Deliberative democracy, also sometimes called discursive democracy, is a system of political decision-making that relies on popular consultation to make policy. In contrast to the traditional theory Political philosophy is the study of such as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should take and why, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a of democracy Democracy is a political form of government where governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). The term comes from the Greek: δημοκρατία - (dēmokratía) "rule of the people", which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) &, in which voting is central, deliberative democracy theorists argue that legitimate lawmaking can arise only through public deliberation. It adopts elements of direct democracy Direct democracy, classically termed pure democracy, is a form of democracy and a theory of civics in which sovereignty is lodged in the assembly of all citizens who choose to participate. Depending on the particular system, this assembly might pass executive motions, make laws, elect or dismiss officials, and conduct trials. Direct democracy and representative democracy Representative democracy is a form of government founded on the principle of elected individuals representing the people, as opposed to autocracy and direct democracy.

The term "deliberative democracy" was originally coined by Joseph M. Bessette, in "Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government," in 1980, and he subsequently elaborated and defended the notion in "The Mild Voice of Reason" (1994). Others contributing to the notion of deliberative democracy include Jon Elster Jon Elster is a Norwegian social and political theorist who has authored works in the philosophy of social science and rational choice theory. He is also a notable proponent of Analytical Marxism, and a critic of neoclassical economics and public choice theory, largely on behavioral and psychological grounds, Jürgen Habermas Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his work on the concept of the public sphere, the topic of his first book entitled The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. His work focuses on the foundations of social theory and epistemology, the, David Held David Held is a British political theorist and a prominent figure within the field of international relations. Together with Daniele Archibugi, he has been a key figure in the development of cosmopolitanism, and is a widely acclaimed scholar on issues of globalisation and global governance, Joshua Cohen, John Rawls John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard. His magnum opus A Theory of Justice (1971) is now regarded as "one of the primary texts in political philosophy." His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism,, Amy Gutmann Amy Gutmann is the 8th President of the University of Pennsylvania and the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Communications, and Philosophy. She is a political theorist who taught at Princeton University from 1976 to 2004 and served as its Provost, John Dryzek, Rense Bos, James Fishkin James S. Fishkin is a professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University. Fishkin is a widely cited scholar on his work on Deliberative democracy. Along with Robert Luskin , he has pioneered a model of polling called the Deliberative Poll, Dennis Thompson Dennis Frank Thompson is a political scientist and professor at Harvard University, where he founded the university-wide Center for Ethics and the Professions (now the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics) based at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. Thompson is known for his pioneering work in the field of political ethics and, Benny Hjern, Hal Koch and Seyla Benhabib.

Contents

Cohen's outline

Joshua Cohen, a student of John Rawls John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard. His magnum opus A Theory of Justice (1971) is now regarded as "one of the primary texts in political philosophy." His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism,, most clearly outlined some conditions that he thinks constitute the root principles of the theory of deliberative democracy, in the article "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy" in the book The Good Polity. He outlines five main features of deliberative democracy, which include:

  1. An ongoing independent association with expected continuation.
  2. The citizens in the democracy structure their institutions such that deliberation is the deciding factor in the creation of the institutions and the institutions allow deliberation to continue.
  3. A commitment to the respect of a pluralism of values and aims within the polity.
  4. The citizens consider deliberative procedure as the source of legitimacy, and prefer the causal history of legitimation for each law to be transparent and easily traceable to the deliberative process.
  5. Each member recognizes and respects other members' deliberative capacity.
  • This can be construed as the idea that in the legislative process, we "owe" one another reasons for our proposals.

Cohen presents deliberative democracy as more than a theory of legitimacy, and forms a body of substantive rights around it based on achieving "ideal deliberation":

  1. It is free in two ways:
    1. The participants consider themselves bound solely by the results and preconditions of the deliberation. They are free from any authority of prior norms or requirements.
    2. The participants suppose that they can act on the decision made; the deliberative process is a sufficient reason to comply with the decision reached.
  2. Parties to deliberation are required to state reasons for their proposals, and proposals are accepted or rejected based on the reasons given, as the content of the very deliberation taking place.
  3. Participants are equal in two ways:
    1. Formal: anyone can put forth proposals, criticize, and support measures. There is no substantive hierarchy.
    2. Substantive: The participants are not limited or bound by certain distributions of power, resources, or pre-existing norms. "The participants…do not regard themselves as bound by the existing system of rights, except insofar as that system establishes the framework of free deliberation among equals."
  4. Deliberation aims at a rationally motivated consensus Consensus is defined in English as, firstly - general agreement and, secondly - group solidarity of belief or sentiment. It has its origin in a Latin word meaning literally to feel together: it aims to find reasons acceptable to all who are committed to such a system of decision-making. When consensus or something near enough is not possible, majoritarian decision making Majority rule is a decision rule that selects one of two alternatives, based on which has 50%+1 of the votes. It is the binary decision rule used most often in influential decision-making bodies, including the legislatures of democratic nations. Some scholars[who?] have recommended against the use of majority rule, at least under certain is used.

Association with political movements

Deliberative democracy recognizes a conflict of interest A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other between the citizen participating, those affected or victimized by the process being undertaken, and the group-entity that organizes the decision. Thus it usually involves an extensive outreach Outreach is an effort by individuals in an organization or group to connect its ideas or practices to the efforts of other organizations, groups, specific audiences or the general public. Unlike marketing, outreach does not inherently revolve around a product or strategies to increase market share. Typically non-profits, civic groups, and churches effort to include marginalized, isolated, ignored groups in decisions, and to extensively document dissent Dissent is a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or an entity (e.g. an individual or political party which supports such policies). The term's antonyms include agreement, consensus (when all or nearly all parties agree on something) and consent (when one party agrees to a proposition made by another), grounds for dissent, and future predictions of consequences of actions. It focuses as much on the process as the results. In this form it is a complete theory of civics Within a given political or ethical tradition, civics refers to educating the citizens. The history of civics dates back to the earliest theories of civics by Confucius in ancient China and Plato in ancient Greece. These traditions in general have led to modern distinctions between the West and the East, and two very different concepts of right.

The Green Party of the United States refers to its particular proposals for grassroots democracy To cite a specific hypothetical example, a national grassroots organization, would place as much decision-making power as possible in the hands of a local chapter instead of the head office. The principle is that for democratic power to be best exercised it must be vested in a local community instead of isolated, atomized individuals, essentially and electoral reform There are many such movements globally, in almost all democratic countries, as part of the basic definition of a democracy is the right to change the rules. Political science is imperfect; electoral reforms seek to make politics work a bit better, a bit sooner. The solution to the problems of democracy tends to be "more democracy." by this name.

On the other hand, many practitioners of deliberative democracy attempt to be as neutral and open-ended as possible, inviting (or even randomly selecting) people who represent a wide range of views and providing them with balanced materials to guide their discussions. Examples include National Issues Forums, Choices for the 21st Century, Study Circles, Deliberative Polls Deliberative polling combines small-group discussions involving large numbers of participants with random sampling of public opinion. Its overall purpose is to establish a base of informed public opinion on a specific issue. Citizens are invited to take part at random, so that a large enough participant group will provide a relatively accurate,, and the 21st-Century Town meetings convened by AmericaSpeaks, among others. In these cases, deliberative democracy is not connected to left-wing politics In politics, left-wing, leftist and the Left are generally used to describe support for social change with a view towards creating a more egalitarian society. The terms Left and Right were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in parliament; those who sat on the left generally supported the radical changes of but is intended to create a conversation among people of different philosophies and beliefs.

In Canada, there have been two prominent applications of deliberative democratic models. In 2004, the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform convened a policy jury to consider alternatives to the first-past-the-post electoral systems. In 2007, the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform convened to consider alternative electoral systems in that province.

Similarly, three of Ontario’s Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) have referred their budget priorities to a policy jury for advice and refinement.

Strengths and weaknesses

A claimed strength of deliberative democratic models is that they are more easily able to incorporate scientific Science is a systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about nature and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories. As knowledge has increased, some methods have proved more reliable than others, and today the scientific method is the standard for science. It includes the use of careful observation, experimentation, opinion and base policy on outputs of ongoing research, because:

According to the proponents, another strength of deliberative democratic models is that they tend, more than any other model, to generate ideal conditions of impartiality Impartiality is a principle of justice holding that decisions should be based on objective criteria, rather than on the basis of bias, prejudice, or preferring the benefit to one person over another for improper reasons, rationality In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason, a key method used to analyze the data gained through systematically gathered observations and knowledge Knowledge is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject; (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information; or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation of the relevant facts. The more these conditions are fulfilled, the greater the likelihood that the decisions reached are morally correct Ethics is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good vs. bad, noble vs. ignoble, right vs. wrong, and matters of justice, love, peace, and virtue. Deliberative democracy has thus an epistemic Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: value: it allows participants to deduce what is morally correct. This view has been prominently held by Carlos Nino.

A failure of most theories of deliberative democracy is that they do not address the problems of voting. James Fishkin James S. Fishkin is a professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University. Fishkin is a widely cited scholar on his work on Deliberative democracy. Along with Robert Luskin , he has pioneered a model of polling called the Deliberative Poll's 1991 work, "Democracy and Deliberation" introduced a way to apply the theory of deliberative democracy to real-world decision making, by way of what he calls the Deliberative opinion poll Deliberative polling combines small-group discussions involving large numbers of participants with random sampling of public opinion. Its overall purpose is to establish a base of informed public opinion on a specific issue. Citizens are invited to take part at random, so that a large enough participant group will provide a relatively accurate,. In the deliberative opinion poll, a statistically representative sample of the nation or a community is gathered to discuss an issue in conditions that further deliberation. The group is then polled, and the results of the poll and the actual deliberation can be used both as a recommending force and in certain circumstances, to replace a vote. Dozens of deliberative opinion polls have been conducted across the United States since his book was published.

The political philosopher Charles Blattberg Charles Blattberg is a professor of political philosophy at the Université de Montréal. Blattberg grew up in Toronto and completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, where he also served as president of its Students’ Administrative Council during the 1989–90 academic year has criticized deliberative democracy on four grounds: (i) the rules for deliberation that deliberative theorists affirm interfere with, rather than facilitate, good practical reasoning; (ii) deliberative democracy is ideologically biased in favor of liberalism as well as republican over parliamentary democratic systems; (iii) deliberative democrats assert a too-sharp division between just and rational deliberation on the one hand and self-interested and coercive bargaining or negotiation on the other; and (iv) deliberative democrats encourage an adversarial relationship between state and society, one that undermines solidarity between citizens.

Social choice theory Social choice theory is a theoretical framework for measuring individual interests, values, or welfares as an aggregate towards collective decision. A non-theoretical example of a collective decision is passing a set of laws under a constitution. Social choice theory dates from Condorcet's formulation of the voting paradox. Kenneth Arrow's 1951 presents deliberative democracy with a distinct challenge. Critics of deliberative democracy have pointed to Arrow's impossibility theorem In social choice theory, Arrow’s impossibility theorem, the General Possibility Theorem, or Arrow’s paradox, states that, when voters have three or more discrete options, no voting system can convert the ranked preferences of individuals into a community-wide ranking while also meeting a certain set of criteria. These criteria are called as limiting the use of deliberative democracy. Deliberative theorists (in particular Christian List/ cf. http://personal.lse.ac.uk/list/ ) have responded with a recent body of research in support of the claim that deliberation actually makes the conditions necessary for Arrow's Theorem to apply less likely.

See also

References

External links

Categories: Direct democracy | Political theories Categories: Political philosophy | Political science | Scientific theories | Philosophical theories | Schools of thought | Social theories | Deliberative groups | Deliberative methods Categories: Deliberative groups | Community organizing | Direct democracy

 

The above information uses material from Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a.
Some facts may not have been fully verified for accuracy. [Disclaimers Wikipedia is an online open-content collaborative encyclopedia, that is, a voluntary association of individuals and groups working to develop a common resource of human knowledge. The structure of the project allows anyone with an Internet connection to alter its content. Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by]
This page was last archived by our server on Fri Jul 30 06:27:18 2010. [ refresh local cache ]
Displaying this page or its contents does not use any Wikimedia Foundation's resources.
The owners of this site proudly support the Wikimedia Foundation.

[Hide]▼
'Deliberative Democracy' Answers
Does ANYONE understand that it is NOT voters who elect the PRESIDENT?
Q. I guess most on here are too young to remember that AL GORE won the POPULAR vote and BUSH was elected President, BUT HOW can that happen you ask? WELL here is a tidbit for those who think they are "in the KNOW" about the "democratic process": An electoral college is a set of electors, who are empowered as a deliberative body to elect a candidate to a particular office. Often these electors represent a different organization or entity with each organization or entity by a particular number of electors or with votes weighted in a particular way. Many times, though, the electors are simply important persons whose wisdom, it is hoped, would provide a better choice than a larger body. The system can ignore the wishes of a general membership… [cont.]
Asked by Solita - Sun Jan 20 12:40:26 2008 - - 11 Answers - 0 Comments

A. First mistake is a reference to democracy. Especially a true democracy . This country was founded as a republic, which allows a LIMITED representation Government. As the President is not elected by the people, either was Senators until the 17th Amendment passed in the early 1900 s. These measures were part of the original Constitution in order to prevent the knee-jerk reaction of the masses to problems and the passing of laws. This spreading of power was done in order to prevent consolidation of special interest groups and the majority from imposing its will upon the minority. Its use was to keep the States in charge and the Federal Government from imposing a national standard and becoming too powerful and stepping all over… [cont.]
Answered by chas - Sun Jan 20 13:07:49 2008

Yahoo Answers Search: Deliberative democracy,
Wed Jul 14 21:12:05 2010
[Hide]▲