Suchergebnisse

Jane J. Mansbridge, Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, and Martha McCoy, Executive Director of Everyday Democracy, discuss deliberative equity and equality in theory and practice. They identify potential tensions and trade-offs between the two values and between these values and other deliberative aims. They discuss how practitioners have attempted to promote equal and equitable deliberative processes and the challenges of measuring these concepts in deliberative settings. Their conversation provides insights into best practices for enabling marginalized groups to engage in deliberation and the persistent challenges that remain. Together, Mansbridge and McCoy outline opportunities for future theoretical and empirical progress in better understanding and ultimately building effective deliberative groups, institutions, and systems.

This article introduces the special issue focused on equality and equity in deliberative democracy. The essay proposes some initial working definitions of equity and equality and offers reasons why scholars and practitioners should attend to both. We outline the basic structure of the issue's three sections and preview the contributors' articles, with special attention to the opportunities and the challenges of achieving equality and equity within the deliberative system.

Jane J. Mansbridge, Charles F. Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values, and Martha McCoy, Executive Director of Everyday Democracy, discuss deliberative equity and equality in theory and practice. They identify potential tensions and trade-offs between the two values and between these values and other deliberative aims. They discuss how practitioners have attempted to promote equal and equitable deliberative processes and the challenges of measuring these concepts in deliberative settings. Their conversation provides insights into best practices for enabling marginalized groups to engage in deliberation and the persistent challenges that remain. Together, Mansbridge and McCoy outline opportunities for future theoretical and empirical progress in better understanding and ultimately building effective deliberative groups, institutions, and systems.

There is growing appreciation for the value of holding enclave dialogue and deliberation among marginalized peoples in their own affinity groups, as one stage in a larger conversation with the broader public or with public officials. These enclaves may be disempowered by enduring political inequalities, or in relation to a particular issue under discussion, or by the act of deliberation itself. Recent research and practice has demonstrated that well-structured dialogue and deliberation in enclaves can increase the inclusion, participation, and influence of members of society who have been excluded from public discourse, while avoiding the dangers of coercion, sectarianism, conformism, error, and illegitimacy. We review normative arguments and empirical evidence for the judicious use of affinity group enclaves to advance equity. We show multiple ways in which enclaves can be incorporated into democratic projects and processes that also include discussion among more representative samples of the public and with government. We offer design principles for affinity group discussion, which are illustrated by a recent series of dialogues on Facing Racism in a Diverse Nation, organized in the U.S. by Everyday Democracy. Finally, we discuss conditions in which enclave deliberation is most likely to be needed to create equity and suggest an agenda for future research.

Online forums pose unique challenges and opportunities for creating equitable public discussions. In this interview, Steven Clift, Executive Director and Founder of E-Democracy.org, shares lessons learned about how to attract new immigrants and refugees to place-based online communities, seeding and facilitating discussions among ethnically diverse residents, and fostering civil discourse. He emphasizes that building a thriving and diverse neighborhood forum online depends on providing spaces where people can discuss community life, exchange free goods, and talk about civic issues in ways that arise organically from people's everyday concerns, rather than recruiting people to a primarily political forum, which tends to attract privileged residents whose voices often dominate in offline politics. Clift also reflects on the implications for equity of the changing technological landscape for online deliberations, from the rise of Yahoo! Groups to Facebook Groups to commercial neighborhood sites, such as Nextdoor.com. As the Internet becomes integrated into all aspects of everyday life, Clift's insights can help us to envision how inclusive online forums can be incorporated into many kinds of public engagement.

American school boards, parent teacher associations, and other school forums are crucial sites for participatory and deliberative democracy, yet they often involve debilitating inequities of power among school officials and parents, adults and students, and parents from more and less privileged backgrounds. In this interview, John Landesman, a Senior Associate at Everyday Democracy, discusses how he addresses power differences in dialogues aimed at improving parental participation and student learning in a diverse school district outside Washington, DC. Landesman argues that developing a robust equity strategy from the start is the only way to meet the aims of dialogue that strives to include a variety of perspectives. Landesman also shares insights into how to practice equity at each stage of organizing a dialogue, from inclusive recruitment and retention of participants, to forum design and facilitation, to evaluating and implementing the group's plans. Like many contributors to this issue, he argues that specific equity strategies should flow from the goals of a particular dialogue. He also discusses how Everyday Democracy has employed affinity group discussions, which create safe places for members of non-dominant groups to speak with each other as one stage of a community-wide dialogue.

This article introduces the special issue focused on equality and equity in deliberative democracy. The essay proposes some initial working definitions of equity and equality and offers reasons why scholars and practitioners should attend to both. We outline the basic structure of the issue's three sections and preview the contributors' articles, with special attention to the opportunities and the challenges of achieving equality and equity within the deliberative system.

Deliberative democracy grounds its legitimacy largely in the ability of speakers to participate on equal terms. Yet theorists and practitioners have struggled with how to establish deliberative equality in the face of stark differences of power in liberal democracies. Designers of innovative civic forums for deliberation often aim to neutralize inequities among participants through proportional inclusion of disempowered speakers and discourses. In contrast, others argue that democratic equality is best achieved when disempowered groups deliberate in their own enclaves (interest groups, parties, and movements) before entering the broader public sphere. Borrowing from each perspective, the authors argue that there are strong reasons to incorporate enclave deliberation among the disempowered within civic forums. They support this claim by presenting case study evidence showing that participants in such forums can gain some of the same benefits of deliberation found in more heterogeneous groups (e.g., political knowledge, efficacy and trust), can consider a diversity of viewpoints rather than falling into groupthink and polarization, and can persuade external stakeholders of the legitimacy of the group's deliberations.

Flow theory offers an individualistic explanation of media enjoyment, while cooperative learning theory posits a social explanation for enhanced learning in groups. This classroom-based experimental study examines whether game players can experience both conditions and the influence of each on several types of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. We find that high quality cooperative learning contributed to acquiring civic knowledge and skills. In contrast, flow was more influential for developing dispositions to empathy and interest in learning more about the game topics. Thus, we conclude that players can experience flow while engaged in cooperative learning, but that these two conditions may support different kinds of civic learning.

Deliberative democracy grounds its legitimacy largely in the ability of speakers to participate on equal terms. Yet theorists and practitioners have struggled with how to establish deliberative equality in the face of stark differences of power in liberal democracies. Designers of innovative civic forums for deliberation often aim to neutralize inequities among participants through proportional inclusion of disempowered speakers and discourses. In contrast, others argue that democratic equality is best achieved when disempowered groups deliberate in their own enclaves (interest groups, parties, and movements) before entering the broader public sphere. Borrowing from each perspective, the authors argue that there are strong reasons to incorporate enclave deliberation among the disempowered within civic forums. They support this claim by presenting case study evidence showing that participants in such forums can gain some of the same benefits of deliberation found in more heterogeneous groups (e.g., political knowledge, efficacy and trust), can consider a diversity of viewpoints rather than falling into groupthink and polarization, and can persuade external stakeholders of the legitimacy of the group's deliberations.

Digital games and simulations (DG&S) could help mitigate inequities in civic education and participation, which are found in many contemporary democracies. Yet incorporating DG&S into the curriculum may reinforce or introduce inequities for students who are less engaged by game-based learning. A quasi-experimental study of 301 U.S. high school students in social studies classes examined whether prior academic performance, civic engagement, civic game play experience and gender affected how (and which) students benefit from playing a life simulation game. Dependent variables included several civic dispositions: justice-oriented citizenship norms and interest in politics, news, and global issues. The simulation game especially enhanced political interest among lower performing students and those with fewer informational resources. Although prior civic activity and civic gaming experience provided advantages for some outcomes, for the most part, gender did not. We conclude that life simulation games have the potential to advance both equity and excellence in civic education, engaging males and females, and advantaged and disadvantaged students, and we theorize about the reasons why.

Scholars of political socialization are paying increasing attention to how the Internet might help cure the civic disengagement of youth. This content analysis of a sample of 73 U.S.-based civic Web sites for youth introduces a framework for evaluating Web sites' strategies for fostering active communication for citizenship. We offer the first systematic assessment of the extent to which a broad range of Web sites aim to develop young people's abilities to use information and communication technology (ICT) as a vehicle for civic participation and to engage with ICT as a policy domain that encompasses issues (such as freedom of speech and intellectual property rights) that shape the conditions for popular sovereignty online. The study finds low levels of interactive features (such as message boards) that allow young people to share editorial control by offering their own content. In addition, few sites employ active pedagogical techniques (such as simulations) that research suggests are most effective at developing civic knowledge, skills, and participation. We also find little attention to ICT policy issues, which could engage budding citizens in debates over the formative conditions for political communication in the information age. We conclude with suggestions for civic Web site designers and hypotheses for user studies to test.