Measuring Epistemic Deliberation on Polarized Issues: The Case of Abortion Provision in Ireland

Abstract

This paper compares the debate quality in the plenary sessions of an Irish Citizens’ Assembly and an Irish parliamentary committee to assess the epistemic effects of public deliberation on a contentious subject: abortion. The unusual occurrence of a similar process of detailed discussion on the same topic in different institutions at around the same time (in 2016–2017) allows us to compare the deliberative capacities of these institutions and thus contribute to discussions on the appropriateness of an increasingly debated democratic reform: assigning political offices by lot. We suggest that the epistemic effect of deliberation on abortion should facilitate nuanced multi-layered discussion that is both ‘deeper’ in being based on multi-faceted arguments and ‘wider’ in terms of a more accommodative view. We anticipate that these effects should be more pronounced in the more deliberative, less polarized, environment of a citizens’ assembly rather than in a parliamentary committee. The analysis deploys the psychological concept of ‘cognitive complexity’. We find that members of the Citizens’ Assembly demonstrate a deeper cognitively complex grasp of the subject matter. In contrast, experts and parliamentarians tend to adjust their mode of delivery at a parliamentary committee reflecting the conflictual and strategic aspects of political debates in such a forum.

Emancipation Against All Odds? The Conservatism Charge to Deliberative Democracy Reconsidered

“…Recent experience with political experiments such as the Irish Citizens' Assembly also shows that participating citizens can develop greater deliberative capacity-in terms of cognitive complexity-than their parliamentarians when discussing the same issue (Suiter et al 2021). Moreover, there is evidence that such minipublics can also foster deliberative capacity in the broader public among nonparticipating actors.…”

Which kind of randomness? Sampling theory, simulation results and their implications for a federal citizens’ assembly

“…Der bundesweite Bürgerrat sollte damit einen Beitrag leisten, der Gefahr einer Ausgrenzung von Interessen und Standpunkten entgegenzuwirken und politischen Laien aus der ,Mitte der Gesellschaft' die Chance zur aktiven Artikulation ihrer politischen Meinungen und Vorschläge zu ausgewählten Schwerpunktthemen (s. unten) zu eröffnen (Deutscher Bundestag 2021, S. 3). Diese Zielsetzungen knüpfen an Befunde experimenteller Studien an, wonach deliberative Gremien, sofern die Teilnehmenden die Meinungsspektren der Grundgesamtheit widerspiegeln, Polarisierungen politischer Meinungsspektren verringern und die Legitimität politischer Entscheidungsverfahren in parlamentarischen Demokratien steigern (Bächtiger und Parkinson 2019;Suiter et al 2021).…”

“…Da vor allem letztgenannte häufig unzureichend sind, werden Redressments in der standardisierten Survey-Methodologie äußerst kritisch betrachtet (Diekmann 2007;Häder 2006;Schnell et al 2013), so dass sie auch im Zuge von Bürgerräten mit größter Vorsicht gehandhabt werden sollten. Vor allem wäre genauer zu diskutieren, inwieweit die Verwendung von Redressment-Gewichten mit dem Gebot gleicher Beteiligung innerhalb zufallsgestützter Gremien und dem der Stimmengleichheit vereinbar ist (Bächtiger und Parkinson 2019;Suiter et al 2021).…”

Comparing and mapping difference indices of debate quality on Twitter

“…They considered four theoretically recognised dimensions of deliberative quality – rationality, reciprocity, respect and constructiveness – while also including alternative forms of communication, such as storytelling and expressions of emotions . The CC has also been adapted according to the communication arena and the topic of discussion by Suiter et al (2022). The authors conducted factor analysis to extract the relevant cognitive complexity clusters in their data instead of using the entire set of dimensions contained in the CC index.…”

“…To date, changes in debate quality have essentially been investigated within offline political communication arenas, albeit there are a few exceptions (e.g. Brundidge et al, 2014; Suiter et al, 2022). As journalists and news media are increasingly reporting on politicians’ social media messages (McGregor, 2019), the quality of the political content disseminated on social media has serious implications for democratic discourse and citizens’ opinion formation.…”