Is Face-to-Face Citizen Deliberation a Luxury or a Necessity for Democracy? John Gastil
Department of Speech Communication
University of Washington
Box 353415
Seattle, WA 98195
jgastil@u.washington.edu
Paper prepared for
University of WashingtonWorkshop on Communication and Civic Engagement
May 19-20, 2000
Ten years ago, one was likely to hear the term "deliberation" only when conversing with an obscure political philosopher, a jury researcher, a parliamentarian, and or a devotee of C-Span. Today, however, the word has become ubiquitous. Within academia, the term is now commonly used by political philosophers (Bohman, 1996; Cohen, 1997; Gutmann & Thompson, 1996), public opinion researchers (Page, 1996; Yankelovich, 1991), communication scholars (McLeod et al., 1999; Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997), public policy analysts (Disch, 1996; Roberts, 1997), and small group researchers (Gastil, 1993). Deliberation is also at the heart of modern public discussion programs, such as citizen juries (Crosby, 1995), study circles (Leighninger & McCoy, 1998), the National Issues Forums (Mathews, 1994; Gastil & Dillard, 1999a), the 1996 National Issues Convention (Fishkin, 1995; Fishkin & Luskin, 1999), and a wide range of other programs (Burton & Mattson, 1999; Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997; Ryfe, 1999). The term has even surfaced in the popular press, particularly during the impeachment trial of President Clinton.
Though deliberation has its advocates, it remains unclear exactly what forms of deliberation are essential. Some democratic theorists argue that only deliberation among officeholders is necessary in a representative democracy. Bessette (1994) summarizes this view: "The wise and virtuous, freely chosen by the community, rule through the exercise of their independent and superior political judgment, disconnected from popular judgment" (p. 2).
Other theorists believe that deliberation must also take place outside of government, but the public plays the role of observer, rather than participant. Thus, Page (1996) argues that "deliberation is essential to democracy . . . In modern societies, however, public deliberation is (and probably must be) largely mediated, with professional communicators rather than ordinary citizens talking to each other and to the public through mass media of communications" (p. 1).
Finally, some theorists who advocate direct public involvement in the deliberative process assume that deliberation could be conducted entirely through interactive electronic media, such as the Internet. If deliberation is defined broadly enough to encompass such interaction, or if deliberation is judged solely by its outcomes, then electronic deliberation may be a viable alternative to face-to-face meetings among citizens (see Barber, Mattson, & Peterson, 1997; Dahl, 1989; London, 1993).
In sum, a broad range of democratic theorists recognize deliberation as a central feature of the democratic process, but only a minority argue that such deliberation must take place among citizens in a face-to-face setting. Advocates of face-to-face citizen deliberation will remain the minority in the debate on deliberation unless they can make a convincing argument for its necessity. First, it must be demonstrated that deliberation among citizens contributes to democratic governance above and beyond the deliberation conducted by officeholders and professional communicators. Second, face-to-face politics will appear increasingly quaint as populations continue to expand, international bodies continue to grow in power, and the Internet continues to widen its reach and improve its features. If research can not identify any special virtues of face-to-face deliberation, it is hard to justify its expense and inconvenience relative to computer-mediated citizen discussion.
The Impact of Citizen Deliberation
Proponents of citizen deliberation argue that participation in deliberative forums, conventions, and panels has a positive impact on citizens’ attitudes and behaviors. The potential benefits of deliberation include more informed and reflective judgments, a greater sense of political efficacy, and an increase in the frequency of political action (Bohman, 1996; Cohen, 1997; Fishkin, 1995; Gastil, 2000; Gutmann & Thompson, 1996; Mathews, 1994; Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997).
Does deliberation have these effects? Denver, Hands, & Jones (1995) found relatively little change in the attitudes of participants in the Granada 500, a British public debate program using face-to-face deliberation. Fishkin and Luskin (1999), however, found many significant attitude changes and considerable increases in political knowledge among participants in the 1996 National Issues Convention (NIC), which brought together a random sample of Americans for three days of face-to-face discussions. Gastil and Dillard (1999b) found considerable individual-level attitude changes at public forums—even in the midst of negligible aggregate attitude change. Though they observed only slight overall attitude changes in each of seven studies on different political issues, they found a consistent pattern of ideological polarization. After face-to-face discussion of each issue, liberal and conservative participants had become more ideologically consistent in their respective views.
In addition to these information and opinion shifts, researchers have found changes in participants’ sense of political efficacy. Answering a standard set of political efficacy questions, NIC participants showed increased confidence in their political knowledge, judgment, and influence after deliberating. Participants also expressed greater trust in politicians and elected officials (Fishkin & Luskin, 1999). Similar results have been obtained through both qualitative and quantitative research on small deliberative forums held across the U.S. (Gastil & Dillard, 1999a). However, Gastil (1999) found that participation in deliberative forums could increase political self-efficacy while reducing group efficacy. In other words, participants might leave a challenging forum more confident in their own ability to take effective individual action but more skeptical of the efficacy of group-based political action. This study also found that deliberation’s impact depends on the nature of forum participants’ experiences. Those who engaged in relatively successful forums—with well-prepared participants, clear guidelines, effective forum facilitators, and adequate deliberation—reported greater attitudinal changes.
Does successful citizen deliberation also have an effect on political behavior? Past research has shown clear links between various forms of political efficacy and political action (e.g., Pollock, 1983; Wolfsfeld, 1986); therefore, if deliberation can boost participants’ sense of political efficacy, it may also spur greater political engagement. Gastil, Deess, and Weiser (2000) found evidence consistent with this hypothesized link. The authors created a dataset of over 1,000 jurors by merging official voting records with jury lists extracted from 1994-1996 case files at the Thurston County (Wash.) courthouse. They found that citizens who served on a jury that reached a verdict were more likely to vote in subsequent elections than were those who served as alternates or sat on criminal juries that were dismissed or deadlocked. The hypothesized causal direction was supported by the absence of a relationship between jury service and voting in previous elections.
Face-to-Face vs. Computer-Mediated Deliberation
One might argue, however, that these same changes in knowledge, opinions, attitudes, and behaviors would also result from computer-mediated deliberation. To this author’s knowledge, no research has systematically compared face-to-face and computer-mediated political deliberation in this way. Similar studies have been done, however, outside of a political context, and it is useful to consider their findings.
Scott (1999) provides a review of the past five years of research on communication in face-to-face and computer-mediated groups. He found that "recent research has not resolved past criticisms concerning mixed and inconclusive findings" on the benefits of computer-mediated group decision making (Scott, 1999, p. 459). Nonetheless, Scott squeezes some tentative generalizations from the literature. In the studies reviewed, face-to-face groups tended to be more efficient, more cohesive, and better at handling complex problems that required qualitative judgments. Computer-mediated groups often made better quantitative judgments, sometimes reduced the influence of individual participants’ social/professional status on the discussion, and usually resulted in comparable—if not greater—levels of participant satisfaction.
I draw three implications from these studies. First, face-to-face deliberation may be more appropriate in the political arena because of the nature of political decisions. Political deliberation involves complex issues, moral conflict, and an inescapable uncertainty about the wisdom of final judgments. Just as complex tasks lend themselves to more democratic methods of group discussion (Gastil, 1994), they might also be better suited to the natural flow of face-to-face interaction. Second, political deliberation usually involves a diverse and unacquainted set of participants. Difficult political decisions often require a degree of compromise and negotiation, which a modest level of group cohesion can facilitate (Gully, Devine, & Whitney, 1995). Previous deliberative forums may have succeeded in this respect only because their face-to-face settings allowed the rapid development of group cohesion. Third, if computer-mediated interaction can consistently reduce the independent influence of social status, it will have a powerful advantage over face-to-face deliberation (see Sanders, 1997). As past research suggests, however, status cues can surface even in anonymous settings through participant self-descriptions, discourse styles, and other means.
In conclusion, past research suggests that democratic systems benefit from the regular practice of deliberation among citizens. Such interaction develops political knowledge, the sophistication of public judgments, political efficacy, and stronger habits of civic participation. Because of these benefits (and others), some theorists have argued that deliberative forums should be institutionalized (e.g., Fishkin, 1995; Gastil, 2000; Threlkeld, 1998). Frequent and complex forums, however, could result in high taxpayer bills or place a heavy burden on the nonprofit sector. Given the lower cost of computer-mediated deliberation, future research should examine whether the same benefits might come from computer-mediated forums.
References
Barber, B. R., Mattson, K., and Peterson, J. (1997). The state of 'electronically enhanced democracy': A survey of the Internet. New Brunswick, NJ: Walt Whitman Center.Bessette, J. M. (1994). The mild voice of reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bohman, J. F. (1996). Public deliberation: Pluralism, complexity, and democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Burton, M., & Mattson, K. (1999). Deliberative democracy in practice: Challenges and prospects for civic deliberation. Polity, 31, 609-637.
Cohen, J. (1997). Deliberation and democratic legitimacy. In J. F. Bohman & W. Rehg (Eds.), Deliberative democracy: Essays on reason and politics (pp. 67-91). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Crosby, N. (1995). Citizen juries: One solution for difficult environmental questions. In O. Renn, T. Webler, & P. Wiedemann (Eds.), Fairness and competence in citizen participation: Evaluating models for environmental discourse (pp. 157-174). Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Dahl, R. A. (1989). Democracy and its critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Denver, D., Hands, G., & Jones, B. (1995). Fishkin and the deliberative opinion poll: Lessons from a study of the Granada 500 television program. Political Communication, 12, 147-156.
Disch, L. (1996). Publicity-stunt participation and sound bit polemics: The health care debate 1993-94. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, 21, 3-33.
Fishkin, J. S. (1995). The voice of the people. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Fishkin, J. S., & Luskin, R. C. (1999). Bringing deliberation to the democratic dialogue. In M. McCombs, A. Reynolds, & Eds. (Eds.), The poll with a human face: The National Issues Convention experiment in political communication (pp. 3-38). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gastil, J. (1993). Democracy in small groups: Participation, decision-making, and communication. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers.
––––. (1994). A meta-analytic review of the productivity and satisfaction of democratic and autocratic leadership. Small Group Research, 25, 384-410.
––––. (1999, May). The effects of deliberation on political beliefs and conversation behavior. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, San Francisco, CA.
––––. (2000). By popular demand: Revitalizing representative democracy through deliberative elections. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gastil, J., Deess, E. P., & Weiser, P. (2000, June). Civic awakening in the jury room: A test of the connection between jury deliberation and political participation. Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Acapulco, Mexico.
Gastil, J., & Dillard, J. P. (1999a). The aims, methods, and effects of deliberative civic education through the National Issues Forums. Communication Education, 48, 1-14.
––––. (1999b). Increasing political sophistication through public deliberation. Political Communication, 16, 3-23.
Gully, S. M., Devine, D. J., & Whitney, D. J. (1995). A meta-analysis of cohesion and performance: Effects of level of analysis and task interdependence. Small Group Research, 26, 497-520.
Gutmann, A., & Thompson, D. F. (1996). Democracy and disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Leighninger, M., & McCoy, M. (). (2). Mobilizing citizens: Study circles offer a new approach to citizenship. National Civic Review, 183-189.
London, Scott. (1993). Electronic democracy. Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation.
Mathews, D. (1994). Politics for people: Finding a responsible public voice. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
McLeod, J. M., Scheufele, D. A., Moy, P., Horowitz, E. M., Holbert, R. L., Zhang, W., Zubric, S., & Zubric, J. (1999). Understanding deliberation: The effects of discussion networks on participation in a public forum. Communication Research, 26, 743-74.
Page, B. I. (1996). Who deliberates? Mass media in modern democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pearce, W. B., & Littlejohn, S. W. (1997). Moral conflict: When social worlds collide. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Pollock, P. H. (1983). The participatory consequences of internal and external political efficacy: A research note. Western Political Quarterly, 36, 400-409.
Roberts, N. (1997). Public deliberation: an alternative approach to crafting policy and setting direction. Public Administration Review, 57, 124-132.
Ryfe, D. M. (1999). Public discourse in action: Mapping the practice of deliberative democracy. Report prepared for the Penn Commission.
Sanders, L. M. (1997). Against deliberation. Political Theory, 25, 347-376.
Scott, C. R. (1999). Communication technology and group communication. In L. R. Frey (Eds.), The handbook of group communication theory and research (pp. 432-472). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Threlkeld, S. (1998). A blueprint for democratic law-making: Give citizen juries the final say. Social Policy, 28(4), 5-9.
Wolfsfeld, G. (1986). Political action repertoires: The role of efficacy. Comparative Political Studies, 19, 104-129.
Yankelovich, D. (1991). Coming to public judgment. New York: Syracuse University Press.