This paper reviews the various connections that can exist between the design of participatory processes and the different kind of results that they can entail. It details how effective participatory processes can be designed, whatever are the results that participation is deemed to elicit. It shows the main trends pertaining to design choicesand considers how to classify different arrangements in order to choose from among them. Then the paper deals with the main dilemmas that tend to arise when designing participatory processes. Thanks to this review, the paper argues that participatory processes tend to display a certain degree of ambivalence that cannot be completely overcome through the design choices.

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As research has increasingly addressed deliberative processes through theoretical analyses, empirical studies, and practical experiments, it has become apparent that deliberation is a phenomenon with many faces. Argument-based interaction may come about in different ways and have different functions. Many of these differences can be explained by the nature of the entry positions, i.e. the type of judgment participants express at the start of the deliberation process. Positions may be strong or weak, conscious or unconscious, free or constrained. I discuss the relationship between type of position and type of deliberation, hypothesizing what difference there may be in the development of the deliberative process and in its outcome, and look at the most frequent deviations from the ideal deliberative model. I discuss both cases of symmetrical deliberation, in which all participants express positions of the same type, and cases of asymmetrical deliberation, more frequent in the real world, in which interaction is among actors whose positions are of different types. The analysis suggests that specific settings should be adopted and specific strategies employed depending on the type of deliberation involved.

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