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Types of deliberation
Luigi Bobbio
lubobbio@libero.it
University of Torino (Italy)
October 2008
Abstract
As research has increasingly addressed deliberative processes through theoretical analyses,
empirical studies, and practical experiments, it has become apparent that deliberation is a
phenomenon with many faces. Argument-based interaction may come about in different ways and
have different functions. Many of these differences can be explained by the nature of the entry
positions, i.e. the type of judgment participants express at the start of the deliberation process.
Positions may be strong or weak, conscious or unconscious, free or constrained. I discuss the
relationship between type of position and type of deliberation, hypothesizing what difference there
may be in the development of the deliberative process and in its outcome, and look at the most
frequent deviations from the ideal deliberative model. I discuss both cases of symmetrical
deliberation, in which all participants express positions of the same type, and cases of asymmetrical
deliberation, more frequent in the real world, in which interaction is among actors whose positions
are of different types. The analysis suggests that specific settings should be adopted and specific
strategies employed depending on the type of deliberation involved.
Empirical studies on decision-making processes increasingly often detect
deliberative aspects in the interaction they observe among participants. It has become
apparent that collective decisions are not only the fruit of negotiation or of preference
aggregation, but are also the outcome of dialogic processes in which participants’ opinions
are shaped or modified. Deliberative practices are systematically observed in a wide range
of situations: in parliaments (Bessette, 1994; Steiner et al., 2005), in European policy
making (Eriksen and Fossum, 2000), in local development policies (Cersosimo and Wolleb
2006), within social movements (Polletta, 2002; della Porta, 2005) and in many other
fields. Nor should we leave out the numerous experiments of artificial forums — such as
citizens’ juries, deliberative polling, the 21
st
Century Town Meetings – that have been
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designed precisely to offer a favorable surrounding for deliberation (Fung, 2003; Gastil
and Levine, 2005). Wherever a decision-making process among different viewpoints
comes about, some trace of deliberation may be observed.
This across-the-board use of the concept, however, brings to light a doubt: when we
speak of deliberation, are we talking about one and the same thing? Might we not be
looking at a multiplicity of practices that, while they share the use of argument in dialogic
form, for the rest present contrasting aspects? After all, why should a parliamentary
discussion resemble a meeting of the No Global movement, or a stakeholder partership, or
a citizens’ jury? Should we not therefore conclude that: ‘deliberation cannot be understood
as a unified process’ and that ‘to speak of a unified thing called deliberation is to speak of a
chimera’ (Button and Mattson, 1999, p. 619)?
We may reason along similar lines in connection with the drawbacks or pathologies
(Hamlett and Cobb, 2007) of deliberation. The dialogic exchange should have the effect of
bringing participants’ viewpoints closer together, it should produce better decisions, and
should reinforce their legitimacy. But the results of deliberation are frequently in contrast
with those ambitions. Discussion can generate conformism, polarization (Sunstein, 2002),
positional contrast; it may be subject to manipulation, it may favor those persons who
master rational argumentation, to the detriment of those who are accustomed to express
themselves in narrative form (Sanders, 1997); it may exclude rather than including (Young,
2000); it may exacerbate conflicts rather than settling them; it may induce individuals to
strengthen their initial beliefs rather than to re-examine them in the light of other
participants’ arguments (Manin, 2005). Here, too, we must ask whether these faults are
faults of deliberation as such, or whether they are likely to appear in specific deliberative
contexts. It is far from certain that all deliberative processes run the same risks. Some of
them are more likely than others to degenerate in specific ways.
But how can we distinguish among the different deliberative processes? The
hypothesis that I aim to discuss in this article is that the development of deliberation
depends on the participants’ different ‘entry positions’, i.e. the nature of the judgments
they express at the start of the deliberative process. If deliberation aims to foster a mutual
understanding among actors’ viewpoints, it is legitimate to suppose that the process will
come about in different ways according to the type of their initial views.
Each participant arrives at the dialogic forum with his or her own judgment on the
issue that is under discussion. These initial positions depend on preferences, on beliefs
concerning the state of the world and cause-effect relationships; they must be
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accompanied by arguments that, at least presumably, are capable of being justified in the
eyes of the public. The point is that the nature of these initial positions may vary greatly
across different situations. They may be more or less definite, more or less solid, more or
less malleable. Not all participants enter the deliberative process with equally well
structured or equally firm convictions. And this initial aspect is likely to influence the
following process.
Traces of this line of research may be found in some empirical studies that
compared deliberative forums among ‘professional’, ‘partisans’, ‘insiders’ on one side and
those among ‘non partisans’, ‘lay people’, ‘ordinary citizens’ on the other. Such studies
repeatedly showed that discussion develops differently in the two contexts and tends to
bring to different outcomes (Petts, 2002; von Stokkom, 2005; Jackman e Sniderman, 2006,
Hendriks et al,. 2007). Fung (2003) maintained that what does change is the ‘temperature’
of the deliberative process which in ‘hot’ in the former cases and ‘cold’ in the latter ones.
In a comparative analysis of seven forums held in the United States, Button and Mattson
observed that models of deliberative democracy ‘assume pre-existing and ordered
preferences among citizens … [while in our cases participants] came to their opinions
about the issues being discussed as a result of the process of talking and listening to others’
(Button and Mattson, 1999, p. 621). Thus the deliberation ended up to have an educational
goal that ‘locked citizens into a deferential and sometimes passive role. When political
learning is the focus, citizens become pupils rather than participants’ (ivi p. 622). Steiner et
al. (2005) note the opposite phenomenon in their study on parliamentary debates: here the
educational function of deliberation is virtually missing; participants appear to be closed on
their initial positions. But, the authors add, ‘this may not hold true in some other settings
such as civic forums, where partisan divides are often less relevant and initial positions
may not be crystallized’ (Steiner et al., 2005, p. 136).
Types of position
The clues that emerge from these studies suggest that deliberation takes on different
features depending on whether the dialogue comes about among insiders (experts,
politicians, bureaucrats, stakeholders, representatives of interest groups) or among lay
citizens. It appears that the nature of participants’ starting positions can affect both the
‘temperature’ of deliberation and its effectiveness (and possibly other aspects too). We
may proceed along this path by examining how the initial positions may be different, and
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which differences may be relevant to the development of the deliberative process and to
any fault it might suffer from.
The positions participants take at the start of the deliberative process may vary
along three dimensions. The first dimension is the degree of definition of those positions.
He or she who enters a deliberative arena may have already developed firm convictions on
the issue under discussion, or may be in a condition of doubt or uncertainty. In the public
sphere any citizen may, sooner or later, be faced with a theme on which he or she has
vague and confused ideas or, simply, has no particular opinion. Frequently, in
consequence, his or her position is also unstable: the person may vacillate in the space of a
short time between very distant viewpoints depending on the stimuli to which he or she is
exposed. Thus we may consider as well defined positions those positions that are
structured, stable, with few doubts; and, vice versa, ill-defined positions are those that are
loose, unstable, uncertain or surrounded by doubts.
The second dimensions is the reflectiveness of participants’ initial judgments. A
person may express a more or less reflective opinion depending on the information he or
she has available on the issue. Information that is relevant to formulating a position is not
limited simply to facts concerning the problem under discussion. Equally important, if not
more so, is the reflection about the implications that an option may involve, for oneself,
one's community or for others, within a shorter or longer timeframe, as well as a
knowledge of the state of the debate on the issue: which arguments for and against are
raised, and by whom. Thus we may consider as reflective those positions that take into
account opposing arguments that are raised in debate, and that are capable of anticipating
the consequences that the preferred solution might entail. Vice versa, we may consider as
unreflective the positions of those who are not aware of the arguments supporting different
options from their own, and who do not realize the implications that their own options
would involve.
Table 1 – Four types of position.
Positions
Well defined Ill-defined
Reflective
Certainty of judgment
Suspension of judgment
Positions
Unreflective
Prejudice
Uncertainty of judgment
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It is interesting to note that these first two dimensions are independent, as Table 1
shows. Certainly, definition and reflectiveness may go hand in hand. There are people who
have clear and stable convictions and who at the same are fully aware of the problem they
are tackling and of the state of the debate that it is going on around it. They know what
they want and are aware of the stakes. At the opposite extreme we find the situation I have
called ‘uncertainty of judgment’: these are uncertain positions of which the holder is barely
aware. As we will see, ordinary citizens called upon to take position on highly specialized
issues tend, at least initially, to find themselves in this situation.
However, people with little awareness do not necessarily express vague and
uncertain opinions: they may have clear and stable opinions with few doubts although they
have no clear idea of the nature of the problem, nor of the arguments against their position.
These are opinions that have not been reflected upon or, to use a value judgment, but also a
more eloquent term, we are faced with a typical case of ‘prejudice’. Lastly there is the
opposite pole: participants are fully aware of the problem and of the controversies it has
raised, but at the same time they remain open to doubt and do not feel able to express well
defined positions. We might call this situation one of ‘suspension of judgment’.
It must be added that it is obviously of great account whether the participants’
judgments are free or whether they are under some external constraint. Frequently, in
theoretical accounts of deliberation, it is assumed that participants only answer to
themselves and are thus free to change their points of view in the light of the content of the
discussion. But this is often not the case: those who participate in a debate may be called
upon to respond for their opinions to others (a party, an association, a constituency, etc.)
and their choices may be subjected to some type of ratification.
This third dimension (freedom of positions) is not entirely independent of the other
two (degree of definition and reflectiveness). In the situations I have called ‘suspension of
judgment’, ‘uncertainty of judgment’ and ‘prejudice’, we can suppose that the participants
are free to change their minds. On the contrary it is much more probable that some type of
constraint exists in the situation I have call ‘certainty of judgment’. Participants who
express well defined and reflective positions are chiefly spokespersons of organized
groups. Even were they convinced of the good reasons put forth by other participants, they
would not always be free to declare that fact publicly. The force of the constraints may
vary depending on the circumstances or on the theme under discussion, but it is unlikely to
be completely missing. Thus from now on we will need to take into account that positions
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of the first type are not only ‘well defined and reflective’, but are also - to some extent -
subject to some external constraint.
Symmetrical and asymmetrical deliberation
It is very probable that deliberative forums that take place in the real world will
bring together people who express positions of different types. It is likely that, in a
meeting, in a committee, in a forum, there will be a mixture of people expressing
judgments that are well and ill-defined, reflective and unreflective, free and constrained.
Thus we may say that deliberative processes in the main present an asymmetrical nature,
since they take place between people who are not equal with regard to the strength of their
convictions, their awareness of the problem, or their freedom to reformulate their
viewpoint during the discussion.
Nevertheless, it is not impossible in the real world to find cases of symmetrical
deliberation, i.e. specific spheres in which the debate takes place among participants who
express positions of the same type. We will see later what these cases are. This can happen
because the nature of participants’ initial judgments is due not only to their cognitive or
psychological attitudes. The nature of their positions is also determined by the
characteristics of the deliberative setting, by the social norms it tends to impose, and by the
roles induced by the specific dialogic context. One and the same person may express more
or less malleable judgments, or more or less considered ones, depending on the
deliberative context in which he or she happens to act. But leaving aside the empirical
evidence, situations of symmetrical deliberation are of great interest from the analytical
standpoint, because they enable us to study some ideal types of deliberation in what we
might call the pure state.
Models of symmetrical deliberation
From the analytical standpoint (but, as we will see, also in empirical terms, at least
to some extent) we can distinguish four types of symmetrical deliberation, which
correspond to the four types of position we examined above: a) suspension of judgment; b)
certainty of judgment; c) uncertainty of judgment; d) prejudice. For each of these four
types of symmetrical deliberation I will examine: the characteristics of the participants’
positions; which empirical cases tend to correspond to the model; how the deliberation
takes place; what risks it runs; what mechanisms can limit those risks.
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Type a: Suspension of judgment
The first type of symmetrical deliberation comes about among people with a high
degree of awareness of the problem and of the controversies surrounding it, but who
despite this (or just because of this) prefer to suspend their judgment. The positions they
take are ill-defined, open and flexible. We may define such persons as skeptics or
agnostics. They have a strong orientation towards agreement and co-operation. They are
open to dialogue. They are like the Socratic sage who knows that he does not know.
It might seem improbable that a deliberative forum be made up exclusively of
individuals with these characteristics (which are not common ones). However, since some
deliberative settings do exist that encourage participants to discuss on the basis of a certain
epoché, accepted and shared by all, situations of this type are not at all impossible. An
example may be that of committees of experts who are called upon to define a standard or
to give an evaluation for a public decision. A similar situation could be perhaps found in
parliamentary commissions, when the theme under debate is not too hot and when the
divisions among participants do not correspond to party cleavages. However, the classic
example, from which much of the theory of deliberation began, consists of juries in
criminal trials (Gastil et al., 2002; Gastil and Weiser, 2006). The fact that juries are drawn
by lot reduces the likelihood of predetermined positions. And once the deliberative phase
itself begins all participants have a deep and absolutely identical knowledge of the case
under discussion. They have listened to the witnesses and to the opposing arguments
brought by prosecution and defense, and thus they are in the ideal condition to find a
solution through dialogue. They may not succeed in reaching agreement, but the path they
follow is likely to be based on reciprocal listening and common reflection.
The account proposed by Gustavo Zagrebelsky (2005) on how the Italian
Constitutional Court works corresponds in full to this model. When the Court meets in the
counsel chamber - reports Zagrebelsky - the judges initially tend to take positions and
sides, but as the discussion continues ‘the objective need to reach agreement takes pride of
place…. There is a natural tendency to understand the reasons of others’ (ivi, p. 43). The
very deliberative context of the Court pushes the judges to take an open and dialogic
approach: in the Court ‘everything possible is done not to vote or, better, to deliberate
without it being necessary to turn to voting, or to make it into a simple formality. This
requires commitment and prolonged discussion, which could easily be avoided by a simple
deciding vote. On the contrary it is Court wisdom to resist the temptation and give itself
the necessary time, without forcing things’ (ivi, p. 42). ‘The deciding vote is extrema
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ratio… But when the Court votes there is always a sense of bitterness even among those
who are in the majority’ (ivi, pp. 47-48).
The symmetrical deliberation in conditions of suspended judgment is that which
comes closest to the ideal speech situation proposed by Habermas (1987). Here, indeed, the
best argument has the greatest probability of winning over participants. We would be
tempted to say that the scope of theories of deliberation (like that of Habermas) is not as
general as is frequently supposed. Rather they tend to be applicable to the specific
circumstances described here, that is when participants express ill-defined but reflective
judgments. In other cases – as we will see – the possibility of reproducing an ideal speech
situation is much more remote.
Another characteristic of this model of deliberation is its dual nature: it is public
and not public. Deliberative forums of this type (juries, constitutional courts, committees
of experts, perhaps also parliamentary committees) are public arenas in which participants
are induced to formulate impartial arguments of general scope. But at the same time they
are circumscribed public spaces that are clearly separated from the general public. The
deliberative process takes place sheltered from the eyes of the world and this discourages
participants from taking demagogic positions (Elster, 1998b; Stasavage, 2007). This
balance between ‘public’ and ‘not public’ is delicate and precarious; but it is one of the
most important institutional guarantees for the success of the deliberative process.
This does not mean that, even in this specific context, there is no risk of
deliberation’s degenerating, but these risks are more limited than in any other context. The
fact that participants’ initial positions are not fully pre-defined reduces the risk of their
taking defensive positions and lessens positional confrontation; participants’ reflectiveness
makes the effects of conformism, polarization and manipulation less probable.
These deliberative situations are extremely rare. However, we may ask whether it
might be possible to reproduce in other contexts the particular features of this setting that
induce participants to take attitudes favorable to dialogue. Or, in other words, whether it is
possible to determine institutional strategies that can make experiences of this type less
rare. Not all these features would be easy to reproduce; for example, deliberation appears
to be favored when a common language or common knowledge is shared by participants,
even if there is disagreement about the subject matter. Legal expertise can facilitate
interaction among constitutional judges, as can the technical and scientific knowledge
shared by committees of experts (note, though, that this shared medium is completely
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missing from juries). However, it would be very difficult to artificially reproduce this
condition in other deliberative contexts.
Other aspects lend themselves more easily to transposition: setting up public spaces
that are circumscribed and not open to the public; providing complete information that is
equal for all; giving time to discuss and to reach agreement.
Type b: Certainty of judgment
In the second model of symmetrical deliberation, the participants are well-informed
and know exactly which side they are on. Unlike the previous case they have few doubts:
they have positions to defend and strategies to follow. Frequently they must report back to
external bodies and thus are not completely free to change their entry positions. This
situation typically occurs when deliberation takes place between stakeholders, activists,
militants, party or interest group representatives. Situations characterized by ‘certainty of
judgment’ are much more frequent than the previous ones. Parliamentary debates are
likely to be of this type, as well as the numerous stakeholders partnerships.
In these settings the deliberative process meets with greater difficulty. Deliberation
would aim at softening the participants’ original positions and making them slightly more
compatible, but this possibility is limited by the rigidity of initial positions Some
degenerative aspects are highly improbable: the fact that participants have well defined and
reflective convictions puts a brake on the risk both of polarization toward extreme
positions and of manipulation.
Two types of distortion of the deliberative process are, on the contrary, highly
probable, and tend to produce opposing effects. First and foremost, the dialogue may
harden to become pure and simple positional confrontation in which the parties leave the
discussion with exactly the same opinions with which they began. It is hardly surprising
that, in their empirical research on parliamentary debates, Jürg Steiner and collaborators
found that speeches tending to put forward and stress one's own position are
overwhelmingly preponderant (they appear in 82 percent of 2,995 speech acts analyzed),
whereas formulation of alternative proposals, appeals to consensus, and proposals for
mediation play marginal roles (respectively only 8 percent, 7 percent and 3 percent of
speech acts) (Steiner et al., 2005, in particular p. 132). The tendency towards a ‘dialogue
of the deaf’ may mean that debate turns into a ritual display, aimed more at external
constituencies than at any attempt to find some common ground.
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This type of symmetrical deliberation, however, also runs the opposite risk: that of
sliding into bargaining. When positions are distant and the discussion is unable to bring
them closer, it is often possible to resolve the contrast through mutual concessions and thus
to reach an agreement that does not result from a common view. Rather it is a settlement
that leaves participants’ original points of view substantially intact. Negotiating tables for
local development – just to given an example – can be resolved through a distributive
agreement that enables advantages to be allocated to participants, without creating any
common good (Magnatti et al,. 2005; Cersosimo and Wolleb, 2006).
Nevertheless, positional confrontation and negotiation are far from being the only
possible outcome. Empirical research has shown cases of symmetrical deliberation among
insiders that succeed in overcoming the distance between their initial positions and in
reaching, through discussion, new common goals. This is what happens to the French
mayors studied by Pinson (2005); by interacting in inter-municipal bodies they succeed in
reformulating problems and finding innovative solutions for their communities. Or, in
Italy, those virtuous cases of agreement over local development (Magnatti et al., 2005;
Cersosimo and Wolleb, 2006) in which, through discussion, participants succeed in
reworking their points of view and in producing a common vision that none of them
possessed initially.
It is not clear which institutional aspects tend to push the participants in the
direction of positional contraposition or negotiation on one hand, or towards deliberative
practices on the other. It might be thought that different status of publicity play a role.
Parliamentary debates (especially if they are in the House) take place in highly public
conditions and are thus more exposed to positional confrontation. Discussions at
negotiating tables or in meetings of the communautés d’agglomération take place sheltered
from outside eyes and thus a less rigid confrontation is favored. Nevertheless, a high
degree of secrecy combined with a limited number of participants is the institutional
formula most favorable to finding settlements of the negotiated type (Elster, 1998b).
Deliberation appears to require the existence of a public space that is not too exposed to the
public.
Another clue is offered by recent analyses on the role of leadership in negotiating
tables for local development (Magnatti et al., 2005; Barbera, 2005; Cersosimo and Wolleb,
2006). According to these studies, the existence of a leader tends to favor the development
of an effective deliberative process, not so much, or not only, thanks to his or her personal
authority or charisma, but above all because he or she is capable of showing the
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participants common goals that they can share, while at the same time renouncing the
possibility of obtaining specific advantages for him or herself. It appears that, for the
process to result in dialogue, a figure is required who is capable of standing above the
interests at stake, and who is able to provide mediation services or to facilitate interactions.
It might be concluded that symmetrical deliberation among insiders could benefit
from the right condition of publicity and from the presence of mediators or facilitators who
are outside the fray; they should be capable of providing structure to the decision-making
process and of helping participants to perceive collective goals that, alone, they would not
have been able to see. Politicians, militants and activists, in a word all those who express
well defined and reflective positions, are in general not very willing to be helped. They
prefer to go it alone. In the next two cases we will see that, on the contrary, support for
decision-making is usual, indeed absolutely necessary. And we may perhaps be able to
find some suggestions that can also apply to the deliberative contexts we have already
looked at.
Type c: Uncertainty of judgment
We will now turn to the opposite situation case of symmetrical deliberation in
which participants are not fully aware of the stake and have poorly-defined viewpoints.
Here, uncertainty of judgment holds sway: people have vague and confused ideas, they
have available only scraps of information that is often random and uncoordinated, they
may have preferences concerning some aspects of the issue but they hardly see the wider
picture. Frequently their options are contradictory because they tend to embrace different
points of view depending on the specific aspect that is focused.
In the real world it is highly improbable that people with positions of this type (ill-
defined and unreflective) decide to meet for the purpose of taking collective decisions.
Forums of the ‘uncertainty of judgment’ type are generally the fruit of experiments that are
artificially constructed to give a voice to ordinary citizens. Sometimes participation is
voluntary, as is the case of the American National Issues Forum (Melville et al., 2005) and
others (Button and Mattson, 1999; Fung, 2003). Sometimes the participants are randomly
selected from among the population involved in the issue under discussion, as comes about
with citizens’ juries (Smith and Wales, 2000; Crosby and Nethercut, 2005), consensus
conferences (Hendriks, 2005b), deliberative pollings (Fishkin, 1995) and many other
similar experiences (Fung, 2003; Gastil and Levine, 2005).
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In these cases, the deliberative process takes place very differently than in the two
contexts considered above. Here, help with the deliberation process is a necessity: the
participants are not left to themselves but enter a pre-structured process. Generally the
experimental design is drawn up by an advisory committee, comprising all the main
stakeholders, which guarantees to provide balanced information. There is a rigid timeframe
for the proceedings, since it is impossible to engage ordinary citizens for too long.
Facilitators assist discussion among the participants. The fact that the process is structured
does not compromise its informality: on the contrary, the organizational framework is set
up to stimulate the development of informal relations and to eliminate those barriers that
are frequently present in non-structured interactions.
But what changes in the deliberative process is not only its form, bit also its
function. While in situations of ‘certainty of judgment’ and in those of ‘suspension of
judgment’, the goal of deliberation is to bring participants’ positions closer, here the goal is
first and foremost to shape those positions, to enable participants to gain an idea.
Information is offered during the process. Participants’ positions do not constitute the
input into the deliberative process (as they do in the case of ‘certainty of judgment’), but
rather its output. They are defined during the dialogic process. They are endogenous
rather than exogenous. Learning is undoubtedly a central aspect of all deliberative
processes, but here the learning aspect is absolutely dominant: deliberation attempts to take
on an educational role, even before its goal of producing an exchange of opinions (Button
and Mattson, 1999).
Deliberation in cases of ‘uncertainty of judgment’ is exposed to different types of
risk. In this case manipulation, which is very improbable in the other cases, is a concrete
possibility that must continually be taken into account. When the educational function of
deliberation tends to predominate over the discursive aspect, participants may end up by
taking positions of deference toward experts and witnesses; they become ‘pupils’ more
than protagonists (Button and Mattson, 1999). The fact that the process is pre-structured
may give it a paternalistic aura (Rostbøll, 2005): the facilitators may guide or condition the
progress of the discussion, even if inadvertently. Conversely, since participants must
define their own preferences during the process, a tendency toward conformism cannot be
ruled out: the more uncertain participants will be induced to follow the first proposals that
are formulated, those that are put forth with greater determination, or those that appear to
receive group consensus. It is possible that some participants will end up by publicly
taking positions that they would not have taken in other circumstances. This risk is
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strengthened by the pressures that tend to be created within the group to reach a unanimous
consensus. These pressures can generate resolutions that formally enjoy the adhesion of all
participants, but that are actually the fruit of superficial convergence and are thus fortuitous
and volatile. Deliberation works if the terms of the controversy are clear and explicit
(Manin, 2005), whereas in these cases there is a risk of deliberation without antagonism
(too facile an operation, and fundamentally useless). The paradox of deliberation thus lies
in the fact that if it takes place among people who express well defined and reflective
opinions it risks ending up in sterile confrontation; and if it takes place among people who
start from vague or uncertain opinions, it risks producing unstable decisions that have little
credibility in the eyes of public decision-makers.
However, these deliberative processes do have one advantage: they are the fruit of
an artificial design that may therefore be corrected. There is now considerable research on
the institutional design of these experiments in order to overcome their drawbacks. The
proposals to improve them concern all aspects of their design: extending the process and
diluting it over time (Ward et al., 2003), providing the possibility for reiteration (Fung,
2003) and many other changes, including detailed ones (Carson, 2006). Research is
therefore open, although it is not clear to what extent it will succeed in avoiding the more
critical aspects of these experiences.
Type d: Prejudice
The last case of symmetrical deliberation is that which involves people who express
well defined opinions, without however possessing a clear idea of the terms of the
question. They are resolute in their options, but know little about them. Their positions are
thoughtless or, we might say, are based on prejudice.
Deliberative forums of this type do not form spontaneously: people who hold
prejudices are unlikely to enter into discussion with those whose prejudices are different
from their own, and they are not interested in doing so. It may plausibly be supposed that
deliberation among prejudiced people only takes place in the artificial contexts I presented
in the previous section. Indeed, it is possible that the same experiment can, at one and the
same time, combine people who have vague and confused ideas (‘uncertainty of
judgment’) and others who have clear but unreflecting opinions (‘prejudice’). However, it
seems likely that the very characteristics of the deliberative process would tend to
discriminate between the two types of position: ‘uncertainty of judgment’ tends to prevail
when the themes under debate are complex, unfamiliar to the general public, and have not
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been the subject of particularly heated controversies. Vice versa, prejudices more easily
surface where hot questions are at stake for which explicit fracture lines exist in public
opinion. The type of forum most exposed to this eventuality is deliberative polling; this
brings together large numbers of people (some hundreds) on highly controversial and up-
to-the-minute questions. Unlike other experiments (such as citizens’ juries or consensus
conferences) here the purpose of the deliberation is not to find a common ground, but
rather to monitor the changes of opinion that come about during the process.. The
challenge of deliberation is all the more significant when the entry opinions are based on
preconceived ideas: at bottom we might say that the purpose of deliberative polling is
essentially that of testing prejudices through information and discussion.
Like the previous one, this type of symmetrical deliberation essentially plays an
educational role, but the direction in which it moves is, in some respects, the opposite.
There it was a question of strengthening and helping to form initially ill-defined
participants’ opinions; here on the contrary it a question of weakening their initially well
defined positions and of sowing doubt. This is a delicate operation that can have
undesired consequences. This is the deliberative context in which polarization can most
easily be produced, so that participants end up by taking even more extreme positions than
those they had at the outset (Sunstein, 2002). Alternatively, it may simply freeze their
points of view: they may end up by only listening to arguments that are in agreement with
their original positions, and ignoring stimuli that might cast doubt on those positions. In
the end, fences may have been erected that reproduce the initial divergences or even
strengthen them (Manin, 2005).
However, it is interesting that, in concrete experiences with deliberative polling,
these negative effects do not actually come about (Luskin et al,. 2002). It is not yet clear
which aspects of the institutional design (providing carefully balanced information,
selecting participants by lot, discussion in small randomly-drawn groups) tend to prevent
this stiffening of positions (Manin, 2005). The impression remains, though, that like in the
previous case the deliberative setting has a determinant influence on participants’ attitudes
of closure or of opening.
Models of asymmetrical deliberation
Deliberation is asymmetrical when the discussion takes place among people who, in
the same context, express positions of different types: well and ill-defined, reflective and
unreflective, free and constrained. Participants happen to be unequal with regard to their
15
awareness, their resoluteness, or their constraints. Asymmetrical deliberation may take
two sharply different forms depending on whether it takes place in a restricted sphere in
which all participants have the possibility of expressing themselves, or in an extended
sphere in which there is a clear-cut distinction between those who take the floor and those
who simply listen and then express - normally by voting - their final decision.
These two types correspond to the distinction, proposed by Gary Remer (2000),
between the conversation model and the oratory model. Remer observed that the notion of
deliberation proposed by contemporary scholars, starting from Habermas, is that of an
open and informal process in which participants confront each other with their own
arguments, in a rational manner and with a spirit of co-operation. Deliberation here is
understood as conversation. But deliberation may also take a completely different form: a
small number of orators standing in front of an audience that they are aiming to persuade.
This is the type of deliberation to which the ancient thinkers referred. What Aristotle and
Cicero had in mind was the use of the art of rhetoric by political leaders in a public
meeting, or by lawyers in a court (Elster, 1998a; Remer, 2000; Urfalino, 2005b). The
oratory (or rhetorical) model describes a deliberative situation that is completely dissimilar
to that of a conversation. Instead of direct debate among participants, here we have a
separation between orators and audience; the appeal to reason is overwhelmed by the
appeal to passions; open and informal discussion gives way to a confrontation limited by
procedural rules; co-operation is replaced by antagonism. The fundamental difference is
that in conversation the participants try to persuade one another; in the oratory model the
orators try to persuade a third party (the jury or the audience). In both cases the
deliberative process seeks to transform preferences; but in the first case these are the
preferences of the participants themselves, whereas in the second case only the listeners’
preferences are concerned.
All the types of symmetrical deliberation examined above follow the conversational
model, since the participants speak directly to one another with the mutual aim of
persuading each other. But also an asymmetrical deliberative context can take the form of a
conversation, when it comes about among a limited number of participants each of whom
has the same opportunity to make his or her voice heard. Hence asymmetrical deliberation
can present two different configurations: the asymmetrical conversation and the oratory
model.
16
Type e: Asymmetrical conversation
In the asymmetrical conversation, the scenario is a contradictory one. The
participants are in a condition of parity; they interact together within a circumscribed
space; all have the equal possibility to speak; they are engaged in a discussion whose goal
is to find some common ground. And yet there is a clear disparity among the participants:
some of them display positions that are more resolute, more constrained and less malleable
and hence they are likely to possess also better argumentative skills.
Of all deliberative processes, the asymmetrical conversation is furthest from the
ideal speech situation. Control is likely to be exercised by the persons that express resolute
and reflective positions over those whose convictions are more uncertain or less reflective
1
.
Especially if there are no external mediators or facilitators, who could try to restore
balance to this disparity, the most probable outcome is a subtle process of manipulation in
which the stronger subjects are capable of setting the agenda, or sanctioning arguments that
are deemed inadmissible or unreasonable.
Situations of this type, in which experts, activists, politicians and ordinary citizens
are involved (formally) on equal terms, are very frequent. An illuminating report comes
from direct observation of some Agenda 21 forums held in the city of Antalya (Doğanay,
2004). The researcher notes that, from the moment when the debate started, there was a
marked difference between experts and bureaucrats on one hand and ordinary citizens on
the other: the latter ‘introduced themselves and greeted the other participants at the
beginning …. However, the experts or bureaucrats neither introduced themselves to the
public, nor greeted the public. Because of the identification between their expert positions
and personal identities, the experts constructed their authority as unquestioned and
acknowledged their privileged position’ (ivi, p. 739). The possibility to take the floor was
likewise influenced by participants’ status: ‘in the meetings where the males, experts,
bureaucrats and the aged participants composed the majority, the females, the ‘non-
privileged’ citizens and younger participants avoided speaking and hardly got a turn, even
if they dared to. The moderator or other male participants mostly interrupted (…)
Furthermore, discourses oriented towards women’s action, which focused on acting
together, had difficulties in accommodating the conflictual, abstract, argumentative styles
developed by the expert, bureaucrat and male participants’ (ivi, p. 740). The author
1
This unbalance is likely to be less dramatic when people expressing ‘suspension of the judgment’ type of
positions are involved. Their presence can be helpful in every kind of deliberation. I can add that the
argumentative capabilities are likely to derive more from the ‘reflectiveness’ than from the ‘degree of
definition” of the entry positions.
17
concludes that ‘deliberative procedures in working groups result in disregarding or
rendering worthless the alternative views that challenge the established framing of the
discussion. Different status perceptions of participants and the mechanisms of exclusion
internal to the process generate a discursive closure that limits the democratic
comprehensiveness of deliberative experiences’ (ivi, p. 741).
External inclusion (i.e. people’s access to the forum) can conceal an internal
exclusion, which is the product of those discursive mechanisms through which people are
refused the ‘effective opportunity to influence the thinking of others’ (Young, 2000, p. 55).
In this context, the criticism that has been aimed at deliberation, as a potentially
discriminatory practice based on an imbalance between linguistic skills and, in the last
analysis, on inequality, appears to be completely justified. My standpoint is that this
criticism should not be addressed simply and solely ‘against deliberation’ (Sanders, 1997),
but rather against that particular form of deliberation that is the asymmetrical conversation.
In situations of symmetrical deliberation, these risks are - as we have seen - much smaller.
Type f: Oratory model
When asymmetrical deliberation takes the oratory form, the situation changes
radically. Here we are in a less restricted environment in which no-one claims the
effective parity among participants. In the oratory model, the distinction between those
who speak to the public (with determined and reflective initial positions) and those who
listen (most probably with less defined and less reflective initial positions) is clear and
generally accepted. Because the listeners are given the power to take the final decision by
voting, for the orators the entire game consists of using sufficiently convincing arguments
to persuade the majority of the audience to take their side. The participants/spectators have
the same expectation. They take up a listening pose to understand how they should side
when the oratory duel concludes.
In contemporary society, the commonest example of oratory deliberation is the
public meeting. From the standpoint of modern theories of deliberation, the meeting
model is not a good example. This is not only because it lends itself to demagogy, to the
orators’ use of insincere and strategic arguments, but also because it limits other
participants to the passive role of spectator, from which only at the end, but exclusively
through voting, are they released. It is significant that the participatory approaches
elaborated over the last few decades systematically distance themselves from this model,
aiming rather to design deliberative settings in which participants face one another directly
18
in small groups in acceptable conditions of parity. The most visible example is the
technique of the 21
st
Century Town Meeting (www.americaspeaks.org) that enables
thousands of people to meet in a single place to tackle a common theme. Participants are
not relegated to anonymous seats in the audience, in front of the orators’ stage (as in the
Athenian ekklesia, or in the 18
th
-century town meetings) but are arranged in small groups
within the hall, helped by facilitators, and can communicate together through computers
connected in a network. In other words, the meeting model has been redesigned and
broken up, so that deliberation based on conversation predominates.
Modern supporters of the oratory model object, though, that in the contemporary
world deliberation is still essentially based on rhetorical confrontation. The oratory model
lends itself better to explaining what happens in real decision-making: it is less demanding
and more realistic (Yack, 2006). Furthermore, it presents a fundamental advantage over
the conversation model: that of placing antagonism at the centre of deliberation. Bernard
Manin (2005) observes that processes of the discursive and dialogic type (i.e.
conversations) may produce disappointing results, since interaction among the participants,
may produce conformism or strengthen initial convictions. For deliberation to take place it
is not enough to open a discussion among differing opinions. It is essential that
participants be faced with a clear-cut contraposition, through which all the pros and cons
are made explicit. In this sense, the oratory model offers better guarantees, because
although it does not allow the participants to interact together, it does give them a clear
picture of the terms of the controversy. Antagonism, even without dialogue, is preferable
to discussion without antagonism. Discussion ‘is not the core of deliberation’ (Manin,
2005, p. 190). Or, as is observed by Urfalino (2005a, p. 55), a close relationship exists
between debate (débat) and struggle (combat).
In reality, the two models can perfectly well be integrated together (as indeed is
suggested by Manin). There is nothing to prevent the deliberative process from being
subdivided into two separate phases: an antagonistic phase in which stakeholders or
experts express their contrasting positions in front of the meeting, and a dialogic phase in
which the participants meet for discussion among themselves. In this way ‘[the]
participants make their choices based on the arguments they have listened to, but also on
the arguments they have exchanged. The decision results from confronting reasons, and
not only through aggregating preferences. But the meeting will also have weighed the pros
and the cons of its decision, which a simple discussion would not have been able to ensure’
(Manin, 2005, p. 191). We may add that this mixed model reflects very closely the
19
millenary structure of the criminal trial, and nor is it particularly dissimilar from recent
experiments, such as citizens’ juries and deliberative pollings, that separate the phase
during which arguments are expounded from that in which the participants reason among
themselves.
Conclusions: types of deliberation and institutional design
Most accounts of deliberation miss to specify the contexts to which they apply: who
the participants are, what is the degree of definition and the reflectiveness of their
positions, how and under what rules is the debate carried on. At the same time, critics of
deliberation emphasize the faults of dialogic processes, but do not clarify the
circumstances that make those risks more or less probable. In this article I showed that a
possible way of distinguishing among different deliberative contexts takes the nature of
participants’ starting positions as reference point. This approach enabled me to determine
six ideal types of deliberation (four of the symmetrical type and two of the asymmetrical
type) and to show that each of those types is associated to different forms of deliberation
and different risks of degeneration.
This analysis has also some prescriptive implications. It offers some elements
through which to evaluate the functioning of different deliberative processes and to cast
some light on the risks they run. This may help to understand which institutional correction
might be introduced in various circumstances to obtain better results. On this ground, the
analysis expounded above suggests some final considerations.
First and foremost, not all deliberative processes are equally capable of guiding
participants towards a constructive and not manipulated dialogue, in view of achieving a
common position. Of the six types of deliberation, the best configuration is that in which
participants have a good understanding of the issue but are willing to suspend their
judgment. This may appear an obvious conclusion, even a self-evident truth, but we must
remember that the condition of ‘suspension of judgment’ is – at least in part – the product
of the specific institutional framework within which the deliberation takes place. It may
seem improbable that we could reproduce these frameworks in other contexts, but it is
nevertheless a hypothesis on which to work.
The worst configuration is that of the ‘asymmetrical conversation’, since
participants whose positions are more reflective and resolute happen to be in open
advantage with regard to their lay counterparts; they are in condition to manipulate the
agenda, guiding the terms of the debate and controlling its outcome. It might be objected
20
that, in deliberative forums in the real world, some degree of asymmetry is unavoidable: it
is most unlikely that there will be complete balance among participants. But this
circumstance constitutes a problem, since asymmetry puts at risk the very function of
deliberation. This means that the best deliberative settings are those in which asymmetry
is reduced or kept as far as possible under control, for example by separating stakeholders
from ordinary citizens, structuring the process, using facilitators to ensure that everyone
can take the floor without prevarication, favoring the development of debate, and so on. It
may be said that the chief purpose of a deliberative design is just that of combating the
most apparent and the most risky forms of asymmetry.
The other four models display both vices and virtues. An awareness of the
characteristics of each may help us to determine the most appropriate institutional
remedies. Mechanisms that work in some deliberative contexts might be transposed to
others with the aim of reducing the risk of undesired drift. For example, structuring
deliberative processes and providing assistance from neutral figures, which are a constant
in contexts where ‘uncertainty of judgment’ prevails, might be extended – appropriately
fine-tuning them – to debates among professionals of the ‘certainty of judgment’ type. Or
again: the positive effects of antagonism (characteristic of the oratory model) may, with
appropriate institutional strategies, be introduced into other situations (above all those
characterized by ‘uncertainty of judgment’).
In contemporary societies, public decisions are formulated in an increasing number
of decision-making arenas where actors of different types interact together to tackle
common problems (Papadopoulos and Warin, 2007). There is no public policy that will
not, sooner or later, be managed through negotiating tables, meetings between
administrators and citizens, specifically constructed settings to settle conflicts and
stimulate co-operation toward integrated plans or projects. When we talk of governance as
opposed to government, we are referring to the proliferation of discursive arenas of this
type. Scholars’ increasing interest towards deliberation is not a chance development: it
reflects the increased interaction that is becoming necessary to make any type of public
decision. To recognize the different nature of deliberative processes may thus be a
significant step in designing specific institutional settings capable, at least to some extent,
of governing them and holding in check their possible negative effects.
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