Deliberative Democracy

The day before the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll kicks off, materminds Professor James Fishkin and Professor Robert Luskin give a few more details about the practicalities:

A basic sampling issue is whether to try to represent the population of every individual member state or the population of Europe as a whole.

The day before the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll kicks off, materminds Professor James Fishkin and Professor Robert Luskin clarify deliberative polling's claims to representativeness:

To help establish that the sample is indeed representative, the characteristics and pre-deliberation views and knowledge of the participants (the initial interviewees who attend the deliberations) are compared with those of the non-participants (the initial interviewees who do not attend).

The day before the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll kicks off, materminds Professor James Fishkin and Professor Robert Luskin clarify what deliberative polling is all about:

A Deliberative Poll (DP) surveys a scientific, random sample before and after it has deliberated one or more policy issues or electoral choices.

As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's initial criticisms (and the response of deliberative polling masterminds Professors Fishkin and Luskin - and part 2), Lupia continues to expand on the need for representativeness:

On the Tomorrow's Europe website, the representativeness of the sample is claimed as a legitimating factor. Here is an instance where, ex ante, you can commit to credible measures of "representativeness."

As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's initial criticisms (and the response of deliberative polling continues to consider the potential effects:

The Tomorrow's Europe poll first requires a stronger and more clearly stated set of goals than appears on their website. Then, turn those goals into hypotheses that can be evaluated with data that you are able to collect.

Oli Henman was Co-Ordinator of the European Citizens Consultation held in York in March 2007, and covered extensively by openDemocracy.

As we prepare for the Tomorrow’s Europe deliberative poll, let’s compare this process with the first Europe-wide participatory process, the European Citizens’ Consultations (ECC) that was held earlier this year.

Both of these processes come under the European Commission’s Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue & Debate, supported by Commissioner Margot Wallstrom; and they both attempt to provide new ways for European citizens to relate directly with the European Union, towards greater participation. This reflects a change at the European level, a recognition that it is time to engage in a more open debate; no-one would have predicted that in 2007, there would be not one but two Europe-wide opportunities for citizens to have their voices heard!

So how do the two processes compare?

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - continue their introductory series. (See part 1, part 2, part 3)

The third purpose of deliberation, to promote mutually respectful decision making, responds to an often neglected source of moral disagreement - incompatible moral values. Even utterly altruistic individuals trying to decide on the morally best standards for governing a society of abundance would not be able to reconcile some moral conflicts beyond a reasonable doubt. They would still confront, for example, the problem of abortion, which pits life against liberty. No less tractable would be other moral issues such as the question of how to balance privacy against security.

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - continue their introductory series. (See part 1, part 2)

The second purpose of deliberation is to encourage public-spirited perspectives on public issues. This aim responds to another source of moral disagreement-limited generosity. Few people are inclined to be wholly altruistic when they are arguing about contentious issues of public policy, such as health care reform or foreign intervention.

Thomas Glaser retired from the European Commission in 2005 after 30 years' service, his last post as head of the EU Representation in Hungary. Currently a visiting professor at the Central European University in Budapest and a member of the advisory board of Generation Europe in Brussels and the Institute for Social and European Studies in Koszeg, Hungary, here he looks at the practical uses of public deliberation in politics:

In Professor Fishkin’s introductory blog, he mentions Athenian democracy as an exemplar, coupling his mention with the word ‘probity’.

Obviously, to a political scientist, the mere mention of Athens brings on a warm, mushy feeling. To an historian, however, the Athenian experiment in democracy led directly to her defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. For the sake of probity and good governance, up to ten generals at a time were voted in for a year. The result was divided command – some generals took a day on and a day off – mutual suspicion, and – since the terms were for one year only – a total lack of strategic vision.

I am taking this opportunity to weigh in on the exchange between Arthur Lupia (and part 2), Jim Fishkin (and part 2), and others concerned with the Tomorrow's Europe Deliberative Poll. I come neither to praise nor bury this effort, but rather to simply offer some perspective.

The Deliberative Poll is but one of many practices created to enhance the quality of public deliberation. Before looking at its details, it's important to recognize that it shares common features with Citizen Juries, Planning Cells, Consensus Conferences, and other deliberative processes that have been developed over the past thirty years. These key features include:

1 - inclusion of a diverse cross-section of citizens in face-to-face discussion on public issues
2 - providing experts and partisans a role to express their views and share information with citizens
3 - a fair amount of semi-structured, professionally moderated discussion of (and reflection on) all that is heard during the process
4 - and a metric for faithfully recording the citizens' views after their deliberation

Only when held against an unreachable standard of perfection does the Deliberative Poll - or its peer processes - fail to achieve these four aims.

Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - continue their introductory series. (See part 1)

The first purpose of deliberative democracy is to promote the legitimacy of collective decisions.

This is a response to the first source of moral disagreement - scarcity of resources. Citizens would not have to argue about how best to distribute health care or how to balance environmental protection and economic growth if these goods and services were unlimited or not in conflict.

Deliberation often cannot resolve moral disagreements because there are reasonable differences about how health care or scarce organs should be distributed. But in the face of scarcity, deliberation can help those who do not get what they want or even what they need come to accept the legitimacy of a collective decision.

As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's criticisms (with more to come shortly) and the response of deliberative polling masterminds Professors Fishkin and Luskin (and part 2), it's time to get to grips with the details.

Here, Dennis Thompson - founding Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Professor of Public Policy and Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy in the Government Department at Harvard University - and Amy Guttmann - President of and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania - begin an introduction to the theories underlying the concept of deliberative democracy:

Following the first of Professor Lupia's posts on the problems of deliberative polls, the two masterminds of the deliberative polling method, Professor James Fishkin of Stanford and Professor Robert Luskin of the University of Texas, explain a bit more about the results and methodology of their approach:

It is true that studies of "deliberation" have produced some variety of results - unsurprisingly, given the considerable variety in definitions and operationalizations underlying them.

Following the first of Professor Lupia's posts on the problems of deliberative polls, the two masterminds of the deliberative polling method, Professor James Fishkin of Stanford and Professor Robert Luskin of the University of Texas, respond to his accusations on the issue of transparency:

As the academic debate over the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll begins to take off, Professor Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research presents the first in a four-part series on some of his concerns about the methods and theories behind deliberative polling:

There are many contested and unresolved issues relevant to the effectiveness of deliberative polls (DP) and related deliberative mechanisms. I happen to believe that deliberative ventures such as DPs can have beneficial effects, but only under specific conditions and with rather limited goals in mind.

I am concerned with the basic credibility of a number of the claims made about the Tomorrow's Europe poll on its website.