The Foundations of Deliberative Democracy: Empirical Research and Normative Implications

Description

Deliberative democracy is now an influential approach to the study of democracy and political behaviour. Its key proposition is that, in politics, it is not only power that counts, but good discussions and arguments too. This book examines the interplay between the normative and empirical aspects of the deliberative model of democracy. Jurg Steiner presents the main normative controversies in the literature on deliberation, including self-interest, civility and truthfulness. He then summarizes the empirical literature on deliberation and proposes methods by which the level of deliberation can be measured rather than just assumed. Steiner's empirical research is based in the work of various research groups, including experiments with ordinary citizens in the deeply divided societies of Colombia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Belgium, as well as Finland and the European Union. Steiner draws normative implications from a combination of both normative controversies and empirical findings.

Jurg Steiner is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at both the University of Bern and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Deliberative Politics in Action (Cambridge University Press, 2005, with Andre Bachtiger, Markus Spoerndli and Marco R. Steenbergen) and the textbook European Democracies (8th edition 2012, with Markus Crepaz).

'This book reports on some of the most exciting work in democracy today. Its innovations will have an impact both on the profession and on practice. It is rare to find such a combination of normative sophistication, empirical innovation, and research organization ... the work on storytelling is exceptional.' Jane J. Mansbridge, Harvard University 'This is an interesting and valuable project that extends the work of Steiner et al., Deliberative Politics in Action. That marked an important evolution in the study of deliberative democracy by developing and applying a Discourse Quality Index to parliamentary debates in four countries. This book is even more ambitious; it uses deliberative democratic theory to identify about a dozen distinct theoretical issues, and then assembles the available empirical evidence to throw light on these issues.' Mark E. Warren, University of British Columbia