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 returns to expand on the need for transparency:
The key premise is: procedural transparency fuels legitimacy. There are changes that could be made that would be helpful towards making the Tomorrow's Europe deliberative poll (DP) more transparent in its aims and methods. I would begin by using more precise language about key points.
On several parts of their website, Tomorrow's Europe refers to the DP as an "experiment" and as having a foundation in social science. If scientific credibility is an important attribute of the venture, then the site should use the term "experiment" properly rather than colloquially.
Throughout the sciences , an experiment refers to an endeavor with random assignment of participants to treatment and control groups. Best practices in experimental design mandate that everything except one variable of interest (or in some cases a very small number of variables) be held constant among control and treatment groups. By so doing, a researcher can document how the variable of interest corresponds to differences in observed behavior. Such practices often allow credible causal statements to be made.
There is no mention on the Tomorrow's Europe website of a control group and, if one exists, the nature of the stimulus to which it would be exposed. Use of the term experiment similar to that appearing on their site has been problematic for DPs in the past.
Following Habermas, the legitimacy of this project requires procedural transparency. Calling this venture an experiment -- if it is not -- and not documenting the nature of the experimental treatments -- if it is -- eat away at the prospect of this study having a lasting impact. Complete transparency about procedures is a must.
