Suchergebnisse

The work of Crocco and her colleagues, "Deliberating Public Policy Issues with Adolescents," combines two important fields—deliberative democracy and discussion as a pedagogy—with a study of policy deliberations in three classrooms. Their article yields valuable insights. As the authors note, the results are disappointing. This may be because the students were not actually asked to deliberate, if "deliberation" means discussing in order to make a decision. After all, the students could not decide US policy on immigration. Their discussion was a kind of simulated deliberation. Evidence suggests that we may see better results from real deliberations that occur within student-led voluntary associations or from simulated deliberations in which the students role-play powerful decision-makers, rather than playing themselves in a discussion that has no political impact.

In this Introduction to the Symposium, we articulate a reframing of Larry Diamond's (2010) program of "liberation technology" around the idea of "deliberation technology." Although the liberation technology program has been useful in supplying dissidents with a basic communication infrastructure during the various revolutions of the 2011 Arab Spring, we briefly examine the cases of Tunisia and Egypt in order to show how deliberative vacuums have arisen after regime change. We then introduce each of the four Symposium submissions with the hopes that a program of deliberation technology might contribute to the strengthening of democratic practice around the world.

"Die Inklusion wirtschaftlicher Interessengruppen in den politischen Prozess stellt die repräsentative Demokratie vor das Problem, dass das Parlament bei wichtigen sozialen und ökonomischen Entscheidungen übergangen wird. Ausgangspunkt dieses Beitrags ist die Frage, ob Arrangements dieser Art legitimiert werden können als eine Form deliberativer Demokratie, in der Entscheidungen getroffen werden nach abwägender Beratung zwischen denen, die davon letztlich betroffen sind. Der empirische Teil bezieht sich auf die finnische Gesetzgebung zur Arbeitszeit in den 1990er Jahren. Die Fallstudie zeigt, dass die Repräsentanten der Interessengruppen bei der Kontroverse über die Arbeitszeitfrage von anfänglicher Bekundung zum vernünftigen Kompromiss zu verhärteten Positionen wechselten. Eine für die deliberative Demokratie ideale Annahme, dass die Beteiligten nach Beratung zu einem gemeinsamen Ergebnis fänden, blieb in diesem Fall unbestätigt. Wichtigste Schlussfolgerung ist, dass selbst wenn die Einbeziehung der ökonomischen Interessengruppen in den Politikprozess nach Kriterien der wirtschaftlichen Wohlfahrt und des sozialen Friedens legitimiert werden kann, bleibt es fraglich, ob ihre Inklusion mit den Kriterien der repräsentativen oder der deliberativen Demokratie übereinstimmen." (Autorenreferat)

Philosophical Deliberations continues Rescher's longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays. Notwithstanding their thematic diversity, these discussions exhibit a uniformity of method in addressing philosophical issues and a commonality of objective: the elucidation of philosophically pivotal ideas.

Deliberative und nicht-deliberative Verhandlungen -- Deliberation, Aggregation und epistemischer Fortschritt -- Strategische Wort-Wahl in der Politik -- Deliberation im Europäischen Parlament -- Indifferenz und Inkonsistenz als Moderatoren von räumlichen Framing-Effekten -- Die Ministerienaufteilung in Koalitionsregierungen.

In a liberal democracy, the evolution of political agendas and formation of policy involves deliberation: serious consideration of political issues. Modern day political participation is dependent on widespread deliberation supported by information and communication technologies, which also offer the potential to revitalize and transform citizen engagement in democracy. Although the majority of web 2.0 systems enable these discourses to some extent, government institutions commission and manage specialized deliberation systems (information systems designed to support participative discourse) intended to promote citizen engagement. The most common examples of these are political discussion forums. Though usually considered trivial adaptations of well-known technologies, these types of deliberative systems are often unsuccessful, and present a distinct set of design and management challenges. In this article we analyze the issues involved in establishing political deliberation systems under four headings: stakeholder engagement, web platform design, service management, political process re-shaping and evaluation and improvement. We review the existing literature and present a longitudinal case study: the Norwegian Demokratitorget (Democracy Square). We define key issues in each of the four areas which need to be understood in order to design and manage a successful net-based deliberation forum.

In this Introduction to the Symposium, we articulate a reframing of Larry Diamond's (2010) program of "liberation technology" around the idea of "deliberation technology." Although the liberation technology program has been useful in supplying dissidents with a basic communication infrastructure during the various revolutions of the 2011 Arab Spring, we briefly examine the cases of Tunisia and Egypt in order to show how deliberative vacuums have arisen after regime change. We then introduce each of the four Symposium submissions with the hopes that a program of deliberation technology might contribute to the strengthening of democratic practice around the world.