Deliberative Policy Making

Aims

Deliberative policy making seeks to reach policy decisions that are both democratically legitimate and technically sound. Especially as applied to environmental regulation, theorists such as Walter Baber and Robert Bartlett have defended the substantive claim that expanding deliberation in policy making increases the ecological rationality of decisions. Unlike traditional, hierarchical forms of administrative decision making, deliberative, horizontal methods are said to be more flexible and robust in the face of the epistemic complexity and uncertainty that characterizes such policy problems in the “network society.” By revitalizing the role of nonexpert citizens in policy inquiry and generating policy-relevant information on as wide a social basis as possible, deliberative policy making helps guard against closing off debate prematurely and discarding policy alternatives.

A normatively demanding conception of public deliberation, which theorists argue is superior to pluralist bargaining, is said to promote these aims. Public deliberation as conceived by theorists such as James Bohman is not merely talk; rather, it involves the exchange of reasons aimed at evaluating alternative proposals for action. Citizens submit their ideas and beliefs for discussion and criticism by fellow citizens, making it less likely that selfish or poorly thought-out proposals will survive the debate. Note that public deliberation requires a considerable level of freedom and equality: inclusion of everyone affected by a decision, substantial political equality including equal opportunities to participate in deliberation, equality in methods of decision making and setting the agenda, free and open exchange of information and reasons sufficient to acquire an understanding of both the issue in question and the opinion of others. These conditions are much more restrictive than the standards usually applied to political debate and difficult to achieve in practice.

Efforts to adapt such principles of public deliberation for practical use have yielded public consultation techniques that go beyond government agencies merely seeking public input from individual citizens or firms. Rather, their goal is to generate high-quality deliberation conceived as dialogue among the participants. These techniques include the consensus conferences pioneered in Denmark, the deliberative opinion polls developed by James Fishkin, collaborative governance schemes involving multiple stakeholders, and the citizen jury. The next section classifies these varieties of deliberative policy making, using a simple typology.

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