Public Justification Versus Public Deliberation: The Case for Reconciliation

Kevin Vallier has recently argued that the ideals of public justification and public deliberation should be separated. The link between the two, Vallier suggests, has been assumed without being properly defended. Once examined, the connection falls apart. In this paper, I argue that there is, in fact, a clear and convincing story available for why the two ideals should be treated as mutually reinforcing. Drawing on recent empirical evidence, I argue that the deliberative behaviour of citizens can have a clear and positive impact on the behaviour and policy choices of public officials.

Emotional Confrontation and Public Deliberation on Paid Sex. The Struggle between Disgust and Shame.

In this paper, we address affective and motivational aspects in relation to the controversy, which can be articulated around a mediatised public issue. We are interested in how emotions are a part of the experience and definition of a phenomenon that is seen as intolerable and forwhich intervention is demanded and the strategic appeal to an affective repertoire in reaching aposition on the issue. We analyse the systems of meaning and emotions mobilised in the currentcontroversy about prostitution and trafficking of persons for the purpose of sexual exploitation. The goal here is to grasp how the perspectives involved employ emotional strategies in which basic affective dispositions and transitory emotions intersect, and how this affects deliberation on the issue. Discourses and stories, as well as defining and framing the emotions of the actors in the controversy furnish emotional experiences to their publics, encouraging them to incorporatecertain rules of feeling that form part of the moral and ideological perspectives promoted. Methodologically, we use an ethnographic approach to follow the conflict and a socio-semioticdiscourse analysis. Our case study covers two linked viral campaigns in social networks (Hola Putero and Hola Abolicionista). The goal is to reflect on the way in which setting and affectivestrategies hinder resolution of the issue.

Policy Implications

This chapter offers a short summary of policy implications raised by the book’s historical research. It comments on the speed and nature of change; the importance of context and state formation; the vital role of public deliberation as well as official compliance; the politics of anti-corruption; and the socio-cultural dimensions that frame what constitutes corruption in office. It is argued that policies should be bottom-up and deliberative as well as top-down and formal; that anti-corruption is a protracted, political and contested process which involves personal, institutional and systemic issues as well as extensive public discussion of ethical questions; that rule-change is easier to achieve than culture-change but reform requires both; that the art of governance is a balance between trust and distrust of office-holders, and between formal and informal modes of accountability; and that history is useful in offering data about the process of anti-corruption and influence of the past.

Seeing Like a Citizen: How Being a Participant in a Citizens' Assembly Changed Everything I Thought I Knew about Deliberative Minipublics

This paper presents a participant-observation account of my experience as a randomly selected participant at a Citizens’ Assembly. I reflect on what the unique experience of ‘seeing like a citizen’ can add to accepted understandings and practices of mini-public deliberation. I find that the experience, though energising, exciting and ultimately hugely worthwhile, also upended many of my prior assumptions grounded in academic scholarship and previous experience as an observer, facilitator and organiser of such events. I draw on the experience to shed new light on the capacity of assembled citizens to: accurately reflect the concerns of the broader community; soberly digest and reflect on evidence; earnestly engage in reasoned argumentation with one another; carefully reach sophisticated or thought-through recommendations as a collective; or ultimately gain a broader sense of efficacy from their engagement as individuals. The point in making these observations is not to critique moves toward democratic innovation (or the specific Citizens’ Assembly I was a part of), but to push forward scholarship and practice to respond and adapt to these little considered challenges.

“All this Regulatory Uncertainty in the Air”: The Indispensability of Public Hearings in Guarding and Guiding Public Deliberation

The field of Environmental Communication has often critiqued the shortcomings of public hearings, noting their limitations in bringing about effective and equitable public decision making. While this work has been significant, it has tended to limit the deliberative field to public hearings themselves, sometimes going so far as to assume that public hearings are the only spaces in which significant deliberations occur. Using a field analysis of the “No Coal Plant” campaign in Surry County, Virginia (2008–2013), the authors illuminate some limitations of existing literature. Their analysis suggests that while public hearings can be extremely limiting, even “failed” public hearings can play a critical role in constituting, organizing, and pacing formal and informal deliberative spaces, which are necessary for communities as they manage the stresses and strains of the decision-making process.