Deliberative
Democracy in Action: An Analysis of
the Effects of Public Deliberation
Fay
Lomax Cook, Jason Barabas, and Lawrence R. Jacobs
Abstract
Deliberative democratic theory suggets that citizens
become more interested in and knowledgeable about policy issues
and more likely to participate in politics after engaging in public
deliberation. We test this idea using a quasi-experiment with a
pre-test/post-test control group design constructed around a deliberative
forum entitled Americans Discuss Social Security (ADSS). Specifically,
we examine the extent to which people who participate in face-to-face
deliberation about Social Security increase their levels of interest
in Social Security, learn more facts about the program, and plan
to become involved in the issue as compared to a random sample of
community residents and non-attending forum invitees. The findings
support theoretical predictions about deliberative democracy with
regard to salience and information but not with respect to participation.
We discuss the implications of these findings for deliberative theory
and for future research designed to assess deliberative democracy
empirically.
Fay Lomax Cook, School
of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University Jason Barabas, Graduate fellow, Department of Political
Science, Northwestern University Lawrence R. Jacobs, Department of Political Science,
University of Minnesota
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