Selen A. Ercan

Deliberation and protest: strange bedfellows? Revealing the deliberative potential of 2013 protests in Turkey and Brazil

Deliberation and protest have usually been understood as two mutually exclusive ways of practicing democracy. It has been argued that protests, due to their adversarial nature, and orientation toward conflict would hinder, rather than enhance, the prospects for deliberation. The recent cycle of protests, including the Arab Spring, Indignados and Occupy Wall Street, has however shown that contentious politics do not necessarily stand in opposition to the idea of deliberative democracy. On the contrary, these protests feature important deliberative qualities. In this article, we seek to identify the deliberative dimension of the recent wave of protests. We do so through a close analysis of theoretical approaches in democratic theory and by drawing on the 2013 protests in Brazil and Turkey. We show that deliberative democracy is not antithetical to conflicts and agonism generated by protests. In fact, protests constitute an integral part of public deliberation, especially when the latter is understood in broader terms, in terms of public conversation that occurs in multiple sites of communication. We argue that the deliberative dimension of the aforementioned protests is manifested in: (i) how they were organized, (ii) how they were carried out and (iii) what they have achieved.

The reach of deliberative democracy

A deliberative approach now dominates the theory – though not yet the practice – of democracy. In its quarter century of existence (its prehistory is much deeper), the field has undergone not just refinement but also considerable transformation and differentiation. While Mutz (2008, 525) exaggerates when she laments that ‘it may be fair to say that there are as many definitions of deliberation as there are theorists’, there has been an expansion of conceptual approaches accompanying the explosion in numbers of scholars attracted to the deliberative democracy field (Bächtiger and Hangartner 2010). Yet there remains a common core. That core is defined by putting communication at the heart of politics, recognizing the need for effective justification of positions, stressing the pursuit of reciprocal understanding across those who have different frameworks or ideologies, valuing of inclusion and reflection, and suspicion of coercive, deceptive, and strategic uses of language (though as Vasilev’s contribution to this collection demonstrates, strategic speech can have its uses). Deliberative democracy scholars come from multiple disciplines, some are theorists, some are resolutely empirical. Some wish to observe and interpret the world, others to change it. Deliberative democracy is a reform movement as well as an academic activity (Gastil and Levine 2005). Most visibly, this movement is manifested in micro-level democratic innovations that involve the participation of ordinary citizens (Smith 2009). ‘Mini-publics’ such as citizens’ juries, citizens’ assemblies, consensus conferences, and deliberative polls have been well studied and widely celebrated (Grönlund, Bächtiger, and Setälä 2014), and indeed in some quarters are seen as defining deliberative democracy. While we recognize the democratic potential of minipublics in deliberation-making in larger systems (as Niemeyer 2014 puts it), any overemphasis on them can provide an easy target for critics such as Pateman (2012), who berates them for leaving the larger structure of limited democracy untouched, and not doing much to broaden citizen participation. This special issue seeks to reflect the recent expansion in the theory and practice of deliberative democracy by covering the sites of public deliberation that are not minipublics, thus showing that the reach of deliberative democracy is much broader than many of the critics recognize. Clearly, the question on what constitutes a ‘suitable’ site of public deliberation has long been at the core of scholarly debates on deliberative democracy. While some scholars, following John Rawls, have suggested to look for deliberation solely in the existing institutions, most notably in courts (Young and

From multiculturalism to post-multiculturalism: Trends and paradoxes

In recent years, multiculturalism has been declared a failure both in Europe and the Anglophone West. This diagnosis went hand in hand with an excessive focus on gendered cultural practices in culturally diverse societies, such as forced marriages or ‘honour killings’; the raise of anti-immigration political movements and the adoption of stricter legal rules in the areas of immigration and citizenship. This article aims to capture the legal, social and political responses to ‘failed’ multiculturalism under the banner of post-multiculturalism. In doing so, it identifies the major shifts that characterises post-multiculturalism and discusses their implications particularly for the citizens of Europe and various ‘others’. A close analysis of the recent shifts in the areas of rights, migration law and policy debates in various culturally diverse societies reveal that post-multiculturalism reinforces rather than counteracts the problematic features of multiculturalism. Drawing on the insights suggested by the literature on neo-liberal governmentality, the article points out the paradoxes of post-multiculturalism and their implications for culturally different Others.

Studying public deliberation after the systemic turn: the crucial role for interpretive research

The recent shift towards a deliberative systems approach suggests understanding public deliberation as a communicative activity occurring in a diversity of spaces. While theoretically attractive, the deliberative systems approach raises a number of methodological questions for empirical social scientists. For example, how to identify multiple communicative sites within a deliberative system, how to study connections between different sites, and how to assess the impact of the broader context on deliberative forums and systems? Drawing on multiple case studies, this article argues that interpretive research methods are well-suited to studying the ambiguities, dynamics and politics of complex deliberative systems.

Twelve Key Findings in Deliberative Democracy Research

This essay reflects on the development of the field of deliberative democracy by discussing twelve key findings that capture a number of resolved issues in normative theory, conceptual clarification, and associated empirical results. We argue that these findings deserve to be more widely recognized and viewed as a foundation for future practice and research. We draw on our own research and that of others in the field.

The democratic challenges and potential of localism: insights from deliberative democracy

This article considers the democratic challenges and potential of localism by drawing on insights from the theory and practice of deliberative democracy. On a conceptual level, the ideas embedded in localism and deliberative democracy share much in common, particularly the democratic goal of engaging citizens in decisions that affect them. Despite such commonalities, however, there has been limited conversation between relevant literatures. The article considers four democratic challenges facing localism and offers a response from a systems perspective of deliberative democracy. It argues that, for localism to realise its democratic potential, new participatory spaces are required and the design of these spaces matters. Beyond structured participatory forums, local democracy also needs an active and vibrant public sphere that promotes multiple forms of democratic expression. This requires taking seriously the democratic contributions of local associations and social movements. Finally, the article argues that, to fulfil its democratic potential, localism needs to encourage greater democratic and political connectivity between participatory forums and the broader public sphere.

Creating and Sustaining Evidence for “Failed Multiculturalism” The Case of “Honor Killing” in Germany

In recent years, so-called “honor killings” came onto the political agenda of many migrant-receiving societies including Germany. There were heated debates over the meanings of these murders in courts, parliaments, media, and the broader public sphere. These debates centered mainly on the question of whether “honor killing” is a culturally specific type of violence that occurs only in certain cultural communities, or a form of violence against women that cuts across all cultures. In Germany, “honor killing” acquired a particular and relatively well-entrenched meaning when it first came to fore in 2005 after the murder of Hatun Sürücü; it has since been understood as a culturally specific form of violence illustrating the irreconcilable differences between minority and majority cultures. As such, it has been associated with the “failed multiculturalism” diagnosis, indicating the inability of traditional migrant communities to integrate into mainstream society. This article seeks to problematize the discursive link between “honor killing” and failed multiculturalism and to explore the factors that help establish and sustain this link in Germany. The article identifies the dominant and competing frames of “honor killing” as articulated in the course of parliamentary debates and the broader public sphere and seeks to understand the reasons for the dominance of culture-based frames. It explains the presumed linkage between “honor killing” and failed multiculturalism by drawing attention to the institutional and discursive context within which these murders were debated. This analysis reveals the significance of the broader context in shaping the way multiculturalism is understood and practiced in culturally plural societies.

Message received? Examining transmission in deliberative systems

ABSTRACT With the systemic turn in deliberative democratic theory, there is renewed and broadened emphasis on the inclusion of all affected by a political decision in the making of those decisions. The key enabler of inclusion at a system level is transmission: theoretically, a deliberative system is more democratic if it can foster the transmission of claims and ideas across different sites, especially between informal sites of public deliberation and the more formal institutions of political decision-making. Yet little is known about the mechanisms of transmission in deliberative systems. How, and to what effect, is transmission facilitated in practice? This paper draws on case studies of three promising mechanisms of deliberative transmission: institutional, innovative and discursive. We discuss the key factors that enable or hinder different forms of transmission, and reflect on the ways in which they might be strengthened in deliberative systems. Our analysis suggests that the systemic turn in deliberative democracy should go hand-in-hand with a nuanced understanding of how transmission occurs across different sites. As such, our discussion has important implications for deliberative scholars and practitioners as they go about conceptualizing, studying and steering deliberative democracy at the large scale.

Performing politics on social media: The dramaturgy of an environmental controversy on Facebook

ABSTRACT Social media has become an important stage for environmental politics where different actors seek to shape and contest meanings. Meaning making on social media is studied through an empirical study of a controversial coal seam gas project in Australia. Key Facebook pages associated with opposing viewpoints on this controversy are analyzed using the dramaturgical concepts of scripting and staging. The analysis reveals that the Facebook performances are multisensory, staged to appear personal, and tightly scripted. It is argued that although these characteristics serve an important solidarity function among like-minded individuals and groups, they leave limited space or tolerance for counter-scripts. This in-depth empirical analysis suggests that social media platforms are transforming the way publics form and meet, but their capacity to bridge opposing viewpoints on divisive issues remains limited.

The fourth generation of deliberative democracy

ABSTRACT This editorial introduction presents an overview of the themes explored in the symposium on ‘Deliberative Systems in Theory and Practice’. The concept of ‘deliberative system’ has gained renewed attention among deliberative democrats. A systemic approach to deliberative democracy opens up a new way of thinking about public deliberation. However, as the key protagonists responsible for the systemic resurgence acknowledge, the framework requires greater theoretical critical scrutiny and empirical investigation. The symposium will contribute to this endeavor by bringing together cutting edge research on the theory and practice of deliberative systems. This introduction offers a brief outline and review of the existing systemic approaches to deliberation, articulating the overlaps and differences and reflecting on the prospects and problems of each. In doing so, we take a generational approach that delineates the development of deliberative democracy into three generations, and argue that the focus on deliberative systems has implications that are so significant for the examination of theory and practice that it heralds a fourth generation for deliberative democracy. We conclude this introduction by providing a brief synopsis of each paper and highlighting the significance of the debates for critical policy studies.