Applying Deliberative Democracy in Africa: Uganda’s First Deliberative Polls

Practical experiments with deliberative democracy, instituted with random samples of the public, have had success in many countries. But this approach has never before been tried in Sub-Saharan Africa. Reflecting on the first two applications in Uganda, we apply the same criteria for success commonly used for such projects in the most advanced countries. Can this approach work successfully with samples of a public low in literacy and education? Can it work on some of the critical policy choices faced by the public in rural Uganda? This essay reflects on quantitative and qualitative results from Uganda’s first Deliberative Polls. We find that the projects were representative in both attitudes and demographics. They produced substantial opinion change supported by identifiable reasons. They avoided distortions from inequality and polarization. They produced actionable results that can be expected to influence policy on difficult choices. The last two decades have seen a great rise in interest in deliberative democracy, in both theory and practice.1 In political theory, this “deliberative turn” has largely supplanted the previous enthusiasm for “participatory democracy,” a change sometimes decried by advocates of the latter. Participatory democracy generally relies on self-selected mass participation. In development contexts, an iconic form is the “participatory budgeting” practiced in Porto Alegre, Brazil.2 By contrast, the form of deliberative democracy that we will discuss here emphasizes designs that promote both the representativeness and the thoughtfulness of public participation. Instead of mobilizing as many people as possible, the idea is to foster thoughtful weighing of the arguments for and against policy alternatives by representaAt the Center for Deliberative De­ mocracy at Stanford University, JAMES S. FISHKIN is Director and ALICE SIU is Deputy Director. At Makerere University, Uganda, ROY WILLIAM MAYEGA is a Lectu­ rer, LYNN ATUYAMBE is Associate Professor, NATHAN TUMUHAMYE is Director of the Eastern Africa Resilience Innovation Lab, JULIUS SSENTONGO is a Research Fellow, and WILLIAM BAZEYO is Dean of the School of Public Health. (*See endnotes for complete contributor