature (Leuffen, Rittberger, and Schimmelfennig 2012), but have also clearly increased EU differentiation. Prior to the crisis, aspects of differentiation were generally thought of in terms of more or less temporary digressions from an established norm. The idea was that the EU developed at multiple speeds (Piris 2011) but that all member states would eventually reach the same destination, effectively symbolized by a deliberative process of constitution making. Today the multiple-​speeds metaphor is being questioned. There are pleas to replace it with the notion that the EU is differentiated in the sense that states occupy permanently different membership statuses. There is no longer any assurance that states will reach the same destination; they may also want to move in the opposite direction—​towards less binding forms of collaboration or towards collaboration in a more limited number of issue areas. Another important effect of the crisis is a sidelining of the European Parliament,4 coupled with a weakening of parliamentary democracy in many of the EU’s member states. That entails a weakening of those bodies that generate broader debates and examinations and break up narrow expert-​based discourses. These developments give credence to our thesis that the crisis has reinforced patterns of segmentation in the EU where policy or issue-​specific networks tie actors together across institutions. The argument is that this is deleterious to deliberative democracy, in that within each functional segment it gives precedence to certain forms of discourse, certain world-​views, and certain forms of knowledge and expertise. Both deliberation’s world-​disclosing and its justificatory dimensions suffer.

A Segmented Political Order We understand segmentation as a feature of political order that has become divided into different functional domains. Each functional domain systematically favors certain participants, certain forms of professional expertise, and certain world-​views and situational depictions; and it will typically define away or exclude other ones (from outside the segment or from other segments). Each segment will accordingly exhibit framing effects and a certain path dependence that can be traced in decision-​making. Segmentation underscores how functionally specific arrangements can develop internal cohesion, and are steeped in distinct patterns of power and specialized knowledge regimes or régimes de savoir (Foucault 1982, 781). A segmented political order is marked by strong built-​in constraints on coordination across functional domains, with obvious implications for the system’s ability to handle problems and conflicts and for how the system addresses and responds to its citizens. Segmentation has affinities with the deliberative governance perspective, in that both underline loosely coupled systems and networked interaction. But in contrast to deliberative governance’s onus on best practice and open-​ended learning, policymaking within segmented contexts

852    Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum is biased towards professionalized expertise and the trained incapacity of epistemic communities. A number of developments suggest that the EU is becoming a segmented political order. Concretely in the EU we see that the crisis response is motivated by a distinct socio-​economic line of thinking: neoliberalism with a strong onus on fiscal prudence and austerity. The institutionalization of the Eurozone is a case in point. It is sustained by a network of likeminded officials across a broad range of institutions. That has today emerged as the core EU segment that drives activities in other issue areas and functional realms. In other words, the image of the EU is not one where all functional realms are equally segmented; one core segment has a dominant role whose operating premises are transposed to other realms. These other realms are segmented to different degrees and different arrangements. Foreign and defense policy is a case in point. It is operated through a distinct set of institutions, giving a distinct impetus to segmentation. Other segments may also emerge. The internal EU tensions that the refugee crisis has sparked may give rise to further segmentation, especially insofar as border controls and surveillance become securitized and removed from the control and scrutiny of representative-​democratic institutions. A range of developments serve to undermine coordination, coherence, and transparency and entrench functionally differentiated realms or segments. Key here is a weakening of the system-​wide coordinating abilities of supranational bodies and arrangements, coupled with a strengthening of within-​domains integration and coordination. A feature with similar effects is the increased role of informal bargains struck among heads of states and governments within the European Council setting, which weakens the supranational institutions and their generally far more transparent mode of operations. That links in with a further development, namely that a number of the key crisis response mechanisms are embedded in international treaties whose relations to the EU institutions are ambiguous. The heightened constitutional ambiguity that the EU’s response to the crisis has engendered stymies overarching debate on the proper course of action. The institutional developments reflect altered societal constraints: large portions of the EU’s social contingent have abandoned the 1970s permissive consensus and have become far more Eurosceptic if not Europhobe. That has given rise to a constraining dissensus (Hooghe and Marks 2009)  that has tied government leaders’ and politicians’ hands; pitted states against each other; and complicated efforts to deal with crises through coordinated and coherent policy responses. The ensuing structures increasingly take the shape of segments:  policy or issue-​ specific networks that tie actors together across institutions. The members have their own situational assessments (how to interpret the crisis, the future direction of the EU), distinct forms of professional expertise, and worldviews and it will typically define away or exclude other ones (from outside the segment). Segments reduce the scope for coordination across policy areas and functional domains. The weakened roles of the EP and national parliaments reduce oversight and weaken transparency and accountability: insiders get greater scope for discretionary actions and outsiders have a harder

Deliberation and the European Union    853 time finding out what is going on inside. Segmentation’s lifeblood is an expertocratic (or technocratic) form of discourse that is clearly inimical to democratic deliberation.

Conclusion In this chapter we have examined how the European context has variously enabled and constrained deliberation. Doing that required paying attention to the nature of the context but also to the deeper issue of how deliberation can foster binding cooperation and democratization. We showed that this undertaking required fleshing out a distinct theory of deliberation, which we labeled the institutional variant. The European Union setting has long been quite conducive to this model. But the Eurozone crisis and the other challenges (including the present refugee crisis) have put this model and the EU to the biggest test thus far. The EU is transforming as a result of the various crises rendering it an increasingly segmented political order. Segmentation does not do away with deliberation, but brings in new constraints and conditioning factors, which reduce its democratic merits. Segmentation implies delinking processes of integration and problem-​solving from proper democratic authorization. The consequence is not only weakened democratic authorization but also reduced oversight, coordination, and coherence; and a significant reduction in transparency. These features become particularly problematic in a setting renowned for its novelty and great complexity, and are readily turned into liabilities by skeptics.

Notes 1. In particular in systems deprived of the major physical means of coercion and without a distinct identity to prompt trust and compliance—​non-​majoritarian elements which we associate with a sovereign state. 2. Luhmann (2000) holds it as a plain illusion and Dahl (1971) chose the term “polyarchy” for modern democracy. 3. Many of the measures are set out in the intergovernmental Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance T/​SCG/​en 1 of March 2, 2012 and the so-​called Six-​Pack, a bundle of five regulations and one directive that cover fiscal surveillance and macroeconomic surveillance under the new Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure. 4. The European Parliament has noted that “the democratic credibility of European integration has suffered enormously from the manner in which the euro crisis has been dealt with to date” (European Parliament 2011).

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Deliberation and the European Union    855 Joerges, C. and Neyer, J. (1997). From Intergovernmental Bargaining to Deliberative Political Processes: The Constitutionalisation of Comitology. European Law Journal, 3: 274–​300. Leruth, B. and Lord, C. (2015). Differentiated Integration in the European Union: A Concept, a Process, a System or a Theory? Journal of European Public Policy, 22: 754–​63. Leuffen, D., Rittberger, B., and Schimmelfennig, F. (eds) (2012). Differentiated Integration: Explaining Variance in the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Lord, C. (1998). Democracy in the European Union (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press). Luhmann, N. (2000). Die Politik der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp). Majone, G. (2005). Dilemmas of European Integration:  The Ambiguities and Pitfalls of Integration by Stealth (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Menéndez, A. J. (2013). The Existential Crisis of the European Union. German Law Journal, 14: 453–​525. Piris, J.-​C. (2011). The Future of Europe: Towards a Two-​Speed EU? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Reinhard, J., Biesenbender, J., and Holzinger, K. (2014). Do Arguments Matter? Argumentation and Negotiation Success at the 1997 Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference. European Political Science Review, 6: 283–​307. Rittberger, B. (2005). Building Europe’s Parliament:  Democratic Representation beyond the Nation-​State (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schmalz-​Bruns, R. (2005). On the Political Theory of the Euro-​Polity. In Making the European Polity: Reflexive Integration in the EU, ed. E. O. Eriksen (London: Routledge), 59–​83. Scharpf, F. W. (1988). The Joint Decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration. Public Administration, 66: 239–​78. Scharpf, F. W. (2010). The Asymmetry of European Integration, or Why the EU cannot be a “Social Market Economy.” Socio-​Economic Review, 8: 211–​50. Sjursen, H. (2002). Why Expand? The Question of Justification in the EU’s Enlargement Policy. Journal of Common Market Studies, 40: 491–​513. Weiler, J. H. H. (2001). Federalism Without Constitutionalism: Europe’s Sonderweg. In The Federal Vision: Legitimacy and Levvels of Governance in the United States and the European Union, ed. K. Nikolaïdis and R. Howse (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 54–​7 1.

Chapter 55

Transnationa l a nd Gl obal Deli be rat i on William Smith

John Dryzek has charted the “deliberative turn” within contemporary democratic theory, which has placed communication and reflection at the center of normative debates about democratic practice (Dryzek 2010, 3). There has been a less widely noted, but no less significant, deliberative turn within normative theorizing about the global order, which is defined here in an expansive sense to refer to the various ways in which states and non-​state actors are related to each other at the transnational level.1 The global order is characterized by bilateral and multilateral agreements, the emergence of institutions, regimes, and networks that offer a degree of regulatory oversight to transnational activities, and a shared exposure to trans-​border risks that tax the steering capacity of nation states. The deliberative turn has seen international political theorists make the case for embedding reasoned, reflective, and responsive processes of argumentation at the heart of this order. There is, in fact, a notable similarity between the deliberative turns in democratic theory and international political theory, in the sense that both have transitioned from a focus on the theory of deliberation toward a more applied investigation into its institutional requirements. The argument of this chapter is that, although the focus on institutions is suggestive, transnational and global deliberation should not be associated with a particular forum or procedure. The most promising avenue for future research is thus to explore the possibilities for global deliberation that are opened up by the broader systemic turn in deliberative theory.

The Deliberative Turn There are a number of studies that map the emerging literature on transnational and global deliberation, and which identify and critique a range of competing perspectives in this area (Bray and Slaughter 2015; Dryzek 2006; Smith and Brassett 2008).

Transnational and Global Deliberation    857 The deliberative turn addressed by these studies can be seen as a reaction to perceived failings of the realist and cosmopolitan paradigms that have dominated international political theory.2 The deliberative focus on reason and dialogue challenges the realist assumption that the global order must be shaped purely by state interest and asymmetric bargaining, while its focus on flexible processes of communication displaces the cosmopolitan assumption that it is necessary to recreate the democratic infrastructure of competitive elections and sovereign authority at the global level (Dryzek 2010, 177). Although the emerging field is diverse in terms of its theoretical and methodological assumptions, it is marked by a considerable degree of convergence on the basic elements of a deliberative theory of transnational and global politics. The first and most fundamental element of a deliberative theory is its commitment to reason giving as a method of solving shared problems. This basic commitment to reasoning in transnational and global politics is given contrasting interpretations across the various theoretical perspectives within the deliberative turn. The liberal view advanced by Joshua Cohen, for instance, defends a concept of “global public reason,” which has as its content “a broadly shared set of values and norms for assessing political societies both separately and in their relations” (Cohen 2004, 194). This concept insists that public reasoning at the global level should observe certain content restrictions, but it allows for an ongoing dialogic process about the best interpretation of shared values and norms. The critical theory approach of Dryzek, by contrast, sees global deliberation as a contest between discourses that offer competing analyses and diagnoses of political problems. This approach does not require deliberators to observe content restrictions, but it does favor communicative action that is “capable of inducing reflection, noncoercive, and capable of connecting the particular experience of an individual, group, or category with some more general principle” (Dryzek 2010, 34). These divergent positions share a commitment to the claim that the various forms of agenda-​setting and decision-​making that occur in the global order should not be shaped by strategic compromises between sectional interests, but should be informed by a reasoned process inclusive of potentially generalizable considerations. The second, and closely related, element is that deliberation should be an epistemic-​ reflective process, which facilitates collective learning through the testing and interrogation of competing perspectives. This idea captures an important aspect of deliberation, which is that it must engage our capacities for practical judgment in the course of reaching considered opinions about a particular issue or problem. The epistemic-​ reflective dimension has a particularly important role to play in transnational and global contexts, given the underdetermined state of knowledge about the normative standards that are appropriate for evaluating institutional design and performance at these levels. This is exemplified by the “complex standard of legitimacy” proposed by Buchanan and Keohane, which can be characterized as a means of reforming global governance along deliberative—​albeit not democratic—​lines (Smith and Brassett 2008, 78–​9). Their standard incorporates substantive criteria of minimal moral acceptability, comparative benefit, and institutional integrity, along with a procedural requirement that global institutions embody “epistemic-​deliberative virtues” that enable agents to ascertain

858   William Smith whether the substantive criteria are being met (Buchanan and Keohane 2006, 425–​7). This requires availability of reliable information about institutional performance, articulation of public justifications for controversial and consequential decisions, and effective monitoring of institutions by external actors. An innovative feature of this account is that prevailing interpretations of the criteria are to be understood as provisional and subject to revision through a dialogue between global institutions and civil society organizations. The basic idea is that “there must be provision for ongoing deliberation about what global justice requires and how the institution in question fits into a division of responsibilities for achieving it” (Buchanan and Keohane 2006, 429). The third element is that sources of power in the global order should be responsive to the societal perspectives that must be included in deliberative processes. The way in which responsiveness is interpreted will depend upon our conception of the participants to transnational or global deliberation. The liberal theory developed by John Rawls, for instance, conceptualizes international public reason as a process that is primarily responsive to the corporate interests of well-​ordered peoples, but he also allows that citizens have a legitimate role to play in holding political elites to account (Rawls 1999, 56–​7). The republican theory developed by James Bohman, by contrast, conceptualizes deliberation as a process that is primarily responsive to the interests of citizens, but he is sensitive to the manner in which these interests must be mediated through membership in national and transnational publics. The requirement of responsiveness is particularly important to the republican account, because of its underlying commitment to an ideal of freedom as non-​domination. This ideal requires that all persons enjoy meaningful opportunities to contest arbitrary exercises of power over them, which places it at odds with regulatory structures in the global order that are typically unresponsive to the citizens subjected to their rule. The ideal of non-​domination insists on responsiveness in the sense that powerholders must offer reasons for their actions and the members of subjected publics must enjoy a more-​or-​less equal capacity to initiate deliberation about the design and decisions of global regulatory structures. The institutional implications of this deliberative ideal are profound; as Bohman puts it: “non-​domination across polities requires a thickly institutionalized space that includes various publics and civil associations that interact and communicate across units as well as various intermediary institutions that promote interaction across borders” (Bohman 2007, 56–​7).

The Institutional Turn This reference to institutional requirements3 anticipates a move away from the ideal of deliberation towards a more practical or applied approach. This is necessary in light of concerns about the plausibility of instantiating reasoned, reflective, and responsive communication at the transnational level. It is unclear, for instance, how such a deliberative praxis could be cultivated, particularly given the countervailing pressures of

Transnational and Global Deliberation    859 state interest and massive power asymmetries in the global order. It is, furthermore, difficult to envisage how ordinary citizens embedded in their local or national communities could be given opportunities to participate in transnational deliberation. And there may be residual worries that, even if such opportunities were available, the sheer extent of linguistic, cultural, and national difference in the global order might overwhelm prospects for deliberation. The institutional turn grapples with these practical concerns, though—​as we shall see—​not without giving rise to new difficulties for the deliberative paradigm.

Transnational Experimentalism The cultivation of deliberation in the global order must confront the rise of transnational administration, which reflects the prominent role that networked policymaking elites play in emerging governance structures (Dryzek 2010, 119–​ 34; Papadopoulos 2012; Slaughter 2004). The theory of transnational experimentalist governance is notable for contending that, perhaps contrary to expectations, these policy networks can be fertile territory for deliberative aspirations. This claim rests on an account of these networks not as rigid and opaque regulatory structures, but as dynamic and open sites of social learning. Experimentalism is associated with a range of processes through which rule-​makers can coordinate activity in the absence of antecedent goals (Brassett, Richardson, and Smith 2012). This framework can be embedded at any spatial level, but it is particularly well suited to transnational contexts characterized by the absence of sovereign authorities that can formulate and pursue common goals (Sabel and Zeitlin 2012). The core idea of transnational experimentalist governance is “deliberative polyarchy,” which is presented as a means of discovering collective goals and monitoring their realization. It is “deliberative” in the sense that “questions are decided by argument about the best ways to address problems, not simply exertions of power, expressions of interest, or bargaining from power positions on the basis of interests” (Cohen and Sabel 2006, 779). It is a “polyarchy” because of “its use of situated deliberation within decision-​making units and deliberative comparisons across those units to enable them to engage in a mutually disciplined and responsive exploration of their particular variant of common problems” (Cohen and Sabel 2006, 780). Transnational experimentalism involves “central” and “local” units setting provisional goals and methods to achieve these goals. The local units are given a significant degree of discretion by central units to pursue these goals, but must undergo an ongoing process of peer review, performance auditing, and comparison with agents pursuing similar goals. This process can culminate in reflection on and revision of the original goals, along with refinement of the methods through which they are pursued. The European Union (EU) offers an example of experimentalist techniques, with its use of formal relations between different units in a chain that are obliged to report progress and achievements to each other. The Open Method of Coordination (OMC), for

860   William Smith instance, has been analyzed as a nascent experimentalist structure, which allows for collaborative problem-​solving within and between EU institutions and the publics of member states (Bohman 2007, 85–​7). The experimentalist framework endorses a model of transnational deliberation that is not particularly democratic, although it does embody certain values associated with democracy. There is, for example, an important role for stakeholder participation in experimentalist procedures (Cohen and Sabel 1997, 332–​3). The participation of stakeholders, particularly local associations and other civil society groups, performs the useful cognitive function of ensuring that deliberation is informed by relevant knowledge and experience, as well as guarding against the threat that an experimentalist process will be hijacked by powerful interests. There are, furthermore, significant dynamics triggered by the introduction of experimentalist procedures, which Cohen and Sabel characterize as “democratic destabilizations.” The process of peer review has the destabilizing effect of establishing a contest between competing sources of technocratic authority, thus undercutting the threat of rule by a unified corpus of policy elites. The progressive deepening of global administration across an expansive policy agenda—​including trade, security, environment, health, and education—​can also contribute to the emergence of a “global public,” at least if such administrative schemes come to embody features associated with experimentalist governance (Cohen and Sabel 2006, 795). The growing awareness of—​and, more ambitiously, participation in—​this administrative structure on the part of relevant publics can trigger a series of destabilizing processes, such that “dispersed peoples might come to share a new identity as common members of an organized global populace” (Cohen and Sabel 2006, 796). There may nonetheless be concerns that, in the absence of introducing more radical democratic innovations, the experimentalist process will remain inaccessible to ordinary citizens. Bohman articulates this concern in relation to the OMC, in his observation that “such a procedure, however deliberative, retains the weaknesses of the hierarchical relations of experts, officials and citizens within which it is embedded” (Bohman 2007, 87).

Transnational Mini-​Publics These concerns have driven some deliberative theorists towards institutional mechanisms that are designed to be more inclusive.4 It is perhaps unsurprising that these theorists draw heavily on the explosion of interest in mini-​publics as a potential resource for embedding deliberative mechanisms in policymaking (Fung 2003). The inclusivity of a mini-​public is achieved through its method of selecting participants, which involves random or near random sampling techniques to achieve an appropriate variety of social characteristics. The quality of its deliberation is secured through its internal organization, which involves a rule-​governed dialogue between participants that is responsive to information and expert testimony relevant to the topic under discussion. The general appeal of such forums “is that deliberation in these mini-​publics is representative

Transnational and Global Deliberation    861 of—​and hence can substitute for—​deliberation among mass publics that simply cannot deliberate together in the same ways” (Goodin 2008, 11). The prospects for introducing mini-​publics to the global order requires us to address the issue of their “transferability,” understood as the scope for introducing deliberative forums at different spatial levels and in contrasting political systems (Smith 2009, 26). The difficulty of addressing this issue is that there are fewer examples of their use in transnational contexts than domestic contexts. The comparative lack of evidence and experience thus makes it difficult to comment with certainty about the domain conditions of embedding mini-​publics in the global order. This cannot help but give arguments in their favor a somewhat speculative complexion, which is illustrated by the fact that debates about mini-​publics in transnational settings are, to a much greater degree than discussion of their use in domestic settings, taken up with imaginative proposals for their establishment. Baber and Bartlett, for instance, propose that a series of citizens’ juries across different territories should be convened to deliberate the problem of international environmental protection. The resulting deliberative opinion could then be taken as a basis for a legal restatement of international common law in relation to the environment by the International Law Commission (Baber and Bartlett 2009, 162–​5). Goodin and Ratner also envisage a use for citizens’ juries, but in this instance convened to deliberate the content of jus cogens norms of international law. These forums could provide guidance for relevant judicial and political bodies about norms that are sufficiently universal to count as peremptory norms of international conduct (Goodin and Ratner 2011). The general idea is that transnational mini-​publics on specific policy issues can be related to, and perhaps supported by, those institutions or agencies that have a degree of regulatory oversight over those issues in the global order. The composition of mini-​publics leads some critics to compare these forums favorably to alternative mechanisms for promoting transnational deliberation. According to Bohman, mini-​publics should be seen as an important supplement to—​or perhaps even a replacement for—​transnational experimentalist procedures. The reason is that mini-​ publics correct for the tendency of the latter to rely on the perspectives of policymaking elites and civil society activists, both of which may differ from the knowledge and experience offered by ordinary citizens. In addition, a mini-​public can be designed in such a way that participants are placed on a more equal footing than may be possible in the case of policy networks or global civil society. As Bohman puts it, “minipublics offer a strategy for getting beyond the dilemma of insider consultation and outsider contestation that is a structural feature of civil society activity in current international arrangements that rely on expert authority and knowledge as the basis for their legitimacy” (Bohman 2007, 87). The use of mini-​publics is also contrasted favorably with more familiar electoral mechanisms. Dryzek, Bächtiger, and Milewicz defend a deliberative global citizens’ assembly (DGCA), comprised of randomly selected representatives of a global population, as a more promising site for authentic deliberation than an elected global assembly. The composition of a DGCA allows for a greater diversity of societal perspectives than

862   William Smith an elected assembly, because the composition of the latter is likely to be drawn from global elites with similar backgrounds in public administration or professional political advocacy. The randomly selected representatives in a DGCA may also be more likely than elected representatives to adopt long-​term perspectives conducive to global goods, due to their insulation from the pressures of electoral accountability to national, regional, or sectional constituencies (Dryzek, Bächtiger, and Milewicz 2011).

The EU Deliberative Polls All this may appear to suggest that mini-​publics are the gold standard for institutionalizing deliberation, but reflecting on one of the few attempts to implement these mechanisms at the transnational level suggests a more cautious conclusion. The use of deliberative polling in the EU represents an attempt to transfer a mini-​public design that has an established pedigree in domestic contexts to the transnational level. The deliberative poll, pioneered by James Fishkin, brings together a random sample of the population to discuss a pre-​set agenda. The participants are provided with extensive briefing materials and are polled before and after their discussions, thus enabling analysis of the impact that deliberation has on their opinions. There have been two such polls in the EU: the Tomorrow’s Europe poll carried out in 2007 and the EuroPolis poll conducted prior to EU parliamentary elections in 2009 (Isernia and Fishkin 2014). The polls were designed to be representative of a singular EU public, rather than a public conceptualized as differentiated along national lines. The designers aimed to ensure that “all twenty-​seven EU member states were represented in about the proportions of their shares of the EU population and also in about the proportion of their representation in the European Parliament” (Fishkin 2009, 184). The linguistic diversity of the deliberative sample was addressed through the Parliament’s technical facilities for simultaneous translation. The distinctive contribution of an EU deliberative poll, according to Fishkin, is that it can function as a “pilot version” of an EU-​wide public that has yet to fully emerge. As he puts it, “if one believes in the possibility of a European-​wide public sphere, the microcosmic strategy has the merit that it would represent what it would be like” (Fishkin 2009, 182). This institutional design contrasts with an alternative approach which organizes a series of forums on the same topic but in different nations. The World Wide Views on Global Warming exercise proceeded along these lines, consisting of forty-eight more or less simultaneous mini-​publics within thirty-eight participating countries timed to coincide with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December 2009. The problem with the exercise is that, in addition to its failure to secure representatives from all parts of the world, the institutional design does not allow for dialogue between citizens of diverse nationalities (Riedy and Herriman 2011). This undermines its credentials as a genuinely transnational forum. The EU polls, by contrast, were not only able to incorporate a wide range of national perspectives but also created opportunities for dialogue between and across these perspectives. The experience of the polls suggest that, at least in a suitably

Transnational and Global Deliberation    863 structured environment, citizens drawn from different nations are able to engage in deliberation in the absence of a shared language or culture (Smith 2009, 185). If the EU polls succeed in demonstrating the potential of mini-​publics as a transnational deliberative space, they also reveal inherent limitations in their use. First, as in domestic contexts, it may be difficult to achieve appropriate linkages between deliberative polls and policymakers or between deliberative polls and broader publics (Fung 2003, 353–​4). The EU polls, for all their merits, did not appear to have a significant impact on either EU decision-​making procedures or the deliberations of EU or member-​ state publics. Second, the operational costs of organizing mini-​publics at the transnational or global levels may function as a deterrence to their use. Claus Offe commends the ambition of the EuroPolis poll in bringing together participants from all member states, but notes that it “seems unlikely to ever be repeated in the same form, considering the costs involved and its relatively short duration necessitated by those costs” (Offe 2014, 438). Third, and more seriously, the polls replicated rather than challenged entrenched assumptions about the composition of the relevant transnational public (Smith 2013, 466–​70). The organizers identified the public represented in the polls in a straightforward manner with the public that already enjoys rights to participate in EU-​wide elections. This reference to existing patterns of membership is troubling, as it excludes perspectives that appear highly relevant to the topics under discussion. For instance, the EuroPolis poll considered the subject of immigration without any input from potential migrants to the EU or the large number of undocumented migrants that already reside within the EU. Their perspectives could have provided unique insight and experience relevant to appraising current and future EU border policy, such that deliberative democrats would surely regret their exclusion from the micro-​deliberative forum. It is worth stressing that their exclusion is not an unfortunate contingency that could easily be corrected, but a structural constraint imposed by the bodies that support and fund the exercise. It is, to put it mildly, unlikely that EU funding bodies would have been amenable to the inclusion of unauthorized or potential migrants, and it is difficult to see how such a move could have been compatible with the avowed aim of organizers to represent the populations of the twenty-​seven EU member states. These reflections illustrate how the deficiencies of existing transnational arrangements will likely constrain and distort mini-​publics, thus limiting their potential as a means of reforming or democratizing those arrangements.

The Systemic Turn The problem with the institutional turn is not that it thinks through the realization of transnational deliberation, but that it all too often falls into the trap of associating it too tightly with a particular forum or networked process. The general difficulty with this move is eloquently captured by Stevenson and Dryzek: “it is asking a lot for any single

864   William Smith forum to appear legitimate in the eyes of all potential constituencies, to include all relevant points of view, to conduct high-​quality deliberation, to reach good decisions, and to be accountable for those decisions” (Stevenson and Dryzek 2014, 26–​7). A potential antidote to this problem is not to retreat to ideal theorizing but to conceptualize transnational deliberation as a practice that can, to a certain extent, be dispersed across a plurality of interrelated spaces and forums. This approach treats these spaces and forums as elements of a system, focusing our attention on their complementary strengths and weaknesses as a means of enhancing transnational deliberation.

Transnational Public Spheres This systemic turn has a precedent in the influential approach to deliberative democracy pioneered by Jürgen Habermas. The key concept for Habermas is the public sphere, defined as “a network for communicating information and points of view” in which “streams of communication are . . . filtered and synthesized in such a way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions” (Habermas 1996, 360). The Habermasian approach sets up an informal division of labor, according to which anarchic communication at the periphery of the public sphere detects and diagnoses problems while institutional decision-​making at the center of the public sphere selects the most appropriate solution for society to adopt. The rise of globalization, especially the migration of power to transnational and global levels, has prompted Habermas and those sympathetic to his approach to call for a transformation of the public sphere along transnational lines. The current trajectory of Habermas’s work is to differentiate between the functional requirements of public opinion at transnational and global levels. The transnational level, exemplified by the EU, requires a strong form of publicity that is capable of democratizing complex administrative and regulatory processes that transcend national borders. The global level, exemplified by the United Nations, requires the emergence of “weak public spheres” that can exert a form of influence on agenda-​setting and decision-​making that stops short of the more demanding conditions required for democracy (Habermas 2006, 142–​3). There are, however, worries about the functional capacity of such a “weak” form of publicity to legitimize global governance in the absence of more democratic channels of influence (Scheuerman 2008). Nancy Fraser follows Habermas’s call to transnationalize the public sphere, offering an analysis that is underpinned by a commitment to the democratic norm that all those subjected to governance structures should participate as equals in the processes of opinion-​formation that hold decision-​makers to account (Fraser 2008, 95–​6). There are, according to her, two distinct problems that must be addressed. The first, which she describes as “a deficit of democratic legitimacy,” is associated with the emergence of administrative structures that are not held to account by corresponding public spheres. Fraser cites, in addition to the familiar case of the EU, the increasing capacity of nation states to subject non-​citizens—​such as foreigners, asylum seekers, or unauthorized

Transnational and Global Deliberation    865 migrants—​to de facto or de jure authority. The second, which she describes as “a deficit of political efficacy,” is associated with the emergence of transnational public opinion that is not accompanied by an administrative or legislative structure capable of enacting it. This problem is illustrated by the worldwide demonstrations of February 15, 2003, against the US-​led war against Iraq: “although this outpouring of opinion could not have been more forceful or clear, it lacked an addressee capable of restraining George W. Bush, and so, in a sense, remained powerless” (Fraser 2008, 156). The shared feature of both of these problems is the absence of appropriate connections and relationships between public opinion and the institutional complexes that have the capacity to mould such opinion into binding decisions.

Transnational Deliberative Systems The concept of a “deliberative system” has been employed by a number of scholars in an attempt to clarify and refine these connections and relationships (Mansbridge et al. 2012). The systems approach follows Habermas in looking for a “division of labour” across multiple elements, such that the aim is to cultivate the right kind of relations between “public” and “empowered” spaces. The system possesses “capacity” to the extent that it accommodates authentic deliberation that induces reflection in a noncoercive fashion, inclusive deliberation that provides effective opportunities for parties to participate, and consequential deliberation that influences collective outcomes (Dryzek 2010, 11-​14). The system is often situated in domestic contexts, but Dryzek contends that it can be applied “to a wide variety of settings, including those that do not contain legislatures, political parties, citizen forums, or elections” (Dryzek 2010, 10–​11). This includes the transnational or global levels where systems coalesce around specific agendas or regulatory regimes, such as climate change, biodiversity protection, trade and finance, refugees and migration, or security and defense. The critical purchase of the systems approach is that institutional arrangements, policy networks, mini-​publics, and strategies and tactics of actors can be treated as interrelated elements of a deliberative system and evaluated according to their potential to increase its overall capacity. This approach is certainly not incompatible with the use of experimentalist procedures or mini-​publics in transnational settings, but it insists that such innovations are related in appropriate ways to other elements of the system. For instance, Smith (2013) argues that a transnational mini-​public could be convened to function as a “deal breaker” in adjudicating disagreement over competing proposals for reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO). This proposal could only succeed in enhancing systemic capacity, though, if mini-​public recommendations are (a) championed by relevant stakeholders in the system, such as civil society organizations or parliamentarians and (b) taken up in relevant empowered spaces, such as the General Council of the WTO. The systemic approach thus offers a holistic framework that “allows us to analyse the division of labour among parts of a system, each with its different deliberative strengths and weaknesses” (Mansbridge et al. 2012, 4–​5). The idea is not to place too much hope

866   William Smith on one particular part of a system as a means of achieving authentic, inclusive and consequential deliberation, but instead focus on the relationships between different parts in the hope that weaknesses in one area can be complemented by strengths in another. The practical implications of this approach are illustrated by Stevenson and Dryzek in their critical analysis of the existing system of global climate governance. Their discussion, among other things, contrasts the relative merits of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the proliferation of state and non-​state governance networks, and the activities of global civil society. The authors offer a range of proposals for enhancing the capacity of the system as a whole, which share the aim of achieving an appropriate balance between different types of institutional and non-​ institutional agency. One of their suggestions is to enhance the capacity of UNFCCC to function as a source of “meta-​governance” in the system, rather than operating primarily or solely as a means of producing binding multilateral agreements. This proposal does not call for the abolition of networked governance, but requires UNFCCC to play a coordinating role in setting standards and holding networks to account. It also does not marginalize the role of non-​governmental organizations, as “the contestatory aspects of civil society activity could then be concentrated on the UNFCCC—​rather than dispersed across myriad governance arrangements” (Stevenson and Dryzek 2014, 195).

Conclusion: Normative Challenges The institutional and systemic turns demonstrate that normative theorizing about global and transnational deliberation is in rude health, but important conceptual and empirical challenges remain. This is certainly true of the systemic turn, which this chapter has identified as the most promising avenue for further research. The systems approach must, for instance, confront the theoretical and logistical difficulties of mapping the relations between complex institutional and non-​institutional arrangements at transnational and global levels. It must formulate guidelines for determining whether and to what extent non-​deliberative elements might be supported as a means of enhancing systemic capacity overall. And—​like other approaches—​it must achieve the optimum balance between what may turn out to be the competing imperatives of achieving consequential deliberation, which can impact upon governance arrangements, and inclusive deliberation, which achieves sufficient levels of parity between participants. The contention of this chapter is that these difficulties should not be treated as fatal, but as illustrative of the need for further theoretical and empirical research to interrogate the prospects for modeling transnational and global deliberation along systemic lines.

Notes 1. The term “transnational” refers to activity between and across national borders, as well as the institutions, regimes, and networks that regulate that activity. This includes institutions

Transnational and Global Deliberation    867 (such as the European Union) that have a regional rather than a global scope (Nye and Keohane 1973). An institution is defined as “persistent and connected sets of formal and informal rules within which attempts at influence take place” (Keohane 2002, 327). On the related concepts of a “regime” and a “network,” see respectively Krasner (1983) and Slaughter (2004). 2. The deliberative turn in international political theory has coincided with the emergence of constructivist approaches in international relations that study the deliberative dimensions of diplomacy and negotiations, though the former tends to foreground normative themes to a greater extent than the latter (see Thomas Risse’s contribution to this volume, Chapter 32). 3. The term “institutional turn” is associated with Simone Chambers, who employs it to refer to the tendency for deliberative theorists to increasingly privilege mini-​publics over macro-​level politics (Dryzek 2010, 6). The term is used in a somewhat broader sense here, to capture the growing interest of international political theorists not only on the actual or potential use of mini-​publics in transnational settings but also other forms of institutional innovations (Smith 2009). 4. The following discussion draws upon and revises ideas developed at greater length in Smith (2013).

References Baber, W. F. and Bartlett, R. V. (2009). Global Democracy and Sustainable Jurisprudence: Deliberative Environmental Law (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Bohman, J. (2007). Democracy Across Borders: From Demos to Demoi (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Brassett, J., Richardson, B., and Smith, W. (2012). Private Experiments in Global Governance:  Primary Commodity Roundtables and the Politics of Deliberation. International Theory, 4: 367–​99. Bray, D. and Slaughter, S. (2015). Global Democratic Theory:  A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press). Buchanan, A. and Keohane, R. O. (2006). The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions. Ethics and International Affairs, 20: 405–​37. Cohen, J. (2004). Minimalism About Human Rights: The Best We Can Hope For? Journal of Political Philosophy, 12: 190–​213. Cohen, J. and Sabel, C. (1997). Directly Deliberative Polyarchy. European Law Journal, 3: 313–​40. Cohen, J. and Sabel, C. (2006). Global Democracy? NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, 37: 763–​97. Dryzek, J. S. (2006). Deliberative Global Politics: Discourse and Democracy in a Divided World (Cambridge: Polity Press). Dryzek, J. S. (2010). Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Dryzek, J. S., Bächtiger, A., and Milewicz, K. (2011). Towards a Deliberative Global Citizens’ Assembly. Global Policy, 2: 33–​42. Fishkin, J. S. (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fraser, N. (2008). Scales of Justice:  Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (Cambridge: Polity Press).

868   William Smith Fung, A. (2003). Recipes for Public Spheres:  Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences. Journal of Political Philosophy, 11: 338–​67. Goodin, R. E. (2008). Innovating Democracy:  Democratic Theory and Practice after the Deliberative Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Goodin, R. E. and Ratner, S. R. (2011). Democratizing International Law. Global Policy, 2: 241–​7. Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. W. Rehg (Cambridge: Polity Press). Habermas, J. (2006). The Divided West, ed. and trans. C. Cronin (Cambridge: Polity Press). Isernia, P. and Fishkin, J. (eds) (2014). Special Issue: Can European Elections be Deliberative? The 2009 Europolis Deliberative Poll. European Union Politics, 15: 311–​441. Keohane, R. O. (2002). Governance in a Partially Globalized World. In Governing Globalization:  Power, Authority and Global Governance, ed. D. Held and A. McGrew (Cambridge: Polity Press), 325–​47. Krasner, S. D. (ed.) (1983). International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Mansbridge, J., Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Christiano, T., Fung, A., Parkinson, J., Thompson D. F., and Warren, M. E. (2012). A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Systems:  Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–​26. Nye, J. and Keohane, R. O. (1973). Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction. International Organization, 25: 329–​49. Offe, C. (2014). The Europolis Experiment and Its Lessons for Deliberation on Europe. European Union Politics, 15: 430–​41. Papadopoulos, Y. (2012). On the Embeddedness of Deliberative Systems:  Why Elitist Innovations Matter More. In Deliberative Systems: Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 125–​50. Rawls, J. (1999). The Law of Peoples: With “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Riedy, C. and Herriman, J. (2011). Deliberative Mini-​Publics and the Global Deliberative System: Insights from an Evaluation of World Wide Views on Global Warming in Australia. PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 8: 1–​29. Sabel, C. and Zeitlen, J. (2012). Experimentalist Governance. In The Oxford Handbook of Governance, ed. D. Levi-​Faur (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 169–​83. Scheuerman, W. (2008). Global Governance without Global Government? Habermas on Post-​ national Democracy. Political Theory, 36: 133–​51. Slaughter, A. (2004). A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Smith, G. (2009). Democratic Innovations:  Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Smith, W. (2013). Anticipating Transnational Publics:  On the Use of Mini-​ Publics in Transnational Governance. Politics and Society, 41: 481–​4. Smith, W. and Brassett, J. (2008). Deliberation and Global Governance: Liberal, Cosmopolitan, and Critical Perspectives. Ethics and International Affairs, 22: 69–​92. Stevenson, H. and Dryzek J. S. (2014). Democratizing Global Climate Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

P a r t   VII

R E F L E C T ION S

Chapter 56

Interview w i t h Jü rgen Habe rmas September 2016, translated by Ciaran Cronin

(1) Today many theorists of deliberation stress that deliberative standards function as “regulative ideals” (such as the standard of equal power in the aggregative model of democracy). This implies that the oft-​quoted concept of the “ideal speech situation” is not ultimately an achievable goal in practice. Do you see this as a welcome development? Your question gives me an opportunity to clarify a persistent misunderstanding about the concept of the “ideal speech situation.” Aside from the fact that I have not used this misleading expression since my 1972 essay on “Theories of Truth,” one must take into account the context in which a concept is introduced. At the time I used the expression to refer to the set of pragmatic presuppositions that we must (!) assume as a matter of fact whenever we engage in argumentation about the validity of propositions. As participants in discourse, we “know” that we are not arguing “seriously” if, in such an exchange of reasons, coercion or manipulation is at work, some of those involved are excluded, or relevant opinions and positions are suppressed. We must presuppose that, in the given situation, only the unforced force of the better argument comes into play. This “know how”—​our “knowing how to participate in a rational discourse”—​has a regulating influence on the actual behavior of participants in argumentation even if they are aware that they can only approximately fulfill these pragmatic presuppositions. In view of this counterfactual status, one can say perhaps that the idealizing content of the pragmatic presuppositions of discourse plays the role of a regulative idea for the participants. From the observer perspective one will find that rational discourses rarely occur in pure form. However, this in no way alters the fact that, from the participant perspective, we must assume those presuppositions that are constitutive of the cooperative search for truth. This is shown, among other things, by the fact that we criticize a mere pretense of

872   Jürgen Habermas engaging in discourse or an agreement reached by dubious means by appealing to these very standards. When examining the concept of rational discourse, a philosopher adopts the epistemic stance of a participant and tries to reconstruct the latter’s performative “knowledge of how to conduct a rational discourse,” hence to convert it into explicit “knowledge of what . . .” it means to argue. By contrast, a social scientist dealing with discourses—​for example, in the context of reflections on democratic practices—​is concerned not with rational discourse as such, but rather  approaches these phenomena from an observer’s perspective, describes discourses in space and time—​that is, in their diverse empirical manifestations—​and for this purpose prefers the less sharply defined concept of “deliberation.” But an empirical researcher also has good reasons not to casually disregard the performative knowledge of the participants.1 There are many practices that can function only as long as the participants make certain idealizing assumptions. In a constitutional democracy, for example, citizens will conduct their disputes through the courts only as long as they can assume that they will receive a more or less fair ruling (unperturbed by what the so-​called realists or the advocates of Critical Legal Studies discover about how the motives of judges are determined by interests). Similarly, citizens will participate in political elections only as long as they are able to assume implicitly that they can make their voice heard and that their vote “counts”—​it should even have the same weight as every other vote. These are also idealizing presuppositions. Unlike informal discourses, however, these discursive practices, which are embedded in institutions of the state, can lose their credibility. Voters who feel “left behind” stop going to the polls. Today we are witnessing how non-​voters can often be re-​mobilized by populist movements. Once they understand themselves as “opposition to the system,” they may participate with the intention to obstruct and no longer under the presuppositions of a democratic election. The problematic aspect of institutions such as democratic elections is not the idealizing assumptions that they demand from their participants, but the credibility of the institutions themselves. Democratic elections cease to function properly, for example, when the failure to take seriously the interests of underprivileged nonvoters leads to a vicious circle, or when the infrastructures of public communication disintegrate to such an extent that dulling resentment, instead of well-​informed public opinions, gains the upper hand. In short, deliberative politics is not, for me, a farfetched ideal against which sordid reality must be measured, but an existential presupposition of any democracy that still merits the name. In a different way we also encounter the pragmatic presuppositions for political deliberation when we consider the history of the emergence of the first modern democracies at the end of the eighteenth century. The secularization of state power led to a gap in legitimation for political power, which until then had been able to rely on the religious beliefs of the population. No political order can achieve stability in the long run if it has to rely exclusively on force. Thus, the legitimizing power of the belief that the ruling dynasties were divinely ordained had to be replaced gradually by the legitimacy-​ generating force of the procedure of democratic will-​formation. At a first glance, it seems

Interview   873 pretty mysterious that “legitimacy”—​i.e. generally convincing results—​can arise out of “legality,” that is, from the legal institutionalization of the democratic decision-​making procedure. An essential part of the explanation is provided by an analysis of the meaning of this procedure from the perspective of participating citizens. The procedure owes its persuasive power to an improbable combination of two factors: it requires, on the one hand, the inclusion of all of those affected by the democratic decisions and, on the other, it makes these decisions dependent on the more or less discursive character of the preceding deliberations. Inclusion corresponds to the democratic requirement that all those affected should participate in political will-​formation on an equal footing, while the filter of deliberation takes account of the expectation that solutions to problems should be cognitively correct and viable and grounds the presumption that the results are rationally acceptable. This presumption can be justified in turn with the assumption that, in the deliberations leading up to the decisions, all relevant topics, requisite information and suitable proposals for solutions are addressed with arguments pro and con. Therefore, it is not a historical accident that a bourgeois public sphere developed in tandem with liberal democracy. Also, under the changed conditions of mass democracy, the institutions of parliamentary legislation, competition between political parties, and free political elections have to put down roots in a vibrant public sphere, an active civil society, and a liberal political culture. Without this social context, the essential deliberative presuppositions for democratic legitimation of rule lack any support in reality. (2a) Many theorists of deliberation object that consensus need not be the goal of a successful process of deliberation; deliberation can lead instead to the clarification of preferences. Have you reconsidered the orientation to reaching understanding as a condition for deliberative influence? Let me make the following point clear in advance: the assumption that political discourses are also oriented to the goal of reaching an agreement in no way implies an idealistic conception of the democratic process as a peaceful university seminar. On the contrary, it is safe to assume that it is precisely the participants’ orientation to the truth or rightness of their beliefs that first adds fuel to the fire of political disputes and lends them a polemical character. To argue is to contradict. But it is only in virtue of the right—​and, indeed, by being encouraged—​to say “no” to one other that the epistemic potential of language develops without which we could not learn from each other. And this is the point of deliberative politics: that we improve our beliefs in political disputes and thereby approach the correct solution to problems. This presupposes, of course, that the political process has an epistemic dimension in the first place . . . (2b) Do you think that the clarification of preferences represents an equally valid goal of deliberation? And can deliberation also produce results that fall short of the ideal of consensus (such as compromises or win-​win situations)?

874   Jürgen Habermas Clarifying preferences is, of course, the first step in every political discourse; at the same time, discourses ground the expectation that the parties should examine their initial preferences in the course of deliberation and also change them in the light of better reasons. This condition enables us to distinguish deliberative opinion-​and will-​ formation from compromises. Discourses have an epistemic dimension because they create room for arguments to exert their preference-​changing force, whereas compromises, which are negotiated between power-​wielding partners in the currency of reciprocal concessions or shared benefits, leave existing preferences unaffected. Both discourses and bargaining are legitimate ways of reaching political agreements. One must pay attention to the kind of issue at stake in order to detect whether an agreement should be sought along the epistemic paths of discourse or via the route of negotiation. The crucial question, however, is what kind of reasons we think are sufficiently forceful to bring about rationally motivated changes in preferences. The answer depends on philosophical background assumptions that empirical political scientists who study deliberative politics also have to clarify. Empiricists defend a non-​cognitivist conception of practical reason that is supposed to be limited to the faculty of rational choice and to strategic decisions. According to this conception, one’s preferences can be influenced exclusively by better information about scopes for action and risks and by more reliable calculations of the consequences of possible alternative courses of action; thus preferences cannot be changed by taking the preferences of other participants into consideration. This restrictive view is counterintuitive, because the reasons in terms of which we argue about the rightness of binding norms of action or about which values are preferable carry no less epistemic weight in the rationally motivated formation of preferences than does information about facts. Political discourses deal not only with the truth of descriptive propositions but also with validity claims that we associate with normative and evaluative propositions. Thus the justice of a legal norm can be examined from the moral point of view of whether, with regard to a matter in need of regulation, it is “equally good” for all concerned; here a principle of universalization comes into play. The members of a political community can, furthermore, examine a decision between competing values from the standpoint of the preferability of these values in the light of the ethos of the community’s shared form of life. Members are prepared to subordinate their preferences to such an ethos. By contrast, preferences as such are not in need of justification, because such first-​person statements are authorized by each individual’s privileged access to their own desires. They deserve equal consideration; but neither in moral, in legal nor in ethical discourses can competing preferences ultimately claim to be accorded equal weight. This is the case only if a matter must be settled by bargaining. Problems of justice are understood as a cognitive task, whereas decisions concerning the priority of some values over others can be regarded as the partially cognitive and partially volitional task of a process of rationally motivated will-​formation. In both cases, the participants’ orientation to reaching an agreement follows from the meaning of the respective issues. Unlike preferences, norms and values never concern only a

Interview   875 single person. Presupposing such an epistemic understanding of discourses, the required orientation of participants toward consensus naturally does not mean that those involved are likely to have the unrealistic expectation that they will actually achieve a consensus on political questions. Practical discourses require their participants to show an improbable willingness to adopt each other’s perspectives and to orient themselves to generalizable interests or shared values. After all, this is why the democratic process connects deliberations subject to time constraints with majority decisions. The majority rule (whether it is a question of a simple or a qualified majority) can be justified in turn by the discursive character of opinion-​formation. Assuming that the presumption of rationally acceptable results is justified and the decision is reversible, each outvoted minority, with a view to a resumption of discourse, can subject itself to the will of the majority without having to abandon its own position. (3a) The theory of communicative action assumes that strategic intentions undermine the deliberative orientation to reaching understanding. In other words, truly deliberative actors must bring an orientation to reaching understanding to discourse. In politics, however, strategic orientations of actors play a central role, which raises the question whether the deliberative model can have any relevance in political situations. Well, the mass of political decisions are, of course, the result of compromises. But that does not uncouple compromises from discourses. First, we can expect the results to be fair (a) only if compromises are reached in accordance with rules that guarantee fairness; and (b) the fairness of these rules can be justified only in discursive terms. Secondly, modern democracies associate popular sovereignty with the rule of law, which means that compromise formation takes place within the framework of constitutional norms. Such a constitutional framework tends to connect the search for compromises with questions of political justice and the realization of values that enjoy political priority. And because political deliberation acquires an epistemic meaning with these issues, deliberation cannot be confined from the outset to compromises over the distribution of goods between self-​interested negotiation partners. Interesting hybrid forms exist and have been analyzed by Mark E. Warren and Jane Mansbridge, with their co-​authors. These authors discuss, among others, the example of climate policy legislation that makes use of tradable emission credits.2 Although in this example a compromise is reached between the climate policy objectives of emission control and the interests of the affected companies, this compromise also touches on questions of justice because it takes into account a policy goal that had already been adopted—​namely, putting a stop to global climate change in the long run in the general interest of citizens and future generations. (3b) In political theory, the opposition between strategic and communicative action has opened the door for agonistic theories (e.g. that of Chantal Mouffe) that claim to be “more political” than deliberative theory.

876   Jürgen Habermas Theories that start from a certain concept of “the” political fall short, regardless of whether they defend an agonistic concept of political struggle, a systemic concept of administratively steered power, or a communicative concept of interactively generated power. If we look back at the evolutionary origins of state formation, it is evident that political power is co-​original with state-​sanctioned laws. As a result, those early societies acquired the reflexive ability to exercise intentional effects on their own conditions of life through collectively binding decisions. Therefore, the belief of subjects in the legitimacy of political power based on the sacred complex was originally a condition for the stability of existing political systems, although, since the “axial” period (from about the eighth to the third century bc3), more exacting standards of legitimacy became a source of criticism of political power as well. Following the secularization of state power in the modern era, finally, democratically generated constitutions took over from religion this role of providing legitimacy. Since then, the widespread background consensus on constitutional principles differs from the received religious forms of legitimacy in virtue of being “invented” in a democratic way—​hence, also through the deliberative exchange of arguments—​during the founding period. The Federalist Papers testify to a deliberative mode of constitution-​making. Such a background consensus must tacitly renew itself in every generation, for otherwise democracies would not endure. The later generations must be able to understand the reasons that speak for their political system. That sounds less idealistic once one understands that democratic constitutions put a simple intuition into effect: the addressees of laws that are supposed to guarantee rights of equal value to all citizens equally must be able to understand themselves simultaneously as authors of these laws. For, only as co-​legislators, hence only through participation in democratic elections and the preceding opinion and will-​forming, can citizens clarify, in the legislative process, the respects in which legal equality is desired in each case. The cohesion of a democratic polity is founded on this basic idea. At the same time it is also a source of persistent criticism and unrest, because the democratic constitution can be understood as the progressive exhaustion of the normative content of the established basic rights. However, the non-​antagonistic core of this background consensus does not mean that the constitution organizes the democratic process as a procedure that is continuously oriented to consensus—​far from it. This thoroughly misleading conception of deliberative politics could come to mind only by isolating the deliberative element of opinion-​ and will-​formation from the whole of the democratic process as it evolves through the various stages of a democratic system. This mistaken view has recently been refuted with great clarity by Robert E. Goodin.4 Personally, I first came upon the political role of deliberation in the context of my studies on the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). But it was only following the Theory of Communicative Action (1982) that I was able, in the Tanner Lectures (1986), to use my concept of “rational discourse” to solve Max Weber’s paradox of the emergence of legitimacy from legality. Out of this developed the discourse theory of the constitutional state (1992), which traces the role of deliberative politics within the framework of a complex state organization—​and understands deliberative politics as the core concept for an integration of popular sovereignty

Interview   877 with the rule of law. Finally, the wide-​ranging empirical studies on deliberative democracy that have been conducted since the 1990s led me to examine once again the interplay of institutionalized discourses and mass communication within the constitutional framework (2006).5 In that last contribution to our field of inquiry, I outline the different arenas of political communication within the constitutional state in which the deliberative element in each case assumes a different form and performs a different function for the system as a whole. One must begin with the different functions that political communication is supposed to perform in different ways in different arenas. It contributes at each level to a democratic process that as a whole is filtered through deliberation. Then the interesting differences in the rationality requirements that are functionally necessary in the different arenas become apparent. These requirements become more and more lax with the levels of political communication. Let us begin with the comparatively high rational requirements of legally institutionalized discourses within the courts and parliamentary bodies and then follow the more and more relaxed flows of communication, the informal discourses within the governmental and administrative agencies, the internal discussions within the political parties, up to the debates between political actors in the public sphere directed to a diffuse audience—​election campaigns, struggles within civil society, and, in general, the political mass communication conveyed by the media. For example, the agonistic character of election campaigns, conflicts between opposing political parties, and confrontations between protest movements and the establishment must be located correctly within the matrix of various arenas and levels of political communication. But that is possible only if one recognizes, for example, that the functional contribution of political mass communication to an, on the whole, deliberative process of opinion-​and will-​formation consists only in generating competing public opinions on topics relevant for decision-​making and in providing sufficient information for evaluating competing platforms. Only on this basis are informed and considered decisions in the voting booth possible. From functional points of view, an orientation to consensus is required only in the deliberations of those institutions in which legally binding decisions are made (and there, of course, only in matters and interpretations of facts and in the decisions that touch on value conflicts and questions of justice, and therefore exhibit epistemic features). The informal communication within the wider public sphere can also withstand robust protests or wild forms of conflict, for their contribution is limited to mobilizing the relevant themes, information and arguments. Decisions are taken elsewhere. Nothing more may be needed to spark an antagonistic dynamic within the public sphere than the conflict-​generating orientation to truth that citizens associate with their expressions of political opinions. But that also tends to be functional for generating competing public opinions. (4) In this context, how do you assess the thesis which is often defended that good and desirable deliberation should include not only rational reasons (or justifications) but also narratives, emotions, and rhetoric? What is your opinion of this development?

878   Jürgen Habermas Here again one must view the picture as a whole. The form of mass communication from which the politically relevant public opinions are supposed to emerge is indeed fueled for the most part by inputs from the side of the government, the political parties, and interest groups, which are then processed by the media. As a general rule, civil society actors have a tough time when faced with the political parties and the experts, PR agencies, and lobbies of various functional systems. On the other hand, civil society is the only society-​wide sounding-​board for the problems and impositions caused by malfunctioning subsystems that are troubling their respective clients or “consumers,” as it were. For politics, therefore, the communicative network of civil society plays the role of a kind of early warning system that registers critical experiences from private areas of life, processes them into voices of protest, and feeds them into the political public sphere. Since the social movements into which protest may condense are not the norm, the unedited “offstage” voices from civil society, when faced with the well-​formulated pronouncements of the other political actors, can gain a hearing more readily the more spontaneously they are expressed. Narratives have an intelligible propositional content, as do the passions and desires to which they give expression; and a forceful rhetoric is still among the more conventional means that a theme needs on the long path it has to travel in order to attract sufficient media attention and find its way onto the agenda of some influential agency. Spectacular, even transgressive, actions can also facilitate messages that are intended to “arrive” in the political system. (5) Some theorists of deliberation (in particular, Jane Mansbridge 6) emphasize, in addition, that self-​interest should also be part of deliberation (in addition to considerations of the common good). However, they stress that individual interests are legitimate only when restricted by principles of fairness; nevertheless, the argument goes, individual interests are an essential aspect of desirable deliberation. How do you assess this argument? For me, this is self-​evident. Even moral discourse must start from the interests of the individual parties to the conflict before one can ask from the perspective of justice what is in the equal interest of all affected. To be sure, no democratic polity can function properly when the citizens in their role as national citizens and co-​legislators exclusively follow their own interests. John Rawls rightly associates the “public use of reason” with the requirement to exhibit certain political virtues, especially that of civility. On the other hand, one must also insist against Rousseau that the democratic state can make only modest demands on its citizens as regards taking their orientation from the common good. (6) How tightly is deliberative democracy integrated into a modern liberal form of political culture? In other words: Can deliberation function at the global level—​and, if so, would you accept that this also calls for adjustments of deliberative standards to different cultures?

Interview   879 If I may be permitted to make a personal remark on this question, my adult political life coincides with the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Thus I was able to witness that a country, which had already had one and a half centuries to accustom itself to the practice of the rule of law, needed four decades following the Nazi regime for the political mentality of the population to become halfway liberal, and that was under favorable economic conditions. This gives you some idea of how difficult similar learning processes must be in countries that are disadvantaged in these respects and are marked by different historical experiences and very different cultures. We must be on our guard against overexuberant notions that democracy can be simply exported without further ado, whether peacefully or by military force. Liberal democracy is such a demanding and fragile form of government because it can be realized only in and through the heads of its citizens. This does not mean, on the other hand, that “the West,” if I may speak in such terms, should relativize at the international level the claim to universality it raises for principles of the democratic rule of law. What is at stake in this discussion are rational principles, not contestable values. The idle talk about “our values,” which supposedly have to be defended against the values of other cultures, is precisely what polarizes the international community. As a philosopher, I defend the view that “we” have good reasons in intercultural discourse to defend the claim to universal validity for human rights as the moral foundations for constitutional democracy. However, this is subject to the condition that “we” participate in such discourses with a willingness to learn and as one party among others. Willingness to learn is called for if for no other reason than that the brutal violent history of Western imperialism has taught us that we have every reason to let our eyes be opened by other cultures concerning the blind spots in our interpretation and application of human rights. But even the presumptive universal validity of the principles now enshrined in the UN Charter does not mean that we may conduct crusades to disseminate liberal democracy. Obviously, a democratic system imposed by paternalistic means cannot achieve long-​term stability. On the other hand, I also consider the so-​called second-​best solution of “adapting” principles to the values and circumstance of a foreign culture to be wrong. For the well-​meaning “political” way of dealing with principles of political justice—​as recommended, for example, by John Rawls in The Law of Peoples—​also necessitates a dubious paternalistic attitude toward other civilizations. (7) In some social and political situations, deliberative ideals (such as argumentative rationality or respect) are difficult to implement—​for example, under conditions of deep religious or ethnic divisions or when participants do not trust each other. What role, if any, can deliberative theory play in such situations? Perhaps we should first recall that, in the course of the pluralization of our societies, the burden of social integration tends to shift in the long run from the level of local forms of

880   Jürgen Habermas life and national cultures to that of political integration among citizens managed by the state. Among the major causes for this shift are the accelerated changes in living conditions induced by technology, the trend toward industrialization, urbanization, etc. and, above all, by increasing immigration from foreign countries and cultures. Aside from the actually shared language(s) in society, what all citizens of a political community are expected to share crystallizes increasingly around citizenship status. Therefore, the political culture can no longer coincide with the traditional majority culture. Even in immigration societies like the United States, this differentiation process is experienced as painful: everywhere it prompts populist reactions—​not only, but especially, among disadvantaged members of societies marked by growing disparities of education, income, and wealth across the social scale. An especially heavy burden is, for example, in religious divisions resulting from immigration by people from Islamic countries into European countries. On the one hand, the liberal state that guarantees freedom of religion can go a long way toward accommodating the minorities by granting religious and cultural rights. On the other hand, however, it must not make questionable compromises; it must require a minority to practice its cultural way of life and its religion only within the framework of basic rights that are equally valid for everyone. These conflicts can be, at best, alleviated with the legislative and bureaucratic means at the disposal of the state; but they can be resolved only through long-​term acculturation and socialization. You ask about the mediating role of deliberative politics. It is, of course, helpful when the various integration conflicts are thematized in the wider public domain in sympathetic ways and, above all, when the fears and uncertainties fueled by populist movements are defused. The bare political fact that these problems are becoming a topic of public debate is, of course, almost more important than the arguments themselves; in the first instance, it is the way in which these problems are dealt with that initially opens people’s eyes for each other and then may foster mutual respect between self-​enclosed groups—​the gentle style of mutual understanding is the message. As a general rule, there is indeed a close connection between deliberation as a form of communication and mutual respect between participants in argumentation. John Rawls conceives of the mutual respect called for by the public use of reason as part of the political virtue of civility. This form of respect is directed to the person of another who should be recognized as an equal citizen; in connection with the public use of reason, respect includes the willingness to justify one’s political opinion to the other person—​that is, to engage in discourse with them. Admittedly, this is only a necessary condition for the more far-​reaching expectation that, in the course of the discourse, one should also adopt the perspectives of the other and project oneself into their situation. This sociocognitive achievement is not relevant for disputes over facts, because factual disputes are purely a matter of evaluating arguments. But practical discourses involve disagreements over interests whose relative weights can be evaluated only from the perspective of the lifeworlds of the other persons involved. Although this reciprocal perspective-​taking, which is necessary in order to consider a conflict from the moral point of view, has a purely

Interview   881 cognitive function, the willingness even to engage in this strenuous operation across wide cultural distances is the real obstacle. The need to cross this motivational threshold explains the stubbornness of the conflicts you address—​but also, more generally, the fact that empirical and theoretical issues are easier to resolve consensually than practical conflicts. (8) If I may conclude by posing a somewhat provocative question: Do you agree that with Between Facts and Norms you abandoned the terrain of critical theory? After all, Between Facts and Norms strongly emphasizes the functioning of the liberal-​democratic state, even though this is also a liberal-​capitalist state. In my theoretical work I  remain committed to the tradition founded by Max Horkheimer and, of course, to my teacher Theodor W. Adorno. The thought of the older generation of critical theorists who were expelled from Germany was dominated by the experiences of fascism and Stalinism. It is only since the Second World War that attempts to tame capitalism through the welfare state have prevailed for the time being, at least in a rather small region of the world. These in retrospect somewhat gilded decades—​Eric Hobsbawm spoke half-​ironically of the “Golden Age”—​have nevertheless shown what the balanced implementation of both elements, the rule of law and democracy can achieve—​namely, the political exploitation of a highly productive economic system to implement the normative content of constitutional democracies. In Between Facts and Norms I tried to reconstruct this content. Liberal rights do not fall from the sky. Citizens involved in democratic will-​formation on a basis of equality first have to be in the lucky position to understand themselves as the authors of the rights that they grant each other as members of an association of free and equal individuals. In the light of this reconstruction one can discern all the more clearly the erosion of democracy that has been progressing ever further since politics, in the politically promoted process of economic globalization, more or less abdicated before the systemic pressure of deregulated markets. From this perspective, the theory of democracy and the critique of capitalism belong together. I did not invent the term “post-​democracy.” But it is the proper term to describe the political impact on society of the global implementation of neoliberal policies.

Notes 1. On this, see D. Gaus, “Discourse Theory’s Claim: Reconstructing the Epistemic Meaning of Democracy as a Deliberative System,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 42 (2016): 503–​25. 2. M.  E. Warren and J.  Mansbridge with A.  Bächtiger, M.  A. Cameron, S.  Chambers, J.  Ferejohn, A.  Jacobs, J.  Knight, D.  Naurin, M.  Schwartzberg, Y.  Tamir, D.  Thompson, and M. Williams, “Deliberative Negotiation,” in Negotiating Agreement in Politics: Report of the Task Force on Negotiating Agreement in Politics, ed. J. Mansbridge and C. J. Martin (Washington, DC: American Political Science Association, 2013), 86–​120, here 98–​9.

882   Jürgen Habermas 3. K. Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, trans. M. Bullock (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953). 4. R. E. Goodin, this volume, Chapter 57. 5. J.  Habermas, “Political Communication in Media Society:  Does Democracy Still Have an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on Empirical Research,” in Europe: The Faltering Project, trans. C. Cronin (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 138–​83. 6. J. Mansbridge with J. Bohman, S. Chambers, D. Estlund, A. Føllesdal, A. Fung, C. Lafont, B. Manin, and J. L. Martí, “The Place of Self-​Interest and the Role of Power in Deliberative Democracy,” Journal of Political Philosophy, 18 (2010): 64–​100.

Chapter 57

If Deliberat i on I s Ev ery thing , Maybe It’s Not h i ng Robert E. Goodin

Aaron Wildavsky (1973), no fan of social planning, once quipped, “If planning is everything, maybe it’s nothing.” I count myself a friend of deliberative democracy, and it is in an entirely friendly spirit that I address an analogous concern with it.1 In developing any new theory—​and all the more so in launching a new political movement, toward which deliberative democracy sometimes seems to aspire (Stevenson and Dryzek 2014, 12; Parkinson 2012, 158)—​it is always best to be as accommodating as possible. At some point, however, you can go too far in diluting the message, and you lose what used to be distinctive about the position that you set out to advance. Complaints about “conceptual stretching” can easily sound like exercises in essentialism, arguments over what deliberative democracy “really means” (Sartori 1970; Steiner 2008). But Humpty Dumpty was right—​you can let words mean whatever you want, just so long you make as your meaning clear (Carroll 1872, ­chapter 6). My concerns are normative, not merely linguistic. Just as adding endless epicycles can turn an empirical theory into a “degenerative research program” (Lakatos 1970; Goodin and Dryzek 1980; Mutz 2008, 552), so too can embracing virtually everything and anything as “deliberatively democratic” blunt the theory’s prescriptive force. Normative theories are supposed to be action guiding, and theories that point in virtually every direction provide us with no clear guidance. We cannot simply assume that all the subsequent stretching of the original deliberative democratic vision has necessarily been progressive, as the term as “evolution” (Mansbridge 2015, 35 ff.) might seem to suggest. Here I shall suggest evaluative standards growing out of our normative reasons for taking an interest in deliberative democracy in the first place, according to which some of the stretches do indeed make the theory increasingly fit for normative purpose while others make it less so.

884   Robert E. Goodin After a brief reprise of the original deliberative democratic vision, in both its liberal Rawlsian and Habermasian critical-​theoretic modes, I shall catalogue a few of the more striking ways in which that original vision has subsequently been stretched. I shall go on to diagnose reasons for those stretches and suggest why some may be more normatively attractive than others. I shall then explore how the deliberative system approach might offer opportunities for doing some internal stretching while retaining broadly the same shape overall.

The Original Visions I begin with two canonical statements of what deliberative democracy was originally supposed to be. The first, from Joshua Cohen, is probably the most systematic statement of the ideal from within the liberal Rawlsian tradition.2 On Cohen’s (1989, 22–​3) account, an “ideal deliberative procedure” has the following four attributes: I1. Ideal deliberation is free in that it satisfies two conditions. First, the participants regard themselves as bound only by the results of their deliberation and by the preconditions for that deliberation. Their consideration of proposals is not constrained by the authority of prior norms or requirements. Second, the participants suppose that . . . the fact that a certain decision is arrived at through their deliberation [is] a sufficient reason for complying with it. I2. Deliberation is reasoned in that the parties to it are required to state their reasons for advancing proposals . . . , with the expectation that those reasons (and not, for example, their power) will settle the fate of the proposal. . . . The deliberative conception emphasizes that collective choices should be made in a deliberative way, and not only that those choices should have a desirable fit with the preferences of citizens. I3. In ideal deliberation parties are both formally and substantively equal. . . . Everyone with the deliberative capacities has equal standing at each stage of the deliberative process. Each can put issues on the agenda, propose solutions, and offer reasons in support of or in criticism of proposals. And each has an equal voice in the decision. The participants are substantively equal in that the existing distribution of power and resources does not shape their chances to contribute to deliberation, nor does that distribution play an authoritative role in their deliberation. The participants in the deliberative procedure do not regard themselves as bound by the existing system of rights, except in so far as that system establishes the framework of free deliberation among equals. Instead they regard that system as a potential object of their deliberative judgment. I4. Finally, ideal deliberation aims to arrive at a rationally motivated consensus—​to find reasons that are persuasive to all who are committed to acting on the results of a free and reasoned assessment of alternatives by equals. Even under ideal circumstances there is no promise that consensual reasons will be forthcoming. If they are

If Deliberation is Everything, Maybe It’s Nothing    885 not, then deliberation concludes with voting, subject to some form of majority rule. The fact that it may so conclude does not, however, eliminate the distinction between deliberative forms of collective choice and forms that aggregate non-​deliberative preferences. . . . [T]‌he results of voting among those who are committed to finding reasons that are persuasive to all are likely to differ from the results of an aggregation that proceeds in the absence of this commitment.

That is the liberal Rawlsian version of the original vision. Deliberative democracy also, of course, has strong roots in the critical theory tradition represented by Habermas. Different though those background theories may be, the practical upshot is pretty similar on all key points.3 The closest critical-​theory equivalent to Cohen’s axiomization of Rawlsian liberalism are the “rules of discourse ethics” which Steenbergen et al. (2003, 25–​6) adduce from Habermas in the course of constructing their Deliberative Quality Index. 4 Here is their list: First, there should be open participation. Every competent individual should be free to take part in the discourse. . . . [E]‌veryone should be allowed to introduce any assertion into the debate. . . . No one should be prevented from exercising these rights due to internal or external coercion. . . . Second, fruitful discourse requires the justification of assertions. . . That is, assertions should be introduced and critically assessed through “the orderly exchange of information and reasons between parties.” . . . Third, the participants in the discourse should consider the common good. . . .  This does not mean that self-​interest should be excluded from argumentation. However, someone using self-​interest must demonstrate that it is compatible with or contributes to the common good. Fourth, the participants in a discourse should treat each other with respect. . . . Fifth, . . . “ideal deliberation aims to arrive at a rationally motivated consensus” [although] consensus is merely an aim and not an absolute necessity.  . . .  [emphasis added]. [Sixth], . . . discourse ethics requires authenticity, which is the absence of deception in expressing intentions [emphasis added].

The two lists map onto one another almost perfectly. Steenbergen et al.’s first point corresponds to Cohen’s first and third. Their second points are the essentially the same. Steenbergen et al.’s fifth point is Cohen’s fourth. Steenbergen et al.’s third, fourth, and sixth points have no direct counterparts on Cohen’s list. Still, respectful and sincere dealing with one another (points four and six respectively) are surely mandated as strongly by Rawlsian liberalism as by Habermasian critical theory. And many strands of liberalism would also insist (with point three) that, when deliberating on public affairs, we should be guided by considerations of the common good. There was, in short, broad

886   Robert E. Goodin consensus across the two principal traditions that gave rise to the original vision of deliberative democracy.

Stretches John Dryzek begins his 2000 book, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond, with a characterization of deliberative democracy that is broadly in the spirit of those original visions.5 But by the time Dryzek wrote, the original visions had come under attack from various quarters, leading Dryzek (and many others) in revisionary directions.6 “Should deliberation be restricted to rational arguments, or admit other kinds of communication?” is a question put firmly on the table by powerful challenges to what Iris Marion Young and others saw as the hyper-​rationalism and elitism of the original model.7 Dryzek (2000, 167; see similarly 2010, c­ hapter  4) responds by accepting the need to allow “testimony or storytelling and greeting” (all “readily incorporated into discursive democracy”) and “rhetoric” (which “plays an important role in deliberating across difference”).8 His endorsement of those extra-​rational forms of communication is hardly unconditional.9 Still, the original vision of deliberation as consisting essentially in an “exchange of reasons” is thereby abandoned.10 For a second example, consider the original vision of the complete absence of coercive power and absolute equality among all participants in the deliberative process. That is wildly unrealistic, pretty much everyone agrees. “Enough of deliberation: politics is about interests and power,” some snort (Shapiro 1999; see also Mouffe 1999). Even dedicated deliberative democrats concede that “a complete absence of power in deliberation is . . . unachievable” (Mansbridge 2015, 37).11 In Iris Marion Young’s (2000, 35) sympathetic reprise, “Ideal processes of deliberative democracy” presuppose that “all potentially affected persons are included in the discussions, and all are able to speak freely and criticize, under circumstances where no one is in a position to threaten or coerce others into accepting their proposals.” But as Young goes on to say, “no existing democracy is as just as that.” Some measure of equality may be achieved by opening up the deliberative process to contributions beyond well-​crafted rational arguments, as already discussed. But inequalities in the capacity to tell a good, compelling story or to craft a persuasive rhetorical appeal will still remain (Mansbridge 2015, 36–​7). From a democratic egalitarian perspective, such inequalities among deliberators in their persuasive power should pose as much of a concern for deliberative democrats as do inequalities in voting power for those relying on aggregative mechanisms of democracy. As regards coercive (as opposed to merely persuasive) power, the most that most deliberative democrats hope for nowadays is equalizing such power—​either across separate spheres (Dryzek 2000, 173) or through countervailing power (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 82–​3, 92; Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2013, 91–​2)—​rather than eliminating it altogether.

If Deliberation is Everything, Maybe It’s Nothing    887 For a third example, the complete openness that characterized the original vision of deliberative democracy has been abandoned as not always desirable. Closed-​door deliberations are defended as allowing deliberators to speak together more freely, whether those deliberators are members of oppressed groups or legislators.12 Others defend them on the grounds that behind closed doors representatives may orient themselves toward seeking the common good, whereas in public they would feel they had to promote the private interests of their constituents.13 A fourth example concerns consensus. While conceding that a literal consensus is almost certainly impossible, the original deliberative democrats nonetheless insisted that deliberation should at least aspire to consensus.14 Rejecting that view, other theorists have retorted that “incompletely theorized agreements” are all we need—​or indeed should want—​for a great many purposes (Sunstein 1995; 1999; Mansbridge et al. 2010, 70–​1). Enthusiastically embracing that view, Dryzek (2000, 170) writes, “In a pluralistic world, consensus is unattainable, unnecessary, and undesirable. More feasible and attractive are workable agreements in which participants agree on a course of action, but for different reasons” (see similarly Dryzek 2009, 1391; Young 2000, 44 and ­chapter 3).15 The original deliberative democratic vision was of a consensus that is “rationally motivated” and shaped by the exchange of reasons. That now goes out the window, to be replaced by a pragmatic agreement on “what to do” without any agreement on “why.” You agree to the course of action for your reasons, and I for mine, end of story; the brute fact that we all agree on what to do suffices for an “incompletely theorized agreement.” But if agreement on “why” is not needed, it is unclear what purpose is served by telling one another our reasons at all.16 By exchanging reasons over the course of a deliberation each can come better to understand and appreciate the other’s position, to be sure. For Young (1997, 65–​9; 2000, ­chapter 3) that is the point of “deliberating across differences.” Discussing those differences might, just occasionally, lead to the discovery of pockets of agreement of which disputants were previously unaware.17 In any case, getting ex-​combatants in Columbia’s civil war deliberating together might perform the useful service of helping to humanize former opponents in the eyes of one another (Jaramillo and Steiner 2014; Steiner 2016; see similarly: O’Flynn 2006; Luskin et al. 2014). Nevertheless, understanding the sources of our disagreement—​simply “clarifying conflict” (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 93), if that is all deliberation ends up doing18—​stops well short of the original aspiration of a genuine meeting of minds.19 Here is a fifth example of stretching, related to the fourth. The original vision depicted democratic deliberations as an essentially cooperative venture.20 Each party comes to the deliberation with his own distinctive perspective, to be sure;21 yet their aim in joining the deliberation is to seek common ground with the others. That is why some early deliberative democrats put a strong norm of reciprocity at the heart of deliberation (Guttman and Thompson 1996). In the title of Mansbridge’s (1980) early book, the hope was to move “beyond adversary democracy.” But deliberative democrats have increasingly come to see disputation and contestation, rather than cooperation, as lying at the

888   Robert E. Goodin heart of deliberative democracy (Dryzek 2000; Manin 2004; Mansbridge et al. 2010, 69; Curato, Niemeyer, and Dryzek 2013). Here is a sixth and final stretch. The original vision depicted democratic deliberations as being governed by an overriding rule of “mutual respect” among those participating in the deliberations. But some such as Stanley Fish (1999) insist that “mutual respect is a device of exclusion.” Not all agree (Mansbridge 2015, 35, 43). But John Dryzek (2000, 168–​9) certainly does, writing: “discursive democracy is not an exclusive gentlemen’s club”; it must be open to “prejudiced, racist, sectarian” talk and, indeed, to outright “incivility.”22 The long and the short of it is just this. The original vision of democratic deliberation was that of a cooperative quest for a rationally motivated consensus based on the respectful exchange of reasons among free and equal participants. Subsequent stretching has extended the concept of deliberative democracy far beyond that—​all the way to what looks more like a fractious struggle to strike a deal underwritten more by pragmatism than reason among people who are not particularly free or equal in their power and influence. That is a long way from where we started, to say the least. Is it movement in the right direction? Should we really be prepared to consider everything within that wide rubric as an equally acceptable form of deliberative democracy?

Reasons for Stretches, and Why Some Are Better Than Others Stepping back from all that detail, I shall now isolate three reasons for stretching the concept of deliberative democracy in all of these ways. Often those reasons will point in opposing directions. Just occasionally, however, they all recommend stretching in the same direction. Stretches that are commended by all those reasons (or at least commended by some and contradicted by none) are unproblematic, for precisely that reason, in a way that others are not. The reasons for stretching the concept of deliberative democracy in the ways just described can be seen as falling into three broad categories. We might stretch the original vision to make deliberative democracy (1) more democratic, (2) more deliberative, or (3) more realistic.23 The principal reason given for moving beyond polite reason-​giving and permitting more disruptive forms of communication, for example, is to open the “gentlemen’s club” up to a wider range of people not schooled in the formal arts of argumentation (Sanders 1997; Young 2000, ­chapter 2; Dryzek 2000, ­chapter 3). The aim of stretching the original vision in that way is to make deliberative democracy more inclusive—​more democratic. Another reason for opening deliberative democracy up to those different sorts of inputs is to get onto the table information that would not otherwise be available to

If Deliberation is Everything, Maybe It’s Nothing    889 deliberators.24 (Or it might just be a way of inducing deliberators to pay attention to some unpleasant facts that they might otherwise have ignored: which is to say, to get the facts meaningfully onto the table.25) Providing relevant information is also a major reason for opening deliberative democracy up to testimony about one’s own interests: how alternative courses of action will impact on people is something deliberators need to know when deciding what is best for the group as a whole (Mansbridge et al. 2010, 73). The aim of stretching the original vision in these ways is to make deliberative democracy better informed—​and in that sense more deliberative. The third reason for stretching the original vision of deliberative democracy in ways surveyed above is to make the model more realistic, more applicable to the real world. Literal consensus among any large group of people is well nigh impossible; deliberative democracy must to learn to live without it.26 Power differentials among people are well nigh inevitable; deliberative democracy has to learn to live with them. And so on. Now, sometimes those three considerations are in tension with one another.27 Sometimes we can make our model of deliberative democracy more democratic only by making it less deliberative.28 Allowing intemperate, disrespectful interventions that are high on emotion but low on information may make the model more democratic, insofar as it opens the process to individuals and whole groups who characteristically incline toward such interventions. But insofar as opening deliberative democracy to such interventions turns reasoned discussions into shouting matches in which nobody listens to what the other is saying, deliberative democracy becomes less deliberative as a result (Mutz 2006). Or, again, many of the mechanisms that are most realistically employed to enhance the deliberativeness of decisions make them less democratic and more elitist, by shifting power to informal specialized networks (nationally or transnationally) or judicial bodies or administrative agencies in the increasingly “regulatory state” (Papadopoulos 2012). Or, yet again, accepting the reality of power imbalances and the inevitability that they will coercively impact upon the political process makes deliberative democracy more realistic, but less deliberative and less democratic as well. Ideally, we would like our model of deliberative democracy to be, at one and the same time, (1) deliberative, (2) democratic, and (3) realistic. When those desiderata are in tension with one another, we have to trade off one for another. And in so doing, we stretch the vision out of its original shape, in one direction or another. How much stretching is “too much” is a matter for judgment, and depends on just how heavily you weigh each of those three considerations compared to one another. Furthermore, your trade-​off function will probably not be a linear one: for most goods, and most political principles likewise, our indifference curves are convex to the origin (Barry 1965, 3–​8; Barry and Rae 1975); and we will probably be willing to pay a higher price in terms of democratic inclusiveness for the first little bit of deliberative quality than we would if deliberative quality is already pretty high. But where the stretching is of this form, there is always some price to be paid in terms of one of the desiderata in order to secure gains in terms of another. Just occasionally, however, stretching might take another form. Just occasionally, the same extension of the original vision will make deliberative democracy more

890   Robert E. Goodin deliberative, more democratic, and more realistic, at one and the same time. Arguably, accepting different modes of communication—​greetings, story telling, rhetoric, limited emotional outbursts, and such like, in addition to rational argumentation—​is a case in point. It is inclusive of more different types of people with different presentational styles, and it is in that sense more democratic. Different sorts of information are conveyed by those different modes of communication, each after its own peculiar fashion—​and that richer information base improves the deliberativeness of the process as a whole.29 Finally, opening the model of deliberative democracy to that wider range of presentational styles makes it more realistic, given the prevalence of just such diversity in real world discussions.

Deliberative Systems to the Rescue? Realism requires, above all, recognizing that deliberative democracy, understood as “talk-​centric democracy” (Chambers 2003, 308), cannot be directly instantiated among any large body of people. To see why, just recall Dahl’s (1970, 67–​8) old back-​of-​the-​ envelope calculation: “if an association were to make one decision a day, allow ten hours a day for discussion, and permit each member just ten minutes . . . then the association could not have more than sixty members.” Anyone trying to instantiate deliberative democratic ideals must find some way of accommodating that stark reality. Various different ways have been suggested.30 But most involve embedding deliberative elements in some larger political system. That is what Habermas (1996, 185) did with his “two-​track model,” “in which institutionalized opinion-​and will-​formation” within legislative bodies “is linked with informal opinion building in culturally mobilized public spheres.” Dryzek’s (2009, 1385–​6) model of the deliberative system elaborates that model, with inclusive and authentic opinion formation in public space generating messages that are transmitted to empowered space that makes decisive, consequential decisions for which, via a feedback loop, those in empowered space can be held accountable back in public space.31 From a normative perspective, the idea behind focusing on deliberative systems with many different components is that the strengths of some might compensate for the failures of others (Goodin 2008; Mansbridge et al. 2012, 3, 22; Mansbridge 2015, 28). “Seemingly low deliberative quality in one location (say, corporatist state institutions) may be compensated by, or even inspire, higher deliberative quality in another location (say, a flourishing public sphere),” Dryzek (2009, 1388, 1395) suggests based on the German environmental politics example. Or again, a protest involving very non-​deliberative acts, with “hecklers . . . shouting down the speakers so that they cannot be heard,” can nonetheless “enhance the deliberative system if they can be reasonably understood as giving voice to a minority opinion long ignored in the public sphere, or as bringing more and better important information into the public arena” (Mansbridge et al. 2012, 189).32

If Deliberation is Everything, Maybe It’s Nothing    891 In earlier work, I focused in stylized fashion on four “deliberative moments” in the liberal democratic political process: discussions in the party caucus room, parliamentary debates, election campaigns, and post-​election arguing and bargaining (Goodin 2008, 189). My aim there was to reflect on how different elements of the deliberative democratic ideal might predominate at different stages of the process—​authentic speaking of one’s mind behind the closed doors of the party caucus room, giving and debating of reasons on the floor of the parliament, widespread inclusion and appeals to the common good in election campaigns, respectful reciprocity in post-​election arguing and bargaining. Thus, for example, while it is democratically important that decisions be made in an open and inclusive manner, it may be deliberatively undesirable for all stages in the process to be fully open to public scrutiny. Jürg Steiner (2014, 142–​3) testifies from his own experience to the importance of political parties developing their policy positions in private, to allow a full and frank discussion of alternatives. When the US Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee opened its doors to the public, disagreements within it were significantly less robust and more muted, suggesting a decline in deliberative quality as a result of openness (Meade and Stasavage 2008). Of course it is important that political parties and the Fed both go on to defend the policies that they adopt in an open public forum. But, as Dryzek (2009, 1385) remarks, “effective deliberation sometimes benefits from moments of secrecy” as long as “publicity can enter later or elsewhere in the deliberative system.” Or for another example, consider partisanship and the role of political parties in the functioning of mass democracies. The job of parties is to present distinct, alternative positions to the electorate. They contest elections, in which they dispute with one another over whose package of policies is superior. It is the job of parties in the electorate to be partisan advocates of their positions, not (at least in the heat of the campaign itself anyway) to be open to persuasion by the other side’s arguments (White and Ypi 2016). Maybe in developing its policy proposals each party should (and maybe occasionally does) engage in full and frank discussions behind closed doors that accord fully with the highest deliberative democratic standards. Ideally once the election is over politicians from all parties ideally should (as once upon a time they used actually used to33) engage in mutually respectful deliberations—​or anyway good-​faith negotiations (Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2013)—​over what laws should be enacted. And maybe citizens in deciding how to vote during the election itself ideally should (and maybe sometimes do) engage in everyday talk with one another that at least roughly approximates the deliberative democratic ideal (Mansbridge 1999). But as long as there is enough genuine deliberation going on elsewhere in the political system, it is arguably all right—​even democratically desirable—​for the interactions between parties fighting the election to take on a decidedly non-​deliberative form. Here is how this systemic sort of thinking might help with the problems identified above with the stretching of the concept of deliberative democracy. Suppose each of the three deliberative democratic desiderata is present to different degrees in each site of political engagement, with any imbalance at one site being countered by an opposing

892   Robert E. Goodin imbalance at some other. If the effects perfectly counterbalance one another, the mix of deliberation and democracy within the overall system would be exactly the same as if none of that internal stretching had occurred at all. Perhaps it is important for something approximating “well-​rounded democratic deliberation” to occur somewhere (and indeed, somewhere central) in the political system. The deliberative democratic ideal, after all, is conjunctive, not disjunctive. It prescribes “democracy and deliberation”—​not “democracy or deliberation.” So if there is no central site where both simultaneously are found, the deliberative ideal is arguably not satisfied (Owen and Smith 2015, 227). As a limiting case, consider the Schumpeterian model of democracy (Macpherson 1977, 77–​92). That model starts with an exclusive elite setting the agenda deliberatively; it proceeds to a stage in which an inclusive electorate chooses without much deliberation among those options; and it ends with an exclusive elite again implementing deliberatively the options thus chosen. Every step is either deliberative or democratic, but no step is both. Is that a problem, and if so how much of one? Looking at the system as a whole, the conjunctive requirement is met. The system is both “democratic and deliberative,” in the sense that there are elements of each present somewhere within it. Surely that is better, from the perspective of the deliberative democratic ideal, than a political system that is wholly lacking in one or the other (or still worse, both). But by the same token, it is probably worse, from the perspective of the deliberative democratic ideal, than a political system in which some steps of the process (or better yet, all steps of the process) are both democratic and deliberative, at least to some degree.34 Hence the importance, from a deliberative democratic perspective, of introducing more inclusive democratic elements into the Schumpeterian model’s more elitist deliberative stages. That is why it is good to promote internal party democracy and widespread public consultations, of whatever meaningful form, in the formulation of policy alternatives. That is why it is good to promote more direct and immediate accountability mechanisms, involving wider popular consultation and participation, for overseeing post-​election policy implementation. Mini-​publics, even if only focus groups, have a role to play in the former, alongside older forms of petitioning, protest, mass movements, and other civil society activities; NGOs, lobby groups, neighborhood associations (Fung 2004) all have a role to play in the latter. It is also important, from a deliberative democratic perspective, to make the election campaign itself more deliberative. More non-​partisan information, mass media fact-​finding and cross-​questioning of candidates in public might all help in that regard (Page 1996). But even with all that, the fact remains that general election campaigns are a “deliberative process” only in the relatively weak sense that “the process of argumentation [among candidates] takes place before a universal audience, the complete set of citizens” (Manin 1987, 358–​9). Citizens remain largely passive observers of, rather than participants in, those arguments (even if they are active participants at least in assessing the arguments presented).

If Deliberation is Everything, Maybe It’s Nothing    893 Proposals for making citizens very much more than that—​such Ackerman and Fishkin’s (2004) Deliberation Day proposal for a nationwide set of mini-​publics to be convened before each general election—​are intriguing but almost certainly unrealistically ambitious. This is not the place to discuss the comparative merits of specific proposals in any detail, however. I want only to situate such proposals in the context of a larger analysis of where the “deliberative system” model—​and stretching of the concept of “deliberative democracy,” more generally—​might go wrong. Why all the concrete reforms just mentioned, and doubtless countless others, are so valuable is simply this. The deliberative democratic ideal is that the political process, certainly as a whole and perhaps also in central instances, should be at one and the same time both deliberative and democratic. Revisions that make the system as a whole (or even just most central instances) all one or all the other risk subverting that ideal. Revisions that make them more nearly both at the same time help to further that ideal.

Conclusion Some of the stretches that have been made in the original deliberative democratic ideal are thus unambiguous improvements, by the standards of what attracted us to that ideal in the first place. Others of those concessions or accommodations are unfortunate, or worse, from those original perspectives. All of the stretches do have the virtue of realism. They all constitute perfectly sensible readings of “what you have to do to get something done, politically,” in the various different circumstances to which they respond. But to say that they constitute “good politics” does not necessarily mean that they constitute “good deliberative democratic politics.” To stretch an ideal too far is to abandon it altogether.

Notes 1. Voiced, if only to be set aside, by Parkinson (2012, 154). 2. So Cohen (1989) frames his discussion, even though Rawls’s (1993, 212–​54; 1997) own most extended published discussions came only much later. 3. Indeed, in their famous exchange on “public reason,” Habermas describes his differences with Rawls as a “familial dispute” (Habermas 1995, 110). 4. Their fourth and fifth points below are attributed to Guttman and Thompson (1996) and Cohen (1989) respectively. They are recognizably themes of Habermas as well, however; indeed, the phrase “rationally motivated agreement” is Habermas’s (1993, 57) own. 5. Dryzek 2000, 1; see similarly the restatement of the “deliberative democratic ideal” in the closing paragraph of Mansbridge et al. (2010, 94).

894   Robert E. Goodin 6. I use Dryzek’s canonical books as my principal sources of examples purely for convenience. But many others have responded similarly to these challenges; for overviews see Bächtiger et al. (2010) on “Type I and Type II deliberative theory” and Mansbridge et al. (2010, esp. 67–​9) on the “expansion of the classic ideal.” 7. Young 1997, 62–​5, 69–​74; 2000, 37–​40 and ch. 2. See also e.g. Sanders 1997; Mansbridge 1999, 223–​27. 8. Others have welcomed, in similar vein, “oratory” (Remer 2000), “snorts of derision” (Mansbridge 1999, 214) and even “silences” (Jungkunz 2013; cf. Sunstein 1999, 130–​2) as meaningful contributions to deliberations. 9. Dryzek (2000, 167; 2009, 1381–​2) would accept such interventions “only if they are (a) non-​ coercive and (b) capable of connecting the particular to the general.” Chambers (2009, 335) would deliberative rhetoric only if it “makes people think, it makes people see things in new ways, it coveys information and knowledge, and it makes people more reflective.” 10. Dennis Thompson’s classic survey article begins by saying, “At the core of all theories of deliberative democracy is what may be called a reason-​giving requirement”; but it goes on to observe that “no major theorist” nowadays “demands that deliberation use only pure reason in their discussions” (Thompson 2008, 498, 505). 11. For evidence, see e.g. Delli Carpini, Cook, and Jacobs (2004). 12. Mansbridge 1996, 56–​ 9; 1999, 219–​ 22; Chambers 2004; Karpowitz, Raphael, and Hammond 2009; Warren and Mansbridge et al. 2013, 106–​12. 13. Naurin’s (2007) EU lobbyists want to be seen to be working for the people who employed them when deliberations are public but are more cooperative in seeking common-​good solutions when dealing behind closed doors with others with whom they have also to work on many other fronts. One can well imagine the same dynamic being at work among those who would feel obliged to be faithful to some identity group when speaking in open meetings but who might be inclined to be far less tribal when meeting behind closed doors. See similarly Chambers (2010) on Canadian constitutional negotiations, and Steiner (2014). 14. Cohen 1989, 23. Steenbergen et al. 2003, 26; see similarly Mansbridge et al. 2010, 88–​90. 15. This is the “convergence” (versus “consensus”) position in “public reason” debates (Quong 2017), although Mansbridge et al. (2010, 70) use “convergence” to mean the opposite. 16. In the public justification literature, of course, it is said to be important that when making or enforcing laws that coerce others you must give them reasons that they can accept for those laws; but that is different from telling them the reasons for which you yourself endorse those laws. 17. Leading to what Lepora and Goodin (2013, 20–​1) call a “substitution compromise.” 18. Still less “exposing and even intensifying disagreements,” which Thompson (2008, 508)—​ rejecting “consensus” as a general goal—​says “may be desirable in many circumstances.” 19. Worse still, it typically settles nothing (Thompson 2008, 502–​3). Mansbridge (2015, 39) speaks of using deliberation to “work out fair ways of handling irreconcilable conflicts of interests” in these circumstances. But that will be feasible only where there is consensus among parties to the dispute regarding fairness; and if pluralism’s “irreconcilable values” extend that far, it will not be. 20. In the same sense Grice (1975) thought that a “conversation” was, which gives rise to his “conversational maxims” that are so similar to Steenbergen et al.’s. For a mapping of one onto the other, see Goodin (2008). Habermas (1993, 49–​50) says as much when speaking

If Deliberation is Everything, Maybe It’s Nothing    895 of how “all affected can in principle freely participate as equals in a cooperative search for the truth in which the force of the better argument alone can influence the outcome.” 21. Otherwise there would not be much for them to discuss, as Thompson (2008, 502) points out; indeed, “disagreement” figured in the very title of his first book on the subject (Gutmann and Thompson 1996). 22. Dryzek continues, “To deny their advocates admission into the forum is,” he goes on to say, “to reveal a lack of confidence in the efficacy of deliberation.” 23. On the assumption “ought implies can,” normative prescriptions must be circumscribed by what is empirically feasible. Bächtiger et al. (2010, 34) offer “increased realism” as the principal reason for the shift from what they call Type I to Type II models of deliberative democracy. 24. As Young (2000, 7) says, “socially situated interests, proposals, claims and expressions of experience are often an important resource for democratic discussion and decision-​ making” allowing “otherwise unspoken knowledge to contribute to wise decisions.” See similarly Mansbridge (1999; 2015, 28). 25. Guttman and Thompson 1996, 90, 135–​36; Mansbridge 1999, 223; Fung 2005; Warren 2007, 278; Parkinson 2012, 158–​9. 26. And perhaps should in a pluralist society that is characterized by irreconcilable differences, where any consensus would be a false consensus—​although then, as I have said, it is unclear what pragmatic purpose can be served by a deliberative exchange of those irreconcilable reasons. 27. As are the various elements of the original visions themselves, of course (Mansbridge 2015, 35). 28. Thompson (2008, 511–​12) remarks on “the conflict between two major values in deliberative theory—​participation and deliberation.” He goes on to add that, if “one of its values cannot be fully realized without sacrificing one of its other values,” that “is especially disturbing if the principles are equally indispensable to the theory.” 29. Maybe this is just a “net gain in deliberativeness,” with the gain in terms of “more information” outweighing whatever loss (if any) in terms of deliberativeness that comes from admitting those other non-​reason-​giving interventions. It might be argued, however, that there was no loss to be outweighed at all (i.e. that such interventions do nothing to take away from the reasons already given, they just do not constitute “reasoned argumentation” themselves). 30. I survey some, and offer others, in Goodin (2000) and Goodin and Dryzek (2006). See also Fung 2003; 2006; Johnson and Gastil 2015. 31. For an application to global climate governance system, amending his earlier model in one respect, see Stevenson and Dryzek (2014, 29). 32. Another example, according to Dryzek (2010, 82–​3), is the way in which the “categorically ugly rhetoric” of populist Australian politician Pauline Hanson “produce[d]‌good systemic results” by provoking counter-​mobilization of other discourses within the community. 33. Matthews 1960; Uslaner 1991; Steiner et al. 2005. 34. The reason has to do with the non-​linear form in the trade-​offs among the various deliberative democratic desiderata, discussed above. Put in the terminology of systems analysis, there can be emergent properties at the level of the system as a whole as a result of interactions among the various components, here, deliberative democratic desiderata.

896   Robert E. Goodin

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Chapter 58

Reflecti ons on De l iberative De mo c rac y When Theory Meets Practice Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson

Deliberative theory, as the contributions to this volume amply demonstrate, has never been so widely discussed or creatively studied as it is today. At the same time, deliberative practice has seldom been so routinely disregarded in so many major political institutions of contemporary democracies. As theory flourishes, practice deteriorates. The stark contrast between theory and practice poses a challenge for deliberative democrats. When there is such a dearth of deliberation, the deliberative project begins to look impractical, and its theory irrelevant. But to deny the relevance of the theory to practice is exactly the wrong response to this challenge. The demands of deliberative theory are all the more pressing—​and all the more relevant—​when they are less heeded. The political scarcity of deliberation increases the need for deliberation, both in theory and practice. A central role of normative theory has always been critical: to go against the grain of political life, to push against the status quo. Modeling reality has never been its central aim—​nor should it be. The core values of deliberative democracy—​providing reasons to justify laws and policies and demonstrating mutual respect—​remain as defensible as ever. Deliberative theorists should continue to seek ways to better understand and encourage those values. Democratic theorists, more than ever, should be taking up this challenge of the deliberative deficit by critically confronting the non-​deliberative practices of our time. Many already are—​which points to another reason why the response is misguided. Although deliberation may be scarce in the most prominent institutions of government, it is thriving at many less visible sites. The successes include not only small-​scale ventures such as laboratory experiments and pilot projects, but also consequential efforts at the state and national levels, such as advisory commissions and citizens’ assemblies. More than 30 nations sent representatives of their deliberative commissions to the World Health Organization’s Global Summit in 2014 (WHO 2014). The

Reflections: When Theory Meets Practice    901 US Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues unanimously endorsed democratic deliberation as a core principle of bioethical decision-​making in its first report (2010) on the ethics of new technologies. After six years of its own deliberations, the Commission devoted its capstone report (2016) to showing the value of public deliberation in reaching recommendations on a wide range of complex and urgent issues, such as preparedness for public health emergencies, risk-​laden pediatric research, and the conflict between privacy and genomic research. Deliberative forums that directly engage ordinary citizens have also had some success, most notably in the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly, and also in other Canadian provinces and the Netherlands (Warren and Pearse 2008), where bodies have proposed major changes to  electoral systems. Even more participatory endeavors have also flourished, most famously in the Porto Alegre budgeting, where citizen bodies in each district of a city determine priorities for the use of a part of the city’s revenues (Baiocchi 2005). Similar efforts are now underway in the US and other countries (Gilman 2016). In addition to the experience of these specific projects and activities, considerable empirical research has shown that, under the right conditions and with careful planning, deliberation can work well, approximating if not fulfilling the criteria that theorists have proposed for success (Thompson 2008a). As deliberative democrats take up the challenge posed by the disparity between deliberative theory and democratic practice, they should of course continue to seek ways to realize the theory. But we also suggest that they should be attending to ways in which the theory itself may need to be adjusted. In the encounter between theory and practice, the theory should not always emerge unchanged. New problems may be discovered or—​ more often—​old problems may appear in a new light. To show how the encounter between theory and practice can reveal fresh perspectives on both, we address three questions: where does democracy need deliberation, what does deliberation need from democracy, and what should democracy expect from deliberation. These questions refer to what might be called the circumstances of democratic deliberation.

Where Does Democracy Need Deliberation? Answering this question begins, at a general level, with theories of deliberative democracy. These typically include a set of principles, processes, and virtues, often articulating the value of basic democratic freedoms, opportunities, obligations, and responsibilities. The work of deliberative democrats does not end here. Major theorists of deliberative democracy, many of whom are represented in this volume, also connect deliberative democratic principles to the challenges raised by existing injustices in particular political and social contexts. When the democratic process is marked by contentious

902    Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson disagreement, lack of mutual respect, systematic exclusion of disadvantaged individuals, and blatant disregard for relevant facts and values, the need for deliberation is greatest. It is sometimes assumed that deliberation is needed to decide only questions of value, not matters of fact. Because the foundations of the theory are moral, the content of deliberation often seems to be concerned mainly with grand ethical principles and great ethical controversies. Yet many if not most of the important questions of public policy depend in part on matters of fact, empirical research, sometimes even rather technical scientific studies. Deliberative democracy must find ways to bring these empirical as well as ethical inquiries into its forums. Competently deliberating about how to stem the tide of the 2014–​16 Ebola epidemic, for example, depended on knowing that individuals exposed to the virus but non-​symptomatic cannot spread the disease (US Presidential Commission 2015, 22–​32). This fact was scientifically well established and readily accessible to prominent US state governors who—​without even a modicum of deliberation—​ summarily ordered twenty-one-​day quarantines of anyone possibly exposed to the virus. The quarantine was needlessly enforced on exposed, non-​symptomatic healthcare providers who were in perilously scarce supply and on many recent immigrants already vulnerable to being stigmatized. Both the basic liberty of these individuals and the world’s capacity to aid Ebola victims was needlessly limited. The offending politicians offered a tragic lesson in why deliberation is essential and must be both ethical and empirical. By contrast, rapid-​response teams from UNICEF in Liberia and the CDC in Guinea in a series of deliberative forums and focus groups successfully engaged with the most affected communities about their concerns, including prevention measures, reporting and isolation of ill family members, and burial practices (which urgently needed to be altered to curb disease transmission) (US Presidential Commission 2015, 37–​8). With stakes as high as life and basic liberty, deliberation must not be limited to purely moral questions, and it therefore cannot depend only on ethical (or philosophical or logical) argument to produce reasonable decisions. Just as scientists should not make public policy without ethics (Sarewitz 2015), so ethicists should not make policy without science. Deliberation can be appropriate for deciding some highly technical issues of public concern, but the standards as well as the procedures must be carefully designed. Theoretical principles, appropriately adjusted, can guide such designs. In 2012, the United Kingdom’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA)—​an independent regulatory agency for research and treatment involving embryos, sperm, and eggs—​was asked by the government to assess public views on mitochondrial donation, a controversial new technique that promises to prevent devastating diseases but involves transferring the nucleus of the mother’s egg cell into a donor egg with healthy mitochondria (HFEA 2013). The HFEA partnered with Sciencewise, a UK publicly funded national center for public dialogue in science and technology policy, to design a 13-​month process that combined deliberative workshops, open consultation meetings, a representative survey, patient focus groups, and an open consultation questionnaire. The “rich and varied public debate” helped “make an informed decision” about regulations for this new technique, which were approved by Parliament in 2015 (Nuffield Council 2015).

Reflections: When Theory Meets Practice    903 Public deliberation was an essential (although not the only) part of this process. The discussion was implicitly shaped by assumptions about what role experts and scientific facts should play in decisions involving ethical values. Future deliberation on similar topics could benefit from more explicit and systematic specification of principles to define the role of experts and the interaction of facts and values in the circumstances in which deliberative democracy typically functions. Theorists could do more than they have done to help develop such principles. The deliberative project can also productively extend beyond the boundaries of the nation state. World Wide Views, an organization supported by the Danish Board of Technology, has hosted citizen deliberations (World Wide Views 2015). In June 2015, some 10,000 participants at ninety-seven sites across seventy-six countries gathered to discuss the issues of climate and energy (World Wide Views 2015). Although the deliberation took place within one nation state, the conclusions were presented to UN representatives both in New York and at the Climate Change conference in Paris in 2015 (United Nations 2015). When deliberation travels across national and cultural boundaries, familiar questions about relativism of values inevitably arise. The experience so far suggests that cultural differences do not preclude productive deliberation, and that at least on questions of universal concern, such as climate change and the protection of human participants in scientific research, citizens share moral perspectives sufficiently to reach agreement even in face of some striking initial disagreements. As the deliberative project spreads throughout the world, theorists will want to explore more fully the optimal preconditions for conducting deliberations among people who hold very different moral outlooks and ethical principles. The question of where deliberation is needed points to the growing recognition that deliberative democratic theory and practice do not require all decision-​making processes to be deliberative. Deliberation is not appropriate for all political forums. As we argue in The Spirit of Compromise, political campaigns are not well suited for deliberation even while they are essential to the competitive nature of the democratic process for selecting leaders (Gutmann and Thompson 2014, 146–​60; Thompson 2013). It would be both unrealistic and undesirable to try to convert campaigns into prime sites for deliberation. Campaigns by their nature are strategic and competitive interactions, not deliberative exchanges. They do not serve their function if opponents are cooperating when they should be competing. Reason-​giving in such circumstances tends to be largely strategic, providing a poor model for the more robust deliberation that should take place before and after a campaign. The habits of deliberation need to be cultivated elsewhere. More generally, the work on deliberative systems shows that deliberative democracy not only accommodates, it also requires, other non-​deliberative forms of decision-​making (Mansbridge et al. 2012). A robust deliberative democracy welcomes a plurality of procedures. However, those other procedures should be deliberatively defensible. Deliberation is generally the best method for deciding which practices should be deliberative and which should not. Deliberation is in this sense the sovereign procedure of democracy. While campaigning is deliberatively defensible in its place, the perpetual campaign that

904    Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson now characterizes the United States electoral system almost certainly is not (Gutmann and Thompson 2014). We cannot deliberatively defend a system where we elect representatives who then fail to govern responsibly because they spend so much of their time, before and after they are elected, campaigning and raising money to campaign again. Similar concerns are raised by the increased use of ballot measures to decide, with little public deliberation, complex and controversial issues, such as taxation, governmental spending, or membership in a political union. Many referenda obviously fall short of what deliberative democracy demands, but theorists have yet to develop a set of clear principles to evaluate this practice compared to available alternatives. The Brexit referendum in June 2016, in which the proposal to leave the European Union won, even though only 37% of the British electorate voted for it, provides a highly consequential case study that could aid deliberative theorists in developing such principles. Deliberative theorists should also devote more effort to developing criteria to assess the relationships between deliberative and non-​deliberative forms of decision-​making. Comparisons showing why deliberative methods are superior to aggregative methods have been more common than analyses showing how the two could work together. A further implication is that both the theoretical and practical agenda of deliberative democracy should give more prominence to the study of the constitutional structure of deliberative democracies, including the way we choose our leaders, organize our institutions, and allocate decision making procedures.

What Does Deliberation Need from Democracy? As the interest in deliberative democracy has grown, so has the inclination to claim its mantle. All kinds of discussions have come to be designated as deliberation—​regardless of whether they are directed toward deliberative democracy’s aim of reaching justifiable collective decisions and expressing mutual respect. The problem with expanding deliberation to include almost any group activity that involves political conversations is that it becomes indistinguishable from mere discussion and therefore its distinctive qualities and challenges get lost. Deliberation should be understood as reasoning that is deployed not only to criticize power but also to exercise it. (Exercising power can of course include making recommendations or mounting protests.) To fulfill its core values, political deliberation needs to be linked, either directly or indirectly, to public decision-​making. Political deliberation therefore must be more than just talk or scholarly argument, no matter how alluring and astute. It should promote robust discussion and debate on an issue of common concern—​justifying arguments with reasons and treating participants with mutual respect—​with the goal of reaching an actionable decision. Informal discussions in small groups or classrooms can be useful preparation for political deliberation. Just as scholarly works on deliberation are needed, so too are classes

Reflections: When Theory Meets Practice    905 that teach deliberative techniques and informal conversations that serve as rehearsals for political deliberation. But scholarship, seminars, and informal group discussions all fall short of full democratic deliberation in critically important ways (Gutmann and Thompson 1999, 273–​5; 2004, 5–​6). The participants do not have the power to make decisions, or the authority to make recommendations to decision-makers. They are not in a position to be held responsible—​directly or indirectly—​for arriving at a publicly defensible and actionable decision. Exercising power or influence encourages deliberators to take their discussions more seriously and adopt a broader perspective. In a robust deliberative democracy, there should be many different ways of expressing political views including protests, demonstrations, and strikes. But by focusing on the practices that lead either to decisions or advice to decision makers we can more fully appreciate what deliberation distinctively requires of the democratic process. Emphasizing deliberation’s role in democratic decision-​making raises several theoretical problems that have not been sufficiently appreciated. When deliberative bodies exercise political influence, how should they be constituted and their authority be justified? In the case of commissions, whose members usually include both appointed citizens and experts, on what basis and in what ways can they legitimately speak for the public? A  national bioethics commission presumably can base its legitimacy on its appointment by a democratically elected executive, much like that of other political appointees. But this answer begs the question of what criteria an executive (or legislature) should use to determine how best to compose the membership of a deliberative commission. This, in turn, depends on deciding to what extent and in what ways these bodies should be representative. Some deliberative theorists have discussed the question of how representative the composition of deliberative bodies should be, but few have examined carefully the question of the source of the democratic authority of the decisions of such bodies. Even if they are randomly selected, representative bodies such as citizens’ assemblies raise related questions of democratic legitimacy. The members of these assemblies engage, on relatively equal terms, in a process of deliberation that the electorate can never hope to match. They are changed by the experience in ways that set them apart from the electorate. They reach conclusions for reasons that most ordinary voters are not likely to fully appreciate. The members begin as ordinary citizens but end as nascent experts. Designed to reduce the gap between citizens and experts, the process itself reproduces part of the problem that it was intended to overcome. The gap might be overcome if voters are prepared to accept an assembly’s conclusions because they trust the members (Thompson 2008b). There is some evidence that the British Columbia voters thought in these terms as they decided how to vote in the first referendum, in which the Assembly’s proposal won substantial majorities, though it was ultimately defeated (Fournier et al. 2011, 131, 153–​4). But the basis upon which such trust can be justified and deemed sufficient to satisfy democratic principles remains problematic. Deliberation also calls on democracy for institutional support. Human beings may be naturally social animals, but deliberative decision-​making is a not a purely natural process. It is a socially constructed artifact. We may naturally want to justify ourselves to

906    Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson one another, to cooperate and reach mutual understanding, but we are generally unable to act on these inclinations without the right kinds of institutional structures and cultural supports. We can bring out the best in our nature only through social and political artifice. In the case of deliberation, the artifice may be quite complex. One of the few national deliberations that has engaged ordinary citizens—​Australia’s Citizens’ Parliament in 2009—​required elaborate preparation and structured procedures (Carson et  al. 2013). Before its 150 randomly selected members gathered to make recommendations to the government on “How can Australia’s political system be strengthened to serve us better?” they met months earlier in smaller groups throughout the country and took part in online discussions. The main event was intricately organized (with participants divided into 24 tables, each led by a volunteer facilitator), and technologically innovative (with online communication integrated with face-​to-​face discussion). A major study of the process later concluded that it had the effect of “rekindling public and public officials’ confidence in the ability of lay citizens to play a direct and active role in the policy-​ making process.” But some observers believed that the agenda was too broad, and that future efforts would have to do more to “link deliberation with the existing political institutions, community structures, and culture norms” (Carson et al. 2013, 298–​9). Deliberative theorists have generally recognized the need for institutional support, but they have not always emphasized the institutional needs could shape the demands that theory makes on practice. Theorists tend to state the various criteria of deliberation as if they are all equally important or equally urgent. From a theoretical perspective they may be, but when confronted with institutional constraints, the theorist has to set some priorities. For example, reason-​giving may be counterproductive in practice—​and reasonably viewed as a devious way of exercising power over less advantaged groups of individuals—​if the institutions supporting mutual respect are weak or, worse still, absent. Thus in the African countries hardest hit by Ebola, it was important to demonstrate respect for the afflicted populations by instituting a robust set of community-​engagement practices; only then could the deliberative process of giving reasons convince people to temporarily modify the sacred burial practices that threatened to spread the disease (US Presidential Commission 2016, 37). Because institutional support for mutual respect is often sorely lacking, both domestically and internationally, theorists need to show not only what mutual respect might mean and how it might be manifested and justified on its own, but also how it can be an essential step toward promoting reason-​giving. Another problem raised by the need for institutional support arises because of the tension between deliberation and democracy. Because deliberation in its origins and by its nature is not distinctly democratic, it needs institutional support that embodies democratic values. Deliberation cannot be imposed. Citizens themselves must want to deliberate, and develop the capacity do so effectively. If citizens cannot be forced to deliberate, how can they come to see its value and develop its skills? Civic education must play a key role. Yet it is not entirely clear either in principle or practice how such education should be conducted. An influential report found that students who have “opportunities to discuss current issues in a classroom setting . . . tend to have greater interest in

Reflections: When Theory Meets Practice    907 politics, improved critical thinking and communications skills, more civic knowledge, and more interest in discussing public affairs out of school” (Carnegie Corporation 2003). Discussions are more likely to be productive if they occur in a “classroom environment that encourages analysis and critique of multiple competing viewpoints” (Hess 2009, 28). Promoting such analytical and critical discussion, however, is not sufficient for a robust education in deliberation. It could even be a step backward if the teacher sees the purpose of debating controversial issues only to be helping students clarify their own values and articulate their own views more effectively. To appreciate the value of deliberation, students need to learn how to understand diverse viewpoints and also how to accommodate them in collective endeavors (Hess and McAvoy 2015, 177–​8). The closer that classroom exercises can come to the decision-​making or advising conditions of binding deliberations, the greater potential such lessons have for engendering deliberative virtues. This approach favors the use of exercises in which students themselves must come to agreement on a controversial issue that collectively affects them, as legislation affects citizens. Some civic education programs choose community issues and others choose issues over which students have a real stake, such as rules governing school conduct. Because deliberation significantly depends on a democratic education for cultivating its skills and virtues (Gutmann 1999, xi–​xiv, 5–​6, 52), the goals and methods of an education for deliberation deserve further study by both theorists and practitioners of deliberative democracy.

What Should Democracy Expect from Deliberation? The deliberative project has not been well served by the unreasonable expectations that have often been imposed on it. Consensus is often said to be a chief aim of deliberation. To be sure, deliberation is useful—​often essential—​in discovering whether there is an underlying convergence of values. An iterated practice of deliberation often has the best chance of bringing a convergence of values to light, and pointing to the elements of a legitimate consensus. When deliberation does so, it serves what may be called the common good. But democracy does itself no favor in holding deliberation to such an unrealistic standard. It should not stake deliberation’s primary claim on reaching a consensus. Doing so is bound to result in disappointment and unwarranted abandonment of the deliberative project. More importantly, consensus, even when possible, is not always desirable. When disagreements are deep and persistent, any apparent consensus may indicate that the less powerful have been pressured to acquiesce in the decision. The shallow agreement achieved in such circumstances often conceals injustice and frustrates efforts to continue future deliberation that might find more just (or less unjust) outcomes. A striking

908    Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson recognition of the risks of reaching for consensus came during the deliberations of the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Thompson 2008b, 38). When one member explicitly called for a show of “absolute unity” and “100% support” for the proposal that seemed to be gaining majority support, another member, who earlier had earlier made the same plea, said that he did not now seek “unanimity” and urged his fellow members in the majority to “reach out to accommodate the minority.” Another member pointed out that the Assembly would present a more credible message to the electorate if the genuine differences among members were clearly expressed in the discussion and revealed in the final vote. Deliberation can be extremely valuable for reaching mutually respectful agreements that fall short of consensus. The classic compromise is a prime example (Gutmann and Thompson 2014, 12–​16). It is an agreement in which, to get a result that improves on the status quo from the perspective of each, all give up something each desires. This kind of compromise is often hard to accept because the sacrifice typically involves not merely getting less than we want, but also getting less than we think we deserve. Compromising in this way is of course less appealing to everyone involved than finding common ground where everyone benefits, which is a version of consensus. But classic compromises are also more realizable in contemporary politics. They are often the only kind of democratically (and morally) defensible agreement that has any chance of overcoming deep partisan gridlock—​and therefore a kind of agreement to which deliberative theorists should give more attention. Also, as many successful and admired democratic politicians sensibly advise: if you are unwilling to compromise, you are unsuited to democratic politics and should find another line of work. Democratic politics, at its base and its non-​utopian best, is about publicly defensible compromise among a diverse group of free and equal people who routinely disagree about what laws and public policies are morally best. Democracy has no reason to expect deliberation always to produce justice. Deliberations, like the ones that produce classic compromises, do not measure their success by steady movement in the direction of a single, most favored theory of just­ ice. This is as it should be, because even well-​informed deliberations among free and equal citizens do not always result in decisions that satisfy any single conception of just­ ice. Epistemic deliberative democrats have emphasized the capacity of deliberation to produce just outcomes, and have shown how, and under what conditions, it can do so, though the conditions turn out to be not so easy to satisfy. There is good reason to favor well-​structured deliberations from an epistemic perspective. But it is equally important to recognize that no democratic process can guarantee just outcomes. To be sure, if deliberation regularly produced unjust decisions more often than other forms of decision-​ making, it would not be acceptable. But to keep expectations in a reasonable perspective, we should always ask: “compared to what?” Both theory and practice could benefit from more systematic study of such comparisons. Deliberative democracy does not ignore the demands of justice. Quite the contrary, it expects citizens to rely on substantive principles of justice to inform their deliberations, and these substantive principles may be found in comprehensive theories of justice. That

Reflections: When Theory Meets Practice    909 is why deliberative theorists need to attend to theories of justice, and how they relate to the process of deliberation. Compared to other forms, deliberative democracy is more likely to protect claims of justice. Yet there are many reasonable conceptions of justice, and much reasonable disagreement about which is correct. It would be both morally and democratically self-​defeating to insist on the legitimacy of only one comprehensive set of principles in a deliberative democracy. A continuing challenge of deliberative theory and practice is to clarify how democracy can move in the direction of legitimate laws while disagreeing about what justice comprehensively is. Even when deliberation fails to produce consensus or justice, it can yield considerable ethical and practical value. In the contentious politics of our time, a manifestation of mutual respect amid the torrents of divisive disagreement may be its most important contribution (Gutmann and Thompson 2014, 109–​17; 2004, 79–​81, 89–​94, 151–​6). Like toleration, mutual respect is a form of agreeing to disagree, but it goes beyond the “live and let live” attitude that a thin version of toleration (also valuably) promotes. Mutual respect expresses a constructive attitude toward, and interaction with, those with whom one disagrees. It expresses a moral value that treats citizens as free and equal persons, and an orientation toward the political process that sees political agents not only as adversaries but also as colleagues who can work together in the enterprise of governing under a common constitution. Political adversaries who respect one another argue and negotiate in the belief that they might work together to support laws that are on balance improvements, even if the laws are not what they would enact on their own, and even if the laws are—​like democracy itself—​inevitably imperfect. Mutual respect enables politicians, civic leaders, and citizens alike to live with disagreement now with a more realistic hope for more agreement later. Because mutual respect plays this key role in deliberative democracy, it merits more analysis than it generally receives. We would be aided by a better understanding of deliberative disagreement, the deep and persistent differences that—​more than other kinds of disagreement—​require citizens to practice mutual respect. A deliberative disagreement is one in which citizens continue to differ reasonably about basic moral principles even as they seek a resolution that is mutually justifiable (Gutmann and Thompson 1996, 73–​9). In this kind of disagreement, citizens may differ not only about the right resolution but also about the reasons on the basis of which the conflict should be resolved. Unlike ordinary political conflict, deliberative disagreement places some citizens in opposition to others who also are committed to finding fair terms of cooperation, and who also are offering reciprocal reasons. The circumstances are quite different from those disagreements where one side lacks reciprocal reasons either for their own position or for rejecting the other’s position (or both). These disagreements signify either an unwillingness or an inability (or both) to find fair terms of cooperation with respect to the issue in question. The difference between these situations—​one in which reciprocal reasons are offered, and the other in which they are not—​tracks the distinction between deliberative and non-​deliberative disagreement. This distinction is clearly manifested in the difference in attitude that deliberators can justify having toward their political adversaries who offer, and those who refuse to offer, mutually respectful reasons for their

910    Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson opposing positions. Exactly how to draw such a distinction, and how to justify treating some claims as respectful and others less so, remain theoretical as well as practical challenges. An important related question is: assuming we can specify the scope of deliberative disagreement, how should citizens act toward their adversaries in face of such disagreements? We have elsewhere suggested some principles of accommodation, and advocated for a practice of economizing on moral disagreement, that might ethically (though not legally) govern such interactions (Gutmann and Thompson 1996, 79–​91). Both the principles and their supporting practices need further specification, and additional analysis. For deliberation to give mutual respect its due in democracy, we also need to develop further the requirements of a deliberative process that best promotes it. We and other deliberative democrats have presented some of these requirements in general terms, but they need to be specified more fully in concrete situations, which will often reveal possibilities that might otherwise be neglected. Consider the very basic requirement that the reasons given in the deliberative process should be respectful (Gutmann and Thompson 2004, 139). When this requirement is applied, implications that might not have been so obvious or seemed so theoretically important become clearer and more practically salient. The application of an interactive decision tool, “Choosing Healthplans All Together” (known as CHAT) illustrates this effect (Goold et al. 2005; and Danis, Ginsburg, and Goold 2010). Already used in 12 different projects in nine US states involving more than 4,200 participants, the exercise engages participants in making complex decisions about which benefits to include in a health insurance package. Participants first choose coverage for themselves or their families, then for a small community, and finally for all members of a defined population, such as a city or a state. As they move through the process, they experience the effect of the different perspectives on their decisions, and see the changes in their attitudes toward the other participants and the citizens whom they are representing. They develop more respect for the views of others, and they also make different decisions. They avoid “winner-​take-​all” solutions that majorities tend to favor, and they give more weight to minority views. This example suggests that mutual respect is not a discrete disposition isolated in time but one that develops over time and affects decision making in a dynamic process. It can even grow out of what may seem to be its opposite, a self-​regarding disposition. Deliberative theory needs to take into account the dynamic character of mutual respect and all of the requirements it specifies. When seen as part of a continuous process, the requirements may raise somewhat different theoretical problems. For example, if some citizens develop the disposition sooner than others, what do they owe to those who may be trying but are falling short of showing respect? Alternatively, how can they help themselves and the deliberations succeed by also aiding others? To what extent are such partial or second-​best applications of reason-​giving and mutual respect acceptable—​or perhaps even essential—​in morally moving a democracy forward? When deliberative theory meets deliberative practice, the encounter usually reveals more conflict than concord. That is to be expected. It is an occasion for appreciating and

Reflections: When Theory Meets Practice    911 exercising the critical function of theory, and for pressing forward with finding the most morally defensible and practically applicable ways of putting the theory into practice. But beyond these aims, the encounter also offers an opportunity for developing both the practice and the theory further. It calls attention to some problems that may not have been noticed, and others that have been recognized but deserve more prominence and more constructive attention. The effort to put deliberative democratic theory into deliberative democratic practice changes not only the practice but also the theory. We have suggested that, when theory meets practice, what democracy requires of deliberation and what deliberation requires of theory look somewhat different. We have also argued that as theorists try to incorporate theoretical principles into practical institutions they should try to keep expectations for deliberative democracy in perspective. In recognizing that the processes of deliberation in democracy are imperfect, we should always ask: how do they compare to the alternatives? Deliberation is admittedly imperfect, but its imperfections pale in comparison with the deformities of the politics of power and manipulation that currently prevail and persistently threaten our democracies.

References Baiocchi, G. (2005). Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). Carnegie Corporation of New  York and CIRCLE (2003). The Civic Mission of Schools (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York; College Park, MD: Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement). Carson, L., Gastil, J., Hartz-​ Karp, J., and Lubensky, R. (2013). The Australian Citizens’ Parliament and the Future of Deliberative Democracy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press). Danis, M., Ginsburg, M. M., and Goold, S. (2010). Experience in the United States with Public Deliberation about Health Insurance Benefits Using the Small Group Decision Exercise, CHAT. Journal of Ambulatory Care Management, 33: 205–​14. Fournier, P., van der Kolk, H., Carty, R. K., Blais, A., and Rose, J. (2011). When Citizens Decide:  Lessons from Citizen Assemblies on Electoral Reform (Oxford:  Oxford University Press). Gilman, H. R. (2016). Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in America (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press). Goold, S. D., Biddle, A. K., Klipp, G., Hall, C. N., and Danis, M. (2005). Choosing Healthplans All Together: A Deliberative Exercise for Allocating Limited Health Care Resources. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 30: 563–​601. Gutmann, A. (1999). Democratic Education (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press). Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (1999). Democratic Disagreement. In Deliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement, ed. S. Macedo (New York: Oxford University Press), 243–​79.

912    Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (2004). Why Deliberative Democracy? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Gutmann, A. and Thompson, D. (2014). The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Hess, D. E. (2009). Controversy in the Classroom:  The Democratic Power of Discussion (New York: Routledge). Hess, D. E. and McAvoy, P. (2015). The Political Classroom: Evidence and Ethics in Democratic Education (New York: Routledge). HFEA. (2013). Mitochondria Replacement Consultation:  Advice to Government. Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, March 2013. Mansbridge, J., Bohman, J., Chambers, S., Christiano, T., Fung, A., Parkinson, J., Thompson, D. F. and Warren, M. E. (2012). A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy. In Deliberative Systems:  Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale, ed. J. Parkinson and J. Mansbridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1–​26. Nuffield Council on Bioethics (2015). UK Approves Regulation on Mitochondrial DNA Donation. http://​nuffieldbioethics.org/​news/​2015/​uk-​approves-​regulation-​on-​ mitochondrial-​dna-​donation/​, February 25. Sarewitz, D. (2015). CRISPR: Science Can’t Solve It. Nature, 522 (7557): 413–​14. Thompson, D. F. (2008a). Deliberative Democratic Theory and Empirical Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science, 11: 497–​520. Thompson, D. F. (2008b). Who Should Govern Who Governs? The Role of Citizens in Reforming the Electoral System. In Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly, ed. M. E. Warren and H. Pearse (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press), 20–​49. Thompson, D. F. (2013). Deliberate About, Not In, Elections. Election Law Journal, 12: 372–​85. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2015). Global Citizens Strong Support for Ambitious Paris Agreement: World Wide Views Presents Consultation Results at UN. http://​newsroom.unfccc.int/​unfccc-​newsroom/​world-​wide-​views-​new-​york-​press-​ release/​, September 25. US Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (2010). New Directions: The Ethics of Synthetic Biology and Emerging Technologies (Washington, DC:  Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues). US Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (2015). Ethics and Ebola: Public Health Planning and Response (Washington, DC: Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues). US Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (2016). Bioethics for Every Generation:  Deliberation and Education in Health, Science, and Technology (Washington, DC: Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues). Warren, M. E. and Pearse, H. (2008). Designing Deliberative Democracy: The British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). World Health Organization (WHO) (2014). Past Global Summits of National Bioethics Committees. http://​www.who.int/​ethics/​globalsummit/​summits/​en/​. World Wide Views (2015). World Wide Views on Climate and Energy from the World’s Citizens to the Climate and Energy Policymakers and Stakeholders:  Results Report (Copenhagen: Danish Board of Technology Foundation).

Index

Tables are indicated by an italic t following the page number. Aakhus, M.  507 Abelson, J.  577 Aberbach, J. D.  282 Abers, R.  703 Aboriginal peoples and deliberation  158, 159 Aboriginal rights  165 abortion rights  428, 633 Abu-​Nimer,  M.  749 acampadas (protest camps)  399, 400–​1 consensual methods  401–​2 emotional expression  402 knowledge-​sharing  402 politics of becoming  402–​3 reclaiming public spaces  400 social movement assemblies  400–​1 accountability as deliberative ideal  4t, 232 revision 8 as voting ideal  232 Achen,  C.  1–​2 Ackerman, B.  35, 38, 40, 41, 45–​6, 49, 205, 318, 474, 627, 893 ACT-​UP  649 Addams, J.  573 Adler, P.  603 administrative agencies  10 administrative law-​making, US  613–​15 deliberative plebiscites  618–​21 districting commissions  616–​18 interest representation model  613–​14 notice-​and comment-​provisions  613,  615 presidential control model  613, 614 Administrative Procedure Act (APA), US  276, 613–​14, 615 Adorno, T. W.  881 Afghanistan 283 Africa  819–​28 Akan taboo on verbal aggression  825–​6

arguing vs. bargaining  825 Ashanti people  821 background  819–​21 colonialism  820, 821 consensual democracy proposal  821–​4 customary law  166–​7 majoritarian/​aggregative democracy failures  820, 821, 822 need for empirical research  824–​7 non-​party proposal  822–​3 primordial vs. civic publics  819–​20, 825 research findings, educational value  862–​3 research findings, and policy and constitutional review  827 research findings, and theorization  862 traditional notions of consensus  93 African-​Americans, and everyday political talk 383 Afrobarometer 824 aggregate ideological consistency  474 aggregation 463 Miracle of  121, 540 models of, in relation to deliberation  469, 469f aggregation-​deliberation model  477–​8,  480 persuasion cost  477–​8 and truth revelation  477 aggregative democracy  219, 223–​4 in Africa  820, 821 contrasted with deliberative democracy  2–​3 impossibility of ideals  2–​3 and public decision-​making  712–​13 aggregative model of decision-​making  464f, 469, 478 aggregative/​transformative procedures  37 agonistic deliberation  158, 159–​60, 161, 164, 205–​6, 212, 240, 875–​6

914   Index agreement 79 communication studies  509 and impact of deliberation  79 air quality management  759 Akan people  825–​6 Akbar, emperor  807 Allan, T.  632 Allport, G.  748, 749 Almond, G.  87 alternative dispute resolution (ADR)  710 Ambedkar, B. R.  806, 809, 814, 815n3 American Constitution see US Constitution American Forum Movement  504 American National Election Study questions 384 Americans Discuss Social Security forum  246 AmericaSpeaks  264, 666, 670, 701 Our Budget, Our Economy meetings  544 Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference (1997), EU  849 analytic deliberation  771–​3, 780 challenges in addressing catastrophic risks  476–​8 competence in facts and values  773 in global governance  773–​6 procedural and substantive fairness  772–​3 ancient Greece Athenian democracy  23, 56, 300, 302 Council of  500, Athens 318–​19, 320 rhetoric  502, 504 Anderson, E.  641 Angrist, J. D.  669 Ani, E. I.  93 Ansari, N.  659 Ansell, C. K.  578 Anthropocene concept  755, 763, 764 anthropology, and political theory  90–​1 anti-​austerity protests  397, 401, 403 anti-​globalization groups  698 apadharma, India  807 Arab/​Jewish campus studies, US  749 Arab public sphere  522 Arab Spring  499 Arendt, H.  175, 212, 240, 260, 261, 452 Areopagus deliberations  643, 651n5 Aristotle  23, 42, 56–​7, 58, 60, 62, 71, 120, 240, 425, 429n6, 429n7, 429n8

Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission  616, 617, 618 Arnstein, S.  189 Arrow, K. J.  117, 222, 423, 424, 429n2, 466–​7, 471–​2,  484n2 Asen, R.  504 Ashanti people, Africa  821 Ashoka, emperor  807 Ashram movement, India  92 aspirational ideals  2 Assemblé Nationale, France  735 Assembly of First Nations of Canada  105 asteroid strikes  768, 777 Åström, J.  366, 370, 372 Athenian democracy  23, 56, 300, 302, 318–​19,  320 attitude convergence  549n6 attitude polarization  544 attribution bias  246 Audi, R.  205 Austen-​Smith,  D.  733 Austin, J.  238, 595 Australia aboriginal/​settler reconciliation  161 Citizen’s Parliament (ACP, 2009)  508, 701, 906 Citizens Parliament, ensuring Indigenous representation 150 Deliberative Poll before national referendum 320 difficulties of deliberative democracy institutionalization in Western Australia 702 newDemocracy Foundation (nDF)  701 participatory budgeting  704–​5 authenticity 8 Baber, W. E.  775, 861 Baccaro, L.  658, 665 Bächtiger, A.  159, 161, 162, 164, 239, 279, 287, 353, 432, 658, 665, 667, 683, 861, 894n6, 895n23 Baiocchi, G.  576, 577, 685–​8 Ban, R.  813 Band Council System, Canada  101

Index   915 Barabas, J.  7, 245, 246, 544–​5 Barber, B.  44, 193–​4, 200n12 Barnes, M.  77 Barnett, E.  80 Barnett, M.  498 Barry, B.  127n2 Bartels, L. M.  1–​2, 539 Barthe, Y.  642 Bartlett, R. V.  775, 861 Baumgartner, F. R.  563–​4 Bayesian conditioning  480, 481 Bayesian updating  520 Beatty, J.  644 Becker, G. S.  429n5 Belgiorno-​Nettis, Luca  701 Belgium G1000  302–​3,  705 general election (2010)  744 mini-​publics  747–​8,  749 proposed federal electoral districts  750 Bell, D.  222 Bendix, W.  276, 279 Bendor, J.  564 Benhabib, S.  159, 219 Benin ​12 Bennett, A.  679, 693n3 Berry, M. E.  93 Besley, T.  811, 812 Bessette, J. M.  6, 38–​40, 46, 238, 281 Bevir, M.  659 Bhakti movement, India  807 Bickford, S.  239–​40, 241 Biesenbender, J.  849 Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, UK  646 Bisgaard, M.  563 Black, D.  471 Black, L. W.  79 Blue, G.  775 Blumler, J. G.  349 Boettcher, J. W.  204 Bogner, A.  647 Bohman, J.  47, 183n2, 219, 238, 310, 351, 442n1, 649–​50, 845–​6, 847, 858, 861 Böker, M.  307, 308, 339 Bolivia constitutional process (2006–​7)  832

Indigenous communities  838 Indigenous government, Charagua  105, 106 National Dialogues  835–​6 protest movements  395, 397 Botswana, deliberative ideals in postcolonial transition  87–​9,  90 Bourdieu, P.  574, 575, 579 Bouton, M. M.  278, 291n11 Bowers, J.  380 Boydstun, A. E.  563–​4 Brashers, D. E.  74–​5 Bräuniger, T.  277 Brazil Constitutional Assembly (1987–​8)  832 minority rights  838 national public policy conferences  702, 834 participatory budgeting  829, 834 police’s abusive use of force  353 Workers Party (PT)  837 see also Porto Alegre Brennan, J.  127n4 Brexit referendum (2016), UK  287, 904 British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (BCAA), Canada  13, 21, 264, 302, 309, 320, 620, 622n6, 702, 707n4, 901, 905, 908 Brown, M. B.  642, 651n2 Brown, P.  649 Bryce, J.  385 Buchanan, A.  857–​8 Buchstein, H.  331 Buddhism, India  806, 807 Bullock, J. G.  564 Burgess, M. M.  647 Burke, E.  173, 260, 278 Burkhalter, S.  505 Burleson, B. R.  505 Bush, George H. W.  283 Bush, George W.  226, 275, 281, 283, 865 Busia, K. A.  821 Button, M.  212 By the People, Deliberative Poll project  666 Calhoun, J.  233n3 California and electoral boundaries  617 Callon, M.  642, 648 Caluwaerts, D.  747, 748, 749

916   Index campaign spending limits  631 Canada Assembly of First Nations of  105 Band Council System  101 British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (BCAA)  13, 21, 264, 302, 309, 320, 620, 622n6, 702, 707n4, 901, 905, 908 encouraging participation by disempowered groups  148 ensuring Indigenous representation in citizens’ assemblies  150 Ontario citizens’ assembly  264, 288, 289, 302, 320, 702 Truth and Reconciliation Commission  165 Canter, A.  246, 247 capability theory, and deliberative democracy 139 Capella, J. N.  372, 541, 543, 667 capital punishment, US  563–​4 Caracas Radical Cause participatory reforms, Venezuela  689–​90, 691, 692 Caracas rioting, Venezuela (1989)  497 carbon pricing  776 Carcasson, M.  506, 510 Cardozo Law School 51n2, 51n5 Carson, L.  199n1, 701, 707n5 Castle, The (film)  440 catastrophic risks, and deliberation  768–​88 and analytic deliberation  771–​3, 780 analytic processes in global governance  773–​6 challenges to using analytic deliberation to address  776–​8 climate change  768–​9, 770, 775, 777 competence in facts and values  781n2 complexity and deep uncertainty  777–​8 criteria for participant selection  775 diversity in impacts  778 eco-​authoritarianism  769 experimentation with different approaches 779 geoengineering 779 global causes and effects  778 global commons and global governance  770–​1 how and when should the global public deliberate? 776 human actions  768

institutional feasibility and formation  774–​5 meta-​uncertainty  768 polycentric approaches  779–​80 social and economic barriers to global democratization  773–​4 variation in generation, effects and mitigating mechanisms  779 ways forward  778–​80 caudillismo 829 Chadwick, A.  365 Chambers, S.  211, 219, 238, 246, 265–​6n1, 307, 308, 437, 536, 628, 867n3, 894n9 Chapman, R.  412 Charles F. Kettering Foundation  701 Chaudhuri, S.  811 Chavez regime, Venezuela  495, 496–​7, 498, 837 Checkel, J. T.  522, 524 Chen, K. K.  579 Chen, P. C. B.  76 Chile Law  20.500 832 Mesa del Diálogo (round-​table discussions, 1999–​2000)  491–​2 China  698, 791–​804 authoritarian deliberation  229 deliberative authoritarianism  793 deliberative culture  796–​7 Deliberative Polls as decision-​making bodies 310 driving forces, characteristics and patterns  794–​5 local governance deliberative processes  794–​5 Maoist Mass Line -​from the people to the people 796 near-​binding Deliberative Polls  320 New Health Care Reform program  496 overview of practices  793 performance legitimacy  797 potentials and constraints of capacity building: systemic approach  797–​800 prospects of deliberative democracy in  800–​801 social protests  794 see also Confucian legacies and traditions in China and Japan Chinese Communist Party (CCP)  93, 436, 791, 793 and deliberative democracy  794, 796–​7

Index   917 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)  793 Choosing Healthplans All Together decision tool 910 Christiano, T.  134, 642 Churchill, Winston  640 Cifuentes, M.  77 Ciplet, D.  781n3 Citizen Deliberation Meetings, Japan  792 citizen flexibility  452 citizen interests, and deliberation  420–​31 and citizen sovereignty  423–​5 democracy and deliberation  425–​6 equal concern  420, 425, 426, 428 equal concern/​equal respect conflict in the right to vote  426 equal respect  420, 424, 425, 427, 428 folk democracy, US  420–​2, 426 institutions: distributed deliberation  426–​8 citizen sovereignty  423–​5, 429n2 consumer sovereignty compared  423–​4 citizens awareness 452 flexibility 454 receptivity 452 translatability 452 citizens’ assemblies  13, 60, 150, 301t, 341n5, 905 British Columbia  13, 21, 264, 302, 308, 309, 320, 620, 622n6, 702, 707n4, 901, 905, 908 Ireland 302 Ontario  264, 288, 289, 302, 308, 320, 702 citizens’ assessment  646 Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR)  242, 243, 247–​8, 320, 336, 620, 621, 700 Oregon  13, 75, 176–​7, 289, 308–​9, 324, 508, 700 citizens’ juries  13, 16, 300, 301t, 308–​9, 700, 701 tendency towards meta-​consensus  304 transnational 861 Citizens’ Parliament (2009), Australia  508, 701, 906 civic republicanism  38 civic virtue  57 civil rights movement, US  218, 353 civil society  10–​11 global 12 Claassen, R.  139 class, neglect in deliberation  576

clientelism, Latin America  829, 837 climate change  768–​9 global governance  770 meta-​uncertainty  777 and mini-​publics  775 Clinton, Bill  283 coalition governments  10, 732–​3 in deeply-​divided societies  744–​5 see also grand coalitions Coelho, V. S. P.  77 coercion deliberation and voting compared  229–​30 severity/​irretrievability spectrum  210 cognitive and rational capacity of the general public  20–​1, 62, 72, 222–​3 cognitive biases  254–​5, 542 cognitive complexity index  123 cognitive diversity  121, 122, 149 cognitive elaboration  382, 383 cognitive science  304 Cohen, J.  3, 7, 8, 6, 36, 43, 47, 48, 49, 51n7, 57–​8, 63, 114, 115, 118, 126, 188, 195, 205, 238, 303, 845–​6, 857, 860, 884–​5, 893n2, 893n4 Coleman, J.  114 Coleman, S.  349 collective intelligence systems  607–​9 Colombia centripetal electoral rules and deliberation  220, 225, 227–​8 deliberative experiments  682, 684, 685, 748, 887 Law  134 (1994) 832 peace process  493 Colombo, C.  563 colonialism  101–​2, 108, 147 Africa  820, 821 India  807, 808 common good/​public interest  3, 8, 38, 40, 46, 47, 224 and closed-​door deliberation  887, 894n13 common ground emphasized over  79 defining deliberation  729 and economic theories of democracy  219, 221 as performative  104 and stakeholder groups  717 and voting  222

918   Index common good orientation as deliberative ideal  4t, 8, 160, 885 philosophic origins  57, 59, 64 revisions to  8 as voting ideal  232 communication studies, deliberation in  502–​17 agreement/​disagreement studies  509 classrooms as proto-​public spaces  510 commitment to the practical  502–​3, 510, 512 complementary character of dialogue vs. deliberation 505 conceptualization of democratic deliberation 503 conceptualization of dialogue  505 deliberation/​dialogue relationship  512 deliberative and dialogic design  507–​8 distinction from deliberative research  503 facilitation studies  509–​10 future directions  511–​12 group interaction dynamics  508–​10 historical and rhetorical perspectives  504 information use studies  509 narrative and storytelling  511 outcome studies  508–​9 and public dialogue  510–​11 reconceptualizing deliberation in concrete terms  504–​6 theorizing and measuring deliberation’ impact  506–​7 communicative action theory  42, 49, 65, 161, 219, 240, 518, 574–​5 and international relations  518, 519–​21 communicative rationality  22, 523, 528, 719 community discourse  573–​4 comparative democratization studies, and deliberative democracy  490–​501 conceptual approaches  490–​1,  495–​9 cycles of contention/​cycles of deliberation  497–​8 the deliberative gap  490, 493–​5 and deliberative systems  495–​7 democratic transitions and consolidation studies 491 participatory dimension  494 sequential approaches  497–​9 why does deliberation matter?  490, 491–​3 workable agreements  491

competitive-​elitist democracy  46–​7 computer-​assisted coding  660 Condorcet, N. de  466 Condorcet’s jury theorem  117, 121, 127n2, 127n7, 223, 425, 465, 471, 492n3 Condorcet’s paradox  466, 467 confirmation bias  304 conflict, partisan  20 conflict clarification, as deliberative ideal  2, 4t, 7–​8, 12, 887 Confucian legacies and traditions in China and Japan  23, 93, 791, 792, 795, 796, 797, 800 Congressional Budget Office, US  276 Connelly, S.  498–​9 Connovan, P.  827 consensual democracies  732–​3, 737 proposal for Africa  821–​4 consensus vs. clarification of preferences  873–​5 consensual method in social movements  401–​2 consensus-​building, and Indigenous deliberation  102–​5,  108 consensus hypothesis  470 constructivist/​Rawlsian approaches to overlapping  140–​1 and critics of deliberative democracy  19–​20 deference to scientific  633, 642–​3 as deliberative ideal  2, 4t, 2, 3, 7, 12, 19–​20, 723n3, 730 effects on opinion change  544–​5 in the global context  107 meta-​consensus hypothesis  471–​3,  472 and reason-​giving  72 reformulations  19–​20 revisions (stretches) to  7–​8, 19–​20, 884–​5, 887 traditional African notions  93 vs. unanimity  123–​5 underlying 479 as voting ideal  231–​2 see also moral consensus consensus agreement (public dispute resolution)  712, 718, 723n3 Consensus Conferences (CCs)  13, 301t, 302, 306, 646, 699–​700 consent theories 428–​9n1 constitution drafting  491

Index   919 constitutional moments  318 constitutional theory, and legitimacy  625 constitutionalism, deliberative  625–​39 deliberation to law  627–​8 deliberative filtering  629 deliberative telescoping  629 disputes about jurisdiction  635–​6 entrenchment 632 federalism  635–​6 first-​order deliberation  630, 632, 635 and international law  633 law to deliberation  628–​31 and legitimacy  625–​6 matters within jurisdiction  635 means by which constitutions come into being  627–​8 proceduralist approaches to rights  632, 636 proportionality test in judicial review  630–​1,  632 rights as deliberative  631–​4 second-​order deliberations  630, 632, 635–​6 significance of political commitments in constitutional texts  628 social and economic rights  632 structural implications  634–​6 constitutions see individual countries consultation  10–​11 consumer sovereignty  423 Convention on Biological Diversity (1992)  771 Converse, P. E.  539, 540 Cook, F. L.  17, 196, 535 Cooke, M.  492 Coppedge, M.  494 Correll, S. J.  546–​7 Coulthard, G.  159 Council of  500, Ancient Athens 318–​19, 320 counter-​terrorism  409 courts  9–​10, 285–​7,  440 and actor motivations  523 constitutional  9–​10 judgement-​aggregation  482–​3 and judiciary awareness  456 and judiciary flexibility  457 and judiciary receptivity  457 and judiciary translatability  456 need to foster deliberation  428 and reason-​giving  421

Crawford, N. C.  520, 521 Crewe, I.  827 Crisp, B.  496 Crook, R. C.  811 Crosby, N.  45, 51n6, 300, 337, 700 crowd-​sourced constitution, Iceland  705 Cruikshank, J.  723n1, 724n7 Cuban missile crisis (1962)  579 Curato, N.  339, 494, 496 Customary Senate, New Caledonia  105 Dahl, R. A.  38, 45, 49–​50, 134, 300, 315, 330, 334, 556, 564, 640, 651n7, 853n2, 890 Dahlberg, L.  365 dance, deliberative potential  93–​4 Danish Board of Technology (DBT)  288, 699–​700 Danish Board of Technology Foundation  700 Davies, C.  80 Dawkins, R.  440 De Boef, S.  563–​4 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789), France  843–​4 deeply-​divided societies, deliberation in  742–​54 Belgium example  747–​8, 749 citizen/​elite gaps  750–​1 citizens and leaders  750–​1 Colombian example  748 deliberation among diametrically opposed citizens  747–​9 deliberative consociation  743–​7, 751n3 elite bargaining  747 grand governing coalitions  744–​5 identity, education and culture  746 inter-​dash group trust  748 Israeli example of status in deliberation  749 mutual vetoes  743, 745–​6 Northern Ireland example  748–​9 outbidding  742–​3, 744, 745, 746, 747, 751n1 polarization 749 PR electoral systems  745 proportionality 743 segmental autonomy  743, 746–​7 US campus studies  749 Deitelhoff, N.  521, 526 Delgamuukw v. British Columbia case  162

920   Index deliberation constrasted with aggregation  2–​3 definitions  2, 468–​9, 536 enclave 15 minimal  93–​4 Deliberation Days  12, 45, 318, 337, 474, 893 deliberation-​induced opinion change mechanisms  480–​2 deliberative communication, forms of  70–​85 agreement and disagreement  78–​9 the case for  71–​3 character of  71–​2 empirical research on  73–​81 facilitated talk  80–​1 and impacts of deliberative forums  76–​7 and inclusion/​marginalization  76 reason-​giving, storytelling and emotional expression  74–​8 deliberative deficit  422 deliberative democracy  1–​31 aggregative democracy contrasted  2 concepts  2–​8 critics  17–​23, 72–​3,  576 definition 2 demand for  20 first-​generation  3, 4t, 57, 612, 723 second-​generation (second wave)  3–​4, 4t, 22, 612–​13, 616, 618, 619–​21, 723 sites of  9–​14 deliberative democracy, origins (1980–​1993)  35–​52 consolidation of philosophical foundations  36 constituent phase  36 constituent phase and critical frontiers  41–​3 counterfactual conceptual model (Bessette) 39 critical-​radical approaches  44–​5 deliberative field articulation  36 early formulations  38–​41 Fishkin  45–​6 five critical borders  46–​7 formulations and insights  35 Habermas’s role  47–​8,  49–​50 historical roots  218–​20 interactions with other fields and disciplines  44–​5 from participatory democracy to  36–​7

Rawls’s role  47–​8, 50 systemic thinking about  14–​17 transition and theoretical innovation phase 35 transitional phase  37 deliberative democracy, and participatory democracy  187–​202 aggregative participatory democracy  188, 191, 191t, 194 benefits of deliberation to participatory democracy  193–​4 benefits of participation to deliberative democracy  191–​3 combining participation and deliberation  194–​8 compatibilities and synergies  190–​4, 191t empirical evidence on mass deliberation  196–​8 participatory deliberative democracy  188, 191, 191t, 192, 194, 196, 198–​9 theoretical debates on complexity, participations and deliberation  195–​6 deliberative democracy as a reform movement  697–​709 a deliberative democracy movement?  697–​9 institutionalizing democracy  701–​4, 706 reasons for optimism  704–​5 track record  699–​701 deliberative democracy, stretching  883–​99 conceptual stretches  883, 886–​8 deliberative systems to the rescue?  890–​3 democratic/​deliberative/​realistic desiderata  888–​90,  891–​3 original visions  884–​6 reasons for stretches, and why some are better than others  888–​90 deliberative democracy, when theory meets practice  900–​12 what does deliberation need from democracy?  904–​7 what should democracy expect from deliberation?  907–​11 where does democracy need deliberation?  901–​4 deliberative global citizens’ assembly (DGCA)  861–​2

Index   921 deliberative ideals  2–​8, 4t absence of coercive power  4t, 5, 231, 885, 886, 889 accountability 4t, 8, 232 common good orientation  4t, 8, 160, 885 consensus 4t, 7–​8, 19–​20, 884–​5, 887 entwined with voting ideals  230–​3 equality 4t, 5–​6, 884, 886 first-​generation (original Rawlsian/​ Habermasian)  3, 4t, 18, 884–​6 publicity (openness, transparency)  4t, 8, 232, 887, 891 reason-​giving  4t, 6–​7, 55, 56, 58–​9, 61, 66, 72–​3, 231, 536, 884, 885, 886, 888, 894 respect (mutual respect)  4t, 4–​5, 231, 885, 888 second-​generation revisions (stretches)  3–​4, 4t, 5–​8, 18–​20,  886–​8 sincerity 4t, 8 deliberative ideals across diverse cultures  86–​99 Botswana’s postcolonial transition  87–​9, 90 defining deliberation  93–​4 deliberative ideals in context  89–​90 ideal explanations  90–​3 normative justifications  94–​5 deliberative ideals, philosophic origins of  53–​69 democracy as inquiry  61–​3 general will  57–​8 government by discussion  59–​60 ideal speech situation  65–​7 public justification  63 public reason  64 public sphere  65, 67 public use of reason  58–​9 unforced force of the better argument  66 wisdom of the multitude  56–​7, 62 deliberative inquiry theory  506 deliberative movements  891 deliberative negotiation  10, 18, 258, 523, 524–​5, 657, 719, 728–​41 achieving  732–​6 arguing-​bargaining/​market-​forum distinction  728, 729 concept of  729–​31 contribution to deliberative democracy theory 730

contribution to negotiation theory  730 and cultural minorities  161, 163–​4, 167 different issues and different risks  735–​6 different problem-​structures and different opportunities 736 distinction from pure bargaining  730 distinction from pure deliberation  730–​1 efficiency of agreements  736–​7 enforceability of outcomes  736 fair compromise  731 in formal institutions  732–​4 fully integrative solutions  731 grey zone between deliberation and bargaining  728, 731 integrative/​ distributive bargaining  729–​30 intense, highly institutionalized interaction 734 issue characteristics  735–​6 kratos (rule) emphasis  728 legitimacy of agreements  737–​8 majoritarian vs. consensual democracies  732–​3 majority vs. unanimity rules  733–​4 mutual respect and justification  731 open public vs closed private settings  735 partially integrative solutions  731 repeated and long-​term interaction  734 roles in democratic politics  736–​8 social conditions  734–​5 stability of agreements  737 deliberative planning practices  595–​611 deliberative design processes as collective intelligence systems  607–​9 identity shaping  606–​7 incinerator public discussion example  596–​9 metaphor, aesthetics and shaping expectations  596–​9 Milan bridge-​planning example  607–​9 multi-​modal deliberative learning  600–​7 picturing new forms of deliberative life  602–​7 problem formulation before problem solution  604–​6 street-​level democracy example  600–​7

922   Index Deliberative Polls (DP)  13–14, 21–​2, 45–​6, 60, 192, 238, 242, 243, 246, 247, 301t, 302, 315–​28, 341n5, 470, 675n8, 707n11, 713, 724n12, 775 Africa 824 alleviation of group composition effects  304–​5 attitudinal representativeness  323 avoiding distortions  325–​6 By the People project  666 criteria for evaluation  322–​6 as decision-​making bodies, China  310 demographic representativeness  322–​3 EU  862–​3 and framing  563 and good conditions  316 and group polarization  543, 544 impact studies  76–​7 Irish constitutional reform  705 Japan 792 and knowledge gain  324–​5 media coverage  353 and national referendums, Australia and Denmark  320–​1 near-​binding, China and Macau  320 and opinion change  273, 540 opinion change and non-​deliberative persuasion 305 outputs 303 and preference change  304 sample size  323–​4 and statistical representation  177–​8 support for meta-​consensus hypothesis  473 Texas Public Utility Commission  319–​20,  321–​2 weighing competing arguments  324 what is the policy context?  319–​21 What’s Next California  320 who deliberates?  318–​19 why should others pay attention?  321–​2 deliberative polyarchy  300, 846, 859 deliberative systems (systems approach)  14–​17, 120, 224, 229, 239, 308, 432–​46, 505 additive/​summative views  440 binding collective agreements  436 and the boundary between science and politics 650

challenges to indexing deliberative quality  660–​1 communication between key sites  447–​60 connectivity 434 decisiveness  436,  437–​8 and global environmental governance  774–​5 help with the problems of concept-​stretching  890–​3 and interconnected media  356–​9 and law  612 and listening  434, 436 mind-​changing mechanisms  435 network maps  438 network models  438–​9 and post-​authoritarian democratization  495–​7 problem-​based approach  660 sequenced models  439 transnational  865–​6 visibility 434 visualizing  438–​9 what is deliberation?  432, 433–​6 what makes a deliberative system democratic?  436–​8 what produces deliberative quality?  440–​1 Della Porta, D.  190–​1, 393, 697–​8 Delli Carpini, M. X.  17, 196, 535 democracy as inquiry  61–​3 democratic deepening  458 democratic deficit  287, 422, 527 democratic destabilization  860 Denmark consensus conferences  302, 306 Deliberative Poll before national referendum 320 rural development in  409, 413 Desaparacidos (enforced disappearances)  491–​2 Deveaux, M.  160 Deville, M.  658, 665 Dewey, J.  23, 61, 62–​3, 119, 578, 642, 648, 678, 781n1 Dey, S. K.  810 dialogic democracy  240–​1 Diamond, L. J.  494, 495–​6 dictatorship of one individual  465 Dienel, P.  45, 51n6, 300, 646 Diers, J.  603 Dietrich, F.  471

Index   923 digital divides  354–​5,  366–​7 Dillard, J. P.  541 direct democracy  45 and deliberative law  618–​21 institutional deliberation  287 integrating mini-​publics with  308–​9 in social and protest movements  171, 395, 401, 403 disagreement  78–​9 and argument repertoire  541 civil 509 and communication studies  509 economizing on  19 and everyday political talk  380 and minimal/​maximal justice  141 not experienced as such  78 online  355–​6 overlapping consensus and reasonable  140–​1 and the politeness norm  78, 79 use of stories to disguise  78–​9 Disch, L.  174, 179, 180, 181, 183n1 discourse ethics  49, 65, 159, 162, 659, 772 rules of  885 social elements  274 Discourse Quality Index (DQI)  123, 243–​4, 245, 247, 274, 275, 279, 290n7, 658–​9, 660–​1, 673, 885 interpretive aspects  659 use in Africa  826 discourse theory  132–​3, 135, 140, 141, 847 discourses, manipulatory  334–​5, 337 Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem  121, 128n15 division of epistemic labour  641–​2 Dobson, A.  240 doctrinal/discursive paradox  482–​3 domination  5, 7, 18 Dogan, M.  680 Downey, L.  774 Downs, A.  316, 564 Drake, A.  745 Druckman, J. N.  541, 542, 546, 549n7, 560–​1, 563, 567–​8n3, 667 Dryzek, J. S.  19, 36, 44–​5, 192, 195, 199n6, 200n14, 219, 238, 239, 337, 341n4, 392–​3, 415, 437, 438, 439, 442, 491, 494, 495, 496, 497, 536, 626, 697, 761, 774–​5, 856, 857, 861,

863–​4, 865, 866, 886, 887, 888, 890, 891, 893n5, 894n6, 894n9, 895n22, 895n32 Durkheim, E.  385 Dutch energy reforms  408, 412 Dutwin, D.  22 Ebaugh, H.  761 Eberle, C.  211, 213 Ebola epidemic (2014–​2016)  902, 906 economic theories of democratic voting  218–​19 fallibility  220,  221–​3 Ecuador Constitutional Council for Citizen Participation and Social Control (2008)  832 Indigenous communities  838 minority rights  838 Organic Law of Citizen Participation (2010) 832 Edelman, M. J.  334 Edgell, P.  579 Edwards, A. R.  242–​3 efficient-​markets hypothesis  223 Egypt settlement development program  498–​9 Tahrir Square demonstrations  399, 400, 402 Eilders, C.  368, 369 Eisenstadt, T. A.  491, 628 Ekeh, P.  819–​20, 825 El Salvador reform of municipal legislation (2005) 832 Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)  562–​3 elections American plurality-​rule  225–​6 centrifugal vs. centripetal incentives  227–​8 Colombia  227–​8 Deliberation Day before US presidential advocated 12 epistemic inefficiency  425–​6 and folk democracy  421, 426 Indigenous models  106 insufficient for political participation  189 Papua New Guinea  226–​7 presidential primaries, US  264 representative democracy as merely competitive 221 and town hall meetings  11–​12

924   Index electoral district boundary commissions, US  616–​18 nonpartisan redistricting commissions  616–​17 partisan gerrymandering  616, 618 electoral fetish, in deliberative democratic theory 310 Eliasoph, N.  93, 383–​4, 827 Elster, J.  7, 36, 42–​3, 47, 51n4, 219, 470, 492, 524, 627, 636, 745 Elstub, S.  196, 239 Ely, J. H.  632 Emirbayer, M.  575, 578 emotions and emotional expression  6–​7, 75–​6,  877–​8 acampadas 402 alienation of forum officials  77 facilitators’ characterization  510 in gram sabhas, India  813 in the mass media  353 and more democratic/​less deliberative exchanges 889 in protest movements  393–​4 and realistic/​democratic/​deliberative democracy 890 subconscious effects  539–​40 empathy  7, 246, 333 empirical democratic theory  89, 187, 188 empirical study of deliberation, preface  657–​62 empirical inquiry and normative theory  657–​8 input-​output approach  658 process-​based approaches  658–​9 empowered participatory governance (EPG) model 577 empowerment of the weak  528 enclave deliberation  15, 150, 153n1, 547 in environmental democracy  762 impact of facilitation  369 online  355, 369, 373–​4 Endangered Species Act, US  757 Enlightenment, the  57, 843 environment, and deliberative democracy  755–​67 better environmental decisions  757 consensus and legitimacy  758, 762

consensus shortcomings  761 co-​optation by elites  760–​1, 763 deliberative partnerships  756 elite environmental decision-​making  75 enclave deliberation  762 equality and fairness  760 inclusiveness  756, 758–​9, 762 individual empowerment  762 justice  756–​7, 760,  762–​3 local knowledge  756, 759–​60, 762 perils  758–​61 political decay concept  763–​4 progress  762–​4 promise of  755–​8 risk governance  757 storylines  757, 763 see also catastrophic risks, deliberation and Environmental Policy and Conflict Resolution Act (1998), US  715 epistemic abstinence  113 epistemic democratic deliberation  8, 56,  113–​31 cognitive diversity  121, 122 consensus critiques  124 consensus meanings  124 and consensus/​unanimity  123–​5 critiques and defences of normative theories 119 deliberation and majority rule  125 deliberative and non-​deliberative approaches 117 descriptive/​explicative frameworks  114–​15 empirical objections to deliberation  125–​6 environmental democracy  758 epistemic mechanisms  120–​6 epistemic proceduralism  114 epistemic value and legitimacy  116 evidence constraint  119 interpretations of voting  114 intersubjective deliberation  113, 122, 125 measuring the quality of deliberation  123 moral and cognitive limitations  121 moral rights and equal status  116 morally construed approaches  118–​19 non-​convergence constraint  119 normative frameworks  114, 115–​19 polarization and consensus  124

Index   925 positive dissensus  125 procedural fairness  116 properties of deliberation  120–​2 properties of democratic deliberation  122 strategic conformism  124, 128n18 epistemic dimension of bureaucratic decisions  284–​5 epistemic elitism  60 epistemic performance indirect approaches  275 synoptic-​direct approach  275 epistemic value  117–​18, 119 as deliberative ideal  233 as voting ideal  233 epistemological egalitarianism  163 epistocracies 114 Epstein, S.  649 equality, and deliberation  2, 4–​5, 144–​55 achieving equality and inclusion in deliberative practices  146–​9 as deliberative ideal  5–​6, 884 enabling rights and practices  147–​8 engineering micro-​institutional deliberation  149–​51 environmental democracy  760 equality and inclusion in democratic systems  145–​6 equity  144, 145, 147, 152 inequalities and internal exclusions  146 inequality and exclusion from political participation  145, 146 inequality and oppression  146 legal framework guaranteeing liberties and participation rights  144, 146, 152 media independence and self-​regulation  147 micro-​institutional forums  144,  152–​3 revisions (stretches)  5–​6, 886 structural equality  145 universal moral equality  144, 145, 146, 152 as voting ideal  232 see also gender equality; political equality Ercan, S. A.  196, 241 Esterling, K. M.  275, 541, 544, 549n8, 659, 666, 670, 672, 674 Estlund, D.  114, 118, 133 ethnic minorities  505

and majoritarian democracy  820, 822 role in Latin America  838–​9 ethnography  685–​8 European Parliament  845, 851, 853n4 European public sphere  522 European Social Forum  397–​8, 400 European Union (EU)  16, 395, 842–​55 austerity and fiscal prudence  852 as consent-​based system  842, 853n1 as context  843–​5 crisis implications  850–​1 and deliberative negotiation  728, 734, 735–​6,  738 Deliberative Polls  862–​3 democracy as justification principle  844 democracy as an organizational form  844 democratic/​legitimacy deficit  527 expertocratic (technocratic) forms of discourse  852–​3 foreign and defence policy  852 foreign and security policy  845 the ideal standard  847–​8 institutional diversity  845 the institutional variant  848–​50 internal market system  845 international relations (IR) studies  520, 522, 525, 526 multiple speed development  851 neo-​liberalism  852 Open Method of Coordination (OMC)  859–​60 the parliamentary principle  849–​50 post-​crisis  850–​3 refugee crisis  852 and rhetorical action theory  520 segmented political order  851–​3 transnational experimentalism  859–​60 as transnational and supranational decision-​making system  846 the transnational variant  845–​6 EuroPolis poll  22, 242, 244, 245, 247, 862, 863 Eurozone crisis  843, 850–​1, 853 Eveland, W. P.  380 everyday political talk  378–​91 encompassing disagreement  380 incidental model  379 individual-​level factors influencing  381

926   Index everyday political talk (cont.) psychology of  382–​4 purposeful model  379 role of the media  385–​7 social/​political talk  379 and voting  380 what counts as  384–​5 executive and administrative bodies awareness 457 flexibility 458 receptivity  457–​8 as site of deliberation  10 translatability 457 experimental design, and deliberation  663–​77 associational approach  664 average treatment effect (ATE)  669 blinding  670–​1 complier average causal effect (CICE)  671–​2 epistemic validity  673 examples  665–​7 exclusion restriction  670–​1 experimental approach  664, 665 identification assumptions and strategies  669–​72 instrumental variables (IV) method  671, 674–​5n5 intention-​to-​treat (ITT) estimand  671, 672, 674n4 monotonicity  671, 675n6 non-​compliance  671,  671n3 population average treatment effect (PATE) 673 potential outcomes framework  663–​4, 665,  667–​9 procedural rules  665–​6 randomization of participants  669–​70 randomized experimental designs  665 sample average treatment effect (SATE)  673 stable unit treatment value assumption (SUTVA) 670 two-​cell/​two-​arm experiments  668,  669 validity and generalizability  672–​4 why experiments?  664–​5 Facebook  354, 355 facilitative trust  309

facilitators  80–​1 and communication studies  509–​10 emphasis of common ground over common good 79 fostering a conducive group atmosphere  74 hands-​off/​hands-​on  80 and listening  242–​3 neutrality  80–​1 and online deliberation  369, 374 praise for emotional engagement  76 promoting equality and inclusion  150–​1 valuing diverse perspectives  78 Farrar, C.  77, 304, 543, 549n5, 666, 672 fascism 91 Fearon, J. D.  736 Feddersen, T. J.  733 federalism and deliberative constitutionalism  635–​6 Fein, J.  560–​1 Femia, J.  200n13 feminism 5 Ferejohn, J.  114 15-​M movement, Spain  400, 402 Finnish online experiments  367 first generation of deliberative democracy theory  3–​4,  18 Fischer, F.  588, 642 Fish, S.  212, 888 Fishkin, J. S.  21, 36, 40, 45–​6, 50, 51n1, 123, 192, 198, 238, 242, 245, 302, 304, 306, 337, 372, 470, 474, 543, 558, 707n11, 713, 724n12, 862, 893 Floridia, A.  193 folk democracy, US  420–​2, 426 and deliberative inequality  422 and externally-​directed deliberation  422 and official reason-​giving  421–​2,  427–​8 Follett, M. P.  731 Fontana, D.  615 Food and Drug Administration, US  644 forceless (unforced) force of the better argument  59, 66, 120, 326, 525, 540, 546 Ford Foundation  809 Forester, J.  44 Forst, R.  132, 135–​6, 137, 138, 139, 140, 846 Foucault, M.  5, 525–​6, 719 Founding Fathers, US  38, 40, 319

Index   927 Fraile, M.  541 Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992)  526, 771 Conference of Parties  776 framing, and deliberation  352, 386, 556–​72 competitive framing  562 effects  539, 541–​2, 667 effects ameliorated by deliberation  541–​2 elite competition and citizen preference formation  558–​64 elite framing as threat to deliberation  559–​61 frames in communication/​frames in thought 566 framing defined  559, 560 improving opinions with framing and deliberation  564–​5 normative ideals  557–​8 virtues of framing for preference formation  561–​4 Frankfurt critical theory  219 Fraser, N.  6, 11, 138, 148, 393, 648, 864–​5 Freedom House  493 freedom of speech and assembly  16, 174 Freeman, S.  220 Freund, T.  542 Friess, D.  368, 369 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster (2011), Japan  793 fundamental interests  430n12 and marginalized groups  159 Fung, A.  454, 494, 544, 549n8, 577, 666, 670, 672, 711 G1000s 301t Belgium  302–​3,  705 Netherlands  303, 306 Gadamer, H-​G.  604 Gallie, W. B.  8 game-​theoretic model of deliberation and information sharing  478–​80 Gamson, W. A.  386 Gandhi, Mohandas  806, 808–​9, 815 Ganghof, S.  277 Ganuza, E.  576, 577 Garfinkel, H.  579

Garry, J.  750 Gastil, J.  177, 247, 286–​7, 309, 337, 505, 541, 620, 621 Gautschi, T.  667 Gaventa, J.  437 Geertz, C.  96n4 gender and communication format  151 and kind of deliberative talk  75 neglect in deliberation  576 and self-​other competence expectation  546–​7 gender equality  166 gender gap in political knowledge  541 gender inequality and discrimination  157, 547 and environmental democracy  759 in gram sabhas, India  813, 814 general elections Belgium(2010) 744 as weak deliberative process  892–​3 general will  57–​8 genetically modified food, media debates  352 geoengineering  769, 770, 779 George, A.  679, 693n3 Georgia 499 Gerber, M.  244, 245, 247, 305, 563 Gerring, J.  494, 657 Gibbard-​Satterthwaite theorem  467, 472 Gibbs, Lois  649 Gibson, C.  811 Gibson, D. R.  579 Giezeman, Willem  600–​7 Gilens, M.  540 Gilligan, J. M.  781n3 Ginsburg, Justice  617 global climate governance  866 global financial crisis (2008)  843, 850 global inequality  774 global justice movement  397, 403 consensual methods  401 deliberation and political translation in  397–​8 move to 2011 movements  399–​403 social forums  399–​400 global politics, increased participation of Indigenous peoples  106–​7 global public  860 proxy  775, 776

928   Index global public reason  857 Global South  397, 593 globalization  396, 864 Gold, V.  660 Goodin, R. E.  125, 175–​6, 335, 337, 341n4, 437, 861, 876, 894n17 Gorbachev, Mikhail  521 Gottweis, H.  588 Gould, C. C.  774, 779–​84 governance-​driven democratization  10 government by discussion  59–​60 gram sabhas India  703, 806, 810–​15 grand coalitions  744–​5, 823, 825 graphe paranomon, Ancient Athens  319 grassroots democracy  395 Green, G.  626 Greenawalt, K.  205 greenhouse gases  769, 776 Grice, H. P.  894n20 Grönlund, K.  305, 342n7 group polarization  20, 304, 326, 373–​4, 543–​4 alleviated by facilitation in online deliberation  369, 374 ameliorated by public dispute resolution (PDR) 718 law of  325 and single-​peakedness  474 groupthink 549n7 Gunderson, R.  773 Guston, D. H.  644 Gutmann, A.  8, 19, 59–​60, 64, 124, 238, 319, 350, 643, 735, 893n4 Habermas, J.  3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 15, 18, 19, 36, 40, 42, 44, 47–​8, 49–​50, 51n2, 51n5, 52n9, 59, 63, 64–​7, 67n2, 72, 90, 120, 126, 128n16, 132, 135, 136, 137, 138, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164, 179, 204, 209–​10, 219, 220, 238, 240, 385, 386, 387, 392, 447, 493, 505, 518, 519–​21, 523, 524, 525–​6, 528–​9n9, 536, 576, 579, 584, 620, 622n7, 622n8, 629, 640, 648, 719, 772, 781n2, 801, 864, 865, 871–​82, 885, 890, 893n3, 893n4, 894n20 Hague, The, street level democracy  600–​7 Hahn, K. S.  543 Hajer, M.  415, 439, 584, 585, 592

Hamburg strategy for the future  371 Hamilton, A.  173 Hampshire, S.  711 Hansard, invention of  65 Hanson, Pauline  895n32 Harilal, K. N.  811 harmony ideology  104–​5, 107 Harris-​Lacewell,  M.  383 Hartz-​Karp, J.  371–​2, 373, 702 Hastie, R.  543 Hauptmann, E.  195–​6 He, B.  93 Heath, J.  254 Heaton, S.  773 hedonic consumption  429n5 hegemonic quality of discourse  576–​7 Heller, P.  811 Hendriks, C.  241 Herne, K.  342n7 Herriman, J.  775 Herzberg, V.  703 Hibbing, J. R.  20, 196, 698 Hickerson, A.  505 Hinduism, India  806, 807 historical sociology and political theory  91 HIV-​AIDS  649–​50 Hjort, J.  96n2 Hobsbawm, E.  881 Hodson, G.  749 Holzinger, K.  849 Holzscheiter, A.  521–​2, 526 Hong, L.  121–​2 Honneth, A.  138 Hooghe, M.  22 Horkheimer, M.  881 horse-​race journalism  225–​6 Hug, S.  621–​2n5 Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA), UK  902–​3 human rights activists  491–​2 human rights association, Latin America 830 Huntington, S.  763–​4 Hurricane Katrina  701 Huspek, M.  505 Hutchens, M. J.  380 Hylland, A.  51n4

Index   929 Iceland, crowd-​sourced constitution  705 ideal conscious engagement  213 ideal speech situation  42, 44, 49, 65–​7, 204, 219, 368, 371, 468, 524, 528–​9n9, 719,  871–​3 conditions of  66 public reason compared  65–​6 identification cards (2005 bill), US  280 Ikegama, E.  91 Imbens, G. W.  669 immigration EuroPolis poll  244, 305, 863 from Islamic countries  880 impartial culture  474–​5 impossibility theorem  117, 222, 466–​7, 477 inclusion 5 India  805–​18 Ashram movement  92 Below Poverty Line (BPL) cards  812 Buddhist deliberative tradition  807 colonialism  807, 808 Constituent Assembly Debates  809 deliberation under Panchayati Raj  810–​13 in dialogue with the West  808–​10 elite domination  813, 814 equality and inclusion  806, 807–​8, 809, 812, 813, 815 gender biases  813, 814 gram sabhas  703, 806, 810–​15 Hindu deliberative tradition  807 historical roots of deliberation  806–​8 illiteracy  805, 812, 813, 814, 815n3 Muslim deliberative tradition  807 sabha tradition  807 satyagraha protests  92–​3 village democracy  808–​9 see also Kerala Indian Constitution Article  40 809, 810 73rd Amendment  810–​11, 814, 815 Indigenous communities, and global environmental governance  775 indigenous conception of democracy  397 Indigenous Peoples’ Forestry Forum (IPFF), Quebec City, 2003  107 Indigenous protest movements, South America 395

Indigenous spheres of deliberation  100–​9 ambiguity of Indigenous peoples concept 100 consensus-​building  102–​5,  108 consensus in the global context  107 dual processes of deliberation  101–​2 external actors’ strategies to circumvent 108 and global politics  106–​7 the Indigenous situation  100–​2, 104, 105, 106 multi-​scalar deliberation  105–​7 Indignados movement  395, 400, 401, 402 inequality and deliberative exclusion  145, 146, 150, 422 global 774 India  809, 814 wealth disparity  699 see also digital divides; gender inequality; marginalized communities; social/​socio-​ economic inequality Ingham, S.  128n17 Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution, US  715 institutional deliberation  273–​99 bureaucracies  283–​5 courts  285–​7 direct democracy  287 foreign policy errors  282 institutional procedures  276–​7, 290n9 insulation of policy-​making from public opinion  277–​8 judicial competence  286 legislatures  278–​81 measurement challenges  275–​6 party-​controlled deliberation  280–​1 presidential advisory processes  282–​3 revenue and expenditure forecasts  276 support for deliberative democracy  288–​9 theoretical considerations  276–​8 timing and frequency of policy innovations  275–​6 US president and  281–​3 institutional design countering anti-​deliberative tendencies  21 encouraging mass participation  318 micro-​institutions  149–​51,  153n1

930   Index institutions and citizen interests  426–​8 conditions for international relations  523–​6 and deliberative equality  148 and deliberative negotiation  732–​4 as sites of deliberative democracy  9–​10 and transnational/​global deliberation  858–​63 Inter-​American Development Bank (IDB)  835 interest groups  279, 311, 449 awareness 453 China 795 flexibility  453–​4 pluralism and  40, 46 receptivity 453 translatability 453 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)  643, 770, 771, 776, 778, 779 International Association for Public Participation (IAP2)  698 international IDEA  493 International Law Commissions  861 International Monetary Fund (IMF)  395, 774, 831 International Organization 518 international relations (IR)  518–​34 actor orientation  523 constructivist approach  867n2 counting speech acts  522–​3 deliberative influence  12 does deliberation lead to better agreement?  526–​7 empirical studies  521–​6 EU studies  522 functionalist accounts  519–​20 inclusivity/​exclusivity of access  524 institutional scope conditions  523–​6 legacy of realism  518 linguistic turn  519 negotiations and outcomes studies  521–​2 normative implications  527–​8 privileging honest brokers  525 rhetorical action theory  520 sequencing and the role of power asymmetries  525–​6 transnational public sphere studies  522 transparency vs. secrecy  524–​5 ZIB debate (rational choice vs. social constructivism)  519–​21

international system  12 investigative journalism  335 Involve organization, UK and Europe  698 Iraq War (2003)  275, 282, 283 worldwide demonstrations against  865 Ireland Citizens’ Assembly  302 Irish Constitutional Convention (2013)  303, 705 Irving, H.  440 isegoria  149, 150 Isenria, P.  242 Islam, India  807 Israel, language status in mini-​publics  749 Ivison, D.  214 Iyengar, S.  372 Jacobs, L. R.  17, 196, 535 Jacques, C.  822 Jacquet, V.  660 Jainism, India  806, 807 James, M. R.  238 James, W.  578 Japan civility cultivated through the arts  91 concept of the public  93 deliberative culture  795–​6, 797 and deliberative democracy  791–​804 Deliberative Polls  792 driving forces, characteristics and patterns  793–​4 jury system  795 Liberal Democratic Party  793 overview of practices  792–​3 potentials and constraints of capacity building: systemic approach  797–​800 privatism 796 prospects of deliberative democracy in  800–​801 protest movements  793–​4, 798 see also Confucian legacies and traditions in China and Japan Jasanoff, S.  651n4 Jefferson Center, Minneapolis, US  700 Jeffrey conditioning  481 Jennings, M. K.  379–​80 Jennstål, J.  333 Jha, S.  813

Index   931 Joas, H.  578 Joerges, C.  522 Johnson, J.  6, 20, 651n1 Johnson, Lyndon  283 Jonsson, M.  366, 370, 372 journalistic intention, and deliberation  94 judgement-​aggregation theory  482–​4,  483t premise-​based vs. conclusion-​based procedures  483–​4 judicial review enhancing democratic deliberation 626 judicial systems  10 juries  10, 286 benefits of participation  506 common sense indexical reasoning  579 domination by the advantaged  325 and game theory  478, 479 Japan 795 juristic democracy model  775 Jury Theorem see Condorcet’s Jury Theorem justice, and deliberation  132–​43, 908–​9 beyond the traditional distinctions  136–​8 democracy and equality  133–​4 democracy presupposing justice  137–​8 democratic deliberation as the construction of justice  132–​3,  135–​6 epistemic value of democracy  133 impartiality as context-​sensitive  135, 136 instrumental value of democracy  133, 134, 136 intrinsic value of democracy  133–​4, 137 justice presupposing democracy  136–​7 mapping the debate  133–​4 minimal/​maximal accounts of justice  136, 138–​40,  141 overlapping consensus  140–​1 procedural conception of justice  134 reasonable disagreement  141 the roles of the philosopher  138–​40 separation of democracy and justice  132 substantive conception of justice  134 justice theory  138, 139, 175, 207, 240, 908 Juzgado General de Indios, New Spain  101 Kahane, D.  305 Kahneman, D.  541, 567n2 Kant, I.  25n1, 47, 58–​9, 60, 62, 67, 175

Kantner, C.  522 Karnataka Act (1985), India  810 Karpowitz, C. F.  79, 665, 666, 759 Katz, E.  385 Katzenstein, P. J.  518–​19 Kaviraj, S.  805 Keck, O.  520 Kelsen, H.  134, 231–​2 Kelshaw, T.  505 Kennedy, Justice  629 Keohane, R. O.  857–​8 Kerala, India gram sabhas  703, 811 People’s Campaign for Decentralised Planning  703, 811, 814 kgotlas (communal meetings), Botswana  88, 89 Khan, S.  77 Khon Kaen Think Tank (KKTT)  591–​2 Khrushchev, Nikita  579 Kim, N.  75–​6 Kinder, D. R.  559, 562 King, M.  659 Kitcher, P.  641–​2 Kleroterion, Ancient Athens  318 Klofstad, C. A.  380 Kluver, Lars  700 Kant, I.  8 Knight, J.  6, 20, 651n1 Knobloch, K. R.  242, 246, 247 knowledge, elite hoarding  62 knowledge gain  541 in anticipation of deliberation  542 and Deliberative Polling  324–​5 and nature of setting/​features of group discussion 542 and online deliberation  372 opinion change dependent on group-​and individual-​level factors  544–​5 Koller, A.  580 Korolev, A.  496 Kratochwil, F. V.  518 Krause, S. R.  6–​7 Kruglanski, A. W.  542 Krupnikov, Y.  537 Kuhn, T.  44 Kuklinski, J. H.  549n3 Kurnik, A.  403

932   Index Laborde, C.  211 Laden, A. S.  139 Lafont, C.  16, 307, 331, 324n11, 334 Lakoff, G.  590 Landa, D.  485n4 Landemore, H.  122, 124, 133, 278, 291n11, 538, 628 Landes, D.  96n2 Landy, M. K.  279 Larmore, C.  4, 205 Lascoumes, P.  642 Lasswell, H.  586 Latin America  90, 829–​41 associativism  830–​1 constitutionalization: role of the state  831–​3 decentralization: role of municipalities  833–​4 democratization: role of civil society  830–​1 development: role of international organizations  834–​6 ethnical and cultural diversity: role of minority groups  838–​9 experimentalist vocation  839–​40 left turn: role of political parties  836–​7 participation programs, comparative study  689–​92 participatory budgeting  829, 834, 835, 837 social accountability  835 law, deliberative  612–​24 administrative law-​making, US  613–​15 deliberative plebiscites, US  618–​21 districting commissions, US  616–​18 Lax, J. R.  621–​2n5 Lazer, D. M. J.  541, 672 Leclair, J.  636 Lee, C. W.  78, 80 Lee, J.  75, 683–​4, 685 Lee, T.  544, 549n8, 666, 670, 672 Leeper, T. J.  560–​1, 563 Leeson, P. T.  93 legislatures, and deliberation  7, 278–​81, 455–​6 adversarial systems  9 awareness 455 consensual systems  9, 18 flexibility 455 information-​sharing  277 listening in  243–​4

mini-​public assemblies advocated  14 need to justify departures from deliberation  15–​16 receptivity 455 second legislative chamber advocated, US  310 translatability 455 variable quality of deliberation  310 legitimacy 16 Lehman Brothers collapse (2008)  850 Leifer, E. M.  578 Lepora, C.  894n17 LeVan, A. C.  491, 628 Levendusky, M. S.  542, 546 Levine, A. S.  537 Levine, P.  74 Levinson, S.  341n3 Levy, R.  628 Lewanski, R.  707n5 liberal democracy/​ies  2, 67, 87, 162, 168, 187, 189, 190 aggregative  191, 191t decreasing quality of  399 Lichterman, P.  93 lifeworld 579 Lindell, M.  543–​4, 548n8 Lippmann, W.  62 List, C.  475, 476, 549n5 listening, and deliberation  237–​50 alternative forms of communication  239 changes of opinion  242 in deeply divided societies  245 in deliberative practice  241–​8 and deliberative theory  237–​41 and democratic theory  239–​40 dialogical approaches  240–​1 empathy research  246 facilitators and moderators  242–​3 government-​run online fora  243 individual dispositions  245–​8 informal and horizontal modes  241 institutional structures  243–​4 legislatures  243–​4 testimony in deliberation  239 Listening to the City event, New York  701 Locke, J.  63 Lodge, M.  539

Index   933 long-​term decisions, and deliberation  251–​69 authority and reverence  260–​1 biases and the future  255, 257, 262 cognitive misers  254 conditions for an effective deliberative environment  256–​7 constitutions  260, 265 coordinating contemporaries  252, 257–​9 coordinating generations of political actors  252–​3,  259–​62 drift 257 dynamic inconsistency problem/​time inconsistency problem  259–​60 future rewards  255 identifying shared objectives  255 incentivizing individuals and groups  255, 259 information-​rich environments  254 intergenerational communications  262 intergenerational cooperation  259, 262, 263, 266n2 legislative assemblies  263 moral concerns advantage  256 motivating long-​term thinking  252, 253–​7 near-​term benefits and longer-​term costs  255 near-​term costs and longer-​term benefits  255 negativity bias  255 negotiation and bargaining  258 persuasion  261–​2 private power  257–​8 public demands of deliberation  254, 258 short-​term tendencies of democracies  251–​2,  253 Love Canal case, New York  649 Lowndes, V.  412 Luhmann, N.  853n2 Lukensmeyer, C.  246 Lupia, A.  537, 673 Luskin, R.  372, 543, 724n12 Lynch, M.  522 Lyon, A.  504 Maasai people, Tanzania and Kenya  100 Maboudi, T.  491, 628 Macedo, S.  205 MacGilvray, E.  62 MacKenzie, M. K.  336, 341n3, 342n11, 647

Mackie, G.  134, 470 Maclure, J.  212 Macpherson, C. B.  190, 199n3 Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure, EU 853n3 MacTiernan, Alannah  702 Madison, J.  35, 40, 173, 317, 452 Mahajan, G.  166 Maine, H. S.  806, 808 majority rule  7, 225, 465, 472, 718 arguments for  465–​6 and cooperation/​conflict  733–​4 detrimental to women  547 and individual autonomy  231–​2 and insular minorities  233n3 in juries  478 and truth-​telling  479 Malawi traditional ideals as barrier to political discourse 92 Maltzman, F.  276 Manin, B.  36, 41–​2, 43, 47, 49, 219 Manor, J.  811 Mansbridge, J.  14, 35, 37, 74, 76, 78, 79, 80, 93–​4, 161, 178–​9, 193, 194, 196, 218, 219, 230–​1, 232, 239, 246, 341n3, 378, 379, 384, 393, 432, 440, 523, 536, 723n2, 724n6, 724n11, 728, 731, 732, 736, 875, 887, 893n5, 894n6, 894n15, 894n19 Manzo, J. F.  579 Maoris 437 March, A. F.  210 March for Science (April 2017)  182 marginalized groups and democratic inclusion  21–​2 emotional expression in protest movements 393 empowered participatory governance (EPG) model  577 enclave deliberation  547 exclusion from deliberation  21–​2, 72–​3, 76, 305, 358, 577 exclusion not upheld by empirical research  22, 325 facilitating inclusion  22, 148, 353 and gram sabhas, India  812 lack of empirical evidence for Deliberative Polls 325

934   Index marginalized groups (cont.) neglect of fundamental interests  159 perception of incapability of reasoned argument 77 and political translation  397–​8 purposive sampling  150 storytelling  511, 579, 683 and the US Social Forum  397 Marschall, M. J.  621–​2n5 Marsh, D.  439 Martin, B.  199n1 Marx, K.  573 Marxism 42 mass deliberation constitutional moments  318 Deliberation Day proposal  12, 45, 318, 337, 474, 893 empirical evidence on  196–​8 Mathis, J.  733 Matolino, B.  822–​3 Matynia, E.  492 Maynard, D.  579 May’s theorem  465 McClurg, S. D.  380 McCoy, M. L.  74 McCulloch, A.  745 McFarland, K.  578 McKearnan, S.  724n8, 724n10 McKersie, R.  729 McKibben, H. E.  733–​4, 735 McLain, A.  542, 546 McNeil/​Lehrer Productions  666 Mead, G. H.  574 media 11 deliberative  328–​64 antidemocratic trends  350 awareness 451 conditions for deliberation in the digital environment  354–​6 conditions for deliberation in the mass communication environment  330–​3 contextual variations and constraints  350–​1 deliberative systems and interconnected media  356–​9 elusive and complicated role in public debates 351 emotional and personal stories  353

empirical research on quality of debate  352 enclaved publics  355 e-​participation initiatives  357 everyday networked discussions  357–​8 flexibility 451 and framing  352, 558, 559, 563, 567n1 as inter-​connected and hybrid system  349–​56 mass media-​based communication  357 networking with diverse others  355–​6 news media  350–​3 normative guidelines  350 online culture and norms shaping deliberation 355 receptivity 451 restriction of epistemic potential of deliberation 351 role in everyday political talk  385–​7 simplistic and non-​contextual information  352–​3 strategic dramaturgy  353 tension over included/​excluded voices  351–​2 translatability 451 median-​voter theorem  471 Medici, Cosimo de  578 Medicines Evaluation Committee, France  644 Mehta, Balwantray  810 Meirowitz A.  485n4 Mendelberg, T.  76, 79, 536, 558, 564, 665, 666, 759 Mendonça, R.  196 Me’phaa people, Guerrero, Mexico  102, 103–​4 Mercier, H.  538 Merleau-​Ponty,  M.  240 Mestizos, Me’phaa  102 meta-​consensus  19, 304, 485n10, 657, 758 hypothesis  471–​3 Meuser, M.  760 Mexico, minority rights  838 Meyers, R. A.  74–​5, 558 Michael, R. T.  429n5 Michelman, F. I.  35, 38, 40, 46, 49, 51n2 micro-​institutional deliberation see mini-​publics middle-​rage theories  512 Milan, bridge planning  607–​9 Milewicz, K.  861

Index   935 military intervention, news coverage  352 Mill, J. S.  23, 59–​60, 119, 120, 122, 206, 323, 808 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA)  770, 771, 778 Miller, D.  19 Milliken, J.  519 Mills, C. W.  577 Mills, R. W.  290n4 Min, S.-​J.  372 mini-​demoi  310 minipopulus 651n7 mini-​publics  13–​14, 16–​17, 60, 67, 71, 149, 150, 152, 176–​7, 244, 246, 287, 300–​14, 317, 379, 411, 440, 448, 892 advisory role  16–​17 awareness 454 and consultation  306–​7 contemporary history of  300 critiques  192,  307–​8 designed coupling  307 in diametrically groups  747–​8, 750 educative function  17 and environmental global governance  774–​5 and facilitative trust  309 flexibility 455 ineffectiveness of online experiences  358 input-​output studies attacked  658 integrating with direct democracy  308–​9 internal practices, empirical evidence  303–​5 Japan  792, 796 key design features: difference within type  301–​3,  301t and long-​term decision making  263–​4 loose coupling  307 and moderators  243 a more decisive role for?  309–​10 and normative legitimacy  16 outputs  302–​3 and participatory budgeting, Australia  704–​5 and perceived legitimacy  16 and the politics of science and technology  645–​7 as trusted information proxies  14 promoting quality and inclusion  149–​51,  152 quotas 302

random sampling  149–​50, 192, 263, 302, 860 random stratified sampling  13, 150, 302 reasons for participation/​non-​participation in 660 receptivity 454 self-​selection  13, 149, 302, 305 time period  302 transferability 861 translatability 454 transnational  860–​2,  865 mini-​publics, scaling up deliberative effects  329–​47 decisiveness claims  331 deliberative norm-​building  336–​7,  340 deliberative stance and its precursors  332–​4, 335, 338, 341n2 design  338, 341n6 discursive regulation  335–​6, 337, 338, 339, 340 discursive role  330 discursive signalling  336 emotional dynamics  334 external conditions  339–​40 focus on outcomes  329–​30 and group-​building exercises  333–​4,  342n10 institutional settings  339–​40 as institutions for deliberative capacity-​building  337 internal conditions  338–​9 micro-​political linkages  339 misdiagnosis and misuse of  330–​1 online methods  338 setting the agenda for voting  320–​1 transformation of the citizen  331–​2, 342n8 voting 339 Minozzi, W.  564 mitochondrial donation  902–​3 mixed assemblies  303 mixed communications  18–​19 Mizak, C.  61 monetary policy and central banks  278 Montesquieu 265 Montevideo Broad Front participatory reforms, Uruguay  689–​90, 691, 692 Moore, A.  644 moral consensus  160 and compromise, bargaining and negotiation  160, 161, 163–​5, 167

936   Index Morales, Eva  397 Morey, A. C.  380 Morlino, L.  494, 495–​6 Mosher, M.  7, 260–​1 motivated reasoning  20, 329, 335, 539, 542, 544, 545 Mouffe, C.  19, 434–​5 Mubarak regime, Egypt  499 Mucciaroni, G.  275, 279 Muhlberger, P.  78, 370, 711 Müller, H.  519–​20, 523 multiculturalism, and deliberative democracy  156–​70 compromise, negotiation and bargaining and intra-​cultural conflicts  160, 161, 163–​4,  167 cultural group differences and deliberative styles  157–​8 deliberative inequalities  157 dialogical intercultural approaches  165–​6 exclusion, internal/​external  157 group-​based differences as resource in deliberation 162 ideal of a common good  160 identity group claims and deliberative virtues  159–​60 legal changes and democratic discourse  162 reciprocity 159 resolving intercultural disputes  165–​7 response to challenges  161–​5 rhetoric, story-​telling and myth  158, 162 styles of political speech  158 multidimensional global democracy  779–​80 multinational corporations  395 multiple advocacy approach to decision-​making  283 Murphree, D. W.  761 mutual respect, as condition of good deliberation  4–​5,  18–​19 Mutz, D. C.  20–​1, 197–​8, 246, 380, 512, 537 Myers, C. D.  536, 545, 558 Nabatchi, T.  77 Nader, L.  104 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), US  284

National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, US  698 National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples  105 National Deliberative Poll on Energy and Environmental Policy, Japan  792–​3 National Institutes of Health Toxicology Program, US Carcinogen Subcommittee 644 National Issues Forum  509, 541, 701 National Research Council (NRC), UK  587–​8 National Science Foundation model of deliberation 587 NATO  520, 521 Naurin, D.  733, 894n13 Neblo, M. A.  6–​7, 20, 196–​7, 200n14, 306–​7, 351, 541, 672, 698 Nehru, Jawaharlal  809 Nelson, K. R.  567–​8n3, 667 Nelson, T. E.  562 neoliberal (rationalist) institutionalism  518, 520 neoliberalism  222, 395, 399, 774 and the EU  852 and Latin America  831, 836 network maps  438 network models  438–​9 Khon Kaen city municipality  589–​90 networks of governance  407–​19 accountability 415 contribution to deliberative systems  409–​11 contribution to public deliberation  415 co-​option and domination  413 as deliberative help or hindrance  408–​9 direct forms of citizens’ engagement in  414–​15 disconnections  412–​13 elitism and exclusion  412 network regulation  414 plurality of voices proposals  414 privileging of market agency  413 secrecy 409 strategies to adjust deliberative systems for 415 strategies to improve  414–​15 networks of mutual consultation and decision, informal  10–​11 newDemocracy Foundation (nDF), Australia 701 New England Town Meetings  507

Index   937 New Left, participatory ethos  218 Neyer, J.  522 Niemann, A.  522 Niemeyer, S. J.  19, 125, 304, 333, 335, 437, 440 Nierras, R. M.  74 Nigeria  820, 827n2 Nir, L.  541, 543 nomethetai, Ancient Athens  319 Non-​Governmental Organizations (NGOs)  10–​11, 407, 527 North, D.  96n2 Northern Ireland Citizen Assembly proposal  750 Deliberative Polls and sectarian deliberation 245 sectarian divisions  748–​9 Nuclear Proliferation Treaty  521 Numbers Trump Ability Theorem  122 Nussbaum, M.  6, 205 Nussio, E.  748 Obama, Barack  283 Obamacare 496 Occupy Movement  395, 401, 402 Slovenia 403 Occupy Wall Street, US  402 O’Donnell, G.  820 Offe, C.  393, 863 O’Flynn, I.  349, 494, 496 Oleske, J.  76 olla popular (soup kitchens), Argentina  396 online deliberation  365–​77 anonymity vs. identification  368–​9 communicative process of  370–​1 and communicative rules  366 conceptual confusion  373 conditions for  354–​6 culture and norms shaping interactions  355 defining  365–​6 designs 373 digital divides  354–​5,  366–​7 enclaved publics  355, 369, 373–​4 external outcomes  371–​2, 373 facilitation/​moderation  369 and interconnected media  357–​8 internal outcomes  372

lack of empirical studies of discussion quality in organized forums  373 motivational issues  367–​8 networking with diverse others  355–​6 preconditions  366–​70 supply of information  369–​70 synchronous and asynchronous discussions 368 ways forward  373–​4 World Trade Center rebuilding  683 Ontario Citizens Assembly, Canada  264, 288, 289, 302, 320, 702 Open Method of Coordination (OMC), EU  859–​60 opinion change  506, 540–​1 in anticipation of deliberation  542 and Deliberative Polls  273, 305, 540 and deliberative quality  659 and framing  563 mechanisms of deliberation-​induced  435,  480–​2 problematic as marker of deliberative quality 658 and quality of deliberation  658, 659 relationship with knowledge gain and group-​/​individual-​level factors  544–​5 Oregon Citizen Initiative Review (CIR), US  13, 75, 176–​7, 289, 308–​9, 324, 508, 700 Oregon development controversy  719 Ornstein, N.  734 Osiatynski, W.  496 Ostrom, E.  774, 780 Owen, D.  15, 332, 436, 441 Padgett, J. F.  578 Page, B. I.  278, 291n11 Page, S. E.  121–​2, 124 Palaniswamy, N.  813 Papua New Guinea, public deliberation under two different voting rules  220, 226–​7 reciprocity within clans  227 paradox of voting (cycling phenomenon)  222 Paraguay Organic Municipal Law (2010)  832 Pareto principle  424, 429n4, 466, 467 Paris Agreement on climate change (2015)  527 Paris Climate Change Conference (2015)  903

938   Index Parkinson, J.  239, 353, 432, 891n3 Parson, J.  96n3 Parson, T.  574 Parthasarathy, R.  813 participatory budgeting (PB)  577, 698, 702–​3, 829 Australia  704–​5 Porto Alegre  318, 685–​8, 702–​3, 704, 901 participatory democracy  36–​7, 39, 44, 47, 63,  188–​90 adaptation by social movements  399–​403 balance between participation and representation in social movements  394–​5 educative effect  190 justification of  189–​90 ladder of participation  189 partial vs. full participation  189 and reduction of socio-​economic inequalities  189–​90 see also deliberative democracy, and participatory democracy partisan and conflict-​focused forums  12–​13 Pascal, B.  575 Pateman, C.  51n7, 190, 192–​3, 199n8, 218, 330 Payne, C. R.  773 Pedrini, S.  159, 667 Peirce, C. S.  61 Pelassy, D.  680 Pellizzoni, L.  576 Pennsylvania State University Press  504 People’s Campaign for Decentralised Planning, Kerala, India  703, 811, 814 Perote-​Peña,  J.  477 Perrin, A. J.  385, 578 persuasive arguments  422, 543 Peru, Framework Law on Participatory Budgeting (2003) 707n7, 832, 834 Peter, F.  134 Peterson, E.  563 Peterson, M. A.  282 Pettit, P.  334, 341n3, 442n1, 484 Phillips, J. H.  621–​3n5 phronesis 502 picqueteros, Argentina  395, 396 Piggins, A.  477 Pincione, G.  17 Pinochet dictatorship, Chile  491–​2

Pion-​Berlin,  D.  492 pirate deliberation  93 Pitkin, H. F.  174, 179, 183n4, 257, 258 planning cells  300, 301t, 303, 646 Plato  56, 62 plebiscites, deliberative  618–​21 chastening function  619 civil societies’ influence  620–​1 educative function  619 sluiceway function  619, 620 pluralism  4, 7–​8, 18–​19, 38, 160, 238 of interest groups  40, 46 of interests  37, 38 and maximal justice  138–​9 in modern politics  63 value 204 pluralist ideals  3–​4, 7–​8, 18, 19 pluralist paradigm  46 plurality-​rule  voting Colombian presidential elections  228 vs. preferential, Papua New Guinea  220,  226–​7 US  225–​6 Poland, Solidarity and the Communist Party round table talks (1989)  492, 496–​7 policy analysis, deliberative  584–​94 advantages of models of  587–​9 analytic/​deliberative methods  587–​8 critique of  588–​9 emergence of  584–​5 foundations of  586–​7 Khon Kaen city municipality, Thailand  587–​92,  593 methodological framework  588 what it is, and why we need it  585–​6 policy makers and agreement vs. disagreement in deliberative forums  79 and deliberation as just talk  73 discussion characteristics valued by  77 e-​participation initiatives  357 facilitators shaping discussions to impact on  81 impact of exposure to citizen deliberation 81 reasons to attend to deliberative opinion  316–​17,  321–​2

Index   939 politeness norms  78, 79 political alienation  506 political autonomy  63 political culture tradition  87, 94–​5 political equality  57–​8 political liberalism  48, 118, 140, 207 political parties awareness 453 displacement, US  427 flexibility  453–​4 importance of developing policy decisions in private  891 multi-​party vs. two-​party systems  733 receptivity 453 role in Latin America  836–​7 translatability 453 political poverty  197 political psychology of deliberation  535–​55 amelioration of framing effects  541–​2 central vs. peripheral processing  539–​40 cognitive biases  539 contributions to the study of deliberation  537–​8 deliberation and partisan thinking  542 deliberative citizens  537, 538–​43 and group dynamics  537–​8, 546 and group-​level contexts  538, 548 group polarization  543 inaccurate beliefs  539 and institutional contexts  538, 548 knowledge gain  541 low levels of knowledge  539 and operationalization of deliberative ideals 537 opinion change  540–​1 preference diversity  544–​6 social identity inequality  546–​7 theorized benefits of deliberation  536–​7 political reciprocity concept  238 political theory and anthropology  90–​1 communication-​oriented  505 and comparative study of deliberative ideals  86–​7 deliberative democracy/​rational choice debates  520–​1 exchange with political behaviour study  535

globally inclusive  95 and historical sociology  91 normative vs. formal  463 and representation  181–​2 politics in translation  447–​60 awareness  449, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 457 citizens 452 conditions for influence across the system  448–​50 executive and administrative  457–​8 flexibility  450, 451, 452, 453–​4, 455, 456, 457, 458 judiciary  456–​7 key transfer sites  450–​8 legislatives  455–​6 the media  451 mini-​publics  454–​5 parties and interest groups  453–​4 receptivity  450, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 457,  457–​8 translatability  449, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 456, 457 Polletta, F.  75, 76, 78, 579, 683–​4, 685 Poole, K. T.  430n13 popular assemblies  396 popular epidemiology  649 populism  171, 179, 329, 330, 872 populist language  334 Port Huron Statement (1962)  188 Porto Alegre, Brazil participatory budgeting  318, 685–​8, 702–​3, 704, 901 Workers’ Party participatory reforms  689–​91, 692, 834, 837 Posner, Judge  629 postcolonial liberalism  214 Postill, J.  402 post-​representative politics/​post-​democracy emergence  171–​2 power 17 centrality to Bourdieuian model  575 centrality to relational sociology  576–​7 coercive  2,  4–​5 power, absence of coercive  4–​5 conceptual stretches  886, 889 as deliberative ideal  4t, 5, 231, 885 as voting ideal  231

940   Index power asymmetries accepting the reality of  889 global 859 sequencing and the role of in international negotiations  525–​6 and the use of mediators  719 Pozzoni, B.  77 practical reasoning  425 pragmatic supposition in Habermas  5 pragmatism  61, 578, 642, 888 pre-​deliberation views  545 preference formation  42–​3, 335, 556, 557, 558–​64,  873–​4 virtues of framing  561–​5 preference transformation model of deliberation  475–​7, 476f, 480 ‘preferences are opinions about interests’  425, 429n5 preferential voting, Papua New Guinea  220,  226–​7 press freedoms  174 Price, V.  372, 541, 543, 667 privacy 8 private use of reason  57–​8 problem-​driven approaches  660 to assessment  678 exemplars  681–​93 supposed affinity with qualitative approaches 679 proportional representation (PR)  745 Single Transferable Vote (STV) form  745, 746 proportionality test in judicial review  630–​1,  632 Public Affairs Act of 1975 (fictional Act)  316 public consultation, problem of  315–​16 Pubic Conversations Project organization  507–​8 Public Dialogue and Deliberation Division, National Communication Association, US  502 public dispute resolution (PDR), and deliberative democracy  710–​27 advantages of supplementing deliberative democracy with PDR  717–​20 aggregative approach to public decision-​making  712–​13

better representation  717 clearly defined and manageable processes  717–​18 combined deliberative/​PDR approach to public-​decision-​making  713–​14 conflict management  719–​20 deliberative approach to public decision-​making  713 deliberative democracy compared  711–​12 independent mediation  715, 717, 718, 720 joint fact-​finding  716–​17,  720 key elements  714–​17 stakeholder assessment  715–​16, 717, 718 tools and techniques  720–​3, 721–​2t value creation  718–​19 public good, and voting  222 public justification  63 convergence  212–​13 and religious reasons  203, 204–​5, 206, 207,  212–​13 public opinion  11, 14, 21, 65, 67, 556 and deliberative forums  288 and good information  317 public opinion polls  177 shortcomings  316, 321 statistical representativeness  177 public reason  48, 84, 160 agonist 212 global 860 ideal speech situation compared  65–​6 laissez-​faire  211–​12 pluralist conceptions of  162 process-​based models  213–​14 public use of reason (Kant)  58–​9, 878, 880 religion, deliberative democracy and  203–​14 public sphere  11–​12, 65, 67, 72, 864 critical  647–​50 enlarged 356 exclusive character of eighteenth century 72 global 12 historical production  579–​80 in non-​Western societies  91 revitalizing 575 satyagraha as  92–​3 transnational  12, 522, 864–​5 public trust in representative institutions  171

Index   941 public will connecting with  315–​16 problem of formation  317 publicity/​transparency anti-​deliberative effects  8 deliberation and public/​private voting  232 as deliberative ideal  4t, 8, 232 and deliberative negotiation  735 in international relations  524–​5, 528 revisions (stretches)  8, 887, 891 and scientific deliberation  644, 650 and social movements  395, 396, 399, 400 and US legislature  9, 428 and voting  232 Pudhu Vaazvhu Project, Tamil Nadu, India  814 Puerta del Sol, Madrid, Spain  399, 400, 401 purposive sampling  150 Quakers 470 qualitative approaches to assessment  678–​94 comparative case studies  688–​92 entanglement with quantitative  679 ethnography  685–​8 qualitative methods label avoided  678–​81 speech analysis  681–​5 supposed affinity with problem driven research 679 quality of deliberation  557 attacks on quantitative orthodoxy  659–​60 challenges to indexing at the systems level  660–​1 in legislatures  9 need for empirical study, Africa  824, 825 and opinion change  658, 659 in science  643–​4 Stromer-​Galley’s measurement scheme  658 see also Discourse Quality Index (DQI) quality of democracy literature  493 quantitative approaches to assessment, entanglement with qualitative 679 attack from qualitative researchers  659 challenge of causality  659 shortcomings in studying quality of deliberation  659–​60 Quirk, P. J.  275, 279

race and ethnicity reconceptualization in sociology of deliberation  576–​7 and the US Social Forum  398 racial discrimination and exclusion  76, 146, 157 Rae, D. W.  232 Rae-​Taylor theorem  465 random sampling 675n8, 713, 862 in Athenian democracy  318–​19 and mini-​publics  149–​50, 192, 263, 302, 321, 860 and online deliberation  367 random selection  13–​14,  16–​17 random stratified sampling  13, 150, 437 Rao, V.  812, 813 rational choice theory  42, 218, 220, 464, 480–​1, 576, 813 pragmatism compared  578 vs. social constructivism in international relations  519–​21 rational-​critical debate  3 rational ignorance  17 Ratner, S. R.  861 Rawls, J.  3, 6, 9, 36, 41, 42, 43, 47–​8, 50, 57, 63, 64, 65–​6, 113, 118, 140–​1, 160, 175, 176, 204, 205, 208–​9, 219–​20, 238, 239, 240, 429n5, 430n12, 440, 537, 629, 642–​3, 805, 858, 878, 879, 880, 893n2, 893n3 Razsa, M.  403 realism  3,  17–​18 reason-​giving capacity to alter attitudes  77 as deliberative ideal  4t, 6, 72, 231, 536, 857, 884, 885 downwardly-​directed  421–​2 and folk democracy  421–​2, 427–​8 as a form of respect  59 in international relations  522–​3 philosophic origin  55, 56, 58–​9, 61, 66 revision (stretches)  6–​7, 72–​3, 536, 886,  888–​9 storytelling, emotional expression and  74–​8,  682–​5 upwardly directed  421–​2 see also public reason; private use of reason reasons of the common good  57

942   Index reciprocity  19, 159, 238, 247, 368, 631, 887 and scientific expertise  643 synchronous discussion  368 within clans, Papua New Guinea  227 referenda  3, 274, 287, 319, 563, 627–​8, 700, 705, 707n4, 713, 904 Brexit  126, 904 deliberation deficit  287 Deliberative Polls preceding  320–​1 non-​binding  229 reflective equilibrium  481 regulatory capture  277 Rehfeld, A.  180 Rehg, W.  47 Reidy, C.  775 Reinhard, J.  849 relational spaces (fields)  575 relevant considerations, as deliberative ideal 4t, 7 religious reasons in public deliberation  203–​17 agonist public reason  212 alternative frameworks  211–​14 arbitrariness 205 context-​sensitive inclusivism  210–​11 convergence  212–​13 epistemic agonism  206 exclusivism and its critics  204–​7 fairness 206 Habermasian translation  209–​10 incompleteness 207 laissez-​faire public reason  211–​12 moral motivation  207 mutual assurance approach  208–​9 political agonism  205–​6 the poverty of secular reason  206–​7 process-​based models of public reason  213–​14 the Rawlsian proviso  208–​9 religion, public reason and deliberative democracy  203–​4 varieties of liberal inclusivism  207–​10 representation and deliberation  13, 171–​86 constituent effects of the representative system 180 deliberative democracy and representative democracy divisions  172

in deliberative democratic theory  175–​8 Deliberative Polls and statistical representation  177–​8 deliberative systems approach  178–​9 democratic systems and legitimacy  178–​81 elite deliberation in representative government  173–​5 linked to republicanism  173–​4 mini-​publics  176–​7 non-​deliberative modes of engagement  172 and political theory  181–​2 and random selection  13 representative claim concept  180 representative institutions, historical analysis of  173–​4 and self-​selection  13 social perspectives  176 standard account of representation  174–​5,  174 system of representation approach  179 systemic reflexivity  180 talk-​centric model contrasted with vote-​ centric/​aggregative model  175 representative democracy, crisis of  403 republican theory 442n1, 858 respect (mutual respect)  909–​10 conceptual stretches  888 as deliberative ideal  4t, 4–​5, 231, 885 as voting ideal  231 restorative justice processes  12–​13 Reuchamps, M.  748 rhetoric  7, 17–​18, 162, 239, 353, 504, 524, 629, 877–​8,  886 Greek theories  502 rhetorical action theory  520, 522, 523 Rhodes, R.  439 Richards, R.  337 Richardson, H.  429n8, 430n13 Ricoy, I. G.  628 Ridgeway, C. L.  546–​7 Riker, W. H.  114, 218–​19, 220, 221, 467, 472 Ripon, Lord  808 Roberts, J. T.  781n3 Roberts, M. J.  279 Roberts Rules of Order  665 Rochester School  218, 220 Röcke, A.  703

Index   943 Roe v. Wade (1973)  428, 633 Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court (1998)  521, 526 Rorty, A.  6 Rosenberg, S. W.  20, 74 Rosenthal, H.  430n13 Rostbøll, C. F.  133, 238–​9 Rousseau, J.-​J.  42, 47, 51n7, 57–​8, 59, 62, 64, 118, 171, 174, 193, 230, 232, 429n5, 878 Rubin, D. B.  668, 669 Rubin Causal Model  668 Rudolph, L.  92 Rudolph, S.  92 Ruggie, J. G.  518 Ruhil, A. V. S.  621–​2n5 Rumore, D.  604 Ryan, M.  658 Ryfe, D. M.  75, 78, 80 Sabel, C.  845–​6, 860 Saffon, M. P.  133 Salnykova, A.  499 same-​sex marriage  629–​30,  705 Sami Parliament  105 Sanders, L. M.  21–​2, 239, 240, 434–​5 Sanyal, P.  812, 813 satyagraha protests, India  92–​3 Saward, M.  180, 181, 182, 437 Scharpf, F. W.  526 Schelling, T.  730 Scherer, L. D.  549n3 Scheufele, D. A.  381 Schimmelfennig, F.  520, 522, 523 Schkade, D.  543 Schmidt, V. A.  498, 522 Schmitter, P. C.  830 Schneider, G.  520 Schneiderhan, E.  77, 575 school boards and deliberation  504 Schudson, M.  378, 379 Schumpeter, J.  114, 221, 424, 892 science, and deliberative democracy  640–​53 critical public involvement  647–​50 deference to a scientific consensus  642–​3,  644 deliberation within science  642–​4

economic development vs. citizen apprehension 646 inclusion of perspectives vs. inclusion of reasons  649–​50 institutions for dialogue  645–​7 move from public understanding to public engagement 645 quality of deliberation  643–​4 rebuilding public trust anticipating controversy  646–​7 reciprocity 643 role of science in deliberative politics  641–​2 science becoming political  640–​1 science/​politics relationship  640 scientific literacy  645 separation of lay and expert deliberation 646 voting on expert committees  644 see also analytic deliberation Sclavi, M.  607–​9 Scrowcroft, Brent  283 Scully, P. L.  74 Searing, D.  827 second generation of deliberative democracy theory  3–​4,  18 secret ballots  95, 106 self-​interest  230, 636, 729, 732, 885 constrained by fairness, as deliberative ideal 4t, 8 and deliberative negotiations  18 and minority groups  159 and voting  222 self-​legislation  58 self-​selection and deliberation experiments  672–​3 and mini-​publics  13, 149, 302, 305 online deliberation  367 and participatory budgeting  318 Selin, J. L.  290n4 Sem Terra, Brazil  395, 396–​7, 404n1 Sen, A.  139, 467, 474 sequenced models  439 sequential approaches and democratization  497–​9 Setålå, M.  342n7 Shaker, L.  79, 759 Shapiro, I.  17, 19, 693n2

944   Index Sheffer, L.  278 Sheller, M.  578 Sherman, Laurence  596–​9 Shipan, C. R.  276 Shwom, R.  773 sincerity as deliberative ideal  4t revisions 8 as voting ideal  233 single-​peakedness  304, 471–​3, 472f, 475, 549n5 and group polarization  474 scalability  473–​4 Sintomer, Y.  703 situational chess  578 slavery 157 Slothuus, R.  561, 563 Smith, G.  15, 332, 367, 370, 436, 441, 658 Smith, W.  865 Sniderman, P. M.  560, 562 social change, tipping point  706 social choice, and democratic deliberation  463–​89 aggregation rule  464–​5, 464f aggregation rule desiderata  466–​7, 471–​2, 476 arguments for the majority rule  465–​6 basics of social choice theory  464–​5 deliberation models inspired by social choice  475–​84 idealism-​realism distinction in deliberation 468 implication of meta-​consensus hypothesis  472–​3 judgement-​aggregation theory  482–​4,  483t meta-​consensus hypothesis (single-​peaked preferences)  471–​3,  472f meta-​consensus hypothesis, empirical evidence  473–​4 mixed model (deliberation complements aggregation)  469, 469f, 473 no-​helpful-​change hypothesis  470–​1 paradoxes and impossibility results of social choice theory  466–​7 preference aggregation rule  466 probability of majority cycles  474–​5 problem of social choice  464–​7 procedure-​behaviour distinction in deliberation 468

pure deliberative model (deliberation replaces aggregation)  469, 469f, 470 working definition of deliberation  468–​9 social comparison effects  325, 543, 549n7 social constructivism  518–​19 v. rational choice, in international relations  519–​21 social forums  399–​400, 402, 403 social/​socio-​economic inequality difference critique  505 effect on participation in mini-​publics  305 India 806 and internal exclusion  325 and opportunities of participation  188–​9 reduction through participation  189–​90 reduction through deliberation  194 and social movements  393–​4 and unobtainability of mass participation in deliberation 192 social liberalism  219 social media  316 and framing  558, 559, 567n1 social movements and protests  11, 392–​406 balance between participation and representation  394–​5 bringing social inequality to public attention  393–​4 centrality of democratic deliberation  394 China 794 and the deliberative democracy movement  697–​8 digital communications  357–​8 global diffusion of democratic innovations  396–​8 importance as arenas for dissent and scrutiny  392–​3 Japan  793–​4,  798 political translation  397–​8 and science  642, 648 social forums and acampadas  399–​403 tension between deliberative democracy and protest  393 social networking sites (SNSs)  348, 349, 354, 355, 356, 357 social psychology  304 social security deficits, US  278

Index   945 socio-​economic inequality see social inequality sociology, deliberation in  573–​83 call for relationally situated deliberation 580 community discourse  573–​4 contextualised, historical theorization  579–​80 core attention to power and domination  576–​7 linkage to public issues  577–​8 pragmatist turn  578 reconceptualization of race/​ethnicity and deliberation  576–​7 relational turn  574, 575, 578, 580 treating social situations as dynamic  578–​9 Sokhey, A. E.  380 Solidarity movement, Poland  492, 496–​7 Song, H.  378–​9 Song, S.  166 sortition  14, 56, 192, 310 South African Law Commission (1998)  166–​7 South America see Latin America speech analysis  658, 681–​5 Spiekermann, K.  471 spirit of 1968  218 Sprain, L.  506 stakeholder dialogues  12 stakeholder representation  409 and networks  412 representatives in public dispute resolution (PDR)  710, 712, 714, 715, 716 Stavenhagen, R.  100–​1, 106 stealth democracy thesis  20, 196–​7, 658, 698 Steenbergen, M.  159, 275, 667, 885, 894n20 Steiner, J.  9, 192, 196, 244, 279, 673, 681–​3, 684–​5, 825, 891 Stevenson, H.  415, 438, 439, 774–​5, 863–​4, 866 Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment (1972)  771 Stoker, L.  380 storytelling and narrative  7, 73, 75, 77–​8, 158, 239, 244, 435, 579, 886, 877–​8, 890 and communication studies  510–​11 discouraged by facilitators  80 disguising disagreement  78–​9 problem-​driven research into  682–​5

Stout, J.  213 Strandberg, K.  21 Strengthening Socialist Consultative Democracy, China  793 Stromer-​Galley, J.  21, 78, 366, 658, 673–​4,  682 subaltern counterpublics  148, 393, 648 Sufi mysticism  807 Sullivan, B.  371–​2, 373 Sunstein, C. R.  8, 35, 38, 40, 46, 49, 125–​6, 198, 284, 325, 430n14, 484, 543, 544, 732 supermajority rule  232, 465 and numerical minorities  233n3 super-​vulcanism  768 Susskind, L.  603–​4, 723n1, 724n7, 724n8, 724n10 Swidler, A.  92 Switzerland  9, 21, 199n4, 277, 666, 682 expulsion of immigrants with criminal records debate  287 legislatures 281 Szasz, A.  760 Taber, C. S.  539 Taft, J.  385 Tahrir Square demonstrations, Egypt  399, 400, 402 Talbott, W.  341n3 Talisse, R. B.  210 Tan, S-​H.  93 Tarde, G.  385, 386, 387 Tarrow, S.  497 Taylor, M. J.  232 Taylor-​Bouchard Commission, Québec  158 technocratic policy analysis  584 Teson, F. R.  17 Texas, Deliberative Polls on utilities  321–​2 Thailand Constitution (1997)  589 Khon Kaen city municipality  587–​92, 593 Theiss-​Morse, E.  20, 196, 590, 698 Theriault, S. M.  560, 562 therisanyo process, Botswana  88 Thomas, Justice  618 Thomas, S. R.  279 Thomas-​Larmer, J.  724n10

946   Index Thompson, D.  8, 19, 59–​60, 64, 124, 190, 238, 265, 319, 350, 643, 657–​8, 735, 893n4, 894n10, 894n18, 895n21, 895n28 Thompson, D. F.  437 Thompson, J.  255 Thuesen, A. A.  409 Tierney, S.  287, 627–​8 Tilden, S. J.  61 Tocqueville. A. de  573 Tokugawa Dynasty, Japan  91 Tomorrow’s Europe poll  862 town hall meetings  11–​12, 194, 196, 666 Khon Kaen, Thailand  590–​1 Townsend, R. M.  507 Tracy, K.  504 transdisciplinary approaches  678 transnational and global deliberation  856–​68 commitment to reasoning  857 deliberation as epistemic-​reflective process  857–​8 deliberative turn  856–​8 EU Deliberative Polls  862–​3 global order defined  856 institutional turn  858–​63, 867n3 responsiveness of global power sources 858 systemic turn  863–​6 transnational deliberative systems  865–​6 transnational experimentalism  859–​60 transnational mini-​publics  860–​2 transnational public spheres  864–​5 transparency see publicity/​transparency Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (2012), EU  853n3 triplewise value restriction  474 Trump, Donald  283, 291n13 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Canada 165 truth commissions  12–​13 Tswana people, Botswana  88 Tully, J.  166 Turner, S. P.  651n6 Tuscany Law no.  69 703–​4 Tversky, A.  541, 567n2 12 Angry Men (film) example  120–​1 21st Century Town Meetings  701

Twitter 354 two-​track model  67, 178, 447, 890 Type II deliberation  162, 164, 239, 895n23 Ugarriza, J.  748 Ukraine 499 unanimity rule  225 beneficial to women  547, 759 and cooperation/​conflict  733–​4 in juries  478 mixed benefits  79 and truth-​telling  479–​80 unforced (forceless) force of the better argument  59, 66, 120, 326, 525, 540, 546 United Nations (UN)  180, 700, 864 Charter 879 Children’s Fund (UNICEF)  902 Climate Change Conference (2009), Copenhagen 862 climate change conferences  352 Conference on the Human Environment (1972), Stockholm  770 Convention on the Rights of the Child  526 Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIPS)  100, 107 Development Programme (UNDP)  834–​5,  836 Environment Programme  771 Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 866 High Commissioner for Reintegration  493 Human Settlements Program (UN-​HABITAT)  498 United States of America (US) Bill of Rights  626 Department of Defense Fort Ord, California  760–​1 Federal Convention  735 federal courts  285 Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee 891 Forest Service  284 Presidential Commission, Study of Bioethical Issues  901 Senate  280, 291n11 Social Forum  397, 398

Index   947 universal human rights  138 Urbinati, N.  133, 158, 160, 181, 566–​7 Urfalino, P.  93, 643, 644 USAID  809, 835 US Congress committee hearings  280 and committees  278–​9 and deliberation  276, 277, 278–​81 DQI assessment of performance  279 erosion of deliberative capacity  428 neutering 427 party leaders  280 and the Roberts Rules of Order 276 schedule change suggested  734 US Constitution  38, 39, 41 Article I, Section  2 616 elections clause  616 US Supreme Court  9–​10, 286, 427, 629 fostering deliberation  428 Uyghur people, China  100 Valadez, J.  163 Valentini. L.  134 validity claims  7 Vandenbergh, M. P.  781n3 van Mill, D.  470–​1 Van Parijs, P.  133 Varieties of Democracy project  494, 495 Venezuela Caracas Radical Cause participatory reforms  689–​90, 691, 692 Chavez regime  495, 496–​7, 498, 837 community councils  837 Constitution 832 and village assemblies  495, 496–​7 Verba, S.  87 Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985)  771 Vietnam War  282, 283 Vitale, D.  195 volcanism/​super-​vulcanism  777 voting contributory model  222 and everyday political talk  380 on expert committees  644

as fundamental democratic right in folk democracy  420, 426 and infringement on others’ interests  424 mandate value  222 and representation  174 see also elections; majority rule; plurality rule; social choice and democratic deliberation; unanimity rule voting and deliberation entwined  218–​36 American plurality rule elections  225–​6 centripetal electoral rules and deliberation in Papua New Guinea  227–​8 is deliberation more free from coercion than voting?  229–​30 deliberation shapes voting  224 deliberation vs. voting?  223–​4 fallibility of economic theories of democratic voting  220, 221–​3 historical origins of deliberative democracy  218–​20 paradox of voting  222 public deliberation under two voting rules in Papua New Guinea  226–​7 standards of voting and deliberation entwined  230–​3 voting paradox  222 voting shapes deliberation  220, 225–​9 Wagenaar, H.  415, 584, 585, 592 Waldron, J.  133–​4, 211, 231 Walsh, K. C.  383, 386 Walton, R.  729 Walzer, M.  17 Wampis Nation, Peru Autonomous Territorial Government  105, 106 Warren, M. E.  93, 95, 177, 195, 223–​4, 233n2, 266n3, 309, 336, 341n3, 342n11, 566–​7, 647, 723n2, 724n6, 724n11, 728, 731, 875 Watkins, S. C.  92 wealth disparity  699 Web 2.0 technologies  354 Weber, M.  291n14, 876 Webler, T.  781n2 Wedeen, L.  93 Wegmann, A.  353 Weiler, J. H. H.  845

948   Index WEIRD subjects  96n6 Weithman, P.  208–​9 Wendake Action Plan (IPFF), 2003  107 Westminster parliamentary systems  281 We the Citizens, Ireland  705 Wetherell, M. S.  80 Wheeler, M.  605 White, J.  453 Whyte, K. P.  775 Wiggins, D.  429n8 Wildavsky, A.  883 Williams, B.  5 Williams, M.  95, 159 Wilson, Woodrow  504 Wiredu, K.  819, 820, 821–​3 wisdom of the multitude  56–​7, 62 Woburn, Massachusetts, leukemia cluster 649 Wojcieszak, M.  749 women deliberative process in India  166 exclusion and oppression  146 and the feminist subaltern counterpublic 148 high participation in US forums  76 low contribution to small group discussions 305 and majority/​unanimity rule  151, 547, 734 use of storytelling  683 and village democracy, India  811, 813 and the World Social Forum  397 women’s movement  394 World Bank  395, 774, 834, 835 World Forestry Congress (WFC), 2003  107

World Health Organization Global Summit (2014) 900 World Social Forum (WSF)  394, 395, 397, 400 World Trade Center attacks (9/​11)  701 online discussions on rebuilding  683 World Trade Organization (WTO)  395, 865 World Wide Views (WWV)  700, 903 on Global Warming  862 Wright, E. O.  577 Wright, S.  243 Wright, S. A.  761 Xi administration, China  793 Yanow, D.  585 Yemen, Qat chewing as forum for open discourse 93 Yesnowitz, J.  657 Young, I. M.  127n1, 128n16, 157, 160, 162, 163, 240, 393, 437, 576–​7, 886, 887, 895n24 young people  699 YouTube  354, 355 Ypi, L.  453 Zangl, B.  520 Zapatistas, Mexico  395, 396 Zapotec people, Mexico  104 Zeguo Deliberative Poll, Wenling City, China  794, 797 Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen 519 Zürn, M.  520