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Deliberative Democracy

Theories of Knowledge, Psychology, Deliberation and Government

Design

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.

The Model

Better understanding is needed for solving these problems, therfore we will suggest the coming set of models.

The Epistemic Model

Epistemic Model

See Also

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