Taking the Goals of Deliberation Seriously: A Differentiated View on Equality and Equity in Deliberative Designs and Processes

Abstract

Deliberation must be immunized against coercive power by a baseline of equality. But what does the requirement of equality mean, in practice, for organizers designing deliberative events and forums? This question is complicated by the fact that equality is fundamentally about two-at times contradictory-values. On the one hand, the value of universal moral equality, which requires abstracting from social circumstances. On the other hand, the value of equity, which requires attending to social circumstances. Deliberative institutions vary in their capacity to promote one value over the other, or in their capacity to compromise between the two. We argue that negotiating between these twin values should be done with reference to the different goals of the deliberative process (generating legitimate decisions, producing more informed opinions, promoting mutual respect, enabling accommodation, and so on), and with an eye to the trade-offs that achieving particular goals might require. Focusing on civic forums, we review existing research related to three important aspects of design-participant recruitment, the nature of the interaction, and decision-making-and discuss how different designs impact deliberation's different normative goals. We argue against a totalizing view of deliberation, where unitary institutions try to achieve all of deliberation's goals at once, and instead discuss how the trade-offs between deliberation's different functions can be resolved at the system level. We conclude by arguing that practitioners should not try to realize all deliberative goals-including equality and equity-at once, but rather should prioritize the goals they want to achieve, and select institutional rules and practices that optimally achieve these goals. Author Biography Edana Beauvais is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests include deliberative democratic theory, political communication, and political psychology. Her dissertation, "Discursive Equality," considers how cognitive biases (such as stereotypes) can contribute to the internal exclusion of disempowered speakers, and theorizes potential solutions to this problem. Edana is involved in the Participedia project, trying to leverage the potentials of information technology to gain insight into citizen participation in democratic innovations.

Effect of deliberation style on the gender gap in deliberative participation

“…In addition, Young (2000) argues the importance of understanding others' positions through public discussion (Chapter 3) and Niemeyer and Dryzek (2007) argue that deliberation should yield meta-consensus and inter-subjective consistency as ideal outcomes. In an attempt to also address such epistemic goals of deliberation (Beauvais and Baechtiger, 2016), this study measured each discussant's 'contribution' in deliberative participation instead of measuring only 'influence.' This deliberative contribution is intended not only to capture influential speeches but also to capture speech that enhances discussants' understanding of important facts, beliefs, and values regarding the topics of discussion.…”

Embedding green infrastructure evaluation in neighbourhood masterplans – does BREEAM communities change anything?

“…External drivers did not support a more inclusive or equitable distribution of benefits from GI functions, except in Estate 1 where legislation relating to Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPO) was applied, which supports the evaluation of the impact of the CPO to social, environmental and economic sustainability by an independent inspector. Further opportunities are needed to support a more deliberative dialogue about the different masterplan intentions regarding GI, as well as increase accountability for the distributional impacts of negotiated outcomes, with sufficient space and resources for dialogue, exchange, learning and response (Beauvais and Baechtiger 2016;Holland 2014). BRE could amend specific BC issues in this regard, such as SE 11 -Green infrastructure and LE 5 -Landscape, to better reflect principles of deliberation and inclusive distribution.…”

Deliberative Democracy in the Age of Social Media | Democracia deliberativa na Era das Redes Sociais

“…Mutual respect refers to a civil language and a good discussion climate in which participants defend their own positions, while acknowledging other perspectives and speakers 68 69 Therefore, participants should be free of external constraints, so they are only bound by the Revista Publicum Rio de Janeiro, v. 5, n. 2, p. 73-105, 2019 http://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/index.php/publicum DOI: 10.12957/publicum.2019.47202 procedural rules of a deliberative discussion. Everyone should have equal access to the communication space which is without barriers or exclusion of participants due to their social or economic status 73 . Moreover, participants should be free of internal constraints, to the extent that everyone has an equal opportunity to speak, to be heard, considered and to influence the agenda setting and topics of the discussion 74 .…”