Facilitating Silence: A Democratic Responsibility in Deliberative Assemblies

This article examines silence in deliberative assemblies, challenging the conventional assumptions that equate silence with disengagement or a failure to participate. Drawing on on recent developments in democratic theory, facilitation practice, and observations from global and local deliberative assemblies, we argue that silence is something facilitators must sometimes interpret, through what we call co-interpretive inquiry, when it arises unexpectedly, and something they can also deliberately invite to serve the deliberative process. We identify several functions silence can serve – including slowing deliberation down, equalising participation, deepening listening, protecting safety, and bearing witness to what is difficult to put into words – each carrying its own risks. We propose facilitating silence as a democratic responsibility that brings these two practices – interpreting and inviting – together, complementing existing accounts of citizen silence and proposals for institutionalising a right to silence. This responsibility, we argue, should not fall on individual facilitators alone, but requires support from the organizations that convene deliberative processes. We close by outlining directions for exploring these ideas across different cultural and institutional settings.