Deliberation, Imaginary Futures and Consideration of Future People’s Perspectives: An Experimental Approach

The inadequacy of democratic processes to consider long-term perspectives is most likely to become a problem in decisions that have long-term causal consequences as well as in long-term planning. Organized citizen deliberation in so-called deliberative mini-publics can arguably improve long-term thinking (MacKenzie 2017) since it helps understand relevant factual knowledge and consider the perspectives of others affected by the decision. However, even the most inclusive deliberative processes may be prone to presentist biases where perspectives of those affected in the future are not adequately taken into account. As a potential remedy, there are models where deliberators are encouraged to imagine the future through exercises of a mental time travel (e.g. Hara 2019). This paper examines the effects of deliberation and such a ‘future design’ in the context of an experiment on citizen deliberation where 120 randomly selected citizens deliberate on a regional plan 2050. We expect that while deliberation enhances consideration of the future, the combination of deliberation and time travel exercise will encourage participants to consider future people’s perspectives in the deliberative process. Moreover, this is reflected in the way in which participants prioritize different policy goals.