Deliberative Democracy and the PINet Project

JOHN GASTILDEPT. OF COMM. ARTS & SCIENCESTHE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY

FEBRUARY 24, 2013

Articles on Deliberative Democracy

Number of peer-reviewed articles with search terms in record fields. Terms = (Deliberation OR Deliberative) AND (Civic OR Citizen OR Political OR Public OR Democracy OR Democratic). Full-text article search yields roughly 10x as many hits.

1990 2000 20100

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

3 8 13 1323 20 28 36 37

6584

112136

150

216231

256

290 297318

341 344

282

Year of Publication

Num

ber o

f pee

r-re

view

ed a

rtic

les

20051995

Elements of Democratic DeliberationCriteria for Evaluating Deliberation

Analytic rigor of panels Learning basic issue information Examination of underlying values Consider range of alternatives Weighing pros/cons of measureDemocratic discussion process Equality of opportunity to participate Comprehension of information Consideration of different views Mutual respect among citizensWriting/voting on Statement Informed decision making Non-coercive process

Research problems or agendas in deliberative democratic theory

• How can we assess:– the degree to which government agencies (and executive

branches generally) deliberate democratically?– legislative deliberation, both on the floor and in

committees?– the degree to which publics are included in the wider

governance process?– the deliberative quality of public discourse more generally

on a range of issues (and across nations)?

    

A sampling of analytic methodsused in delib. dem. research

• Discourse Quality Index (justifications, etc.)• Coding for analytic rigor (deliberation) and

democratic social relations• Argument repertoire/diversity• Message homogeneity (talking points)• Holistic codings of process quality

PInet research competition ideas

• Solicitation for developing an analytic method that lends itself to automatic coding, yet can withstand a validation test against more careful human coding approaches

• Competition announced through two main associations/networks: Natl. Comm. Assn. and the Intl. Comm. Assn.

Questions and Concerns

• The most feasible and reliable approaches to automatic coding may lack validity.

• The most valid content analytic approaches may not be feasible.

• Can we assemble a research team that can sustain the long-term investment of time and resources required to overcome the validity/feasibility problem?