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Simon Niemeyer, John Dryzek, Robert Goodin, Andrè Bächtiger, Maija Setålå, Julia Jennstål, Nicole Curato < Back Deliberative Democracy in the Public Sphere: Achieving Deliberative Outcomes in Mass Publics Investigator(s): Simon Niemeyer, John Dryzek, Robert Goodin, Andrè Bächtiger, Maija Setålå, Julia Jennstål, Nicole Curato Funded through Discovery Project (DP120103976) ($340,357), the Project Team includes: Simon Niemeyer, Chief Investigator John Dryzek, Chief Investigator Robert Goodin, Chief Investigator Andrè Bächtiger, Partner Investigator Maija Setålå, Partner Investigator Julia Jennstål, Partner Investigator Nicole Curato, Postdoctoral Research Fellow Project Description This project investigates the mechanisms and settings that facilitate the same deliberative outcomes achieved in small group deliberation among the wider population.

< Back Wendy Russell Associate About Wendy Russell works the development of deliberative engagement methods for national policy. She is also a strong advocate of technology assessment (TA) and is working to build TA capacity for Australia.

< Back Dannica Fleuss Associate About Dannica Fleuss' research deals with conceptualizations of democratic legitimacy, philosophy of science and deliberative democracy. She is also a postdoctoral research fellow and lecturer in political theory at Helmut Schmidt University (Hamburg).

< Back Deliberation and media policy studies: Towards a deliberative policy ecology approach Preeti Raghunath, The Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC), Pune, India Tue 20 October 2020 11:00am - 12:00pm Virtual seminar Abstract The study of deliberative democracy has received great impetus in Political Science and associated fields of Political Philosophy and Environmental Policy Studies. My engagement with literature on deliberative democracy comes from my grounding in Critical Media Policy Studies and Habermasian thought. Drawing on theoretical literature and empirical ethnographic fieldwork conducted in four countries of South Asia, and through the use of Grounded Theory, I present the building of the Deliberative Policy Ecology (DPE) Approach to the study of media policies and policymaking in South Asia. About the speaker Preeti Raghunath is an Assistant Professor at the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC), Pune, India. Her research and praxis are in the realm of critical media policy studies in South Asia. She is particularly interested in pushing the epistemological contours of the area from the Global South. She is the author of 'Community Radio Policies in South Asia: A Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach', published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. She serves as a Vice-Chair of the Global Media Policy Working Group of the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). Previous Next

< Back The Political Economy of Devolution in Britain from the Postwar Era to Brexit Nick Vlahos 2020 , Palgrave Summary Bringing together ten leading researchers in the field of deliberative democracy, this important book examines the features of a Deliberative Mini-Public (DMP) and considers how DMPs link into democratic systems. It examines the core design features of DMPs and their role in the broader policy process and takes stock of the characteristics that distinguish them from other forms of citizen participation. In doing so, the book offers valuable insights into the contributions that DMPs can make not only to the policy process, but also to the broader agenda of revitalising democracy in contemporary times. Read more Previous Next

< Back DEMOCRACY, CRISIS, RESILIENCE - IN CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR JEFFREY ALEXANDER ABSTRACT This conversation will focus the prospects of democracy in the context of current crisis characterised by waves of populist backlash; extremist attacks; the Capitol building imperiled; ever-worsening economic inequality; the insidious erosion of privacy; the epistemic collapse of the public sphere; the rise of a new form of techno-authoritarianism, ready for export. These crises are compounded by the practical challenges of averting climate collapse and ending a pandemic skillfully adapting to our best attempts at control. At stake are not only the institutional structures of democratic governance but the cultural structures which lend meaning and collective motivation to democratic self-governance. In this conversation with one of the world’s leading sociological theorists, we explore the cultural dimensions of crisis and the sources and prospects for democratic resilience. BIO Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University and Founder and, with Philip Smith, Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology. Jeffrey Alexander works in the areas of theory, culture, and democratic politics. A leading exponent of the “strong program” in cultural sociology, he has investigated the cultural codes and narratives that inform diverse areas of social life. His recent work has tackled question of crisis, radicalism, and solidarity in democratic politics in the United States and beyond. Previous Next

< Back When does deliberation occur, and how do you know you've found it? Simon Niemeyer, University of Canberra Tue 26 July 2016 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract This presentation focusses on the question of how the process of deliberation takes place in mini public settings. In part it revisits the findings of Goodin and Niemeyer (2003) who found that most of the transformation takes place during the early phase of deliberation where information is acquired. The findings draw from a real-world deliberative event in Uppsala Sweden involving 60 participants considering options for addressing the issue of begging by internal EU migrants. As for Goodin and Niemeyer, transformation is measured in terms of position on underlying issues (attitudes/beliefs, values) at three stages (pre; mid, following information presentations; and post-deliberation), but in this case policy preferences were also surveyed permitting a wider range of analysis. The results are consistent with Goodin and Niemeyer, where the greatest transformation occurs during the early information phase of the event. However, another measure of transformation (intersubjective consistency) is most strongly affected during the later deliberation phase. The results raise the question in respect to what counts as deliberative transformation. They also suggest that deliberation from the individual perspective may involve a sequence whereby the initial opening of minds induces a higher level of receptiveness to information and transformation, which is followed by a subsequent process of reflection. To the extent that this model of internal deliberation is valid it potentially accounts for wildly conflicting results obtained from observing deliberation, as well as potential implications for understanding the possibility of both deliberation within and deliberation in mass settings. About the speaker Simon Niemeyer is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow whose research covers the broad fields of deliberative democracy and environmental governance, particularly in respect to climate change. His focus is on the forces that shape public opinion and how this can be improved so that the expressed preference of the public better reflects their collective long-term interests. This has guided his research in the direction of exploring the nature of preference change during deliberative minipublics, which is now moving into a phase of understanding the possibility for deliberative preference formation in mass public settings and the institutional features that best facilitate deliberative democratic governance. Simon completed his PhD at the Australian National University and since then has been the recipient of a number of Australian Research Council Awards, including his current Future Fellowship. As well as his Future Fellowship he is the lead investigator on an ARC project concerning the possibilities for achieving mass public deliberation; a co-investigator on another ARC project on deliberative democracy and achieving just outcomes when adapting to climate change (with David Schlosberg), and a co-investigator on a Swedish Research Council project (with Julia Jennstål) concerning the nature of the deliberative person. He is currently co-located between the University of Uppsala and the University of Canberra while he develops international links for the next phase of research in assessing deliberativeness of national political settings. Previous Next

< Back UPCOMING: DOES FOOD DEMOCRACY MATTER? LINKING THE DELIBERATIVE QUALITY OF SOY AND COFFEE VALUE CHAINS TO ECOLOGICAL 'FOODPRINTS' The global food system is facing a multiple sustainability crisis. Agri-food value chains are among the main drivers of humanity’s overstepping the planetary boundaries related to climate change, loss of biodiversity (genes, species, and habitats) deforestation, soil erosion, water pollution, and nutrient imbalances. At the same time, key food producers like small- and medium-scale farmers are being driven from their land as a result of expanding extractivist resource use and highly asymmetric market access. Among the root causes of the global food system’s sustainability crisis are the multidimensional and increasingly asymmetric power relations – defined as the uneven capacity to influence goals, processes, and outcomes of governance – between the actors involved. Peasant communities, family farmers, rural workers, women, small-scale traders, artisanal food processors, and resource-poor consumers remain widely excluded from the decision-making processes through which agri-food value chains are governed. Deliberation – citizens’ political conversation and collective decision-making – has been described as a “partial antidote” to unequal power relations and as an important lever for rendering decision-making less power-driven. Democracy research argues that deliberation brings to the fore public goods and society’s ecological interests. However, empirical knowledge supporting these claims in the context of food and agriculture is scarce. This research aims at understanding whether and how deliberation affects ecological outcomes (“foodprints”) of soy and coffee value chains and power asymmetries among their key actors. Specific aims are to (1) determine the deliberative quality of selected agri-food value chains; (2) understand the implications of varying degrees of deliberation for power relations among key actors; (3) assess the selected agri-food value chains’ ecological foodprints; and (4) determine how deliberative quality relates to power asymmetries and ecological foodprints. We take a mixed-methods approach in four interlinked research streams: (1) Deliberative quality, comprising analysis of soy and coffee value chains and their key actors, institutional analysis, and discourse analysis to determine deliberative spaces and deliberative quality, and (2) Power asymmetries, focusing on whether and how the deliberative quality of agri-food value chains affects power asymmetries from key actors’ perspective – with semi-structured interviews, participant observation, focus groups, and document review applied in both streams; (3) Ecological foodprints, comprising life cycle inventories to measure the selected value chains’ resource use intensity, land use, deforestation, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste/nutrient management, using semi-structured interviews, participant observation, as well as document and database review; and (4) Integration, applying process tracing to infer causal relationships between deliberative quality, power asymmetries, and ecological foodprints. BIO Dr. Johanna Jacobi is an Assistant Professor for Agroecological Transitions at ETH Zürich. She studied Geography, Biology and Social Anthropology. Her master thesis investigated wastewater-irrigated agrobiodiversity in peri-urban agriculture in Hyderabad, India. For her PhD studies at the University of Bern, she conducted research on the resilience of cocoa farms in Bolivia to climate change. In a post-doctoral project at UC Berkeley, she focused on agroforestry in Bolivia, where she then lived and worked in a transdisciplinary action- research project for several years. Her research focuses on agroecology as a transformative science, a practice and a social movement, and on power relations in food systems with approaches and methods from political ecology. Johanna Jacobi is also a member of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA). Previous Next

< Back Political parties as participatory arenas Anika Gauja, University of Sydney Tue 9 October 2018 11:00am - 12:00pm The Dryzek Room, Building 22, University of Canberra Abstract In this presentation I engage with the often-made claim that shifting patterns of political participation threaten parties as viable organisations and as mechanisms of linkage between citizens and the state. I explore the possibilities for partisan democratic renewal and increased citizen engagement that arise with a shift to more individualised, or personalised types of political participation. Using data from a comparative study of party reform and an Australian-based study of contemporary party membership, I examine how political parties have accommodated new demands for participation within their organisational arrangements, focusing on the key party functions of candidate selection, policy development and campaign communication. Many of these participatory opportunities are being extended beyond party members to supporters, blurring the boundaries of party. I reflect on how these new structures and processes are reshaping the role of parties as mediators between citizens and the state, and the challenges involved in reconciling personalised politics with collective identity. Previous Next

Former PhD student < Back John Parkinson Former PhD student About John is a Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at Maastricht University and holds the post of Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance.

< Back John Parkinson Associate and Former PhD Student About John is a Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at Maastricht University and holds the post of Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance.