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'Hope for Democracy' recognizes the primary problems that plague contemporary democracy and offers a solution. It tells the story of one civic innovation, the Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR), which asks a small group of citizens to analyze a ballot measure and then provide recommendations on that measure for the public to use when voting. It relies on narratives of the civic reformers who developed and implemented the CIR and the citizens who participated in the initial review. Coupled with extensive research, the text uses these stories to describe how the review came into being and what impacts it has on participants and the public.

This article examines the subjective experience of cognitive and behavioural change following public deliberation in two different nations. It examines short- and long-term survey data from two highly structured deliberative forums – the 2009 Australian Citizens' Parliament and the 2010 Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review. Results showed increases in reported deliberative and internal efficacy, some measures of external efficacy, and communicative and community-based engagement, though participants rarely reported increases in institutionalised political participation. Participants in an online process in Australia reported limited increases in their internal and external efficacy and communicative engagement. These findings suggest that well-structured deliberative governance can transform the meaning and practice of citizenship.

Deliberative processes can alter participants' attitudes and behavior, but deliberative minipublics connected to macro-level discourse may also influence the attitudes of non-participants. We theorize that changes in political efficacy occur when non-participants become aware of a minipublic and utilize its deliberative outputs in their decision making during an election. Statewide survey data on the 2010 and 2012 Oregon Citizens' Initiative Reviews tested the link between awareness and use of the Citizens' Initiative Review Statements and statewide changes in internal and external political efficacy. Results from a longitudinal 2010 panel survey show that awareness of the Citizens' Initiative Reviews increases respondents' external efficacy, whereas use of the Citizens' Initiative Review Statements on ballot measures increases respondents' internal efficacy. A cross-sectional 2012 survey found the same associations. Moreover, the 2010 survey showed that greater exposure to—and confidence in—deliberative outputs was associated with higher levels of both internal and external efficacy.

Bien que les mini-publics délibératifs connaissent une popularité grandissante, peu ont été formellement institutionnalisés dans des systèmes de gouvernement. L'Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) est un mini-public auquel il a été accordé une telle légitimité par son adoption comme composante du processus de référendum d'initiative citoyenne en Oregon. La CIR connecte le travail du mini-public à l'ensemble du corps civique en rédigeant un Citizens' Statement sur lequel les votants peuvent s'appuyer pour déterminer leur vote lors de référendums d'initiative citoyenne. Cet article raconte l'histoire de la CIR, de son périple vers la légitimité institutionnelle et explore comment ce dispositif a été promu et mis en place dans de nouveaux contextes.

The interplay between emotion and reason is of interest to scholars of deliberative democracy, yet it has been little analysed. Examining a 2010 Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) in Oregon, USA, we find (1) that the participation of chief petitioners, advocates and witnesses is conducive to the expression of emotions and (2) that, aided by moderators, panellists remain focused on clarifying key points and writing their Citizens' Statement. We conclude that the competitive–collaborative structure of the CIR offers opportunities for emotional expression and reasoned deliberation while productively combining these important forms of discourse.

Deliberative democratic theory has proposed the use of mini-publics to discern a more reflective public opinion, which can then be conveyed to policymakers or back to the wider public. In 2009, the legislature in the State of Oregon (USA) created one such process in the Citizens' Initiative Review to help the public make informed choices on statewide ballot measures. This study investigated how the public conceptualizes and assesses the Citizens' Statements that Citizens' Initiative Review panels place in the statewide Voters' Pamphlet. We pose a series of research questions concerning how the public perceives the role of the Citizens' Initiative Review in initiative elections. We investigate those questions with usability testing sessions held in the final weeks before the 2014 election. Forty interviews were conducted in Portland, Oregon, and 20 were held in Denver, CO, where a pilot version of the Citizens' Initiative Review was held. Online survey data collected in Oregon and Colorado followed up on the themes that emerged from the usability tests to obtain more general findings about these electorates' views of elections and the Citizens' Initiative Review. Key results showed that voters found the Citizens' Initiative Review Statements to be a useful alternative source of information, although they required more information about the Citizens' Initiative Review to make robust trust judgments about the process. Voters were uncertain of the value of the vote tally provided by Citizens' Initiative Review panelists, but reading the Citizens' Initiative Review Statement inspired some to vote on ballot measures they might have skipped.

Deliberative theorists posit that highly structured face‐to‐face policy discussions can transcend ideological differences. By contrast, cultural cognitive theorists argue that people's cultural orientations constrain policy‐relevant information processing and forestall the public's ability to reach consensus. Two studies examine whether deliberative processes can span divergent cultural orientations. The first assesses a prominent deliberative forum programme's capacity to frame policy solutions across the quadrants of a two‐dimensional cultural grid. The second study examines whether deliberation generates policy recommendations that transcend biases to yield cross‐cultural agreement. Results show that public deliberation can encompass multiple cultural orientations and encourage participants to look beyond their biases to discover common ground. When it comes to framing and implementing deliberative public forums, cultural orientations appear to be surmountable obstacles.

The Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) is a deliberative process that has been used in the United States to involve panels of citizens in producing balanced and easily understandable accounts of proposed ballot measures and their potential effects. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the CIR process is shaped by evaluative framing in which the rational component cannot be clearly separated from the emotive base of assigning responsibility. We analyze the argumentative dynamic of advocates' presentations during the 2010 CIR on Measure 73 and discuss emotional claims as products of narrative structures that define problem situations. We explore how the distinction between manipulative and valid emotional claims within the context of public deliberation can be made with the help of three categories of analysis: Themes, Ideals, and Scenarios.

The Oregon Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) distinguishes itself by linking a small deliberative body to the larger electoral process. Since 2010, CIR citizen panels have been a legislatively authorized part of Oregon general elections to promote a more informed electorate. The CIR gathers a representative cross-section of two dozen voters for 5 days of deliberation on a single ballot measure. The process culminates in the citizen panelists writing a Citizens' Statement that the secretary of state inserts into the official Voters' Pamphlet sent to each registered voter. This study analyzes the effect of one such Citizens' Statement from the 2010 general election. In Study 1, an online survey experiment found that reading this Statement influenced Oregon voters' values trade-offs, issue knowledge, and vote intentions. In Study 2, regression analysis of a cross-sectional phone survey found a parallel association between the Statement's use and voting choices but yielded some mixed findings.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: Deliberative Design and Innovation -- Introduction -- 1 Origins of the First Citizens' Parliament -- 2 Putting Citizens in Charge: Comparing the Australian Citizens' Parliament and the Australia 2020 Summit -- 3 Choose Me: The Challenges of National Random Selection -- 4 Grafting an Online Parliament onto a Face-to-Face Process -- Part II: Exploring Deliberation -- Introduction -- 5 Listening Carefully to the Citizens' Parliament: A Narrative Account -- 6 Deliberative Design and Storytelling in the Australian Citizens' Parliament -- 7 What Counts as Deliberation? Comparing Participant and Observer Ratings -- 8 Hearing All Sides? Soliciting and Managing Different Viewpoints in Deliberation -- 9 Sit Down and Speak Up: Stability and Change in Group Participation -- Part III: The Flow of Beliefs and Ideas -- Introduction -- 10 Changing Orientations Toward Australian Democracy -- 11 Staying Focused: Tracing the Flow of Ideas from the Online Parliament to Canberra -- 12 Evidence of Peer Influence in the Citizens' Parliament -- Part IV: Facilitation and Organizer Effects -- Introduction -- 13 The Unsung Heroes of a Deliberative Process: Reflections on the Role of Facilitators at the Citizens' Parliament -- 14 Are They Doing What They Are Supposed to Do? Assessing the Facilitating Process of the Australian Citizens' Parliament -- 15 Supporting the Citizen Parliamentarians: Mobilizing Perspectives and Informing Discussion -- 16 Investigation of (and Introspection on) Organizer Bias 218 -- Part V: Impacts and Reflections -- Introduction -- 17 Participant Accounts of Political Transformation -- 18 Becoming Australian: Forging a National Identity Through Deliberation -- 19 Mediated Meta-deliberation: Making Sense of the Australian Citizens' Parliament -- 20 How Not to Introduce Deliberative Democracy: The 2010 Citizens' Assembly on Climate Change Proposal -- Conclusion: Theoretical and Practical Implications of the Citizens' Parliament Experience -- List of Contributors -- Index