I start off with posting the last rewrite of the outline of my thesis:

Thesis outline

I start out with a belief that deliberation is important to democracy and that our current systems of democracy are in several ways detrimental to good deliberation. I believe that this affects the quality and outcome of political decisions without actually empowering the people in the way supposed by much of current thought.

I do however realize that my beliefs are not very important to anyone but myself. My beliefs have no relevance to scientific debate if I cannot transform them from beliefs into complete scientific arguments. I am furthermore of the impression that current thought on deliberation, although far advanced, suffers a lack of credence in the social sciences because of weak empirical underpinnings.

This has led me to single out three research topics, each of which will be devoted a separate section of this thesis. The topics are separate and will be handled with different methodical approaches, but will hopefully constitute a meaningful totality. My main goal is to effectively argue that deliberation is important to democracy and to contribute in the search of effective ways to strengthen that idea through empirical research.

I) Why deliberation is important in representative democracy

The first research question is the simplest, but also easily the most controversial. But it is my opinion that one cannot start a theoretical debate without first asking “why?” What makes this a relevant topic of research? That is what I will try to answer in the first part of my paper.

I will not try to argue that deliberative democracy is a completely different type of democracy, one that is superior to and inconsistent with the current trend of liberal representative democracy. Quite the contrary, I will try to argue that deliberation is neither inconsistent with liberalism nor the ideals of representative democracy, but are in fact necessary parts of any working system of democracy. Following this I will not argue for the overthrow of the modern style of democracy, rather just to highlight some potential problems so that they may in the future be properly addressed, and some of the potential harmful effects remedied.

This section will mostly be a theoretical argument, drawing upon the classics of democratic thought, the major liberal thinkers and the recent day theorists concerned with deliberation.

II) How some aspects of our current institutions serve to discourage deliberation

Although I will not argue the overthrow of the current institutions of democracy, I will try to show how the current system doesn’t facilitate good deliberation, but in some instances actually discourages it. In particular I will examine the formation and power of political parties, and how we can expect these to have a particularly detrimental effect on deliberation within the political system.

This section will also to a large degree be theoretical in focus. I will however try to supplement theory with existing empirical research to the degree this is available.

III) How deliberation may be studied empirically

Studies of deliberation, despite having spawned a rather rich theoretical literature over the last few decades seem to have had a disproprtionally weak impact on the mainstream of political science. I attribute much of this to a view of deliberation as a utopian concept that has so far belonged mostly to the realm of philosophy with too little empirical research. In particular, its perceived non-quantitative nature seems to be at odds with the dominant naturalistic methodoligcal paradigm of current political science. This thesis aims to remedy some of that through exploring possibilities for empirical studies of deliberation.

Using two Norwegian student political bodies as the basis, I will apply a method developed by Jürg Steiner et al. in their book Deliberative politics in action, the most promising method yet to see extensive empirical testing. This comparative study will be used as a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of this method for testing the effect of political parties on deliberation as well as its general applicability to studies of deliberation.

“Society is like a ship, and everyone must be prepared to take the helm.”
(Henrik Ibsen, An enemy of the people,my translation.)

Those of us who hold deliberation (in any form) to be an important prerequisite for informed decision making, would also be interested in the topic of how deliberative functions in society can be improved.

James Fishkin has been one of the most quoted political scientists concerned with the topic of deliberation. He’s a normative scientist, concerned with the benefits that can be reaped from encouraging more democratic debate throughout the population. He has proposed new democratic institutions, such as deliberative opinion polls, or more grandly the thought of a universal “Deliberation Day” (Ackerman & Fishkin 2003). But both of these rest on one very important assumption, that  “[...]most citizens would be glad of the opportunity to play a serious role in important historical events” (Fishkin 1991:9). And this is an assumption Fishkin seems to take lightly. But is it realistic?

John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse  have done extensive research on what processes American voters actually want. And one of their conclusions is that “People want to turn political matters over to somebody else because they do not want to be involved themselves[...]“(Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002:85). In general, people want “ordinary people” to have more of a say, but they themselves don’t wish to be involved, and prefer to be left alone (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002:129). They sum this up as follows:

“The last thing people want is to be more involved in political decision-making: They do not want to make political decisions themselves; they do not want to provide much input to those who are assigned to make these decisions; and they would rather not know the details of the decision-making process [...]This does not mean that people think no mechanism for government accountability is necessary; they just do not want the mechanism to come into play except in unusual circumstances” (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002:1-2)

People are concerned that they might be taken advantage of by special interest groups and elected officials that reap personal gains at the expense of society. Subsequently they find support for more public involvement to be high when it is presented as the only option to rule by a self-centered elite. But that doesn’t mean they want to be continually involved. The ideal government is according to the common man one that governs with the best interest of society in mind, but that doesn’t require much involvement from its citizens – a non-self-serving elite (Hibbing & Theiss-Morse 2002:130). Interestingly enough, Fishkin (1991:54-55) himself makes a similar point – that the public doesn’t seem to have a wish for participating as much as possible in democracy. He cites a survey that quite clearly shows that increases in direct majoritarian control through plebiscite actually seems to reduce the voter turnout and make the public less involved.

This is a challenge to theories of rational behaviour. Given that politics have an impact on our lives, why should we not want to decide as much as possible? One reason may be that we find our own impact on politics to be so little that it doesn’t justify our own involvement. Spending five hours in political processes won’t get us five hours’ worth of more favourable outcomes for us personally. And politicians should be very bad indeed to justify in personal gain for you to give up a major part of the life you have chosen for yourself and go into politics full time.

This basic assumption seems to be something many political theorists forget to take into account. Most people are happy leaving decisions to a system they trust. And I believe the kind of systems Fishkin suggest presupposes a high level of trust that your opinions will be taken seriously.  If this is true, what we have to start looking at is how to improve trust in politicians and how to improve the deliberative processes inside the governments we already have.

Sources

Ackerman, Bruce, & James S. Fishkin (2003) “Deliberation Day”. In James S. Fishkin & Peter Laslett (Eds.), Debating Deliberative Democracy. Malden: Blackwell, 7-31

Fishkin, James S. (1991) Democracy and Deliberation. New Directions for Democratic Reform, New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hibbing, John R., & Elizabeth Theiss-Morse (2002) Stealth democracy: Americans’ beliefs about how government should work, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.