| Abstract: | This article investigates 16 organizations that attempt to foster better public deliberation in local and national communities. It develops a typology of these organizations and discusses them in the context of the scholarly literature on deliberative democracy. It particularly focuses upon the contributions these organizations may make to debates within the literature between advocates of relational and rational modes of deliberation. It finds that, much like the literature, practitioners of deliberative democracy wrestle with the competing demands of inclusiveness and group cohesion. Organizations attempt to solve this dilemma by stressing group action. However, this emphasis on action raises another dilemma associated with the relation between deliberative and representative models of politics. The essay concludes by suggesting that these organizations have accepted the challenge of improving public life through discourse that has been laid down by deliberative democratic theory. As such, they represent a natural experiment in deliberative democracy that deserves the serious attention of the scholarly community. |
