Easter readings: new selection of articles and notes on democracy, open government, civic tech and others

Open government’s uncertain effects and the Biden opportunity: what now? 

A review of 10 years of open government research reveals: 1) “a transparency-driven focus”,  2) “methodological concerns”, and 3) [maybe not surprising] “the lack of empirical evidence regarding the effects of open government”. My take on this is that these findings are, somewhat, self-reinforcing. 

First, the early focus on transparency by open government advocates, while ignoring the conditions under which transparency could lead to public goods, should be, in part, to blame. This is even more so if open government interventions insist on tactical, instead of strategic approaches to accountability. Second, the fact that many of those engaging in open government efforts do not take into account the existing evidence doesn’t help in terms of designing appropriate reforms, nor in terms of calibrating expectations. Proof of this is the recurrent and mostly unsubstantiated spiel that “transparency leads to trust”, voiced by individuals and organizations who should have known better. Third, should there be any effects of open government reforms, these are hard to verify in a credible manner given that evaluations often suffer from methodological weaknesses, as indicated by the paper.

Finally, open government’s semantic extravaganza makes building critical mass all the more difficult. For example, I have my doubts over whether the paper would reach similar conclusions should it have expanded the review to open government practices that, in the literature, are not normally labeled as open government. This would be the case, for instance, of participatory budgeting (which has shown to improve service delivery and increase tax revenues), or strategic approaches to social accountability that present substantial results in terms of development outcomes.  

In any case, the research findings are still troubling. The election of President Biden gives some extra oxygen to the open government agenda, and that is great news. But in a context where autocratization turns viral, making a dent in how governments operate will take less  policy-based evidence searching and more evidence-based strategizing. That involves leveraging the existing evidence when it is available, and when it is not, the standard path applies: more research is needed.

Open Government Partnership and Justice

On another note, Joe Foti, from the Open Government Partnership (OGP), writes on the need to engage more lawyers, judges and advocates in order to increase the number of accountability-focused OGP commitments. I particularly like Joe’s ideas on bringing these actors together to identify where OGP commitments could be stronger, and how. This resonates with a number of cases I’ve come across in the past where the judiciary played a key role in ensuring that citizens’ voice also had teeth. 

I also share Joe’s enthusiasm for the potential of a new generation of commitments that put forward initiatives such as specialized anti-corruption courts and anti-SLAPP provisions. Having said this, the judiciary itself needs to be open, independent and capable. In most countries that I’ve worked in, a good part of open government reforms fail precisely because of a dysfunctional judiciary system. 

Diversity, collective intelligence and deliberative democracy 

Part of the justification for models of deliberative democracy is their epistemic quality, that is, large and diverse crowds are smarter than the (elected or selected) few. A good part of this argument finds its empirical basis in the fantastic work by Scott Page.

But that’s not all. We know, for instance, that gender diversity on corporate boards improves firms’ performance, ethnic diversity produces more impactful scientific research, diverse groups are better at solving crimes, popular juries are less biased than professional judges, and politically diverse editorial teams produce higher-quality Wikipedia articles. Diversity also helps to explain classical Athens’ striking superiority vis-à-vis other city-states of its time, due to the capacity of its democratic system to leverage the dispersed knowledge of its citizens through sortition.

Now, a Nature article, “Algorithmic and human prediction of success in human collaboration from visual features”, presents new evidence of the power of diversity in problem-solving tasks. In the paper, the authors examine the patterns of group success in Escape The Room, an adventure game in which a group attempts to escape a maze by collectively solving a series of puzzles. The authors find that groups that are larger, older and more gender diverse are significantly more likely to escape. But there’s an exception to that: more age diverse groups are less likely to escape. Intriguing isn’t it? 

Deliberative processes online: rough review of the evidence

As the pandemic pushes more deliberative exercises online, researchers and practitioners start to take more seriously the question of how effective online deliberation can be when compared to in-person processes. Surprisingly, there are very few empirical studies comparing the two methods.

But a quick run through the literature offers some interesting insights. For instance, an online 2004 deliberative poll on U.S. foreign policy, and a traditional face-to-face deliberative poll conducted in parallel, presented remarkably similar results. A 2007 experiment comparing online and face-to-face deliberation found that both approaches can increase participants’ issue knowledge, political efficacy, and willingness to participate in politics. A similar comparison from 2009 looking at deliberation over the construction of a power plant in Finland found considerable resemblance in the outcomes of online and face-to-face processes. A study published in 2012 on waste treatment in France found that, compared to the offline process, online deliberation was more likely to: i) increase women’s interventions, ii) promote the justification or arguments, and iii) be oriented towards the common good (although in this case the processes were not similar in design). 

The external validity of these findings, however encouraging they may be, remains an empirical question. Particularly given that since these studies were conducted the technology used to support deliberations has in many cases changed (e.g. from written to “zoomified” deliberations).  Anyhow, kudos should go to the researchers who started engaging with the subject well over a decade ago: if that work was a niche subject then, their importance now is blatantly obvious. 

(BTW, on a related issue, here’s a fascinating 2021 experiment examining whether online juries can make consistent, repeatable decisions: interestingly, deliberating groups are much more consistent than non-deliberating groups)

Fixing the Internet? 

Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev published a great article in The Atlantic on the challenges to democracy by an Internet model that fuels disinformation and polarization, presenting alternative paths to address this. I was thankful for the opportunity to make a modest contribution to such a nice piece.  

At the same time, an excellent Twitter thread by Levi Boxel is a good reminder that sometimes we may be overestimating some of the effects of the Internet on polarization. Levi highlights three stylized facts with regards to mass polarization: i) it’s been increasing since at least the 1980’s in the US, ii) it’s been increasing more quickly among old age groups in the US, and iii) in the past 30 years countries present different patterns of polarization despite similar Internet usage.

Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned about the effects of the Internet in politics. For instance, a new study in the American Political Science Review finds that radical right parties benefit more than any other parties from malicious bots on social media. 

Open democracy

2021 continues to be a good year for the proponents of deliberative democracy, with growing coverage of the subject in the mainstream media, in part fueled by the recent launch of Helène Landemore’s great book “Open Democracy.” Looking for something to listen to? Look no further and listen to this interview by Ezra Klein with Helène.

A dialogue among giants 

The recording of the roundtable Contours of Participatory Democracy in the 21st Century is now available. The conversation between Jane Mansbridge, Mark Warren and Cristina Lafont can be found here

Democracy and design thinking 

Speaking of giants, the new book by Michael Saward “Democratic Design”, is finally out. I’m a big fan of Michael’s work, so my recommendation may be biased. In this new book Michael brings design thinking together with democratic theory and practice. If the design of democratic institutions is one of your topics, you should definitely check it out!   

Civic Tech 

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to deliver a lecture at the Center for Collective Learning – Artificial and Natural Intelligence Institute. My presentation, Civic Technologies: Past, Present and Future, can be found here.

Scholar articles: 

And finally, for those who really want to geek-out, a list of 15 academic articles I enjoyed reading:

Protzer, E. S. (2021). Social Mobility Explains Populism, Not Inequality or Culture. CID Research Fellow and Graduate Student Working Paper Series.

Becher, M., & Stegmueller, D. (2021). Reducing Unequal Representation: The Impact of Labor Unions on Legislative Responsiveness in the US Congress. Perspectives on Politics, 19(1), 92-109.

Foster, D., & Warren, J. (2021). The politics of spatial policies. Available at SSRN 3768213.

Hanretty, C. (2021). The Pork Barrel Politics of the Towns Fund. The Political Quarterly.

RAD, S. R., & ROY, O. (2020). Deliberation, Single-Peakedness, and Coherent Aggregation. American Political Science Review, 1-20.

Migchelbrink, K., & Van de Walle, S. (2021). A systematic review of the literature on determinants of public managers’ attitudes toward public participation. Local Government Studies, 1-22.

Armand, A., Coutts, A., Vicente, P. C., & Vilela, I. (2020). Does information break the political resource curse? Experimental evidence from Mozambique. American Economic Review, 110(11), 3431-53.

Giraudet, L. G., Apouey, B., Arab, H., Baeckelandt, S., Begout, P., Berghmans, N., … & Tournus, S. (2021). Deliberating on Climate Action: Insights from the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate (No. hal-03119539).

Rivera-Burgos, V. (2020). Are Minorities Underrepresented in Government Policy? Racial Disparities in Responsiveness at the Congressional District Level.

Erlich, A., Berliner, D., Palmer-Rubin, B., & Bagozzi, B. E. (2021). Media Attention and Bureaucratic Responsiveness. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory.

Eubank, N., & Fresh, A. Enfranchisement and Incarceration After the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Mueller, S., Gerber, M., & Schaub, H. P. Democracy Beyond Secrecy: Assessing the Promises and Pitfalls of Collective Voting. Swiss Political Science Review.

Campbell, T. (2021). Black Lives Matter’s Effect on Police Lethal Use-of-Force. Available at SSRN.

Wright, N., Nagle, F., & Greenstein, S. M. (2020). Open source software and global entrepreneurship. Harvard Business School Technology & Operations Mgt. Unit Working Paper, (20-139), 20-139.

Boxell, L., & Steinert-Threlkeld, Z. (2021). Taxing dissent: The impact of a social media tax in Uganda. Available at SSRN 3766440.

Miscellaneous radar: 

  • Modern Grantmaking: That’s the title of a new book by Gemma Bull and Tom Steinberg. I had the privilege of reading snippets of this, and I can already recommend it not only to those working with grantmaking, but also pretty much anyone working in the international development space.
  • Lectures: The Center for Collective Learning has a fantastic line-up of lectures open to the public. Find out more here.
  • Learning from Togo: While unemployment benefits websites were crashing in the US, the Togolese government showed how to leverage mobile money and satellite data to effectively get cash into the hands of those who need it the most
  • Nudging the nudgers: British MPs are criticising academics for sending them fictitious emails for research. I wonder if part of their outrage is not just about the emails, but about what the study could reveal in terms of their actual responsiveness to different constituencies.
  • DataViz: Bringing data visualization to physical/offline spaces has been an obsession of mine for quite a while. I was happy to come across this project while doing some research for a presentation

Enjoy the holiday.

46 favorite reads on democracy, civic tech and a few other interesting things

open book lot

I’ve recently been exchanging with some friends on a list of favorite reads from 2020. While I started with a short list, it quickly grew: after all, despite the pandemic, there has been lots of interesting stuff published in the areas that I care about throughout the year. While the final list of reads varies in terms of subjects, breadth, depth and methodological rigor, I picked these 46 for different reasons. These include my personal judgement of their contribution to the field of democracy, or simply a belief that some of these texts deserve more attention than they currently receive. Others are in the list because I find them particularly surprising or amusing.

As the list is long – and probably at this length, unhelpful to my friends – I tried to divide it into three categories: i) participatory and deliberative democracy, ii) civic tech and digital democracy, and iii) and miscellaneous (which is not really a category, let alone a very helpful one, I know). In any case, many of the titles are indicative of what the text is about, which should make it easier to navigate through the list.

These caveats aside, below is the list of some of my favorite books and articles published in 2020:

Participatory and Deliberative Democracy

While I still plan to make a similar list for representative democracy, this section of the list is intentionally focused on democratic innovations, with a certain emphasis on citizens’ assemblies and deliberative modes of democracy. While this reflects my personal interests, it is also in part due to the recent surge of interest in citizens’ assemblies and other modes of deliberative democracy, and the academic production that followed.  

On Civic Tech and Digital Democracy

2020 was the year where the field of civic tech seemed to take a democratic turn, from fixing potholes to fixing democracy.

MISCELANEOUS

Finally, a section as random as 2020.

As mentioned before, the list is already too long. But if there’s anything anyone thinks should absolutely be on this list, please do let me know.

Deliberative democracy and the media

Deliberative democracy is based on the principle that politics should be inclusive, deliberative and consequential. This means that there need to be mechanisms to ensure that all those affected by collective decisions should be able to influence the outcome and that this should involve a process of reason and reflection.

Reflection on important issues cannot occur in an information vacuum. We need inputs into our decision making and the better the quality of that information, the better the capacity for us to reflect on what outcomes we think should be aimed for. Certainly there is a tendency to overplay the role of information alone in considering our positions. The common refrain from those concerned about inaction on climate change, for example, is that the public needs to be better informed. But information alone isn’t enough. There is plenty of that out there already. The problem lies in the way that it is put together, the context in which it is presented, and the level of trust in sources of information that reflect the complexity and nuances of the issue, while still being accessible.

In other words, we also need to consider the need for information to be provided in ways that enable us to side-step fallibility in modes of reasoning, such as the tendency to only seek information the reinforces our pre-existing positions (referred to as motivated reasoning, or commitment bias) or to draw intuitive conclusions that sometimes poorly reflect the substance of the issue (referred to as type 1 reasoning, or peripheral processing; as opposed to type 2 reasoning or cognitive processing). These are motivational issues that I’ll write about another time.

But no matter how well intentioned the motivations behind our political reasoning, it will be fallible to the extent that the information available is poor either in the way it is synthesised, balanced or if it attempts to misdirect or deceive. Not all forms of information are equal, nor trustworthy, if the intention of those providing the information is strategic (i.e. seeks to achieve a particular outcome beyond providing information, especially one that is in their direct interest) as opposed to communicative. Indeed, when it comes to climate change there are many sources of information that are provided strategically, but working out who to trust is difficult, especially when the issue, such as climate change, is so complex. Trust in scientists themselves has been undermined from some sectors. Some scholars, such as Ainslie Kellow (a former mentor of mine) argue that, no matter how well founded climate change is per se, the science has been over-egged in some instances — a perception that has not been helped by the famous ‘climate-gate’ emails. In a world where everybody communicates strategically, no matter how well intentioned, the overall effect is a decrease in trust.

So the question becomes, who can we trust to provide trustworthy information? It is well established that the news media (or fourth estate) has traditionally been important to the functioning of a healthy democratic system. Quality journalism (ideally) identifies issues and synthesises information for public consumption, providing a range of views that permit members of the public to develop well-informed positions, which are, in turn, ideally expressed through the political system via formal and informal mechanisms such as voting, public opinion etc. Ideally there is a kind of self-regulation in operation where there is an incentive for news media to provide considered and trustworthy information to consumers, who should be in a position to judge the quality of the information and whether they are willing to pay for it, or simply spend the time to digest it.

However, this assumption appears to be increasingly challenged, with traditional modes of journalism apparently under threat — both for better and for worse. There are a number of reasons why this appears to be happening, not least in the face of technological innovations delivering vast amounts of freely accessible information, undermining the ability of news outlets to fund what we refer to as ‘quality journalism’ — an issue that is identified by Michelle Grattan in her piece in the Conversation. This is a kind of supply side problem where the cost structure is affecting the ability to afford good quality journalism. Another supply side problem involves the concentration of media ownership (partly due to cost pressures) and the potential for the strategic use information going hand in hand with increasing political power, should the motivations of media proprietors switch from mere information provision and profit to activism — a charge that has been levelled a more than one proprietor in recent times.

But there is also related a demand side problem in which information overload and freely available information at that, undermines the appetite of citizens, as consumers of that information, to seek out and fund quality journalism, or to make discerning judgements about what they are reading. And there are longer-term effects that appear to in play as well. The news companies, who are under such tight constraints, need to find ways to attract readers. And in some cases there is a tendency to ‘dumb’ down content, seeking to titillate rather than inform. Or there can be increasing Balkanisation of news outlets who increasingly cater to the specific beliefs of their audience, stroking their sensitivities for profit. The effect is to entrench perspectives even further and produce information enclaves where whole sections of society get their information from entirely different sources, each supporting different conclusions. The result is a spiral into partisanship, and refusal to take into account competing perspectives, with the market catering for the demand for information that provides a firewall against any perspective that doesn’t accord with a consumers’ worldview. The same thing occurs in online groups, who can more easily find others with their own, sometimes extreme views, facilitated by technology.

Good democratic process requires that we, the citizens open our minds to competing perspectives, even if we ultimately reject opposing arguments. We need sources of information that digest these views and present them in ways that are trustworthy. It is the ultimate expression of freedom of choice, to actively choose among alternative, rather than blindly ignore them.

The ideal model of journalism that seeks to illuminate these alternatives seems increasingly under threat. Although there are alternative models to traditional media that do seem to provide ‘quality journalism’, they seem to be outcompeted by fragmented, biased information sources or even outright propaganda.

Deliberating around the world

From October 5th to 7th 2012 an interesting deliberative event was realized in Italy. The experiment took place in Monteveglio (BO) Emilia Romagna, a region which has had historically a primary role in the political development of modern Italy.  In mid-November, citizens from five different municipalities (a total of about 30,000 people) nearby the city of Bologna will be called to decide whether to proceed with an amalgamation proposal put forward by the local administrations. In occasion of this referendum a three days assembly was realized. The aim was to give to 20 quasi-randomly selected citizens an opportunity to deliberate on the referendum question and share their insight with the broader community. The Iniziativa di Revisione Civica (Civic Revision Initiative) presents the first Italian deliberative event inspired by the seminal model of the Oregon’s Citizens’ Initiative Review although the former did have its own peculiar features. The area where the Iniziativa di Revisione Civica was hosted is a very dynamic political environment and citizens as well as speakers appeared remarkably good in participating to this new type of assembly. The Iniziativa di Revisione Civica is also of particular interest to our D2G2 Centre as we offered scientific advice there and conducted research to understand the quality and the possible impact of this deliberative forum on the wider community. Interesting findings are expected over the next months!

A deliberative proposal for psychological experimentation

The field of social psychology is dominated by the experimental paradigm. The typical participant in social psychological experiments is an undergraduate that takes part in the experiment either because of course requirements or because there is some reward being offered. Voluntary or non-rewarded participation is rare. One could therefore say that participants are coerced into being researched.  Moreover and typically, experiments use deceptive methods in order to keep participants naive about what is going on.

While this state of affairs is perhaps most typical of psychological science it is not unfamiliar to other social sciences such as sociology or political science. From a deliberative democratic perspective, such an arrangement is anything but democratic or deliberative. Although mandatory ethics require that participants are debriefed after the experiment has taken place and then have an option to have their data withdrawn from the research record if they choose, an irreversible deliberative democratic breach has already taken place. The question is whether psychology departments could  approach the issue of experiment participation differently.

There are several reasons why psychology and other social science departments are dependent on undergraduates and their participation in experiments. One reason is pure pedagogical. Participation in an experiment gives first hand insight into the process. Undergraduates gain an experiential understanding of the process of experimentation and students who later choose a path in science have a better understanding of experimentation from a participant’s point of view. A second reason is more utilitarian in that it simply provides researchers with their object of study. A third reason could be said to be a more altruistic one in that both researcher and participant are contributing to further the understanding of human functioning in the world.

It is perhaps this last reason that social scientists could capitalise on in promoting a more deliberative way of gaining access to research participants. First year undergraduates normally have to participate in a stipulated number of experiments in order to received their grades. Could this be done deliberatively? I believe so. Why not have a lecture where students are informed about science, the way it is conducted and its dependence on people’s willingness to put themselves up as the objects of research? It could be argued that a dependence on willingness only leads to self-selection and, consequently, skewed or biased results. Whereas this could be true, the choice to withdraw one’s data after the fact can also lead to bias, as we don’t know whether there are any specificities to the people that refuse to have their data being used. In fact, the routine use of undergraduates as research participants is most certainly riddled with biases, as university students are anything but representative of the general population.

Perhaps a better way of obtaining the participation of students would be to have undergraduate students, and others, deliberating about the issue and whether they want to participate and therefore contribute to the advancement of scientific understanding of human behaviour. It is difficult to find a way for course credits to still be given for participation under this ‘opt in’ regime, but because the course credits under the existing scheme can be seen as illegitimate they can and should be dispensed with. A practice based on deliberative decision making rather than coercion teaches things about the practice of psychology that our students should be made to consider and although participation may fall in the first instance this should be no reason for continuing a practice that is illegitimate, simply because we haven’t managed to find a more legitimate way to ensure the students are keen to be involved in the advancement of their chosen field.  A non-negligible side-effect of such a procedure is that it would also entail a lesson in deliberative practice.

Is there a deliberative argument against female genital mutilation?

Elaine Santos has this interesting habit of randomly asking difficult questions over morning tea. This week, her pop quiz question is “Is there a deliberative argument against female genital mutilation?” (Last week it was “What do we do with asylum seekers?”) One of our colleagues who has had this same conversation with Elaine said there is none while I, perhaps worryingly, instinctively thought there is.

Off the bat, I suggested that female genital mutilation is unacceptable under deliberative terms if those who are affected by it (inclusivity) are not given the opportunity to contest the traditional/cultural reasons for such practice (openness).

The openness argument is relatively straightforward. Deliberative democracy opens all principles and practices to challenge including tradition, ideology, expertise and sacred texts. Time-honoured practices, in order to be acceptable and legitimate based on deliberative terms, should be subject to critical tests of reasons. Its advocates as well as its critics should be able to publicly provide other-regarding justifications for supporting or disavowing such practice. A number of ethnographers and anthropologists (e.g. Vicki Kirby, Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf and Janice Boddy) have contributed to the dissemination of alternative discourses on the subject, facilitating greater understanding on female genital mutilation from the point of view of women themselves.

The inclusivity argument – ascertaining those who are “affected by it” – is a more complex one. On its strict definition, we can say that it is young female children who should have a say on the matter or their mothers who usually make the decision for them. It gets trickier, however, when we extend the notion of inclusivity to those who are not directly affected by the practice (in the sense that they are not subjected to it) but consider themselves to have a stake on the issue. This goes right in the heart of the normative dilemma of who should deliberate and decide on the acceptability of this practice. A colleague said that we should only engage with this issue if it occurs within our shores, as in the case of legislative debates on honour killings occurring in immigrant communities in Germany and the UK (our colleague Selen Ayirtman does exemplary work on this subject). Otherwise, we would be meddling in the affairs of other cultures. I questioned the default privilege this argument provides on the nation-state as the primary category for when we should engage in discourse on a particular issue. Global affairs can be viewed using different optics and nation-state or territorial boundary is just one of them. For example, as a woman, I feel that I must be able to contest a practice that systematically perpetuates female sexual oppression and gender asymmetries, even though I live in a western liberal democracy. On the other hand, as someone coming from a post-colonial, neo-liberal cultural background, I feel that I also have something to say about practices that confront the western liberal view of what is good. It is only until this discussion that I realised how tricky the issue of inclusion is in deliberative theory, but perhaps this tension is best left unresolved and contested, maintaining the multiple voices on the subject.

Our morning tea did not end with a consensus or even incompletely theorised agreements. Nevertheless, the discussion on the subject was both productive and engaging, prompting us to think about uncomfortable issues that deliberative democrats needs to face head on.

Nicole Curato is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the ANU. She worked with Prof. John Dryzek and Dr. Simon Niemeyer on an ARC and newDemocracy foundation-funded Project: Creating and Analysing the Australian Citizens’ Parliament. Aside from the theory and practice of deliberative democracy, Nicole’s research interests include fringe forms of political participation and qualitative research methods. Nicole is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the University of the Philippines.

Good political deliberation involves listening and empathy, a rare beast it seems

There is a good commentary piece in the Age today about the perils of political communication and the tendency for people (and I mean all of us) to interpret what we are reading or listening to from our own particular perspective, rather than trying to understand what it is that the other person is actually trying to communicate. This happens all the time, particularly it seems, when it comes to online interactions, which, according to the American scholar Cass Sunstein, is particularly prone to ‘enclave thinking’. This involves people not only looking at information using a very narrow lens, but also a tendency to seek out information that supports our pre-existing view.

Even more problematic is the tendency for people to harden their positions, particularly as the evidence stacks up against it, particularly where views are relatively extreme. (This particularly seems to be the case for climate change.)

Apart from a few exceptions, our experience with small group deliberation is that these tendencies seem to disspate as the process moves on. But not always. The key seems to be  taking the time to establish relationships within the group so that they see their task as finding a solution to a common problem together, rather than arguing their particular view (this is not to say that they should end up agreeing, but that’s for another post). The American scholar Shaun Rosenberg refers to something similar to this phenomenon in identifying the importance of emotion and empathy in deliberation. Deliberation doesn’t just involve dealing with facts, it also involves dealing with emotions. The ends we should be striving to meet, the impact of our decisions on affected others etc are all important considerations that come to play. And unless there is identification with the needs of others, then there is effectively no deliberation, there is merely a market of ideas.

When this kind of group identity occurs participants usually express considerable satisfaction, if not genuine joy, in respect to their experience. And this is despite the enormous effort that they have put into working through the issue over the space of a number of days. Those who do not engage in this mode tend not express satisfaction — to say the least, in some cases.

Just why, when and how the formation of group identity and willingness to properly engage with other perspectives in deliberation occurs is something we are currently researching. An important question concerns whether it is possible to achieve this kind of outcome in the wider public. That’s something we will be working on over the new few years.

Simon Niemeyer is a research fellow with the Political Science Program, RSSS, with research interests spanning deliberative democracy (preference transformation, institutionalisation), environmental governance, and adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. He was one of the first in the field of deliberative democracy to systematically examine the processes of preference transformation of individuals participating in democratic discourse. His research findings challenge a number of assumptions regarding how deliberation works in practice, which have significantly contributed to deliberative theory.

“Decisions, Decisions: Why Deliberate if Leaders hold all the Power?” by Jonathan Kuyper

Politics is fundamentally about power. Determining who we are as political animals and how power shapes societal interactions are perhaps the most basic questions in the study of politics. This, at least, is my intuition. For a long time, I will admit that reading the deliberative democracy literature left me wanting. I couldn’t understand how a programme of political theory could ground its ideal in the absence of power.

The more I read, the more problematic this disjuncture appeared. For Habermas, discourse ethics is a case of ideal speech in which deliberators come to an uncoerced understanding of each other’s arguments and position. The only permissible force is that of the ‘better argument’. The ability of actors to hash out reasons and reach decisions without coercion became the touchstone of deliberative theory.

My concern is obvious. The political sphere is characterised by power differences, with actors running amok trying to get their lot in life. So, why establish a deliberative conception of political legitimacy which is not only unattainable, but seemingly contrary to reality?

Over time, I came to realise that the gap between ideal deliberation and political power is ineliminable. Power asymmetries will always exist, some people won’t be included in deliberation, and decisions always require leadership.

It is this last element which has most occupied my recent thought. Leadership is not simply a buzzword used to sell self-help manuals. It is a real phenomenon which exists in all societies at all times. Military units, African tribes, religious congregations, and the workplace all require leadership to make decisions and implement action. So, how can meaningful deliberation occur if, at the end of the day, leaders are required to make the tough decisions?

I am reminded, as so many political scientists seem to be at tough moments, of Alice in Wonderland. On one of her travel, when she comes to a fork in the road, Alice asks the Cheshire cat which road to take. The Cheshire cat asks where Alice wants to go. When Alice replies that she doesn’t know, the Cheshire cat replies that the direction is therefore irrelevant.

In the same way, deliberation requires a purpose. We all require a sense of direction to ground our thought and establish parameters for decisions. If 100 people came together with 100 different agendas, even given eternity, no decision would be reached and we would have no metric to determine whether good or reasonable deliberation had occurred.

It is my feeling that persuasion and deliberation are essential elements of what makes us political animals. However, if discussion is going to bring about democratic outcomes, the role of leaders requires a more detailed treatment. How can leaders be constrained to allow good deliberation between citizens at one moment, but enabled to make deliberative outcomes a reality? If leaders always get the final say, then what good is a reasoned consensus?

The counter-intuitive solution to this problem of leadership might be more leadership. If in deliberative events several leaders play key roles, these leaders can check-and-balance each other, deliberate with each other over issues, and dilute their own coercive power by spreading the load. This minimizes the possibility that any one individual can co-opt a deliberative event and simultaneously reduces the likelihood of leaders coercively framing discussion. Whilst this might not be a perfect solution, it is a step in the right direction.

Deliberative democrats, for the most part, have done a poor job of explaining whether deliberation can be legitimate or meaningful when combined with leadership in the real-world. I am hopeful that a system-wide analysis of deliberation will bring into sharp relief the importance and necessity of leaders. How leaders can form a legitimate part of deliberative democracy is thus up for future discussion…

For a more comprehensive treatment of leadership and deliberative democracy, see http://services.bepress.com/jpd/vol8/iss1/art4/.

Jonathan Kuyper is a PhD student in the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance interested in developing a working theory of global deliberative democracy that accounts for, and sythesises, ideal theory, non-ideal theory and applied thinking. Jonathan is specifically interested in institutional design and how this limits and creates opportunies for transational deliberative experiments. His PhD project is entitled ‘Institutionalising Deliberative Democracy into Global Institutions: From Theory to Practice’, under the supervision of Professor John Dryzek and Professor Lorraine Elliott as the Chairs, and Dr Terry Macdonald and Dr Chris Reus-Smit as external supervisors.