Download Public Participation: Types, Hopes and Hypes

dialogue & deliberation
Oliver Escobar
University of Edinburgh & What Works Scotland
St Andrews, 21st March 2015
Outline
• Context: study /practice of participatory &
deliberative democracy, governance and coproduction
• Mixing communication studies and political science
• Conceptual approach to D+D
• Applications: courses and cases
Normative context
In participatory democracy…
“…citizens govern themselves directly, not necessarily
at every level and in every instance, but frequently
enough and in particular when basic policies are being
decided and when significant power is being deployed.
This is carried out through institutions designed to
facilitate ongoing civic participation in agenda-setting,
deliberation, legislation, and policy implementation…”
Benjamin R. Barber, Strong democracy, 1984
Society as a web of communication patterns
Different patterns of communication create different interpersonal
contexts
Communication is not only instrumental, but also consequential:
• Importance of what gets done (results, outputs)
• but also what gets made (relationships, contexts)
• and how it gets made (through what communication
patterns; with what consequences)
Communication patterns
•
•
“emergent functions that,
once developed, maintain
their boundaries and resist
change by actively
attracting episodes that
share their central
characteristics and repelling
those that differ or would
change them” (Pearce
2007:158)
A facilitator fosters desirable
patterns AND detects and
alters undesirable patterns
Communication patterns in public discourse:
common rituals + pitfalls
 Exchanging monologues
 Pre-packaged arguments
 Dominant voices
 Posturing
 Specialised jargon
 Avoidance
 Polarisation and oversimplification
 Confrontational exchanges
Contrasting approaches to interpersonal
communication
Debate
Dialogue
Deliberation
Seeks to promote
opinions and gain
majority support
Seeks to build
Seeks common
understanding
ground in order to
and relationships solve problems
Participants
argue, express,
persuade and
compete
Participants
Participants frame
listen, exchange, and weigh options,
reach across,
and make choices
reflect
Outcome:
win/lose
Outcome: no
decision
Outcome: win/win
Communication / contrasting ideal types
Debate
• Dominant pattern:
ADVOCACY
• Confrontational forms
of communication
• Certainty
• Professional expertise
as superior knowledge
• Outcome orientated
• Communication as
message-transmission
Dialogue
• Dominant pattern:
INQUIRY
• Collaborative forms of
communication
• Curiosity / Openness
• Multiple forms of
knowledge (e.g. local,
experiential)
• Process orientated
• Communication as cocreation of meaning and
relationships
Dialogue (Escobar 2011)
•
A form of non-polarised discourse that focuses on
building understanding and relationships
•
Creation of safe spaces
•
Suspension of assumptions and automatic response
(assimilation/opposition)
•
Finding common ground / exploring differences
•
Co-creation of shared meanings and language
•
Collaborative inquiry
•
Storytelling
•
Understanding the contribution of emotions
Deliberation
Information, evidence
Mapping and evaluating alternatives
Giving (and taking) public reasons
Re-examining and (perhaps) changing preferences
Seeking agreement or consensus
Making informed and reasoned decisions
Why combine dialogue and deliberation?
Some critiques of deliberation:
•
Internal exclusion (Young 2001): emphasis on
reasoned/articulated exchanges privileges certain participants
and excludes other forms of expression (eg, testimony,
storytelling)
•
Often dominated by ‘debate’ – advocacy dynamics. Risk of not
exploring issues and perspectives in depth
•
Overly ‘rational’: No room for emotions
When designing participatory processes and forums, a dialogue
phase before the deliberative phase can help to address these
weaknesses (see Escobar 2011 Chapter 6)
In practice the challenge is to facilitate communication
dynamics that balance advocacy and inquiry
Dialogue and Deliberation
PIN diagram (Andrew Acland)
Win-Lose
Positions
visibility line
Interest &
values
Needs &
fears
Win-Win
applications
courses and
cases
Embedding a culture of public engagement in
Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s).
Edinburgh Beltane
Beacon North-East
Manchester
CUE East
Wales Beacon
UCL
The National Coordinating Centre
Beacons for Public Engagement – funded by the UK funding councils,
Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust
D+D course with researchers, academics,
public engagement practitioners, science
communicators, knowledge brokers, policy
workers, community activists, scientists…
•
.
•Pilot: 2009
•Current programme
delivered 20 times since
2010
•Over 250 participants
• + MSc module version
Brain Imaging
Deliberative
Dialogue 2010
Deliberative
workshops -COSLA
Commission on
Strengthening
Local Democracy
2014:
-Community
Councils
-Third Sector
-Faith Groups
Deliberative Dialogue process with
Third Sector Interfaces / VAS 2015
Citizens’ Juries
on wind farm
development
2014-2015
A concluding note on
‘creating artificial conversations’
dialogue and deliberation
seek to disrupt communication
patterns that
1) perpetuate power inequalities
2) and prevent public participation in
democracy from becoming
meaningful and consequential
Thank you!
to get in touch:
[email protected]
@OliverEscobar