Integrated Deliberation: Reconciling Civil Society's Dual Role in Deliberative Democracy

Among the growing literature on deliberative democracy there are two diverging streams of thought, each implying a different role for civil society. Micro deliberative theorists, with their focus on the procedural conditions for structured fora, encourage civil society to engage in collaborative practices, usually with the state. In contrast, macro deliberative democrats, who are interested in the messy and informal deliberation in the public sphere, advocate that civil society should work discursively outside and against the state. This article explores some of the implications of these conflicting roles, taking into account two observations from deliberative practice: first, that all micro deliberative fora are surrounded and impacted by their macro discursive context, and second, that some actors in civil society are more willing and capable of deliberating than others. To conceive of deliberative democracy as an entirely micro or macro enterprise is not only unrealistic, but potentially exclusive. The article advocates for a more viable and inclusive deliberative theory; one that integrates all kinds of deliberation from the micro to the macro. To this end, public deliberation is best conceptualised as an activity occurring in a range of discursive spheres that collectively engage a diversity of civil society actors.     

Commentary on Widmalm: A rebuttal

Abstract

This paper examines the public involvement in a particularly sensitive and highly contentious field of EU policy making: the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) sector. It argues for the establishment of a larger public debate in the EU policy field and interactive discourses that involve public voices, rather than just technocrats or scientists, in the GMO sector. In terms of deliberative democracy, an assessment of the EU's GMO regime is mixed: on the one hand, new practices have been introduced, which indicate a shift towards more participatory policy making; on the other, enhanced societal participation does not necessarily support the emergence of a larger engaged public and deliberation in the general public sphere. Thus, after the design of the ‘participatory garden’, the wider European public debate on GMOs has not ‘grown’ due to a lack of horizontal co-ordination among EU initiatives; the preference for institutionalized forms of cooperation with civil society; and the lack of evaluation methods for public involvement in GMO approvals.     

Civil society organizations and deliberative policy making: interpreting environmental controversies in the deliberative system

This paper argues that while research on deliberative democracy is burgeoning, there is relatively little attention paid to the contributions of civil society. Based on an interpretive conceptualization of deliberative democracy, this paper draws attention to the ways in which civil society organizations employ “storylines” about environmental issues and deliberative processes to shape deliberative policy making. It asks, how do civil society organizations promote storylines in the deliberative system to change policy? How do storylines constitute policy and policy-making processes in the deliberative system? I answer these questions through an empirical analysis of two environmental controversies in the USA: environmental justice in New Mexico and coalbed methane development in Wyoming. Findings indicate that civil society organizations used storylines in both cases to shift the dynamics of the deliberative system and to advance their own interpretations of environmental problems and policy-making processes. Specifically, they used storylines (1) to set the agenda on environmental hazards, (2) to construct the form of public deliberation, changing the rules of the game, (3) to construct the content of public deliberation, shaping meanings related to environmental policy, and (4) to couple/align forums, arenas and courts across the system. These findings suggest that promoting storylines through accommodation and selection processes can be an important mechanism for shaping policy meanings and for improving deliberative quality, although these effects are tempered by discursive and material forms of power, and the competition among alternative storylines.     

Deliberative Democracy Nationwide?—Evaluating Deliberativeness of Healthcare Reform in China

To date, China’s deliberative institutions have mainly been seen as small-scale mechanisms for controlling local social unrest. This paper explores how deliberative principles in China work at the national level. The case under scrutiny is China’s new healthcare reform. Drawing on the existing empirical studies, Chinese-language reports and articles, official document analysis, and on several unstructured interviews with Chinese academics, the article attempts to evaluate the extent to which deliberative democratic principles are present in the process of healthcare policy making. To achieve this analytical goal, it develops and applies five criteria of good deliberation. The analysis suggests that the public policy process in China is now more inclusive and pluralistic than it was in the past. This arguably indicates that China’s political system is moving in a new direction.     

Participatory storylines and their influence on deliberative forums

For all the recent discussion on the virtues and vices of public deliberation, surprisingly little attention has been given to how deliberative procedures actually operate in different policy contexts. This article takes up this task with a specific focus on how deliberative designs such as citizens' juries and consensus conferences interface with their participatory context. The concept of the participatory storyline is developed to describe the competing narratives associated with a policy issue on who constitutes the public” and how “they” should be represented and involved in the policy process. An analysis of two Australian cases reveals how existing participatory storylines can productively or destructively influence deliberative forums. The empirical research suggests that a more productive deliberative procedure is one that supports or “speaks to” existing narratives on what constitutes public participation. Under these conditions key policy actors are more likely to engage in the deliberative process and endorse its outcomes. Some suggestions are provided for how practitioners can better anticipate the way a deliberative forum might interface with its participatory context.     

Credible Empowerment and Deliberative Participation: A Comparative Study of Two Nuclear Energy Policy Deliberation Cases in Korea

What factors make deliberative participation of public policy effective? Why, in some cases, are participants in deliberation more motivated than others, and reach their final judgment in a timely manner, based on systematic processes of opinion gathering and consensus building? By comparing and investigating two recent cases of public participation in energy policy deliberation in Korea, we argue that deliberative participation is more effective when the prospect that the outcome of their activities might be accepted by decision makers is high. The two cases, the public deliberation committee (PDC) on the nuclear waste issue which operated from 2013 to 2015, and the PDC on the nuclear power plant construction issue which operated in 2017, show that they went through similar courses of action, and used similar methods for deliberation. However, while the 2017 PDC has produced clear‐cut policy recommendations, and the government have accepted these, the 2013 PDC failed to reach conclusions on the given critical issues. We argue that the difference in the results is caused by credible empowerment along with two other factors––the sensitivity of issues and the learning effect. Participants of deliberation tend to judge the possibility of the government’s acceptance of their opinions based on either the government’s direct announcement or its inclusiveness in the past policy history. If governments are willing to consult the public to increase legitimacy and transparency, they should send explicit signals to the public on its inclusiveness in the short term, and also should increase credibility in the long term.     

The Civil Society,the Uncivil Society,and the Difficulty Israel Has Making Peace with the Palestinians

Abstract

The difficulty Israel has making peace with the Palestinians, which became evident with the failure of the 1993 Oslo Agreements, can be explained through the internal relationships and historical dynamics within the Israeli public sphere, and the relations between the public sphere and the state. Using the terms ‘civil society’ and ‘uncivil society’ as a theoretical framework, the article examines both the relations between these two binary representations within the public sphere and the ability of each of them to influence state policy through two analytical tools: cultural politics and instrumental politics. The contention is that the Oslo Agreements failed in part because while both the civil and uncivil societies arose as a cultural innovation and alternative collective identities in neo-liberal Israel, the uncivil society succeeded in translating its collective representations into effective instrumental politics that influenced the Israeli state, while the civil society failed to do so.     

Deliberative Democracy and International Labor Standards

Political theorists have argued that the methods of deliberative democracy can help to meet challenges such as legitimacy, effective governance, and citizen education in local and national contexts. These basic insights can also be applied to problems of international governance such as the formulation, implementation, and monitoring of labor standards. A participatory and deliberative democratic approach to labor standards would push the labor–standards debate into the global public sphere. It would seek to create broad discussion about labor standards that would include not only firms and regulators, but also consumers, nongovernmental organizations, journalists, and others. This discussion could potentially improve (1) the quality of labor standards by incorporating considerations of economic context and firm capability, (2) their implementation by bringing to bear not only state sanctions but also political and market pressures, and (3) the education and understanding of citizens. Whereas the role of public agencies in state–centered approaches is to formulate and enforce labor standards, central authorities in the decentralized–deliberative approach would foster the transparency of workplace practices to spur an inclusive, broad, public conversation about labor standards. To the extent that a substantive consensus around acceptable behavior emerges from that conversation, public power should also enforce those minimum standards.     

On a Governmentality Analytics of the ‘Deliberative Turn’: Material Conditions,Rationalities and the Deliberating Subject

Amongst social and political researchers, as well as diverse policy actors, debate has of late grown around the role deliberation can and could play in addressing contemporary social, political and environmental issues. Substantial conceptual and empirical concerns remain about this ‘deliberative turn’, including the strictures of achieving ‘true deliberation’ and a lack of focus to date on the contexts and ‘material conditions’ of deliberative events and spaces. In response, this paper argues that the recent growth of research utilising Foucault's governmentality thesis can provide a fruitful analytics to explore aspects of the deliberative turn, in particular the rationalities and subjectivities that undergird it. This argument draws on recent debates in both deliberative politics and governmentality studies, as well as examples of past and on-going deliberative research.     

Metropolitan Institutions and Policy Coordination: The Integration of Land Use and Transport Policies in Swiss Urban Areas

The article addresses the question of how different metropolitan institutional settings affect the quality of political negotiation processes and their subsequent policy decisions. Starting from the theoretical controversy of the two metropolitan reform traditions, two opposing ideal types of metropolitan government institutions are conceptualized: on the one hand the public choice model that stands for a decentralized, nonprofessional, and politically dependent administration in fragmented urban areas, and on the other hand the neoprogressive model that stands for direct public service production by centralized and professionalized bureaucracies within consolidated municipalities. A qualitative comparative analysis of nine decision cases in four Swiss urban areas uncovers three main results: voluntary, positive, and policy-driven coordination as well as well coordinated policy solutions are found in centralized rather than decentralized institutional settings, in fragmented rather than consolidated metropolitan areas, and in project structures with a strict separation of the political sphere of negotiating from the technical sphere rather than in negotiations without such clear distinction. However, it is only under very specific institutional conditions that these well-coordinated solutions are also being implemented. The findings must be put into perspective in two respects. On the one hand, the positive effect of fragmentation on the quality of deliberation is supposedly unique to Switzerland due to its very strong federalism. On the other hand, the importance of bureaucratic autonomy is probably due to Switzerland's marked tradition of a weak state. The results from the nine test cases in general, however, substantiate the hypotheses derived from the neoprogressive model of metropolitan government institutions rather than the public choice model.     

Strategy and Partnership in Local Economic Development: A Case Study in Local Economic Strategy Making

The development of a strategic response to local economic change has been of crucial importance to local authorities in the U.K. throughout the 1980s. This paper investigates the processes of strategy formulation and implementation in the city of Norwich. It raises a range of issues with regard to the potential effects of cooperation between the public and private sectors at the strategic level. The adoption of economic development as a strategic policy area has brought into question a number of relationships both within and between local public authorities, and is of fundamental importance to the character of public/private relations.     

Local economic strategies as industrial policy: a critical review of British developments in the 1980s

The proliferation of interventionist local authority strategies for employment and economic development has been widespread in Britain since the early 1980s. But much of the radical promise of these strategies has been slow to materialise, due in part to the abolition of the metropolitan authorities and to the election of a third Thatcher government. Moreover new and traditional forms of policy production have co-existed in an uneasy relationship within local authorities, and this threatens the strategic capacity of intervention. It is argued that the regeneration of strategic perspectives should be a priority for local authorities; at the same time flexible specialisation in manufacturing offers new political and tactical opportunities for strategic intervention in pursuit of both regeneration and accountability in the economic sphere.     

Deliberative Democracy and the Politics of Recognition

It is commonly supposed that deliberative democracy and the politics of recognition are natural allies, as both demand a more inclusive politics. It is argued here that this impression is misleading and that the politics of recognition harbours significant anti-deliberative tendencies. Deliberative politics requires a public sphere which is maximally inclusive of diverse beliefs and perspectives, including those which dissent from orthodox understandings of group indentities. By contrast, the politics of recognition typically seeks to insulate such identities from challenge, both from within and without. Devices such as special group representation, while apparently inclusive, risk incentivising an anti-deliberative culture of deference to identity claims. An alternative model of inclusive politics, which involves a more contestatory political culture and a multiplication of deliberative opportunities, is sketched.     

Five Arguments for Deliberative Democracy

Five arguments in favour of deliberative democracy are considered. These focus on its educative power, on its community-generating power, on the fairness of the procedure of public deliberation, on the epistemic quality of its outcomes and on the congruence of the deliberative democratic ideal 'with whom we are'. The first four arguments are shown to be inadequate. The fifth argument, it is claimed, not only provides the most convincing defence of deliberative democracy but can also be used to decide rationally between competing interpretations of the deliberative ideal. By way of illustration, the essay concludes with a critical discussion of the rival versions proposed by Rawls and Habermas.     

Best Laid Plans … The Institutionalisation of Public Deliberation in Scotland

Despite increasing support for participatory and deliberative principles amongst academics, practitioners and parliamentarians alike, efforts to infuse political systems with more inclusive and consensual forms of debate often founder. This article explores this conundrum by examining institutional reforms through the lens of deliberative democracy. More specifically, we scrutinise attempts to institutionalise forms of civic deliberation within the Scottish political system via the Scottish Civic Forum and the Scottish Parliament's committee system. Our analysis tells the story of how these two types of institutional reform, both designed to facilitate the move towards a more participatory and deliberative model of democracy in Scotland, have fared over a ten‐year period. In turn, this analysis allows us to comment on the ways in which deliberative and parliamentary democracy may be integrated.     

The Sophisticated Public: The Effect of Competing Frames on Public Opinion

Deliberation is the current buzzword among democratic thinkers. Deliberative democracy assumes that deliberation has an effect on the people engaging in the deliberative process. Several studies have demonstrated that this is indeed the case: deliberation increases political knowledge and opinion consistency, as well as mutual understanding and broader tolerance among citizens. In order to verify the findings from these studies and to confront the problems of internal and external validity in the previous studies of deliberation, alternative methodological designs must be applied. Applying an experimental split-sample design using CATI on the Danish electorate reveals how arguments and frames influence public opinion. Across various frames and arguments and political issues, positive (negative) arguments tend to push opinions in a positive (negative) direction. When competing frames are presented to the public, people submit to neither ambivalence nor non-attitudes. Quite to the contrary, people tend to follow their predisposition and provide more consistent opinions. Thus, deliberation composed of various competing frames and arguments facilitates – rather than distorts – sophisticated and considered public opinion.     

Intergovernmental Relations and the Advocacy Coalition Framework: The Operation of Federalism in Denver Water Politics

The relationship between intergovernmental relations and theformulation and implementation of public policies is not wellunderstood by scholars. Borrowing from the advocacy coalitionframework, this study contends that public policies reflectthe strategic choices of federal, state, and local actors operatingwithin policy subsystems. The success of various governmentalpolicy strategies is dependent on the autonomy of each actorand the level of policy fragmentation within the subsystem.These variables are defined, operationalized, and examined withinthe context of intergovernmental relations in Denver water politics.     

Deliberative Innovation to Different Effect: Consensus Conferences in Denmark, France, and the United States

Democratic reformers are attracted by the role that advisory forums composed of lay citizens can play in public consultation on complex policy issues (such as participatory technology assessment). Using a comparative study of consensus conferences on the issue of genetically modified food in Denmark, France, and the United States, the authors show that the potential of such deliberative "mini-publics" is quite different in different sorts of political system. They attend to the mode of establishment, perceived legitimacy, policy impact, and influence on public debate of the forum in each case. In actively inclusive Denmark,mini-publics are deployed in integrative fashion; in exclusive France, in managerial fashion; and in the passively inclusive United States, in advocacy fashion. Proponents and practitioners of deliberative participatory reforms should take into account the constraints and opportunities revealed by this analysis and attend to the different roles that mini-publics might play in different political systems.     

Legislating deliberative engagement: Is local government in Victoria willing and able?

Growing dissatisfaction with representative democracy and concomitantly, the increasing expectation that citizens assert more influence over public policy have seen the emergence of more participatory and deliberative forms of governance in public management practice. This article explores the attempt of the state government of Victoria, Australia to legislate for mandatory deliberative engagement as part of its local government strategic planning instruments. The ambition of the reform was significant; however, it was almost unanimously rejected by the local government sector. Based on analysis of the key themes that emerged from the submissions made during the 3-year Victorian Local Government Act Review process, we explore the limitations and barriers to implementing deliberative engagement practice at a local government level. We demonstrate that whilst the promise of participatory democracy might have been compelling, in the case of Victoria there were a series of contextual and capacity considerations that needed to be taken into account before the implementation of such reforms were pursued.     

Spheres of liberty,conflict and power: The public lives of private persons

State‐society relations during the modern period reflect notions of citizenship analogous to Isaiah Berlin's concepts of positive and negative liberty. Positive citizenship, motivated by what Robert O'Brien calls ‘the democratic impulse’, is highly participatory. The politics of seventeenth‐century Protestant social movements constitutes one historical model to which twentieth‐century fundamentalist movements can be compared. Characterized by a shrinkage of the private sphere and an expansion of public life, positive citizenship emphasizes active engagement in establishing and implementing normative standards for individuals and communities, and control of the state for virtuous ends. Negative citizenship concentrates on the protection of individual rights, expanding both the private sphere and a third or meta‐space which evinces qualities of public and private realms simultaneously. The historical model presented is what Jürgen Habermas has called the ‘bourgeois public sphere’, a quasi‐parallel polis from within which critics of state power assert their right to resist and organize their capacity to repel attempts to enforce standards of public virtue however arrived at. These ideal types are compared to different scenarios of state‐society relations to analyze the likely impact on public and private life of rapid globalization.