Deliberative Quality and Expertise: Uses of Evidence in Citizens’ Juries on Wind Farms

Abstract

When addressing socio-scientific wicked problems, there is a need to negotiate across and through multiple modes of evidence, particularly technical expertise and local knowledge. Democratic innovations, such as deliberative citizens’ juries, have been proposed as a means of managing these tensions and as a way of creating representative, fairer decision making. But there are questions around participatory processes, the utilization of expertise, and deliberative quality. This paper considers forms of argumentation in the 2013-2014 “Citizens’ juries on wind farm development in Scotland.” Through a critical-interpretative research methodology drawing on rhetoric and argumentation, we demonstrate that arguments relating to the topoi of the environment and health functioned as de facto reasoning, whereas arguments using social scientific evidence around economics more prominently interacted with local knowledge. The findings offer implications for process design to improve and promote deliberative quality in mini-publics and other forms of participatory engagement on socio-scientific issues.

Expert hearings in mini-publics: How does the field of expertise influence deliberation and its outcomes?

“…Framing implies a selection of legitimate concepts and viewpoints as well as emphasizing some issues at the expense of others. Frames involve multiple “forms of evidence, from technical and scientific to personal and moral” (Drury et al, 2021 , 31). Such processes have an impact both on the contents of discussion and on individual opinion-formation (Calvert & Warren, 2014 ).…”

“…Based on previous findings (see, for example, Drury et al, 2021 ), we assume that participants in a mini-public might not be ready to absorb information and evidence from all fields of expertise equally. Moreover, it is reasonable to expect that the opinions and information provided by experts from different fields invite the participants to take different kinds of issues into consideration, even if the views expressed by the experts were moderate in terms of justifications for or against strict containment measures.…”

“…Research concerning the role of expert information in deliberative mini-publics is still relatively scarce (see also Drury et al, 2021 ; Roberts et al, 2020 ; Muradova et al, 2020 ). While some empirical evidence on expert influence on deliberators’ opinions exists (e.g.…”

Research Methods in Deliberative Democracy

“…This can enable triangulation-the application of several research methods to study the same phenomenon-but also increases the amount of evidence we have to assess causal hypotheses (Gerring 2004) or to enhance the interpretation of the case. For example, the mixed method study on the case of citizens' juries on onshore windfarms in Scotland had several data sources including juror survey data, nonparticipant observation, interviews with the witnesses, and an analysis of the jury discussions, which enabled triangulation about good practice for the use of evidence in mini-publics (Drury et al 2021;Roberts et al 2020).…”