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General process of deliberation

From Deliberative Democracy Institiute Wiki

The general processes of deliberation try to describe the process that all deliberations go through.

Basic mechanism

The purpose of the deliberative process is to bring the members of a group from the initial state to the state of deliberative decision.

All members have, needs, alignment of interests, psychological and MON states (we will call them deliberative states). During deliberation, the process should transform the members to optimized states, which will result deliberative decision.

Overall process

Overall process

Mutual Interests

All deliberation starts with people with mutual interests. At the beginning of the deliberation, it is likely the members will have more MONs than SON. General process - start.jpg

Conflicts

When the members will try to decide upon a preferable solution to their mutual interest, they will probably have conflicting views, understandings, solutions, etc. General deliberation process - conflicts.jpeg


Creating SON

The conflicts in deliberation should initiate a process of learning. The process will include hearing different world-views, understanding, and solutions. The main ais is to creating better mutual understanding and increasing the SON. This process may engage listening, clarification, criticizing, synthesizing, and the ability to be able to view the issues through different world views.

General deliberation process - creating a son.jpg

It is perfectly all right not to be able to create unanimous SON. Although it is preferable to create a son, for mutual understanding, it is natural, that not all members will agree upon the issues that are discussed.

Creating options

The next element in deliberative decision making is creating alternative options to solve the common challenge. There are many methods to create a diversity of options. and in different situations the amount of diversity may alter, for instance in fast decisions, we might have a small number of options, while in a large-scale decision that includes many members there might be more options.

Evaluating

Each option should be evaluated according to these parameters.

Validating

After creating a large number of options, the options should be validated, using falsification.

Chances of sucess

Each option has a different chance of success. The members should figure out what is the chance of success in each option.

ROI

Each option has it own outcomes, and resources needed to carry it on.

Value

When investing in an option, each member has its own resource, and therefore she might evaluate differently the willingness to take each action. also, she might value defiantly each option. for instance, some will value peach very high, while others will prefer vendetta over peace. therefor preferring options differently.

General deliberation process - validate-evaluate.jpg

Selecting

From the different options, members can select a preferable option to solve the issue. If the main issue involves a common resource, like behavior in the public sphere or an action that should be done for the whole group, the members can decide as a group. If the issue is private, each member may select his own preferable option.

General deliberation process - selecting.jpeg

Learing from experience

In order to improve the future decision, there should be a trial and error, The members should act upon the selected options and learn from the results of their performances.

Preserving the SON

The groups should have some means to preserve the knowledge, besides holding the acquired knowledge in their brains, so the newcomers would be able to learn from past experience.

References