Deliberative Democracy
A Wiki Theory about Deliberative Democracy
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Contents
The Goal of this wiki
The goal of this wiki is to produce a theory about deliberative democracy. The theory should support real life deliberation and apps for online deliberation.
The Model
Abstract
Deliberative democracy is a democracy, in which citizens take part in decision making. It holds high values of democracy. It claims that every citizen should have an equal voice, every citizen should have equal influence in the shaping of public solutions. It manifests that when making a public decisions, every option should be taken into account, even if it’s owners does not have much education in the subject. The reason for that, is that every citizen has her own interests in the public decision, and they may be influenced from the choices the dicision body will make.
Yet letting every citizen participate in the discussion, and influence the option taken by the public, results tedious and everlasting meetings. Many citizens want to shape the solution, while many others want to propose their own unique solutions, while others want to criticize the ideas brought to the table. Equal deliberation may be a very cumbersome process that takes huge amounts of energy and time. If all residents of a small town would have the same influence on the solutions proposed, the deliberation may take years. As the body of decision makers grows, so do the time and energy it takes to make an equal decision. Because of its tediousness many citizens prefer not to participate in it, and therefore making equal deliberation a null.
So, if we want to keep the ideals of deliberation of real equality, while making the process efficient and suited for the participating of thousands and millions, we have to learn how deliberation works. What are her elements, and how they interact with each other? If we will be able to understand the element we will be able to suggest more efficient ways to conduct equal public deliberation, and even invent new application that may help larger groups of citizens engage in the public decisions.
In this web-site we will suggest a theory which will explain the elements of deliberation, and their interactions. We then will investigate into common practice of deliberation and analyze them according to the theory. Lastly, we will suggest future process for deliberative democracy and internet application for deliberative democracy.
Introduction
Values of Deliberation
The basic values of deliberation:
Free and falsifiable knowledge: All public knowledge is corroborated by falsification[1]. All public knowledge is transparant and is ready for public analysis[2]. The public enjoy free public sphere to deliberate [3]. Deliberation is free. No other force other than reason can be used[4]. The public deliberate on common concerns[5].
Inclusive and equal: Deliberation is Inclusive (Habermas), without discrimination due to economic, education or other causes. Effective participation: Citizens must have adequate and equal opportunities to form their preference and place questions on the public agenda and express reasons for one outcome over the other. Their voting is equal, and the knowledge should be engaged in a mannar that will let every participant effectivly understand the subject in hand[6].
Openess:The participants must keep open the possibility of changing their minds, and continuing a reason-giving dialogue that can challenge previous decisions and laws[7].
Political capbilities:The public develop political competence (Cohen). The public control the process of deliberation and the agenda (Dahl).
Learning by exprience:The government follows the public decision, the actions and the results are transparent, and the public can learn and improve future decisions (Cohen).
Problems in deliberation
The Model
The Mental Elements of Decision Making
To successfully engage and understand deliberation I will suggest that we first have to understand the elements of decision making:
The elements of decision making
The Group in Decision Making
The Medium Model
The Psychological Model
The Sociological Model
Compering the Model to Deleberative Methods
Bulding new Methods according to the Model
See Also
References
- ↑ Habermas, J. (1986). Communicative rationality and the theories of meaning and action. Habermas (1998f), 183–214.
- ↑ Dror, Yebezkel. "Transparency and openness of quality democracy." Openness and transparency in governance: Challenges and opportunities (1999): 25-43.
- ↑ Habermas, Jürgen. "The public sphere: An encyclopedia article." Media and cultural studies (2001): 73.
- ↑ Cohen, J. (1989). Deliberation and democratic legitimacy. Debates in Contemporary Political Philosophy, 342.
- ↑ Habermas 1989:xi
- ↑ Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its critiques. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- ↑ Gutmann, Amy, and Dennis Thompson (2004). Why Deliberative Democracy? pp. 3-7.