Experimenting with Deliberative Mini-Publics

Session Submission Type: Virtual Created Panel

Session Description

In both theory and practice, deliberating mini-publics have been the focus of much recent work on deliberative democracy. Yet there are many open questions about what they contribute. Do their effects last? Can their apparently salutary effects on their participants be scaled to much larger populations outside the random samples? How precisely should they be composed? These questions, and others related to them, are illuminated by the four field experiments discussed on this panel. Two of them, Siu and Wakao in Tokyo and Arneson in Norway, employ an “automated moderator” technology to conduct Deliberative Polls. This kind of technology sheds light on how deliberation can be scaled online to larger numbers of participants and to more events. The follow up to “America in One Room” a year later with both treatment and control groups sheds light on the long-term effects of deliberation in a national field experiment in the US. The results help address the question of whether spreading deliberation might have lasting as well as widespread effects. Grönlund and Herne’s paper from Turku, Finland experiments with a way to connect politicians to the mini-public, by including them within the sample in an online experiment. Progress with deliberative mini-publics depends on a dialogue that is both empirical and normative. This panel attempts to contribute to both.

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / Democratic Innovations

Individual Presentations

• Can Deliberation Have Lasting Effects? - James S. Fishkin, Stanford University; Alice Siu, Stanford University; Larry Diamond, Stanford University; Norman Bradburn, University of Chicago; Valentin Bolotnyy, Hoover Institution

• Involving Politicians in Deliberative Mini-Publics - Kimmo Gronlund, Abo Akademi University; Kaisa Herne, University of Turku

• Deliberative Polling with Automated Moderation: A First Application in Japan - Alice Siu, Stanford University; Shinya Wakao

• Deliberative Polling During a Pandemic - Sveinung Arnesen, NORCE - Norwegian Research Centre

Chair

• Helene E. Landemore Yale University

Discussants

• John Gastil Pennsylvania State University

• Jonathan Collins Brown University