There are many problems with contemporary democracies. Deliberative democracy cannot address all of them (for example, problems with electoral systems, corruption, jurisdiction boundaries and relationships between levels of government, human rights). But there are some problems that it is ideally positioned to address.
These stand out:
Gridlock - The most difficult decisions are not made.
There is a lack of meaningful participation for the public between elections.
Public decisions are highly sensitive to public opinion, but not to public judgment.
Representation - Decision making bodies are not very representative of the public.
In many countries, there is a troubling degree of polarization.
Public trust in democracy is low, and declining.
How participants are selected
What kind of conversation they engage in
How they make decisions
One of the most basic questions in the design of political systems is “Who decides?” If you unpack that question a little, you get something like this – How to select the people who set agendas, develop proposals, and make decisions?
There are three well-known answers:
(an open invitation to anyone who wants to participate)
The well-known modes are:
(surveys and polling, and typical public meeting process where many people speak, but there is no collaborative problem solving)
What are the problems with these answers?
What’s missing is open-minded, informed, collaborative problem solving.
There are three well-known answers:
What are the problems with these answers?
What’s missing are processes that stimulate critical thinking, explore all possibilities, and allocate sufficient time to analyze and learn together, before working towards a rough consensus that will come as close as possible, given time and resource constraints, to the ideal of a solution that everyone can support.