Groups and Deliberation |
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| Authors: | Christopher F Karpowitz Tali Mendelberg |
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| Institution: | 1. Brigham Young University and Princeton University;2. Christopher F. Karpowitz is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University and a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. His research explores how citizens experience democratic institutions and processes, with special attention to democratic and deliberative theory and practice. In addition to articles in various journals, he is coauthor of Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and that We Can Do About It Brookings 2005).;3. Tali Mendelberg is Associate Professor of Politics at Princeton University. She is the author of The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages, and the Norm of Equality (Princeton University Press 2001) and articles in various journals on race and on deliberation. |
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| Abstract: | We present a group‐based approach to the study of deliberation. Deliberation occurs in groups, yet many studies of deliberation do not take the group as a unit of analysis. We argue that group composition and the attendant social dynamics to which they give rise are an important aspect of deliberation. We offer several examples of ways to study these effects, including the interaction of gender composition and the group's decision rule in the context of an experimental study of decisions about justice, the effect of racial composition in simulated juries, and the effect of ideological composition in local meetings. We examine the consequences of these factors on a variety of outcomes, including individuals' private opinion, individuals' behaviour, and group decisions. In conclusion we discuss the implications that group effects have for empirical and normative theories of deliberation. |
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| Keywords: | Deliberation Group Group Composition Justice Juries Local Meetings Gender Race Ideology |
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