Deliberative democracy conference
Matthew Festenstein
University of York, York, UK
24 - 26 June 2009
‘Deliberative democracy’ has become a dominant, if contested, paradigm in
democratic thought. Political philosophers have investigated the
conceptual shape and normative desirability of deliberation, rationality,
procedural fairness. Empirical political scientists have explored the
forms and availability of deliberation in relation to international
negotiations, mediation processes, regional and national legislative
processes, and various experimental settings. Among practitioners, the
idea of deliberative democracy inspired a surge of experimentation with
techniques of public participation in policy making, including citizens’
juries, participatory budgeting, electronic town halls, and many other
models in environmental, development, health, and planning decisions
around the world. Indeed, much empirical work on deliberative democracy
has tended to focus on these micro processes, or ‘minipublics’, and to
overlook the larger, macro issues which originally inspired the
deliberative democracy project. More generally, political enthusiasm for
mechanisms such as citizens’ juries has arguably not kept pace with
developing conceptual, normative and empirical research.
This conference aims to move forward the research agenda in this area,
bringing together different approaches and identifying a set of linked
problems and issues for deliberative democracy. [1] Developments in
normative theory, empirical work, and practical experiment have tended to
work in parallel, with the logic of specialisation tending to minimise
incentives to communicate across disciplinary and subfield boundaries. The
first aim of the conference is to encourage reflection on the relationship
between these different aspects of the deliberative paradigm. What are the
distinctive problems of each approach and institutional translation? [2]
The different research traditions raise questions about the appropriate
level of analysis in considering deliberative democracy. To what extent is
deliberative capacity a property only of small groups or of larger social
units or structures? Is it the case that micro processes, on their own,
are best used to address relatively micro problems, problems that can be
fairly easily defined, with a known and containable number of
stakeholders? This seems to be the direction in which deliberative
practice is heading, with the focus on limited problem-solving. Is this
focus justifiable or does it arbitrarily delimit or even undermine the
claims made on behalf of deliberation, that it can address problems of
mass political disengagement, social exclusion, the formation of political
enclaves and the power of small elites? To what extent are genuinely
deliberative processes conceivable or desirable on larger scales, such as
the national or supra-national level? [3] How we identify and evaluate the
deliberative qualities of groups and structures is related to the
analytical framework adopted for study. Social choice theory, more
institutional orientations, and approaches grounded in psychology offer
different accounts of the character and dynamics of deliberation. These
different theoretical approaches in turn suggest different methodologies
for investigating deliberation and to some extent different subject matter
for inquiry. The third conference objective is to advance debate among
these frameworks.
Confirmed speakers include:
Professor James Bohman (Saint Louis)
Professor Simone Chambers (Toronto)
Professor Thomas Christiano (Arizona)
Professor John Dryzek (Australian National University)
Dr Sophie Duschesne (Oxford)
Dr Florence Haegel (Sciences Po)
Professor Maarten Hajer (Amsterdam)
Professor Christian List (London School of Economics)
Professor Jane Mansbridge (Harvard)
Dr Aletta Norval (Essex)
Professor Ioannis Papadopoulos (Lausanne)
Professor Graham Smith (Southampton)
Professor Mark Warren (University of British Columbia)
The Conference is supported by the British Academy and by the University
of York.
For further details, including information about registration, please
contact:
Professor Matthew Festenstein (York)
Mf...@york.ac.uk
Dr John Parkinson
Jr...@york.ac.uk
Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html.
Prolonged discussions should be moved to chora: enrol via
http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/chora.html.
Other philosophical resources on the Web can be found at http://www.liv.ac.uk/pal.