Deliberative democracy in the age of serial crisis

Abstract

What is the state of deliberative democracy in the age of serial crisis? This survey article provides a descriptive and reflective assessment of recent developments in the field in the light of a political context in which there is growing incivility, political polarization, normalization of disinformation and the growing appeal of finding simplistic solutions to complex problems. We describe deliberative democracy as a field of research that has evolved to become (a) assertive in practice, (b) precise in theory, (c) global in reach and (d) ambitious in empirical research. For each of these facets of deliberative democracy, we reflect on the extent to which the field has responded to conceptual, empirical and political challenges, and identify its shortcomings, which warrant further attention. We conclude by drawing attention to research imperatives that the field needs to address to remain relevant in a highly unequal, climate-challenged and increasingly fragile global public sphere.

When citizens met politicians – the process and outcomes of mixed deliberation according to participant status and gender

“…Men, on the other hand, tended to score higher in measures that signal opposition and negativity than women did (c.f Afsahi 2020). Nevertheless, it should be noted that the overall level of negative elements in the deliberation quality was low, possibly due to facilitation (Beauvais and Bächtiger 2016;Curato et al 2020). When judging discussion quality from self-reported measures, citizens reported having heard about new facts during the discussion to a significantly higher extent than politicians did, but no other differences were found.…”

“…Additionally, the policy impact of democratic innovations has been criticized for being too weak (Fournier et al 2011;Johnson 2015). To counter this criticism, deliberative democracy proponents have emphasized measures for safeguarding inclusion such as facilitation (Beauvais and Bächtiger 2016;Curato et al 2020) and started inviting politicians to participate in deliberative events, often called mixed deliberation (Strandberg and Berg 2019) or mixedmembership deliberation, to close the gap between deliberative and representative decision-making processes (e.g. Farrell et al 2020).…”

Social Entitlements in Habermas’s Discourse Theory of Law: Welfare State Regulations as Legitimizing Institutions

“…Although the majority of the conservative governing party was against legalizing it, it was implemented in 2017 under public pressure with the support of other parties. In addition, there are further examples of the transformative power of public deliberation (Curato et al 2022). Holzleithner draws the circle of relevant participants in the discourse very tightly and therefore does not trust the model of deliberative politics enough.…”

Democracy without Shortcuts: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Rather than trying to fix or amend the (democratic) operation of minipublics, a problem-based approach asks what ' added value' they provide for democratic systems and under what contexts. Clearly, in the age of serial crisis (Curato et al 2020) as well as in the eyes of many citizens worldwide, deficits in inclusiveness and responsiveness of democratic systems seem endemic, which creates a clear demand for more citizen involvement, and minipublic represent a premier route to achieve this goal. As such, both first generation experimentalism -focusing on how to make minipublics work (and work better) in practice -and second generation 'nesting' an institutionalization attempt -focusing on how to enhance their consequentiality in the political system -are crucial predicaments to fulfil such demands.…”