The possibilities for promoting an expanded conception of democratic political participation through information and communications technologies (ICTs) have been widely observed. Potential synergies between ICT developments and democratic renewal arise from the two-way, interactive nature of new digital media, and their technical enhancement of citizen capacities to access, produce, distribute,...

Within democratic theory, rational choice theories have for some time been challenged by approaches of ‘deliberative democracy’. I argue that the central analytical contrast between these theories consists in their differing focus on preferences: while rational choice takes them to be stable for the time frame in question and exogenous to the decision process to be analysed, deliberative theory...

Public Sphere The third kind of public sphere, named by Habermas as the “abstract public sphere”, is produced by media, which connects singular and globally spread readers, listeners and spectators (BFN, 1996: 308). In the Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere Habermas conceives the small press as an important institution for the conveyance of ideas and the establishment of the rationa...

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A policy question was posed in 2001 to Canadian publics: should Canada proceed with clinical trials on xenotransplantation and if so, under what conditions? As part of its development of policy and regulations on this medical technology, Health Canada and the Canadian Public Health Association implemented a public consultation process that included a public opinion survey and deliberative citiz...

Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, and its surrounding metropolitan area ranks highly among the world’s most liveable cities. However, it is experiencing urban sprawl, and given the predicted high rates of growth, continued growth outwards is unsustainable. To harness the creativity of the community, the Minister for Planning and Infrastructure decided to engage the people of Perth i...