Hybrid Forms of Deliberation: Connecting Elite, Public, Citizen, and Enclave Deliberation

Deliberative democracy refers to a form of democratic governance, where collective decisions are preceded by public deliberation. Instead of conflict and competition deliberative democracy focuses on finding common grounds, solving disputes, and forming consensus. Therefore, the recent deliberative turn in democracy theory is often represented as a cure for common malaises of electoral democracy, such as decreasing voter turnout. It can also help to solve some of its recent challenges, such as polarization. In order to upgrade our current democratic systems, the scholars have sought ways to embed the norms of deliberation in the current democratic political systems. These attempts include building better connections between the "old" institutions of electoral democracy and innovative "new" practices of deliberative democracy, such as citizens' assemblies, councils, and panels. These so-called deliberative mini-publics may also be joined to other forms of democratic innovations, such as citizens' initiatives leading to a whole array of new hybrid combinations of democratic practices. To contribute to the study of this emerging field of hybridity, this paper studies how new hybrid democratic practices accommodate and combine different forms of deliberation. The paper proposes a distinction between elite, public, citizen, and enclave deliberation. Elite deliberation occurs among political authorities and experts, public deliberation encompasses open societal debates, citizen deliberation involves randomly selected participants in mini-publics, and enclave deliberation takes place within groups sharing distinct identities or views. All four above-mentioned forms of deliberation pertain to certain theoretical underpinnings and normative perspectives on the values of deliberation. By underlining these differences, the paper paves way to a more nuanced understanding of deliberation that is not restricted to one specific form of deliberation. Furthermore, the paper argues that the combination of various forms of deliberation can be beneficial for the advancing the norms of deliberative democracy in a democratic political system. For example, if a group of people struggle to get their voice heard during group discussions, it would help these people to form their preferences, if they could deliberate together in an enclave before participating in mini-public discussions. The paper will introduce some real-world cases of hybrid deliberation and discuss their strengths and weaknesses in advancing the norms of deliberative democracy.