Democratic deliberation for sustainability transformations: between constructiveness and disruption

Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy

Joshua Cohen In this essay I explore the ideal of a 'deliberative democracy'.1 By a deliberative democracy I shall mean, roughly, an association whose affairs are governed by the public deliberation of its members. I propose an account of the value of such an association that treats democracy itself as a fundamental political ideal and not simply as a derivative ideal that can be explained in t...

Modelling Democratic Deliberation

Deliberative democracy is a political theory that places deliberation at the heart of political decision making. In a deliberation, people justify their preferences to one another. They are confronted with new information and new perspectives, which might lead them to change their preferences. Therefore, deliberative democracy, unlike social choice theory, takes preferences to be secondary (der...

Does democratic deliberation change minds?

Discussion is frequently observed in democratic politics, but change in view is rarely observed. Call this the ‘unchanging minds hypothesis’. I assume that a given belief or desire is not isolated, but, rather, is located in a network structure of attitudes, such that persuasion sufficient to change an attitude in isolation is not sufficient to change the attitude as supported by its network. T...

Rational Actors , Political Argument , and Democratic Deliberation

An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design

This paper elucidates the experience and thinking behind our new web-based environment for asynchronous group deliberation: Deme (pronounced "deem"). Deme grew out of participation in and observations of group decision making and community democracy, and is being developed within a university-community partnership to enhance civic participation and to bridge digital divides. Civic decisions in ...