Modelling Deliberative Systems

Are there better or worse ways of setting up deliberative systems? Deliberative democrats say that a deliberative system should exhibit several elements: a public space, an empowered space, transmission belts, accountability, meta-deliberation, and decisiveness. But they don’t say much, however, about how these elements can or should sit together in the system and work in unison (cf. Dryzek forthcoming). In this paper I will inquire into the different ways deliberative systems can be structured. In the first part of the paper, I draw on examples of existing deliberative institutions and practices to identify two possible models of deliberative systems: a linear and a looping model. Linear systems are typically, but not invariably, hierarchical. They are bottom-up deliberative systems, with the public space at the very bottom and the empowered space at the very top. All inputs are transmitted unidirectionally from the bottom-up. The looping system is bidirectional and more egalitarian: it prioritizes reflexivity, with each of the two spaces influencing and being influenced by one another. I also discuss a third model (suggested in Dryzek 2009): a hybrid model with a loop at the very end of a linear deliberative process. According to this model the empowered space would be looping back at the end of the linear phase to report to and to be held accountable by the public space. In the second part of the paper I discuss the deliberative virtues each model displays, as well its capacity to overcome deliberative deficiencies. I will focus on how each model sequences three specific tasks of deliberation – justification, reflection, and decision – and discuss how this affects each model’s democratic and epistemic functionality.