20 Facts About Deliberative democracy

Deliberative democracy or discursive democracy is a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision-making.

Deliberative democracy is closely related to consultative democracy, in which public consultation with citizens is central to democratic processes.

Deliberative democracy holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation, not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting.

Roots of deliberative democracy can be traced back to Aristotle and his notion of politics; however, the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas' work on communicative rationality and the public sphere is often identified as a major work in this area.

Deliberative democracy can be practiced by decision-makers in both representative democracies and direct democracies.

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One purpose of populist deliberative democracy can be to use deliberation among a group of lay citizens to distill a more authentic public opinion about societal issues but not directly create binding law; devices such as the deliberative opinion poll have been designed to achieve this goal.

Deliberative democracy takes on the role of an "epistemic democracy" in this way, as it thus has an epistemic value: it allows participants to deduce what is morally correct.

Studies by James Fishkin and others have found that deliberative democracy tends to produce outcomes which are superior to those in other forms of democracy.

Deliberative democracy produces less partisanship and more sympathy with opposing views; more respect for evidence-based reasoning rather than opinion; a greater commitment to the decisions taken by those involved; and a greater chance for widely shared consensus to emerge, thus promoting social cohesion between people from different backgrounds.

Former diplomat Carne Ross writes that in 2011 that the debates arising from deliberative democracy are much more civil, collaborative, and evidence-based than the debates in traditional town hall meetings or in internet forums.

For Ross, the key reason for this is that in deliberative democracy citizens are empowered by knowledge that their debates will have a measurable impact on society.

Deliberative theories of democracy have often been contrasted with agonistic models of democracy.

Consensus-based decision making similar to deliberative democracy is characteristic of the hunter-gatherer band societies thought to predominate in pre-historical times.

The first example of Deliberative democracy arose in Greece as Athenian Deliberative democracy during the sixth century BC.

Athenian democracy was both deliberative and largely direct: some decisions were made by representatives but most were made by "the people" directly.

When Deliberative democracy was revived as a political system about 2000 years later, decisions were made by representatives rather than directly by the people.

Deliberative element of democracy was not widely studied by academics until the late 20th century.

The more common view, held by contributors such as James Fishkin, is that direct deliberative democracy can be complementary to traditional representative democracy.

For example, lay citizens have used deliberative democracy to determine local budget allocations in various cities and to undertake major public projects, such as the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Deliberative democracy recognizes a conflict of interest between the citizen participating, those affected or victimized by the process being undertaken, and the group-entity that organizes the decision.