Deliberation and Protest: A Closer Look at Social Fora dynamics (original) (raw)
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The chapter addresses the relations between social movements and deliberative democracy, pointing at opportunities but also at tensions in theorization and practices of democracy. While social movements are important for deliberative democracy, and vice versa, activists and deliberative democrats alike have addressed a number of tensions between deliberative democracy and protest. The global diffusion of deliberative norms, practices, and experiences of democracy in social movements is discussed in the light of the growing literature on deliberative democracy. In particular, faced with challenges to the legitimacy and efficacy of representative democracy, social movements' democratic innovations, such as the Forum and the Camp, represent important experiments in cooperation in settings of deep diversity and inequality. In addition, the reflections on social movements' conceptions and practices help in specifying some conceptualization of deliberative politics.
Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 2008
Contemporary social movements can serve as a critical case for the empirical study of deliberation. In countless face-to-face meetings activists often discuss long hours before a decision is reached. In this context, we try to analyse the conditions under which deliberation is successfully employed as a method of discursive conflict resolution. As we develop participant observation in a comparative approach we encounter three methodological challenges which this paper addresses. First, we look at some characteristics of the global justice movements, briefly addressing the different settings in which controversial discussions occur. Second, we give a rationale for applying a semi-standardised multi-level participant observation in order to allow the collection of comparable data by various researchers in several countries. Focusing on participant observation on the level of controversial discussions we thirdly conceptualise competitiveness, power, and asymmetry as three theoretical dimensions to identify eight different practices of discourse, one of them being deliberation. We are currently implementing this model for regular observations of group meetings on a local, national and European level. First results should be available in the near future.
Activists’ Views of Deliberation
This article, based on more than 60 interviews, explores the tensions between deliberation and various forms of political activism and advocacy. It identifies more than 20 objections to deliberation that are proposed by political activists in various countries and contexts. It concludes with suggestions for combining deliberation and advocacy. Citation: Levine, Peter and Nierras, Rose Marie (2007) "Activists’ Views of Deliberation," Journal of Public Deliberation: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: http://www.publicdeliberation.net/jpd/vol3/iss1/art4
Critiques, Protests, and Public Spheres: In Defense of Deliberative Democracy
Democracy is under pressure -worldwide. We are confronted with two developments which, at first glance, point in different directions: democracy seems to be both in decline and to be on the rise, phoenix-like, from the dead at the same time. On the one hand, we face, even in the Western societies, a growing alienation in politics between citizens and democratic institutions. On the other, citizens worldwide do not seem to be either politically inactive or de-motivated at all. On the contrary, in recent years, we have witnessed the many faces of citizen resistance and activism directed against the political status quo: the Occupy movement and other mass protests and riots in many European and American cities, from London to New York to Rio de Janeiro, the so-called Arab Spring, and the uprisings in Greece, Turkey, and, recently, in Hong Kong.
Belgrade Philosophical Annual
Existing instruments to measure the quality of deliberation are too static, focusing too much on the analysis of the individual speech acts. We present an instrument to identify Deliberative Transformative Moments (DTM) lifting the level of deliberation from a low to high or vice versa. To use this instrument, one has to look at the group dynamics of the entire discussion. Empirical basis are discussions among Colombian ex-combatants from both the extreme left and the extreme right. We investigate to what extent personal stories have either a positive or a negative impact on deliberative transformative moments. A corresponding typology of personal stories is developed. This paper is a continuation of previous research on the deliberative model of democracy. 1 Good scholarship should ideally be creative destruction of one's previous research. 2 This is precisely what we want to do in our current research, although not in an extreme form. In our previous research, we developed the method of Discourse Quality Index (DQI) to measure the deliberative quality of the speech acts of discussions in parliaments and also among ordinary citizens. The values for the individual speech acts were aggregated for the individual participants and also for the discussion groups at large. Theoretically,
When Deliberation Happens. Evaluating Discursive Interactions Among Ordinary Citizens
Despite the recent interest in deliberative democracy, little research has been carried out to study when deliberation happens, i.e. paying attention to the quality and nature of the discursive interactions taking place among ordinary citizens in public settings. Most empirical research is interested in the effects of deliberation (does it produce enlightened preferences?) rather than in assessing whether deliberation took place at all. On the contrary, the evaluation of the democratic potential of participatory instruments requires that the nature of the discursive interactions is taken into account before measuring their effects. This is why it is necessary to understand when deliberation occurs, thus putting the emphasis on the social, political, and institutional conditions of the emergence of deliberation. To pursue this task, I compare two participatory budgeting institutions in Europe, aimed at gathering ordinary citizens to define collectively the allocation of public resources at the municipal level. Based on an ethnographic study of two years, I analyse the discursive interactions in participatory budgeting assemblies in Municipio XI in Rome and Morsang-sur-Orge in the Paris banlieue. I therefore assess the role of procedures and facilitation in the emergence of deliberation, before stressing the social conditions fostering the expression of disagreement (stakes and leadership), which is a necessary condition for the (rare) emergence of deliberation.
Although scholars have begun to study face-to-face deliberation on public issues, "deliberation" has no clear conceptual definition and only weak moorings in larger theories. To address these problems, this essay integrates diverse philosophical and empirical works to define deliberation and place it in a broader theoretical context. Public deliberation is a combination of careful problem analysis and an egalitarian process in which participants have adequate speaking opportunities and engage in attentive listening or dialogue that bridges divergent ways of speaking and knowing. Placed in the meta-theoretical framework of structuration theory , deliberation is theorized to exist at the center of a homeostatic loop, in which deliberative practice reinforces itself. A review of theory and research on the causes and effects of deliberation leads us to develop this structurational conceptualization into the self-reinforcing model of deliberation. This model posits that public deliberation is more likely to occur when discussion participants perceive potential common ground, believe deliberation is an appropriate mode of talk, possess requisite analytic and communication skills, and have sufficient motivation. Deliberation directly reinforces participants' deliberative habits and skills, and it indirectly promotes common ground and motivation by broadening participants' public identities and heightening their sense of political efficacy.
A Conceptual Definition and Theoretical Model of Public Deliberation in Small Face-to-Face Groups
Communication Theory, 2002
Although scholars have begun to study face-to-face deliberation on public issues, "deliberation" has no clear conceptual definition and only weak moorings in larger theories. To address these problems, this essay integrates diverse philosophical and empirical works to define deliberation and place it in a broader theoretical context. Public deliberation is a combination of careful problem analysis and an egalitarian process in which participants have adequate speaking opportunities and engage in attentive listening or dialogue that bridges divergent ways of speaking and knowing. Placed in the meta-theoretical framework of structuration theory (Giddens, 1984), deliberation is theorized to exist at the center of a homeostatic loop, in which deliberative practice reinforces itself. a review of theory and research on the causes and effects of deliberation leads us to develop this structurational conceptualization into the self-reinforcing model of deliberation. This model posits that public deliberation is more likely to occur when discussion participants perceive potential common ground, believe deliberation is an appropriate mode of talk, possess requisite analytic and communication skills, and have sufficient motivation. Deliberation directly reinforces participants' deliberative habits and skills, and it indirectly promotes common ground and motivation by broadening participants' public identities and heightening their sense of political efficacy.
Citizens' atitudes towards democratic deliberation
Portuguese Journal of Social Science, 2012
The economic and social crises the Western democracies are currently experiencing have aggravated ideological polarisation and increased citizens’ distrust of both politicians and political institutions. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain consensus just at the moment when it is most needed in order to put into effect those reforms the situation demands. It is in this context that studies of democratic deliberation gain new relevance and significance, particularly within parliaments, which are the places, par excellence, for political debate and consensus building. However, democratic deliberation requires more than just institutions, rules and regulations: it requires a political culture that is imbued with these principles and values, that is to say, it need citizens and political actors with positive attitudes towards the various dimensions of democratic deliberation. The results obtained here point in the general direction of support for the different aspects of deliberation, both in the attitudes of the citizens’ and the deputies, indicating some very specific differences between each of them.