Deliberative Democracy: An Introduction¹

Abstract

Deliberative democracy, heretofore the dominion of political theorists, is now experiencing an empirical turn. There is a growing community of scholars examining deliberation using a diverse array of methodologies. This empirical research has peered into a variety of real-world settings, such as international negotiations ( However, although the empirical deliberative train is rolling, much work remains to be done. This special issue seeks mainly to survey the territory and the way ahead, but it also sets out to fix some of the track. It focuses on three distinct challenges in the study of deliberation: (1) the booming diversity in conceptualizing deliberation; (2) appropriate methodological tools to study deliberation; (3) developing more unified analytical frameworks. The contributors of the special issue present advanced analytical and methodological approaches to address these challenges. Booming DiversityA first challenge is the booming diversity in conceptualizing deliberation. The standard conception of deliberation in the literature has a strong 1 We would like to thank Eszter Kiss-Deák, Elie Burgos, Cyrielle Champion, Céline Fraefel, and Pia Hess for invaluable help in putting this special issue together.

The politics of justification? Applying the ‘Discourse Quality Index’ to the study of the European Parliament

“…They broadly indicate a high quality of deliberation, comparable to that recorded in studies of national parliamentary systems (Bächtiger and Steenbergen, 2004). The respect and recognition levels to begin with, are very high, slightly surpassing in magnitude those recorded by the original DQI applied to a linguistic debate in the Swiss parliament (Bächtiger et al ., 2009: 6). More than 50% of coded speeches showed evidence of respect to other speakers (Figure 3) and their arguments or actions (Figure 4).…”

“…Deliberative instruments that focus on deliberation rather than its outcome range from speech act analysis (Holzinger, 2001) to the DQI that abides by a Habermasian logic in the study of deliberation (Steenbergen et al ., 2003) to Stromer Galley's (2007) content focused codebook in studying group interaction and finally to Klüver's (2009) quantitative text analysis of Commission and interest group debates juxtaposing manual coding to automated text analysis. In an attempt to tame such polyphony, we abide by the DQI not only because – like us – it focuses on the analysis of parliamentary speeches but also because it is a dynamic research instrument that has considerably evolved over the years (Bächtiger et al ., 2009). Our study of European Parliaments speeches will also add, crucially, to the diversity of the settings to which the DQI has been applied moving from a national to a supranational level.…”

The Civic Cultureat 50: Change, Continuity and Challenges in the Federal Republic of Germany

“…60 Yet conceptualisations of deliberative democracy have a tension within them: on the one hand, many adhere to a demanding, Habermasian framework of rational discourse; and on the other, there is a recognition that such lofty standards are unlikely to be achieved in the real world. 61 In other words, the relative merits of these innovations cannot be divorced from questions about how to engage mass publics more effectively and how to realise democratic values more fully. And these issues closely intersect with debates about citizen competence -particularly about how well equipped citizens are to adjust to institutional arrangements that may be greatly more democratic in form, but far more complex in structure.…”

Meta-deliberation: everyday acts of critical reflection in deliberative systems

“…Problems of exclusion and domination have been central concerns of deliberative theorists ever since the first programmatic arguments were made a few decades ago (e.g. Bächtiger et al, 2007; Dryzek, 2002; Gutmann and Thompson, 1998; Habermas, 1996; Mansbridge, 1983). Conversations oriented towards mutual understanding and guided by norms of public-mindedness and equal respect do not necessarily succeed in including all affected persons or all relevant perspectives.…”