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The integration of deliberative democracy within larger schemes of policy-making of collaborative governance is a key challenge. Such integration potentially means changes in the role and in the power relationships between the actors of collaborative governance. Indeed, it brings in citizens – who were traditionally not formally involved – along with stakeholders – who were traditionally involved. Through the case of a large-scale education reform in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium, this paper seeks to explore how these actors react to the use of deliberative mini-publics and regard their legitimacy.

Despite increased understanding of Indigenous environmental values, governments still fail to respectfully incorporate these values into environmental policy. Deliberative democratic theory can hel...

With deliberative democracy becoming increasingly incorporated into political processes, the instances of citizens and politicians meeting in deliberation, so-called mixed deliberations, is increas...

The effects of climate change are multiple and fundamental. Decisions made today may result in irreversible damage to the planet’s biodiversity and ecosystems, the detrimental impacts of which will...

The boundary problem in political theory concerns the question of the constitution of the demos, and the principle(s) and/or mechanism(s) that may be permissibly used for its demarcation. But what ...

A variety of forms and practices of citizenship in China has been well studied, but, unfortunately, studies on industrial citizenship are missing. Moreover, while there has been a growing literatur...

Polarization in political culture and the decline of public education for civic engagement have become serious challenges to a healthy constitutional federal republic in the United States. Communic...

Quality deliberation is essential for societies to address the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic effectively and legitimately. Critics of deliberative and participatory democracy are highly skeptical that most citizens can engage with such complex issues in good circumstances and these are far from ideal circumstances. The need for rapid action and decision-making is a challenge for inclusivity and quality of deliberation. Additionally, policy responses to the virus need to be even more co-ordinated than usual, which intensifies their complexity. The digitalisation of the public sphere may be seen as a further challenge to deliberating. Furthermore, these are stressful and emotional times, making a considered judgement on these issues potentially challenging. We employ a modified version of the Discourse Quality Index to assess the deliberative quality in two facilitated synchronous digital platforms to consider aspects of data use in light of COVID 19. Our study is the first to perform a comprehensive, systematic and in-depth analysis of the deliberative capacity of citizens in a pandemic. Our evidence indicates that deliberation can be resilient in a crisis. The findings will have relevance to those interested in pandemic democracy, deliberative democracy in a crisis, data use and digital public spheres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Javnost-The Public is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the high-choice media landscape, satire has the potential to help news and politics break through information apathy barriers and reinvigorate democratic debate. While scholarly attention to the genre of satire has increased, interest in satirists themselves has been sparse. Using a theory of non-deliberative forms of public discourse and the idea of role conceptions, this study presents an analysis of interviews with Swedish satirists working in broadcasting media. Results showed that being Eye-openers and Questioners – meaning providing alternative perspectives and problematizing societal norms – were the primary contributions of satire, according to satirists. There were differing roles to take on when it came to social bonding and solidarity: Unifier, where the aim was to be bridge-building in a polarized debate, and Divider, where the main focus was to inspire critical thinking and foster independence from consensus. The role elements Reporter, Explainer and Solver were also introduced and discussed.

This article situates spoken word poetry as a discussion-based practice for the social studies classroom. Similar to traditional forms of discussion like debate and deliberation, spoken word poetry...

What role can deliberative democracy mechanisms perform in relation to policy design? This article reports findings from an experiment which was conducted to answer that question. The experiment brought together a random sample of the public who debated public policy questions online and face-to-face. Three key findings emerged. First, deliberative democracy mechanisms are different from more typical participatory policy design tools because they offer something more dynamic than a ‘snapshot’ of public opinion. Second, public deliberation can contribute evidence to policy analysis processes that is more considered because it emerges from a process of citizen sensemaking. Finally, unique forms of policy relevant data can be produced by analyzing the justifications that citizens use to convince others during policy deliberations. These findings suggest that allowing citizens to “talk policy” through deliberative democracy mechanisms can produce unique forms of policy knowledge.

Two voting system referendums in the same year in two countries with institutional and cultural similarities provide an excellent opportunity for comparison, particularly given the significant diff...

Mini-publics are institutions that invite a small group of citizens to deliberate on a specific political issue. Deliberation scholars find them attractive because they use random sampling techniqu...

It remains contested whether Chinese public consultation practices can be called local deliberative democracy or a sort of consultative authoritarianism. Yet, these different evaluations lack an ap...

Since less well educated citizens are underrepresented in many forms of citizen participation, deliberative ‘mini-publics’ have been introduced as a democratic innovation to redress some of this in...

Several studies have investigated the impact of mini-publics on public policy. These works do not however integrate the fact that decision-makers have preferences before a minipublic, and that these preferences affect the way a mini-public can impact public policy. The article develops a model to measure the influence of mini-publics on public policy, called the Sequential Impact Matrixes (SIM). This framework distinguishes multiple types of influences that a mini-public can exert on decision-makers following the latter’s initial sets of policy preferences. The model suggests that a minipublic can exert five different kinds of influences on decision-makers, namely a continuous, enriching, innovating, shifting, or an inhibiting influence. The framework is applied on the Citizens’ Panel ‘Make Your Brussels Mobility’ and it shows that most of the Panel’s recommendations were in line with the decision-makers’ initial preferences, whereas influences altering these preferences are rarer.

In this paper, we examined the effect of deliberative democracy on polarization of opinion. Through three cases analyses, we find that deliberative democracy has two major components – provision of information and group discussion. Polarization of opinion can be explained by several theories: social identity theory (Tajfel, 1978), social comparison (Isenberg, 1986), and confirmation bias (Kahneman, 2012). We constructed a deliberative democracy model that reflected these mechanisms of polarization. We found that deliberative democracy actually decreased polarization of opinion when group discussion was a strong factor. Our study provides guidelines for institutional design incorporating deliberative democracy, with emphasis on composition of unbiased group discussions.

This article examines the use of a Citizens’ Jury as a source of voter information in the context of a government-initiated (top-down) referendum. Several studies show the capacity of the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) to enhance voters’ knowledge and capacity of judgement in ballot initiative processes. However, similar procedures have not been tested outside the U.S.A. or in the context of government-initiated referendums. Our case is a Citizens’ Jury on Referendum Options organised in the municipality of Korsholm (Finland) in 2019. Even though the referendum concerned a contested municipal merger, we find that jury's participants were nonetheless satisfied with the deliberative process and found it impartial. A large majority of voters in Korsholm had read the statement by the jury and thought it was a useful and trustworthy source of information. Based on a field experiment, we find that reading the statement increased trust in the jury, factual knowledge, issue efficacy and perspective-taking.

Hyperconnected societies offer new opportunities for the role of the individual voice. A deregulated world of information poses a paradox, however, in which fake news might conceivably underpin the...

Gert Biesta criticises deliberative models of democracy and education for being based on an understanding of democracy as a ‘normal’ order, which involves certain ‘entry conditions’ for democratic participation. As an alternative, Biesta introduces the idea of democracy as ‘disruption’ and the associated subjectification conception of education both of which he draws from the work of Jacques Rancière. This paper challenges Biesta’s critique of deliberative democracy by demonstrating that the ‘entry conditions’ for deliberation serve an important normative function. It is also suggested that Biesta’s critique dismisses some important dimensions of the deliberative model. The paper further contests Biesta’s conceptions of democracy and education by arguing, first, that his position involves certain contradictions that are problematic especially from a normative perspective. Second, the paper argues that Biesta’s conceptions of democracy and education might result in dismissing crucially important questions concerning the long-term evaluation and improvement of democratic and educational institutions. Gert Biesta criticises deliberative models of democracy and education for being based on an understanding of democracy as a 'normal' order, which involves certain 'entry conditions' for democratic participation. As an alternative, Biesta introduces the idea of democracy as 'disruption' and the associated subjectification conception of education both of which he draws from the work of Jacques Ranciere. This paper challenges Biesta's critique of deliberative democracy by demonstrating that the 'entry conditions' for deliberation serve an important normative function. It is also suggested that Biesta's critique dismisses some important dimensions of the deliberative model. The paper further contests Biesta's conceptions of democracy and education by arguing, first, that his position involves certain contradictions that are problematic especially from a normative perspective. Second, the paper argues that Biesta's conceptions of democracy and education might result in dismissing crucially important questions concerning the long-term evaluation and improvement of democratic and educational institutions.

This research paper will commence with an attempt to bifurcate the traditional theories of justice from its modern counterparts. Under the former category, works of the Greek philosophers like Plat...

This paper addresses the question of why democracy is desirable in terms of a relational theory of democracy. The theory draws on concepts from Aristotelian, critical realist, and psychoanalytic th...

Challenges in attaining deliberative democratic ideals – such as inclusion, authenticity and consequentiality – in wider political systems have driven the development of artificially-designed citiz...

Constitutionalists and deliberative democrats show increasing interest in deliberative constitutionalism. They seek to reconcile two prima facie conflicting camps in legal and political philosophy:...

Citizen participation has been a popular format in policy fields like environmental and climate policies for many years. More recently, however, it has extended to issues of foreign policy which has long been considered as a prerogative of the executive in democratic systems. This paper analyses citizen participation in German foreign policy by comparing deliberative-participatory processes implemented by the German Federal Foreign Office (AA) and the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety (BMU). We draw on recent scholarship in the field of deliberative democracy in order to gain a better understanding how the two ministries understand citizen participation, how they implement these processes, and what effects they have on formal decision-making. Using interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, we investigate two processes of citizen participation in depth. We argue that ministerial understandings of citizen participation determine how they design formats in their respective field. This leads to quite divergent implementations and results of deliberative-participatory formats in the field of foreign policy, depending on whether the AA or the BMU initiates them.

This mini-symposium revisits the three pillars of Deliberative Policy Analysis (DPA): deliberation, interpretation and practice. DPA was originally intended as a moral-analytical programme that int...

Focusing on ordinary people’s political talk the paper contributes to the study of deliberative democracy from a systemic perspective. By examining citizens’ everyday communication, it focuses on a...

Although research on the deliberative systems has been extensive, relatively little attention has been paid to indigenous deliberation. This article provides an analysis of how indigenous civic org...

Deliberative democracy entails a commitment to deciding political questions on their merits. To that end, people engage in an exchange of reasons in a shared endeavour to arrive at the right answer...

A democracy extends beyond partisan politics. The current study examines how a social media video about the environment can spark political deliberation and participation. Drawing from normative de...

This article focuses on the political implications of behavioural public policy for democratic governance and participation. It is being argued that it is an influential case illuminating the way post-democratic practices gain global authority and redefine democracy and citizenship. The article is based on two assumptions: First, the rise and spread of behavioural public policy can only be understood as the result of global interactions. Second, behavioural experts manage to combine both political and epistemic authority. Based on randomized controlled trials as seemingly unquestionable evidence, behavioural insights are already feeding into the debate on the reasoning failures of citizens and the replacement of democracy by an epistocracy, i.e. a government of experts. While the behavioural discourse has informed critical reflections on deliberative democracy, proponents should be well aware of the post-democratic biases it has mobilized.

Citizens’ assemblies can contribute to inclusive, citizen-driven policymaking. This commentary focuses on Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly, an internationally acclaimed deliberative forum that examined...

This paper explores the idea of a formalized “critical space” in higher education, using elements of Habermas’s theory of communicative action and ideas from Barnett, Englund, and Marginson. Inquir...

Two years of observations and interviews provided evidence of injustices as state officials ignored calls for monitoring by residents at a toxic waste site in Phoenix Arizona. When federal investig...

How do the range of issues voters care about and party system polarization impact democratic outcomes? Recent debates have focused on the negative effect of polarized systems on democratic quality. However, the extent to which this polarization is channeled or diffused over a wide range of issues on the public agenda has not been analyzed systematically. Using data from 31 European countries from 2003 to 2018, we show that party polarization indeed has a negative effect on people's satisfaction with democracy. Importantly, however, we demonstrate that at high levels of issue diversity, the negative effect of polarization is minimized. Drawing on the deliberative democracy literature, we argue that at low levels of issue diversity, polarization makes compromise in society less likely and the political discourse more antagonistic. However, at higher levels of issue diversity, contestation and conflict can be diffused over a large range of issues, providing more favorable conditions for collective will formation and, ultimately, higher levels of satisfaction with democracy.

The article explores some trade-offs between two democratic goods: intelligibility and ideological diversity that different types of electoral systems – proportional representation and single membe...

This article argues that it is important to analyse different democratic innovations in terms of their functions in democratic systems. For example, while citizens’ initiatives have a role in agend...

Advances in technology drastically changed the ways people live, as well as how businesses developed products and services. Moreover, new technologies allowed forms of deliberative democracy. In sp...

Imagine the following scenario. You have been invited to participate in a public meeting, organized and run by adults with intellectual disabilities and autism. The organizers call the meeting to o...

What might break the ‘glass ceiling’ that has so far prevented a deep sustainability transformation? I consider the cultural dimension of such a transformation. Cultural meanings not only provide the building blocks of individuals’ life stories, but collectively construct social reality, powerfully shaping how people think and act. Any glass ceiling to societal transformation is partly cultural, and can be reproduced by a society’s ‘political grammar,’ which constrains what can be perceived and politically advanced. Contesting these limits is vital for making glass ceilings visible and opening up new transformative potentials. Consequently, overcoming the glass ceiling of the environmental state must be understood as a cultural transformation: a process of ‘meaning-making’ that re-orientates people’s fundamental norms and outlooks. This adds nuance to the debate around democracy and sustainability; it is not democracy in general, but only a particularly vibrant and critical deliberative sphere that can provide the necessary political foundation.

The study of citizenship as a political or moral ideal involves identifying core commitments and capabilities, the cultivation and exercise of which is often presented as a condition of bei...

Ecological democracy confronts a challenge of not only reconciling democracy and ecology, but doing so where human activities and their environmental consequences are increasingly global. Deliberat...

A deliberative democracy is reliant on an informed electorate discussing issues and presenting persuasive arguments. Individuals acquire information from exposure to political messages. Par...

Deliberative democratic theorists often trace their idea that vigorous democracies rely on open deliberation to ancient Athenian democracy. Furthermore, deliberative theorists claim that equal, inc...

Scholars have called for a synergy between studies of deliberative democracy and social movements for their mutual enhancement. The existing literature generally applies the principle of deliberati...

How do liberal democracies respond to the fact of multiple speakers in public discourse? Previous approaches to media regulation were predicated upon a few speakers-many readers/listeners/viewers m...

The “youth bulge” in developing countries means that we need to pay close attention to how young people want to be governed. That need is particularly great in developing countries that are also de...

Hajer and Wagenaar (2003. Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xiv, 16) advanced a conception of policy anal...

While there has been much anticipation that open government data (OGD) would increase the inclusion of marginalized groups in government decision-making processes, researchers have found little evi...

This article analyses the state of democracy in the world in 2018, and recent developments building on the 2019 release of the V-Dem dataset. First, the trend of autocratization continues and 24 co...