Participation

Participation A-Z: D is for deliberation

December 4, 2024 by Digital Engagement Team No Comments | Category A-Z, Democracy, Our work

You might have heard about deliberation in the context of citizens’ assemblies and other participation processes. Deliberation describes a specific way of communicating.

The idea is that in a deliberation, people exchange views and ideas, advocate for their position, inquire about other perspectives and discuss, before coming to a shared decision (consensus). Deliberation is best support by a trained facilitator.

The hallmarks of deliberation according to Public dialogue and deliberation: A communication perspective for public engagement practitioners (Escobar, 2011) are:

• seeking information and evidence
• evaluating alternatives
• giving (and taking) public reasons
• re-examining and (perhaps) changing preferences
• seeking agreement or consensus
• making informed and reasoned decision

The benefit of deliberation is that it brings different perspectives to bear on a challenge to generate novel solutions. Deliberation can add legitimacy to decisions because people have worked together to find a conclusion that is acceptable to all. This is especially true when a decision involves trade-offs.

Deliberation can be difficult to achieve as different people bring different understandings, styles of communication and skills to the table. Therefore facilitators should spend time with people to ensure the rules of engagement are understood by all and that different forms of knowledge sharing are respected.

People taking part in deliberation are also subject to the complex social norms and rules governing appropriate group conduct. Some people may require more support to feel as equally able to participate. This could take many different forms, as John Boswell (2021) suggests, capacity building, mentoring, solidarity building and targeted facilitation.

References

Boswell, J., (2021) “Seeing Like a Citizen: How Being a Participant in a Citizens’ Assembly Changed Everything I Thought I Knew about Deliberative Minipublics”, Journal of Deliberative Democracy 17(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.975

Escobar, O. (2011). Public dialogue and deliberation: A communication perspective for public engagement practitioners. UK Beacons for Public Engagement. http://www.beltanenetwork.org/resources/beltane-publications/

Comments