Deliberative Democracy—What Theory, Research, and Experiments Tell Us

Even for specialists, it can be hard to keep up with real world experiments in deliberative democracy, not to mention scholarly writing about the topic.  But a recent analytical summary by leading international scholar John Dryzek and his colleagues at the Australian National University goes a long way toward making sense of it all.

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In their article, published last year in the official organ of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences,  the team distills a vast amount of material on the subject.  The result is a list of twelve “key resolved issues in the theory, study, and practice of deliberative democracy.”  These are listed below verbatim.

• Deliberative democracy is realistic. any and diverse deliberative innovations… have been implemented in a variety of political systems.
• Deliberation is essential to democracy.
• Deliberation is more than discussion.  careful facilitation …attention to emotional interaction careful attention to institutional settings.
• Deliberative democracy involves multiple sorts of communication.
• Deliberation is for all.  eliberation can temper rather than reinforce elite power.
• Deliberative democracy has a nuanced view of power.
• Productive deliberation is plural, not consensual.
• Participation and deliberation go together.
• Deliberative transformation takes time.
• Deliberation is the solution to group polarization.
• Deliberative democracy applies to deeply divided societies.
• Deliberative research productively deploys diverse methods.

Reading Dryzek and company’s article (particularly the sections that address how deliberation can address “polarization”, even in “divided societies”) will repay the effort many times over.  Yet even this condensed catalogue stands as a reminder of just how much citizens and scholars have advanced both the theory and practice of deliberative democracy over the past few decades.