What Is Public Deliberation?
Deliberation is a basic tenet of healthy democratic practice based on the idea that involving citizens more closely in making decisions that affect them strengthens representation, transparency, and accountability, and can lead to citizen action and results.
Not Politics as Usual
- Deliberation occurs when citizens, not just experts or politicians, are involved in community problem-solving and public decision-making
- Working with trained facilitators who utilize a variety of deliberative techniques, citizens come together and consider relevant facts and values from multiple points of view
- Citizens listen to one another in order to think critically about the various options before them and consider the underlying tensions and tough choices inherent to many public issues
- Citizens strive to come to some common ground as a basis for action (if warranted) through reasoned public judgment
What Are the Characteristics of Public Deliberation?
- All Voices and Values Must Be Heard
Public deliberation forums are structured so that status, position, and titles are less important than in other venues. Deliberative forums provide a “safe space” where the values and ideas of all participants are considered. The opportunity (and challenge) of public deliberation is to work through difficult choices as a community of equals. There will always be differences in knowledge and power within groups, but public deliberation is designed to encourage everyone (including “experts”) to listen to each other, free from the expectation that fellow citizens must know everything. Only in listening to and deliberating with fellow citizens can the community effectively determine appropriate choices on a particular issue. - Equality of Opportunity
In deliberative forums, all participants are encouraged to speak. For this reason groups of 12-20 are preferred. All ideas given by participants are recorded and compiled into a report at the close of a forum. By listening to and recording each participant's input, all participants have an opportunity to directly affect outcomes. - Public Deliberation is about Choice Work
Public deliberation is neither dialogue nor debate. Dialogue focuses on relationship-building, understanding, and discussion of informal topics. Debate consists of two (or more) positions battling to "win" an argument. Deliberation requires both good dialogue and good argument—and more. It includes carefully weighing various approaches and the views of others, seriously considering the consequences of tradeoffs, and working through sometimes emotionally difficult and challenging choices. - Public Deliberation Requires Diversity
Public deliberation requires that the individuals who come to the table be representative of the community. By encouraging a diversity of views, people are able to make the best decisions because they are working together with people both similar and different from themselves. - Deliberation Seeks Common Ground (Not Consensus or Compromise)
Effective deliberation does not require consensus or compromise. Consensus is perfect agreement on a decision. Compromise occurs when each "side" gives something up. In public deliberation people often don't all agree. The goal of public deliberation is to find common ground, which means the “actions or policies that are acceptable to a group whose individual members may still cherish different values and hold different opinions but have a shared frame of reference or sense of direction.” Whether or not the public is ready to act depends on the extent to which they have reached this “common ground.” (Melville, Willingham, & Dedrick, The Deliberative Democracy Handbook, p. 47)
What do Individuals and Communities Gain from Public Deliberation?
- People begin to feel that they have power over the decisions made in their community and that they make a difference.
- Deliberation lessens people’s tendency to “demonize” those with differing views. Disagreement often becomes a starting point for discussion rather than an ending point.
- Deliberation allows communities to move beyond polarization by helping individuals dig deeper into issues by discussing tradeoffs and solutions to problems, while allowing people to recognize and retain what they value most.
- Deliberation helps people become more engaged in important issues in their community and promotes citizenship. Citizens who participate in public deliberation tend to vote, to volunteer more, and to educate themselves about the issues so they are prepared to speak.
- When people’s input matters they seek productive relationships with government and with other members in their community. People also come to appreciate new and more ways of working in groups.
- While people do not tend to change their values or opinions in one session or forum, their views do tend to expand. They frequently change their attitude toward the position they oppose and the people who hold that position.
- By participating in deliberative forums, people tend to move beyond merely thinking about how issues affect only themselves to how they affect their community. Participation broadens social relationships, fosters an appreciation for diverse viewpoints, and increases individuals’ connection to their community.