'Legislative Frame Representation'—A Content-based Approach for the Assessment of Deliberative Systems

Despite the fact that the early theories of deliberative democracy were largely conceived on a societal scale, deliberative systems remain an an empirically under-explored topic. This paper aims at exploring a novel pathway into the empirical translations of the deliberative systems approach, using discourse content rather than procedural indicators (e.g. respect). I argue that public deliberation is a process of shaping public policy through concrete political arguments and—therefore—the analysis of the ‘constellation of discourses’ is paramount. Furthermore, procedural indicators only allow sensible interpretation within micro contexts, where institutional and contextual factors can be kept constant. This is at loggerheads with a systems approach, as a vast array of procedural discourse standards have to be accommodated. I develop the concept of Legislative Frame Representation (LFR) as a crucial indicator for the level of sub-systemic deliberative uptake and policy responsiveness. It postulates that the weight and salience of topic dimensions (or frames) on a policy discourse in civil society should be taken up and reflected by national parliaments to promote the smooth transition from opinion to will formation. LFR is predicated on the view that a healthy deliberative system should feature a legislature in the centre of the decision-making procedure, which proves to be reflective and responsive toward issues present in its social environment. Next to the theoretical and methodological work, I present the findings of an exploratory case study for the immigration discourse in the US and Canada. The results indicate that there are considerable differences in the systems’ capacity to take up discourses from civil society and that LFR can be an important tool to explore deliberative systems empirically.