The meaning of deliberation is ‘to weigh up’ and seeks to build common agreement in order to solve problems. Deliberation is a form of collective reasoning - weighing up options and making choices together. Deliberation aims to stimulate fresh thinking on an issue and seeks a decision.
Deliberation is an approach to decision making that encourages reflection, promotes equality of contribution and is non-coercive. In public deliberation, those involved consider relevant, balanced and unbiased information and experiences from different points of view, to engage with tradeoffs collectively and form a shared conclusion or recommendation on what to do next.
By the end of a deliberative process, participants should come up with a shared conclusion - that they’re all either in favour or they can at least ‘live with’.
Qualities of public deliberation:
Public deliberation is a process of reasoning between people:
- Seeks information and evidence
- Evaluates alternatives – as a public act
- Gives public reasons
- Re-examines and sometimes changes personal preferences
- Seeks agreement (where possible)
- Makes informed and reasoned collective decisions
Is a form of convergent communication - narrowing the focus
To be deliberative, a process must involve:
- Discussion between participants at interactive events (including through online technologies). These events are designed to provide time and space for participants to learn from a variety of sources. The events follow a logical path through learning and discussion, so that participants build on and use the information and knowledge they acquire over the course of the exercise. This results in a considered view, which may (or may not) be different from their original view, and which has been arrived at through careful exploration of the issues at hand.
- Working with a range of people and information sources – including information, evidence and views from people with different perspectives, backgrounds and interests. This may include evidence requested or commissioned by participants themselves. Discussions are managed to ensure that a diversity of views from people with different perspectives are included, that minoritised or disadvantaged groups are not excluded, and that discussions are not dominated by any particular faction.
- A clear task or purpose, related to influencing a specific decision, policy, service, project or programme.
The magic of deliberation lies in its ability to move participants from public opinion to public judgement. This is done by lowering the visibility line to move beyond surface-level opinions, to exploring the needs, fears and values that sit beneath a certain standpoint. Participants do this along with others, increasing understanding and empathy with others, as well as finding common ground. You need dialogue before you can do deliberation.
Above is a diagram of the visibility line, reproduced with permission from Oliver Escobar's Public Dialogue and Deliberation
Involve has developed 9 Principles of Effective Deliberative Engagement. Read about them here.