Democracy as Problem-Solving: Processes of Citizen Deliberation and their Limits

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in the ways in which citizen deliberation and participation can be used as a means to resolve political problems. Processes of organized citizen deliberation, e.g. in deliberative mini-publics, are used to tackle complex problems, to ‘tame wicked problems’ and to overcome political crises and deep divisions. Citizen deliberation is expected to counterbalance the limitations of decision-making capacity of elected representatives, officials, and experts, and therefore to enhance the epistemic and moral quality of political decisions. The panel papers analyze the prospects and limits of citizen deliberation, e.g. from the perspective of cognitive science. One of the issues of interest is whether different types of political problems call for different forms of citizen engagement. Moreover, the panel deals with issues of agenda-setting, inclusion and legitimacy in the context of organized citizen deliberation. How should issues dealt with in deliberative processes be defined? How should ‘all affected’ principle be interpreted in organized citizen deliberation? In which ways can citizen deliberation be linked to existing forums of decision-making? The panel addresses also more philosophical questions related to instrumental accounts of democratic participation, especially their alleged conflict with theories emphasizing intrinsic value of democracy.

Title	Details
Giving Reasons is Not the Same as being Reasonable – The Promise and Limits of Deliberative Reasoning	View Paper Details
Inside the Black Box: Citizens' Evaluations of Deliberation during the Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review	View Paper Details
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Communitarian Deliberation: Two Citizen Experiments on the Political Rights of Foreigners in the Swiss Canton of Geneva	View Paper Details