Democratizing deliberative systems

'Deliberative democracy' is often dismissed as a set of small-scale, academic experiments. This volume seeks to demonstrate how the deliberative ideal can work as a theory of democracy on a larger scale. It provides a new way of thinking about democratic engagement across the spectrum of political action, from towns and villages to nation states, and from local networks to transnational, even global systems. Written by a team of the world's leading deliberative theorists, Deliberative Systems explains the principles of this new approach, which seeks ways of ensuring that a division of deliberative labour in a system nonetheless meets both deliberative and democratic norms. Rather than simply elaborating the theory, the contributors examine the problems of implementation in a real world of competing norms, competing institutions and competing powerful interests. This pioneering book will inspire an exciting new phase of deliberative research, both theoretical and empirical

Rawls and deliberative democracy

This chapter offers arguments to support the following conjectures: (1) despite claims by Rawls and some commentators, Rawls is not and cannot be a deliberative democrat; the evidence for this can be gleaned by focussing on various interpretations of the structure of Rawls’ arguments in A Theory of Justice (1972) and Political Liberalism (1993) respectively; and (2) if we ask more directly how the ideal dialogue of the original position might be approximated in real-world conditions, we can reach suggestive conclusions about institutions and deliberative democracy radically different from those reached by Rawls himself

Robust Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative democracy aspires to secure political liberty by making citizens the authors of their laws. But how can it do this in the face of deep disagreement, not to mention imperfect knowledge and limited altruism? Deliberative democracy can secure political liberty by affording each citizen an equal position as a co-author of public laws and norms. Moreover, fundamental deliberative democracy—in which institutional design is ultimately accountable to public deliberation but not necessarily subject to its direct control—does not strain knowledge or altruism. Thus, there is a place for deliberative democracy in a robust political economy

Deliberative democracy and its informational basis: what lessons from the Capability Approach

Amartya Sen's works lead to focus theoretical issues relative to deliberative democracy, not only on optimal procedural rules, but upstream on the substantial content of the informational basis that serves as background to deliberation. The contribution explores the issues to take on board, especially questions on deliberative inquiries and the constitution of publics.Deliberative Democracy; Capability; Inquiry; Informational Basis; Amartya Sen

If citizens have a voice, who's listening? Lessons from recent citizen consultation experiments for the European Union. CEPS EPIN Working Paper No. 24, 12 June 2009

Are European Union institutions, as they claim, really listening to citizens thanks to more ‘deliberative’ consultation tools? The European Commission and the European Parliament in particular have committed themselves to engaging in a dialogue with citizens in recent years. But to what effect? This paper notes how official policies have adopted language borrowed from the deliberative democracy school of thinking, but denounces the lack of clarity in the role assigned to deliberation with citizens in EU policy-making processes. It also invites EU policy-makers to think more critically about recent and future experiments that present themselves as ‘deliberative’. It does so by highlighting areas for improvement in recent initiatives. Finally, it makes a number of recommendations for the future of dialogue with citizens, suggesting in particular the creation of a European Observatory for Democracy and Opinion, as well as a list of criteria to assess the design and role of such activities, and the concentration of efforts on one high-quality, high-impact initiative per year

Pyramidal Democracy

We consider a decentralized, multilayered representative democracy, where citizens participate in deliberative policy formation after self-organizing into a pyramidal hierarchy of small groups. Each group elects a delegate, who expresses the deliberative consensus of that group at the next tier of the pyramid. The pyramid thus acts as a communications network which efficiently aggregates useful information and policy ideas. It is also a powerful meritocratic device, which channels legislative responsibility towards the most committed and competent citizens. This yields a practical implementation of deliberative democracy in a large polity.deliberative democracy

Deliberative Agenda Setting: Piloting Reform of Direct Democracy in California

Can the people deliberate to set the agenda for direct democracy in large scale states? How might such an institution work? The 2011 California Deliberative Poll piloted a solution to this problem helping to produce proposals that went to the ballot and also to the legislature. The paper reports on how this pilot worked and what it suggests about a possible institution to solve the deliberative agenda setting problem. The legislative proposal passed the legislature but the ballot proposition (Prop 31) failed. However, we show that the proposals actually deliberated on by the people might well have passed if not encumbered by additional elements not deliberated on by the public that drew opposition. The paper ends with an outline of how the process of deliberative agenda setting for the initiative might work, vetting proposals once every two years that could get on the ballot for a greatly reduced cost in signature collections. Adding deliberation to the agenda setting process would allow for a thoughtful and informed public will formation to determine the agenda for direct democracy

Deliberative Democracy

Deliberative democracy is a political theory that requires legitimate decision making to be based on deliberation among citizens. The theory is often contrasted with the purely aggregative voting methods used in many democratic societies, as well as the self-interested bargaining typified in economics. Deliberative democracy is compatible with science and technology communication theory in that both broad theories promote participation, engagement, and accessible knowledge for all people, not just for the powerful or elite

What Should We Learn From Early Hemodialysis Allocation About How We Should Be Using ECMO?

Early hemodialysis allocation deliberations should inform our current considerations of what constitutes reasonable uses of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. Deliberative democracy can be used as a strategy to gather a plurality of views, consider criteria, and guide policy making

Training the imagination to go visiting

Jon Nixon’s article, ‘Learning the Language of Deliberative Democracy’ explored languages of hope in relation to the discourses of deliberative democracy. Ours continues this theme of finding languages of hope. Like his article, ours makes people central. It explores a neglected area of epistemology: knowing people. It suggests that we take a critical perspective on the metaphors we live and then re-configure them to think again about the public and private spaces in the universities where we work