Experiments on Democratic Deliberation

Deliberative democracy

For some time now political theorists have advocated a more deliberative form of democratic practice as a supplement to more conventional electoral democracy. They claim that citizens brought together to discuss public policy in a setting that emphasizes equal participation, mutual respect and reasoned argument will be more likely to bridge the differences of today’s fragmented society. Citizens participating in a deliberative democracy will also be more likely to produce policy decisions that are both perceived as more legitimate and are in fact more consensual, rational and just. In recent years theory have turned to practice in an attempt to realize the promises of deliberative democracy. This has lead to a proliferation of deliberative practices around the world.

Deliberative experiment in Finland 2006

Introduction

On the 18th of November 2006 a deliberative experiment called Citizen Deliberation was held in Turku, Finland. The topic of the experiment was: "Should a sixth nuclear power plant be built in Finland?" Similar experiments, where a group of citizens are gathered to deliberate upon an important issue, have been organized in several countries around the world before, but this was the first of its kind in Finland.  

The participants

Before the actual deliberation day, a survey, mainly covering political issues in general and energy policy in particular, had been sent to a random sample of 2500 people from the Turku region. These people were also invited to take part in the deliberative experiment. A self-selected sample of 144 participants was aimed at and eventually 135 participants took part in the deliberation on nuclear power.

Information and experts

During the initial stages of the event the participants read balanced information on nuclear energy and heard an expert panel consisting of (proponents and opponents of nuclear power. The panel consisted of) two experts supporting nuclear energy, a member of parliament from the conservative National Coalition Party and the director of communications of a nuclear power company (TVO); and two experts opposing it, a member of parliament from the Green Party and a representative from the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation. Each member of the panel made a short presentation after which the participants were allowed to pose questions to the experts.

Deliberation in groups

After the plenary discussion it was time for the actual deliberation which took place in 12 small groups to which participants were randomly allocated. Two small groups were reserved for the Swedish-speaking minority. The small groups consisted of 10 - 13 members. The participants were asked to follow certain rules of discussion, such as being respectful towards each others opinions and justifying one’s own views. Trained moderators made sure that the group discussions were unbiased and respectful toward all participants, but otherwise they did not to take part in the discussion. In the beginning of the small group discussions, each participant stated a viewpoint which they wished to be discussed, and a free discussion on these themes followed. The discussions lasted for three hours, after which the groups were asked to make a decision on whether a sixth nuclear power plant should be built in Finland.

Decision-making

There were two experimental treatments. Namely, in six small groups the decision was made by secret ballot, whereas in the other six groups it was made by formulating a common statement. The variation in the decision-making procedure was the only difference between the groups, and otherwise they followed exactly the same procedure of discussion. In the vote groups, members could vote yes, no or cast an empty ballot. In the common statement groups, there was a predetermined procedure of writing a final statement.

Research Problems and questions of interest

Experiments on democratic deliberation usually have two different approaches to deliberation by either aiming at a consensus (consensus conferences) or by ending in a vote or an opinion poll (citizens’ juries, deliberative polls). In our experiments we used both approaches, giving us the possibility to compare the quality and effect the different approaches have on citizen deliberation. We study the group decision making process and small group dynamics. Several variables were studied through surveys, for example, political knowledge, efficacy, trust, political participation and collective action.

Results

Our initial finding is that the volunteers who were willing to take part in the experiment were more inclined to act politically than those who did not volunteer; they also possessed a higher level of internal political efficacy and had more trust in the parliament and politicians. Concerning the energy related issues, the participants became more critical of the use of peat, coal and building a sixth nuclear power plant in Finland. Participation in the experiment also increased energy related knowledge.

There was a slight decrease in the impression of one’s own possibility to influence on politics, but the participants’ trust in parliament and politicians had increased during deliberation. Interpersonal trust increased slightly as well as the participants willingness to take a particular kind of collective action (electricity saving).

Even more significantly, deliberation increased the participants' belief that other people would be ready to save electricity. This may be interpreted as a consequence of the fact that deliberative settings encourage expressions of socially desirable motivations. However, deliberation did not increase the participants' preparedness to act politically.

Virtual deliberative experiment 2008

Arranging deliberative events is quite expensive and ineffective and if these practices are to have an impact on democracy at large, they need to move from real world into the virtual world. Virtual deliberation gives us the possibility to bring real-time democratic interaction to the citizens, without having to organize a big costly event with the restrictions of travel and accommodation. In our experiment discussants met in an online forum and the interaction was realized through webcams and microphones. This enabled the participants to take part in the deliberation from their own homes or where ever they can get on-line.

The on-line experiment was developed as a replication of the face-to-face experiment (in, 2006) with the actual discussion consisting of as many groups, but with fewer participants (79 all-in-all, making it around 7 people in each small group). The participants were this time gathered from all over country, not only from the Turku region as was the case in the 2006 experiment. The topic was the same (as in the face-to-face deliberation experiment); the procedure was roughly the same, as the participants had access to the same reading material, could watch recordings of the speeches made by the experts during the face-to-face deliberation experiment and took part in small group discussions lead by the same moderators as in 2006.

Even though the use of the virtual forum demanded some basic computer knowledge and there were some technical difficulties along the way, the participants represented a wide spectrum. Both men and women, as well as people from all different age groups between 18 and 67 years of age took part in the experiment.