Empirische Deliberationsforschung - eine systematische Übersicht

Zusammenfassung: Die empirische Deliberationsforschung hat nach zögerlichem Start in den 1990er Jahren einen wahren Boom erlebt: das philosophische Konstrukt des vernünftigen Dialogs wurde nicht nur auf sein Vorkommen in der politischen und zivilgesellschaftlichen Sphäre hin untersucht, sondern zunehmend auch in Modelle politischen Entscheidungshandelns eingebaut. Folgender Literaturbericht fragt systematisch nach den Funktionsweisen deliberativen Handelns, seiner institutionellen, kulturellen und akteursspezifischen Voraussetzungen sowie den Ergebnissen, die aus deliberativ hochwertigen Prozessen erfolgen. Die mittlerweile vielfältigen empirischen Studien zeigen, dass insbesondere unter günstigen institutionellen Bedingungen Akteure in Politik und Zivilgesellschaft vernünftig miteinander diskutieren können, wobei sich dann auch normativ wünschbare Ergebnisse (wie höhere epistemische Qualität oder breiter abgestützte Kompromisse) einstellen. Gleichwohl bleiben nach einer Dekade intensiver Forschung einige zentrale Fragen offen, insbesondere die Frage nach der stringenten Trennung von deliberativem (und verständigungsorientiertem) und strategischem Handel

Empowering local citizens: assessing the inclusiveness of a digital democratic innovation for co-creating a Voting Advice Application

Increasing citizen dissatisfaction with democracy leads governments and municipalities across the globe to seek new ways of including and empowering citizens. Little is known about whether ‘Digital Democratic Innovations’ (DDIs) could contribute to this goal. We developed a new DDI in a Swiss municipality, dubbed Demokratiefabrik, where 1,079 citizens co-created a questionnaire that served as an official Voting Advice Application for candidates and voters in communal elections. We find that while sophisticated and allegiant citizens and left-green voters participated more in the DDI, they did not dominate the process of creating the questionnaire. Intriguingly, citizens with lower political trust were particularly active on the platform, suggesting that DDIs might give disenchanted citizens a new voice in the political process. Overall, carefully designed DDIs can be a venue for inclusive citizen participation, involving and empowering local citizens in decision-making

Religious reasons in the public sphere: an empirical study of religious actors' argumentative patterns in Swiss direct democratic campaigns

The ‘going public' of religious actors is taking central stage both in religious studies and political philosophy. But this ‘going public' of religious actors is controversial. The debate revolves around the question of whether religious actors must frame their religious convictions in terms of secular reasons or whether they should be allowed to introduce religiously grounded beliefs into public political argument without constraints. Despite vigorous and ongoing debate, there is little systematic and empirical research on this question. This article focuses on the public statements of religious actors in the context of Swiss direct democratic votes on abortion and immigration. Our empirical findings reveal an interesting gap: while many political philosophers and religious thinkers have moved to a position where religious actors can - and even should - openly employ religious arguments, the practice of religious actors in Switzerland is different. The larger denominations of Catholics and Protestants especially have a tendency to use a great amount of secular vocabulary. In addition, our findings also reveal that the use of religious or secular reasons varies considerably according to different issues, different media types (religious vs. secular press), different religious traditions, different alliance structures, and different media genres, while there is no clear time tren

Deliberative inclusion of minorities: patterns of reciprocity among linguistic groups in Switzerland

We present a model of deliberative inclusion, focusing on reciprocity in the interaction between structural minorities/disadvantaged groups and majorities/privileged groups. Our model, however, comes with a ‘friendly amendment': we have put the ‘burden of reciprocity' mainly on majorities and privileged groups. It is mainly their obligation to seriously listen and respond to the demands and arguments of minorities and disadvantaged groups and show a willingness to respect and accommodate these interests. Empirically, we apply our model to the interaction of linguistic groups in the Swiss parliament. We find a highly egalitarian, sometimes even minority-favoring mode of interaction between the German-speaking majority and linguistic minorities. The German-speaking majority seems to be willing to take the ‘burden of reciprocity' when linguistic minorities' vital interests are concerned. Conversely, linguistic minorities are slightly more self-referential and adversarial under such condition

How Deliberation Happens: Enabling Deliberative Reason

We show, against skeptics, that however latent it may be in everyday life, the ability to reason effectively about politics can readily be activated when conditions are right. We justify a definition of deliberative reason, then develop and apply a Deliberative Reason Index (DRI) to analysis of 19 deliberative forums. DRI increases over the course of deliberation in the vast majority of cases, but the extent of this increase depends upon enabling conditions. Group building that activates deliberative norms makes the biggest difference, particularly in enabling participants to cope with complexity. Without group building, complexity becomes more difficult to surmount, and planned direct impact on policy decisions may actually impede reasoning where complexity is high. Our findings have implications beyond forum design for the staging of political discourse in the wider public sphere