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Can the people deliberate to set the agenda for direct democracy in large scale states? How might such an institution work? The 2011 California Deliberative Poll piloted a solution to this problem helping to produce proposals that went to the ballot and also to the legislature. The paper reports on how this pilot worked and what it suggests about a possible institution to solve the deliberative agenda setting problem. The legislative proposal passed the legislature but the ballot proposition (Prop 31) failed. However, we show that the proposals actually deliberated on by the people might well have passed if not encumbered by additional elements not deliberated on by the public that drew opposition. The paper ends with an outline of how the process of deliberative agenda setting for the initiative might work, vetting proposals once every two years that could get on the ballot for a greatly reduced cost in signature collections. Adding deliberation to the agenda setting process would allow for a thoughtful and informed public will formation to determine the agenda for direct democracy.

Can the people deliberate to set the agenda for direct democracy in large scale states? How might such an institution work? The 2011 California Deliberative Poll piloted a solution to this problem helping to produce proposals that went to the ballot and also to the legislature. The paper reports on how this pilot worked and what it suggests about a possible institution to solve the deliberative agenda setting problem. The legislative proposal passed the legislature but the ballot proposition (Prop 31) failed. However, we show that the proposals actually deliberated on by the people might well have passed if not encumbered by additional elements not deliberated on by the public that drew opposition. The paper ends with an outline of how the process of deliberative agenda setting for the initiative might work, vetting proposals once every two years that could get on the ballot for a greatly reduced cost in signature collections. Adding deliberation to the agenda setting process would allow for a thoughtful and informed public will formation to determine the agenda for direct democracy.

Deeply divided societies would seem to be infertile ground for mass deliberation. 'Enclave deliberation', among people on the same side, may well occur. But people on opposing sides may not trust one another, they may not listen with an open mind, or they may regard the other side's arguments as insincere cover for sectional interests. Perhaps, though, we underestimate their deliberative capacities? This article examines a deliberative poll (DP) in the Omagh area of Northern Ireland, a society having only recently emerged from protracted violence, reflecting and reinforcing the deep divide between Catholics and Protestants. The topic -- the future of the local schools -- was one on which many of the issues were heavily impinged by the Catholic-Protestant divide. We examine the extent to which a representative sample, including both Catholics and Protestants, was able to deliberate constructively and how the experience changed their policy attitudes and their opinions of one another. Adapted from the source document.

Deeply divided societies would seem to be infertile ground for mass deliberation. 'Enclave deliberation', among people on the same side, may well occur. But people on opposing sides may not trust one another, they may not listen with an open mind, or they may regard the other side's arguments as insincere cover for sectional interests. Perhaps, though, we underestimate their deliberative capacities? This article examines a deliberative poll (DP) in the Omagh area of Northern Ireland, a society having only recently emerged from protracted violence, reflecting and reinforcing the deep divide between Catholics and Protestants. The topic – the future of the local schools – was one on which many of the issues were heavily impinged by the Catholic–Protestant divide. We examine the extent to which a representative sample, including both Catholics and Protestants, was able to deliberate constructively and how the experience changed their policy attitudes and their opinions of one another.

AbstractDeliberation is widely believed to enhance democracy by helping to refine the 'public will', moving its participants' policy attitudes closer to their 'full-consideration' policy attitudes – those they would hypothetically hold with unlimited information, to which they gave unlimited reflection. Yet there have also been claims that the social dynamics involved generally 'homogenize' attitudes (decreasing their variance), 'polarize' them (moving their means toward the nearer extreme), or engender 'domination' (moving their overall means toward those of the attitudes held by the socially advantaged) – attitude changes that may often beawayfrom the participants' full-consideration attitudes and may thus distort rather than refine the public will. This article uses 2,601 group-issue pairs in twenty-one Deliberative Polls to examine these claims. Reassuringly, the results show no routine or strong homogenization, polarization, or domination. What little pattern there is suggests some faint homogenization, but also some faintmoderation(as opposed to polarization) andopposition(as opposed to domination) – all as is to be expected when the outside-world forces shaping pre-deliberation attitudes are slightly more centrifugal than centripetal. The authors lay out a theoretical basis for these expectations and interpretations and probe the study's results, highlighting, among other things, deliberation's role in undoing outside-world effects on pre-deliberation attitudes and the observed homogenization's, polarization's, and domination's dependence on deliberative design.