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Exploring the Contributions of Cultural Theory for Improving Public Deliberation about Complex Policy Problems
Steven Ney and Marco Verweij
In this article, we argue that the Cultural Theory pioneered by Mary Douglas can help resolve two pressing issues in the study and practice of public deliberation. The first of these issues concerns how best to structure deliberative processes (or “minipublics”) that have increasingly been implemented around the world. We use Cultural Theory’s analysis of social relations to derive a hypothesis con- cerning the ideal design of minipublics, and outline research strategies to test the hypothesis. The second issue pertains to scaling out minipublics. We describe John Dryzek’s and Simon Niemeyer’s influential proposal for deploying discourses to make public deliberation more representative, and discuss the limits of their proposal. Furthermore, we show how Cultural Theory’s analysis of people’s cultural biases (i.e., collectively shared perceptions, beliefs and norms) may help overcome these limits and how the design of minipublics can generate trust in and legitimacy of public deliberation.
KEY WORDS: public deliberation, Mary Douglas, cultural theory
Introduction
In the 1990s, the notion and practice of deliberative democracy came of age (Bohman, 1998). Scholars began to argue for more deliberative decision making on the grounds that in pluralist societies, it can resolve complex policy issues—such as climate change, urban regeneration, or health care—in a more legitimate and effec- tive manner than other modes of social choice (Bohman, 1996; Cohen, 1989; Elster, 1998; Gutmann & Thompson, 1998). Simultaneously, practitioners started to develop, and implement, a manifold of deliberative designs for organizing concrete decision- making processes (Gastil & Levine, 2005). In this article, we explore the contribu- tions of Mary Douglas’s Cultural Theory to these fields of research and practice. In particular, we argue that the theory lends itself to a proposition concerning how best to design deliberative practices. Moreover, the approach can strengthen Dryzek and Niemeyer’s (2008) influential proposal on “deliberative representation” and thereby contribute to scaling-out public deliberation.
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The Policy Studies Journal, Vol. 42, No. 4, 2014
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0190-292X © 2014 Policy Studies Organization Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ.
In what follows, we outline these potential contributions and sketch how future research can test their empirical validity. In the first section, we briefly discuss the theory and practice of deliberative processes and deliberative democracy. This section concludes that, despite considerable conceptual and empirical work on delib- erative processes in the past decades, it is still unclear why some processes seem to be better than others at tackling complex policy challenges in pluralist societies. After outlining the general features of CT, we use the approach in the subsequent sections to: (i) formulate a hypothesis about which types of deliberative processes are likely to be more effective and widely supported than others. Moreover we outline how, if our hypothesis is empirically validated, CT can provide prescriptions for improving such deliberative practices; and (ii) describe how CT contributes to scaling-out public deliberation by strengthening an influential existing proposal for improving the representativeness of deliberative processes.
Deliberative Processes and Deliberative Democracy
The exact meaning of public deliberation is frequently contested and therefore tends to subtly shift over time (Bohman, 1998, pp. 400–1). Some even argue that “deliberation lacks a coherent conceptual definition” (Burkhalter, Gastil, & Kelshaw, 2002, p. 398) and that “there is no settled account of what constitutes public deliberation in theory or in practice” (Blacksher, Diebel, Forrest, Goold, & Abelson, 2012, p. 14). Nevertheless, most democracy theorists agree that delibera- tion involves public discussion in which participants support proposals for collec- tive decisions by justifications that appeal to other participants and by reasons that these others can accept (Fung, 2003, pp. 343–44). Thus defined, public deliberation differs from modes of collective decision making that rely on authority, status, force, numerical support, or money, such as, arguably, voting, bargaining, and top- down imposition.
Nonetheless, leading scholars of deliberative democracy have recently asserted that self-interest and power have been given short shrift in deliberative theory. In order to make up for this neglect, “[f]uture theorists will want to investigate further the ways in which specific forms of bargaining and negotiation are compatible or incompatible with deliberative ideals” (Mansbridge et al., 2010, p. 93). As we show below, Cultural Theory helps explain why such alternative conceptions of public deliberation abound. For now, though, we hope to avoid definitional debates by adopting Jensen Sass and John Dryzek’s expansive conceptualization of public delib- eration as encompassing:
[A]ll communication concerning questions of authority, not restricted to the argumentation of, say, communication action (Habermas) or public reason (Rawls). Allowable communication includes rhetoric, silence, gossip, humor, ritual, the telling of stories, and what Mansbridge calls “everyday talk” (but not command, deception, coercion, or private expressions that cannot reach others). (Sass & Dryzek, 2014)
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Our understanding of deliberative democracy flows from this generic concep- tualization of public deliberation. Deliberative democracy involves decisions reached through public deliberation that are binding on the participants or those for whom the participants are authorized to speak (Mansbridge et al., 2010, p. 65).
Theorists also disagree on what public deliberation can achieve. For instance, Jürgen Habermas (1973, p. 239) envisages a “rational consensus,” in which partici- pants base any collective action on the force of the better argument. For Cass Sunstein (1995), public deliberation should generate “incompletely theorized agree- ments”; that is, outputs all participants can agree on, albeit for different reasons and from alternative moral perspectives. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (1998, p. 84) hope deliberative processes1 lead to policy outputs that, while not necessarily carried by consensus, achieve an “economy of moral disagreement” by minimizing opposition. Last, Simon Niemeyer and John Dryzek (2007) argue that public delib- eration should establish a “meta-consensus”: rather than unanimity on what should be done, participants here agree on the types of reasons and considerations permis- sible in debate as well as the character of the choices to be made.
Nothwithstanding these varying levels of ambition, proponents agree that delib- erative processes increase both the legitimacy and effectiveness of policymaking. Normatively, they argue, public deliberation deepens and extends existing struc- tures of democracy. By giving citizens an effective voice in policymaking, delibera- tive processes help overcome the so-called “democracy deficit” of contemporary representative democracies (Gastil, 2000). Furthermore, deliberative processes have practical benefits. For one, the act of public deliberation—arguing back and forth, weighing and assessing evidence, listening to and formulating arguments—helps reduce what Nabatchi (2010) has called the “citizenship deficit.” Not only do indi- vidual citizens become more adept at formulating arguments but they also, at least in theory, develop “civic empathy” and an ability to develop a public interest argument. And because the policy outputs are based on reasoned argument, they should be acceptable and effective. In terms of policy effectiveness, proponents have claimed that reasoned and critical deliberation can lead to better policy outputs and outcomes. Whereas established representative democracies deepen the many divi- sions of diverse and pluralist societies, deliberative processes promise to more effectively make use of that very diversity for the solution of complex and uncertain policy challenges.
The case for deliberative democracy has frequently been challenged as well (O’Neill, 2007; Sanders, 1997; Sunstein, 2002; Young, 2001). Critics doubt whether it is possible to reach consensus or even an economy of moral disagreement, assert that deliberative processes favor those with more rhetorical skills and other resources, warn that public deliberation tends to polarize people rather than bring them together, question its representativeness, fret over its slow pace, and claim that public deliberation can only ever have a local impact.
While early conversations about public deliberation were of a conceptual or deductive nature, debate in the last 10 years has increasingly drawn on empirical studies (Elstub, 2010). Both proponents (Ban, Jha, & Rao, 2012; Fishkin, He, Luskin, & Shiu, 2010; Niemeyer, 2011; Yetano, Royo, & Acerete, 2010) and opponents (Mutz,
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2006; Ryfe, 2005; Schkade, Sunstein, & Hastie, 2007) sought to strengthen their argument with data collected through surveys, case studies, and experiments. Yet, the conclusion most often drawn from empirical research is that it all depends. Specifically, these studies suggest that outcomes of public deliberation are highly sensitive to the precise rules that govern the interaction among participants (Barabas, 2004; Delli Carpini, Lomax Cook, & Jacobs, 2004; Holmes & Scoones, 2001; Michels, 2011; Rosenberg, 2007; Yang & Pandey, 2011). In other words, certain forms of public deliberation seem to function more satisfactorily than others.
As a result of all this work, the study and practice of public deliberation are thriving. At the same time, there is a need for conceptual clarification (Pellizzoni, 2013; Von Korff, Daniell, Moellenkamp, Bots, & Bijlsma, 2012). In particular, there is not much clarity about the features deliberative practices should include in order to function better, and that could serve as criteria for judging proposed practices. In the words of Julia Abelson and colleagues:
The paucity of rigorous evaluations is, however, of concern for those looking to draw generalizable lessons to inform the design of more effective partici- pation processes in the future. Indeed, more work is needed to . . . system- atically assess various methods against pre-determined criteria. (Abelson et al., 2003, p. 249)
Furthermore, the representativeness of deliberative practices—or rather the lack thereof—causes concern. Most deliberative processes involve anywhere from a few dozen to several thousand participants, who have either volunteered or have been drawn by lot. How can it be justified that their deliberation and decisions impinge on nonparticipants (Lafont, 2014)? Alternatively, how could more people partake in deliberative processes or how could nonparticipants be made to trust processes and outcomes of public deliberation? As Robert Goodin (2012, p. 807) puts it: “The problem, at root, is one of legitimacy. By what right do twenty people on some citizens’ jury, or two hundred people involved in some deliberative poll, speak for the rest of all their fellow citizens?”
As a consequence, the following questions remain open: Are some forms of public deliberation more useful and effective than others in tackling complex and uncertain issues in pluralist societies? If so, which ones and why? Is it possible to improve deliberative methods that have not yet fully lived up to their promise? Last, how can deliberative processes, often involving just a few dozen or a few hundred participants, come to represent larger numbers of people?
We believe that the Cultural Theory (CT) pioneered by anthropologist Dame Mary Douglas (Douglas, 1982, 1996; Douglas & Ney, 1998) offers answers to these questions and thus may have important contributions to make to the ongoing debate on public deliberation.
There have been a number of calls for enriching the discussion about public deliberation with theories of political culture (Benhabib, 2002; Fischer, 2006; Sass & Dryzek, 2014). Despite the wide variety of such theories (Fuchs, 2007), several features make Cultural Theory particularly useful in this context. First, unlike many other political culture approaches, CT has a fractal nature. That is to say, it posits that
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any level of analysis—including the individual, meso, and macro levels—features similar patterns of social structures, belief systems, and social practices. (For an early application of CT to a whole society, see Simon Schama’s [1987] analysis of why the Netherlands thrived in the seventeenth century.) This feature should be interesting for deliberative scholars, as they are currently striving to scale up the impact and representativeness of public deliberation beyond the level of individual communi- ties. Second, more than other political culture approaches, CT has always focused on the intricacies of the policy process. This has been due to the contributions that leading scholars of public policy and management such as Aaron Wildavsky (2006; Douglas and Wildavsky, 1982), Hank Jenkins-Smith (Jenkins-Smith & Smith, 1994), and Christopher Hood (2013) have made to the development of the approach. Last, due to its Durkheimian roots (6, 2003), CT analyzes patterns of social relations as well as (corresponding) sets of beliefs, perceptions, and preferences.
But what is Cultural Theory?
Cultural Theory
Cultural Theory (Swedlow, 2011; Thompson, 2008; Thompson, Ellis, & Wildavsky, 1990; Wildavsky, 1996) is based on the simple insight that the manner in which we organize our social relations shapes the way we perceive the world and, consequently, the way we act on it. More than that, though, CT is a theory of socio-cultural viability. It sets out to identify the possible combinations of social relations, belief systems, and practices—“ways of life,” in short—that are likely to persist over time.
CT maps ways of life along two dimensions: grid and group. Grid measures the extent to which role differentiation constrains the behavior of individuals: where roles are primarily ascribed, grid constraints are high; where roles are primarily a matter of choice, grid constraints are low. Group, by contrast, measures the extent to which an overriding commitment to a social unit constrains the thought and action of individuals. Four stable ways of life emerge from these two dimensions. In their most generic form, these are referred to as individualist (low grid, low group), hierarchical (high grid, high group), egalitarian (low grid, high group), and fatalist (high grid, low group).
Adherents to individualist ways of life prefer ego-centered networks that allow for maximum individual spatial and social mobility. Eschewing rules, traditions, or customs, individuals regulate their relations with other free agents through negotia- tion and contract. For this reason, those who follow individualist ways of life cham- pion individual rights, liberties, and responsibilities. Here, humans thrive in the rough and rugged world of free markets. Since unfettered markets reward intelli- gence, acumen, and hard work, while punishing free-riding, individuals either inno- vate or suffer the consequences of failure.
Hierarchical ways of life, by contrast, are those tradition-bound institutions in which people know their place, but in which that place might vary with time. Members of these nested bounded groups emphasize duty, obligation, and loyalty
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toward the institution, be it a tribe, a ministry, or a regiment. In hierarchies, each institutional level comes equipped with a battery of finely tuned rules, norms, incentives, and sanctions to guide behavior, reward loyalty, and punish transgres- sion. For hierarchical actors, the management of social relations (or, indeed, any- thing) is best organized from the top on down. Human nature, weak and fallible as it is, yearns for order and stability. But left to its own devices, so the argument goes, society inevitably descends into disorder. For members of hierarchical ways of life, social immobility is a small price to pay for the security of strong institutions.
Egalitarian ways of life eschew differences in power and status. As a result, they are often in a state of mobilization: suspicion of contamination from the outside and treason from within make this form of organization the most unstable and fluid. Yet, endemic fission is not that much of a problem for those committed to the principle that “small is beautiful.” Adherents to egalitarian ways of life frequently rail against formality, materialism, pomp, and artifice, rejecting authoritarian institutions and competitive markets, preferring simplicity, frankness, intimate friendship, and spiri- tual values. People, they argue, are fragile: small and intimate societies based on absolute equality, solidarity, and authenticity therefore provide the only suitable environments for human well-being.
In fatalism, people are isolated from one another, yet still subject to stringent regulations. Members of fatalist ways of life therefore lack either the opportunities afforded by open networks or the security of cohesive groups. To them, the world appears inherently inscrutable and random. Other people, even those that share their social isolation, remain unpredictable and untrustworthy: hence, the fatalist way of life counsels to “defect first.” As a consequence of this distrust, fatalism is character- ized by a power struggle of all against all. This is the only constant in an otherwise capricious world.
CT postulates that these four ways of organizing, perceiving, and justifying social relations are the building blocks of social life—that is to say, each social domain (from a kindergarten to an international regime) is supposed to consist of an ever-changing mix of these four ways of organizing, justifying, and perceiving human relations. These contending ways of life, Cultural Theorists argue, are in constant rhetorical and symbolic conflict about how best to structure society. This conflict erupts and re-erupts because the ways of life not only share the same social space, but also define themselves in contradistinction to one another. Mary Douglas (1996, p. 43) maintains that any “act of choice is also active in their [the individuals’] constitution-making interests. A choice is an act of allegiance and a protest against the undesired model of society. On this theory each type of culture is by its nature hostile to the other three cultures.”
Somewhat counterintuitively, CT understands this conflict to be a source of social cohesion. Each way of life provides a specific set of “perceptual lenses” that helps its adherents make sense of the world by defining focus and salience. Wearing one of the perceptual lenses brings specific aspects of contentious policy issues— such as climate change or poverty or abortion—to the foreground while others are relegated to the background. Furthermore, they all contain a kernel of truth as to
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how people can and would like to live. As Mary Douglas (1996, p. 43) continues, each of the ways of life “has its strengths, and in certain circumstances each culture has advantages over the others. And each has its weaknesses. But all four coexist in a state of mutual antagonism in any society at all times.” The weaknesses of a particu- lar way of life generate problems that other types of ways of life are well equipped to identify and to solve. Thus, both the cognitive and organizational coherence of each way of life depends on the others, not only to define themselves against, but also to compensate for each other’s shortcomings.
Scholars of governance and public policy have built on this insight (Hendriks, 2010; Hood, 1998; Hoppe, 2006; Jones, 2011; Ney, 2009). If policymaking for complex and uncertain challenges is dominated by adherents to just one or two of the ways of life, then policy solutions are likely to reflect the in-built blind spots and vulnerabilities typical of these cultural types. This is part of the reason why so many policies fail to respond to complex and uncertain problems or give rise to intractable policy controversies (Schwarz & Thompson, 1990). More importantly, this insight also points to a possible way out of this predicament (Verweij, 2011; Verweij & Thompson, 2006). In order to overcome or, better still, avoid both policy failure and intractable policy controversies, it is necessary to deal with complex and uncertain policy challenges by including and engaging all ways of life in policymaking.
In the past, this argument has often been limited to just three ways of life: individualism, egalitarianism, and hierarchy. Fatalist distrust and pessimism, policy scholars have frequently argued, preclude it from contributing to policymaking (e.g., Thompson et al., 1990, pp. 93–96). Yet, scholars increasingly challenge this understanding of fatalism. For instance, Christopher Hood and col- leagues (Hood, 1998; Hood, James, Peters, & Scott, 2004) show that fatalist features, and especially randomized processes, play a useful role in public management— for instance in preventing collusion and corruption. James Hollway and Claudio Pardo Enrico (2012) suggest understanding fatalism in terms of “cynicism” which can significantly contribute to the formation of public policies. In particular, they argue that fatalism offers insights into how best to use coercive methods in pro- cesses of collective action to overcome the resistance of those who seek to gain at the expense of others. Moreover, various recent empirical investigations into atti- tudes towards policy issues (Jones, 2014; Song, 2014) have shown that fatalism is a powerful explanation of many people’s policy preferences. For these reasons, we explore the contributions that this way of organizing, justifying, and perceiving can make to the study of public deliberation.
What, then, are the implications of CT for public deliberation? We argue that the approach can make two sets of contributions. CT can increase our understanding of: (i) how to design deliberative processes that can deal effectively with complex and uncertain policy challenges; and (ii) how to scale out these deliberative processes by generating trust in their inputs and procedures. The former contribution relies on CT’s analysis of social relations (discussed in the next two sections). The latter contribution—highlighted in the section thereafter—utilizes CT’s applicability to people’s beliefs, perceptions, and preferences.
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Designing Minipublics
For practical reasons, actual public deliberation takes place within a subset of citizens drawn from the total population of all eligible citizens or stakeholders. Deliberative processes based on subsets are also referred to as “minipublics” (Dahl, 1989; Fung, 2003). The term “mini” is somewhat misleading since the number of participants that constitute a “minipublic” can range from several dozen to a few thousand. Whether they are small or large subsets, “minipublics” reside “in the middle range of democratic institutions—in the neighborhood of administrative agencies and secondary associations rather than constitutions and basic structures” (Fung, 2003, p. 339). Examples of existing minipublics are deliberative polls, plan- ning cells, citizen juries, national issue forums, and consensus conferences (Goodin & Dryzek, 2006). CT’s contributions to the design of minipublics start from the premise that there are four (ideal-typical) ways of structuring such deliberative processes, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Since Cultural Theory leads us to expect similar patterns of social cohesion and division across different levels of analysis, we should expect to find these ideal-typical ways of organizing public deliberation in these meso-level democratic institutions.
The egalitarian way of designing public deliberation consists of an open debate among all those who could be affected by the final outcomes. Participants should only argue in terms of the public good and refrain from openly or covertly pursuing private interests. Participation should be voluntary and individuals should be willing to listen emphatically and patiently to each other’s life stories and concerns. Leveling differences of rank, status, or power of among the participants—for instance by wearing non-conspicuous clothing and using simple, clear language—is crucial for the success of public deliberation. The deliberations should ideally be held in a public space, organized in the form of a roundtable. Decisions emerge through the formation of a collective will indicated by a full consensus. Debate lasts as long as is necessary for this consensus to emerge. The egalitarian blueprint comes close to what Bächtiger, Niemeyer, Neblo, Steenbergen, and Steiner (2010) have called “Type I” forms of public deliberation, which focus on deliberative intent and aim for consensus.
Hierarchical public deliberation is all about experts and leaders. This approach presumes that stakeholders’ judgments are too unreliable and that policy problems are too complex for deliberation to be left to the free interplay of social forces. Instead, the interaction between stakeholders with different perspectives and inter- ests needs to be mediated, steered, and formalized by the relevant experts and authorities. The topics to be discussed, the ways in which this has to be done, when and where meetings need to take place, and who can participate, need to be regu- lated by trained and experienced stewards. Once the designated stakeholders have had their say on what the issues are and how they should be resolved, the appro- priate authorities synthesize all these views into a workable solution, which is then imposed on the organization or public involved. This model resembles the concept of “authoritarian deliberation” that Baogang He and Mark Warren (2011) have pro- posed for capturing deliberative developments in China.
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The individualist way of designing public deliberation sets up competitive processes that provide stakeholders with different views on the problem and its solution with the freedom to implement their ideas. Thus, stakeholders can dem- onstrate, through actions rather than words, that their plans are more effective than those of others. The most persuasive stakeholders can keep part (or all) of the rewards of their labor—be that in terms of prestige or material resources gained. Here, time is money and should not be wasted. Here, competitive processes driven by self-interest assure speediness and efficiency. If it is not possible to create a competition, then bargaining between stakeholders with different perspectives is acceptable as well. In the individualist view, participation in these processes should be on a strictly voluntary basis. It can be argued that such public deliberation is no deliberation at all. As Jane Mansbridge et al. (2010, p. 64) put it “deliberative democracy has traditionally been defined in opposition to self-interest, to bargain- ing and negotiation, to voting, and to the use of power.” However, they find that this stance is not realistic and state:
we contend that self-interest, suitably constrained, ought to be part of the deliberation that eventuates in a democratic decision. Indeed, some forms of negotiation involving self-interest meet all of our criteria for ideal delibera- tion, in particular the criterion that in their ideal form deliberative methods eschew coercive power. We thus include such constrained self-interest and these forms of negotiation in our reformulation of the deliberative ideal, that is, the regulative standard to which real deliberations should aspire. (Mansbridge et al., 2010, p. 64)
Hence, at least according to these prominent deliberative theorists, individualist forms of public deliberation are not only feasible, but are also needed.
The fatalist perspective on designing effective public deliberation is that it is unlikely and certainly not without the use of power. According to this perspective, we live in a dog-eats-dog world in which people are too busy with increasing their relative power positions through hook or crook to strive after any lofty ideals. It is therefore nearly impossible to bring about public deliberation in a planned manner and will always require some form of coercion. It may not be surprising that very few deliberative theorists or practitioners have advocated this strategy, as it appears to clash with the deliberative ideal of coercion-free decision making. But Mansbridge et al. (2010, p. 82) again beg to differ: “the ideal of fully absent coercive power is not only impossible to achieve but even hard to envision.” Moreover, their deliberative model allows for the use of coercion for certain purposes, namely to keep order during deliberative proceedings, to compensate for existing power imbalances, and to implement decisions that have been deliberatively taken (pp. 82–83). In addition, as we mentioned above, Christopher Hood (1998) has pointed out that the fatalist feature of contrived randomness (which includes selection by lot) can benefit decision-making structures.
Hence, CT outlines a set of contending perspectives on how best to structure deliberative processes. For our purposes, it is helpful to provide a systematic over- view of these perspectives. In a review of the literature, Archon Fung (2003, pp.
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340–47) identifies eight crucial institutional design choices involved in creating a minipublic. These decisions concern: (i) the aims of the deliberative process (which can range from merely allowing citizens to develop their preferences all the way to tabling detailed policy decisions), (ii) the selection of participants, (iii) the issues under discussion, (iv) the interaction between participants, (v) the length and fre- quency of public deliberations, (vi) the motivations and behavior to be expected of participants, (vii) the extent to which minipublics are empowered, and (viii) the degree to which minipublics monitor the implementation of previous policy deci- sions (in addition to informing future policy choices). In our view, the last of these choices—while important—can also be subsumed under other design choices, such as those revolving around the aims, topic and frequency of the public deliberations. Furthermore, we feel that Fung (2003) overlooks one central aspect of the design of minipublics, namely how to aggregate participants’ preferences. Hence, we replace Fung’s eighth design choice with the question of how to aggregate participants’ views. Each of CT’s ways of life resolves these eight design issues differently, as Table 1 shows.
Each of these ways of organizing minipublics has its own drawbacks. The insis- tence on the emergence of collective will (which may be slow in coming if, indeed, it ever arrives) weakens the egalitarian approach. Moreover, including only affected stakeholders limits its scope to local decisions. The hierarchical approach may leave stakeholders with a feeling that their views and opinions have not been seriously considered at all, and that instead they have been manipulated into endorsing what the authorities and experts had already decided upon. The processes of competition and bargaining on which the individualist approach relies seem to go against the spirit of community and tolerance often demanded by public deliberation. In any case, for many topics (such as the legalization of abortion) it may not be feasible to organize such processes. All these three ways of structuring minipublics run the risk of being thwarted by even a handful of obstructionists among the participants. Finally, the fatalist strategy is essentially a council of despair.
The shortcomings of each contending way of structuring public deliberations can only be compensated for by the other ways. Egalitarianism’s sluggishness is at least partly amenable to hierarchical steering as well as individualist competitiveness and bargaining. The centrifugal forces sparked by the individualist approach succumb to hierarchical planning and mediation; the egalitarian sense of community and belonging can also overcome the social distance created by competition. The risks of alienation of stakeholders that are run by the hierarchical approach are mitigated by the more inclusive processes preferred by egalitarianism as well as by the indepen- dent initiatives prescribed by individualism. Fatalism can help all the other delib- erative modes by offering coercive means of dealing with obstinate participants who refuse to acknowledge the arguments of others and/or consider the public good. In terms of the design choices in Table 1, this implies that effective deliberative pro- cesses consist of a functioning and mutually reinforcing combination of contending design principles.
From the argument above, then, we posit the following hypothesis: Minipublics that creatively and flexibly combine CT’s four ways of organizing deliberative
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630 Policy Studies Journal, 42:4
processes are more likely to generate the normative and practical benefits of public deliberation than other designs. From this hypothesis logically follows CT’s advice for how to improve less-than-satisfactory minipublics: by carefully adding features of the hitherto neglected ways of life.
Testing the Hypothesis: Two Research Strategies
The hypothesis formulated above can be tested in case studies and lab experi- ments (cf. Stoker & John, 2009). This will entail assessing the implementation of different process designs across a range of complex and uncertain policy issues.2 For a pluralist and diverse citizenry, we must consider the hypothesis falsified if: (i) a deliberative process design that does not include all four modes of organizing public deliberation consistently produces the normative and practical benefits of public deliberation; and (ii) a process design that includes all four modes of organizing public deliberation consistently fails to produce the normative and practical benefits of public deliberation. It will be important to compare like with like: different deliberative processes may be more suitable for some types of policy problems than for others (Fung, 2006), or may only fit certain social, political, and legal environ- ments (Hoppe, 2011).3 Hence, it will be necessary to control for these potential influences.
The first strategy for testing our hypothesis is to distinguish between delibera- tive designs that are, according to CT, “most likely” and “least likely” to generate a high level of deliberative discourse (Eckstein, 1975; Seawright & Gerring, 2008). A number of deliberative methods appear to rest on only one of CT’s ways of organiz- ing. As such, other things remaining equal, they are therefore least likely to produce the benefits claimed for public deliberation. Other minipublics make creative use of all four of CT’s ways of organizing, and are therefore most likely to secure these benefits.
An example of the creative use of all four ways of organizing is Deliberative Polling, a minipublic developed by James Fishkin (1991, 2009). Deliberative Polls typically bring together as many as 130 to 450 participants. Hierarchy is present in the form of briefing materials, expert panels, trained moderators, and advisory groups, all of which are there to ensure orderly proceedings. Deliberative Polls also make use of random sampling to choose participants, which according to Hood (1998) is a fatalist feature of public administration. Egalitarianism is evident in the central role played by public deliberations and small-group discussions among the participants, who are treated as equals and cannot be linked to any special interests. (These small groups typically involve up to 18 people.) Individualism comes in the shape of the financial compensation that the participants get for their troubles, the short time frame of the proceedings (typically a few days), the rule that participants do not need to argue in terms of the collective good, as well as the opinion polls that are taken at the beginning and end of the deliberative process, and which serve to indicate how the opinions of the entire electorate would have evolved if all its members had been able to deliberate.
Ney/Verweij: Cultural Theory and Complex Policy Problems 631
Another example of a minipublic that is most likely to generate the normative and practical benefits of public deliberation is a Future Search. Such a process also engages all of CT’s four ways of life (Emery, 1977; Emery & Devane, 1999; Weisbord & Janoff, 2010). This may not be coincidental, as these deliberative designs have emerged from the work of Fred Emery and Eric Trist, whose work on Open Systems Theory (Emery & Trist, 1972) has great affinity with CT (Thompson, 2008, pp. 110– 12). Future Searches have been pioneered at the Tavistock Institute of Human Rela- tions in London and are also undertaken through the Future Search Network and Future Search Alliance located in Pennsylvania. In a Future Search, participants develop a set of strategic goals and tactical action plans that they later seek to implement. Any group of people—a company, governmental agency, or community—may use a Search. Moreover, Searches may also be conducted around issues of national or regional importance. The main egalitarian component of a Future Search consists of actively leveling any pre-existing status or rank differences among participants. A strict democratic structure is put in place both during public deliberation and implementation phases. Participants operate strictly in a peer-to- peer mode. As a Search involves people from all echelons of the system (i.e., the company, governmental agency, community), this involves significantly blurring the usual lines of authority. Another egalitarian element consists of the intense public deliberations that take place within small groups. A Search usually involves 60 to 80 people. But most public deliberations take place within groups of about 8. A last egalitarian element is the aim of achieving consensus—both within the small dis- cussion groups and, at the end, in the entire assembly. Hierarchy abounds as well. The entire process is divided up in three phases (before, during, and after the Search), each with its own set of principles that need to be heeded. Before the Search, the sponsors, facilitators, and steering committee have to make sure that the right people (representing all the viewpoints and expertise needed) commit to participat- ing, and that the issue at hand gets properly defined and studied. After the Search, periodic review meetings need to be held to bring back together the stakeholders from the original conference and other interested parties so as to renew their com- mitment. The Search itself is also strictly structured. It consists of 3 days, and follows a predetermined sequence of Tasks (Focus on the Past; Focus on the Present, External Trends; Focus on the Present, Owning Our Actions; Ideal Future Scenarios; Identify Common Ground; and Action Planning). Facilitators are at hand to keep everybody on track. Individualism is evident in various ways as well, including the short duration, the creativity and boldness vis-à-vis the future that are encouraged by the organizers and facilitators, and the individual responsibility that participants have to implement the plans on which they have agreed. Last, fatalism is present in an interesting way. A Future Search is explicitly designed to create (at least for a while) uncertainty, anxiety, and confusion among the participants. This is seen as a neces- sary phase on the way to consensus.
Deliberative Polls and Future Searches are instances of minipublics that rely on all of CT’s ways of organizing. We therefore hypothesize that, for complex and uncertain problems in pluralist societies, such decision-making procedures are most likely to secure the normative and practical benefits of public deliberation. In con-
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trast, various other minipublics predominantly rely on one way of structuring public deliberation. This is for instance the case for Open Space Technology and Integrated Sustainability Assessment.
Open Space Technology (O’Connor & Cooper, 2005; Owen, 2008) is a widely used, predominantly egalitarian approach to public deliberation. It tackles complex and uncertain challenges by creating an agora for people to contribute and share in equally. Meetings based on Open Space Technology have no agendas, no set times, no facilitators, and certainly no chairpersons. In fact, Open Space Technology assigns no formal or informal roles to anyone or anything. Whether CEO or simple office clerk, expert scientist or homemaker, leading politician or chairperson of the gardening club, everyone has the possibility to contribute to the process: “whoever comes are the right people” (Owen, 2008, p. 71). In order to avoid specific framings of the issue at hand to dominate proceedings, Open Spaces begin by gathering all participants in a circle. All are encouraged (but not compelled) to post themes that move them, and to host a break-out session. These breakout sessions—that participants organize as they see fit—are governed by a single rule: if you are not contributing or learning, move on to another discussion (the “Law of Two Feet”). In Open Spaces, envisaging specific outcomes is less important, counterproductive even, than allowing issues, themes, and discussion to emerge authentically from the bottom-up. The logic here is that “whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened” (Owen, 2008, p. 71).
Integrated Sustainability Assessment is a deliberative process that makes use of a largely hierarchical set of principles (Rotmans & van Asselt, 2003; Toth, 2004; Weaver & Rotmans, 2009). It involves “a long-term comprehensive assessment of international and national policy programs against sustainability targets and criteria” (Rotmans, 2006, p. 35). Integrated Sustainability Assessment requires scientists to build semi-quantitative models that assess the multiple dimensions of sustainable development, in terms of multiple scales, multiple domains, and multiple genera- tions. These models:
need to analyse the non-sustainability symptoms at the systems level in relation to their deeper driving forces; they need to recognise and monitor early warning signals of non-sustainability, in order to disentangle the short- term fluctuations from the long-term slow wave-patterns; and they need to evaluate the sustainability impacts of strategic policies at different scales. (Rotmans, 2006, p. 37)
In other words, Integrated Sustainability Assessment aims to analyze the mul- tiple causes and impacts of a complex problem in order to develop policy options for a strategic solution of the problem in question. The diverse perspectives of the stakeholders are fed into these models as input data, and are extracted by scientists with the help of focus groups, policy exercises, and dialogue methods.
These are two examples of deliberative processes based on one of the ways of organizing social relations highlighted by CT. If used in isolation (i.e., not in com- bination with other deliberative techniques that rest on alternative principles), then such approaches are—according to our hypothesis—least likely to generate the nor- mative and practical benefits claimed for public deliberation about complex and
Ney/Verweij: Cultural Theory and Complex Policy Problems 633
uncertain problems in pluralist societies. That is to say, if deliberative benefits were to consistently emerge from these types of processes, other things being equal, then our hypothesis would have to be considered falsified.
The second research strategy to examine our hypothesis assesses whether the quality of any given deliberative processes improves when elements from missing ways of designing minipublics are added to it. Thus, controlled comparisons— between deliberative processes that rely on different sets of CT’s ways of organizing—would become feasible. This strategy would have the added value of establishing whether it is feasible to “mend” deliberative processes by incorporating missing ways of organizing.
Participatory Action Research offers an illustration of how this could work. This deliberative process has long been employed worldwide for resolving highly complex problems (Forester, 1999, chapter 5). Most understandings and uses of Participatory Action Research are predominantly egalitarian (e.g., Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005; Reason & Bradbury, 2001). This is the case because these projects blur the boundary between observers (i.e., researchers), and those who are observed (members of an organization or community), by the collective planning, implemen- tation and evaluation of research (including problem identification), and action. Moreover, the goal of these projects is invariably to permanently level authority distinctions and increase solidarity within an organization or community.
However, William Foote Whyte’s version of this approach is more pluralistic (Whyte, 1991). His use of Participatory Action Research has a strong egalitarian component, as it puts “lay members” of an organization or community on a par with academic experts. Projects undertaken by Whyte or his colleagues from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University are decided upon and implemented jointly with stakeholders from all levels of the organization or community in which the projects take place. Intense public delib- erations within small groups of researchers and practitioners are part and parcel of this process that aims for voluntary commitment and participation. But Whyte and his colleagues also make use of other ways of structuring public deliberation. When different organizational members cannot decide among alternative plans (for instance, regarding how to increase agricultural productivity in a region), then their advocates are sometimes given the opportunity to demonstrate their wisdom through rivaling pilot projects (e.g., by giving participants the responsibility for different plots of farmland). This competitive approach originates from the indi- vidualist playbook. Hierarchy rears its head as well in Whyte’s usage of Participa- tion Action Research. The boundaries within which projects have to stay and the ultimate aims they need to reach, are outlined a priori by senior management or community leaders. Moreover, the academic consultants do not have to accept each and every proposal made by members of the organization or community. Last, any participatory project relies on the involvement of key stakeholders—participants who are especially knowledgeable or enthusiastic about the project. Hence, our hypothesis would predict that Whyte’s use of Participatory Action Research would be more effective and widely endorsed than other, more monolithic interpretations of this deliberative method.
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These two research strategies would allow stringent testing of CT’s answer to one of the most pressing questions currently raised in the debate about deliberative democracy: how to inch nearer “Towards More Realistic Theories of Deliberative Democracy,” to borrow the title of a recent symposium on the topic (Bächtiger et al., 2010).
Scaling Out Public Deliberations
As we have seen, different methods of public deliberation involve different numbers of citizens. Yet whether a particular method brings together a few dozen (such as Citizen Juries) or several thousands of individuals (such as Deliberative Polls), the (mini)publics constituted by the approaches are always small in relation to the entire population of eligible citizens. This, however, invariably raises uncomfort- able issues concerning the legitimacy and impact of deliberative processes. Peter Levine, Archon Fung, and John Gastil have described these issues as well as possible solutions as follows:
To become politically and socially significant, public deliberation initiatives must scale “out” in the sense of directly or indirectly including many more participants. Most civic innovations in deliberation involve hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of individuals. As a percentage of affected citizens, those who participate directly in such encounters constitute a far lower percentage of the population than even the lowest of low-turnout elections. . . . (Levine, Fung, & Gastil, 2005, pp. 3–4).
Apart from including larger numbers of citizens in deliberative processes, “taking deliberation to scale” will also be about generating trust in public delibera- tion among citizens and stakeholders not involved in specific deliberative exercises. This is why thinkers such as Friedman (2006) or Parkinson and Mansbridge (2012) urge us to think about the way disjointed deliberative processes can be made to contribute to what Jonathan Kuyper (2012) calls the “deliberative legitimacy of the overall system” (p. 21).4 A particular prominent proposal in this vein that focuses on the inputs of deliberative processes is Dryzek and Niemeyer’s (2008, 2010) plan for increased “discursive representation.”
Instead of having stakeholders represented in deliberative practices, they propose representing discourses. Implicit here is the assumption that individuals can reconcile their policy preferences with the discourses represented in the process and that this engenders trust in public deliberation. For them, then, a discourse is a set of categories and concepts that embody specific assumptions, judgments, claims, dispositions, and capabilities. According to Dryzek and Niemeyer, ensuring the representation of all relevant discourses about a particular topic overcomes the challenge of scaling out of public deliberations in practice. This is the case because:
The number of discourses that need representing on any issue is generally much smaller than the number of representatives in general purpose legis-
Ney/Verweij: Cultural Theory and Complex Policy Problems 635
latures, so it ought to be possible to constitute a small issue-specific delib- erating group that contains representatives of all relevant discourses. (Dryzek & Niemeyer, 2008, p. 485)
Dryzek and Niemeyer suggest identifying the relevant discourses on a particular social problem by employing Q methodology in combination with other inductive research tools such as historical analysis, in-depth interviews, and opinion surveys. Once identified, representatives of these discourses need to be carefully selected for inclusion in a Chamber of Discourses. Representatives could either come from the most diehard advocates of a particular discourse (to form a Chamber of Extremism) or be recruited from those who feel persuaded by several discourses (to establish a Chamber of Moderation). Dryzek and Niemeyer spell out various ways in which such Chambers could be embedded in domestic and international systems. They could function formally or informally, reach decisions by voting or by other means, and could be invested with more or less authority. While the authors refuse to be drawn into a debate about the specific forms that Chambers of Discourse should take in concrete cases, they point out that discursive representation could infuse more democratic decision making into highly transnational and/or networked policy domains.
The crucial premise of Dryzek and Niemeyer’s proposal is that there are usually far fewer discourses than stakeholders in policy areas. But why make this assump- tion? How can it be epistemologically and theoretically justified as well as empiri- cally validated? Why not assume, as some post-essentialist policy analysts have (e.g., Hazen, 1993, p. 16), that there may be as many potential discourses as there are stakeholders, and that, anyway, these are always in flux?
Q methodology (McKeown & Thomas, 2013) provides only a temporary shelter from these questions. Here, researchers first establish the “concourse,” i.e., the full range of discourses on the topic at hand. Thereafter, they select—from policy reports, newspaper articles, and other outlets—some several dozen statements that, collectively, are supposed to cover the entire concourse. Simultaneously, research- ers recruit at most several hundred respondents to obtain a purposive (rather than representative) sample that includes as many viewpoints as possible. Each of the respondents then sorts the statements into groups which analysts then subject to a factor analysis to produce a manageable number of discourses. Even though Q methodology allows respondents to manipulate the categories of the study, the analysts implementing this method still need to take a number of crucial decisions. The latter include establishing the boundaries of the concourse, selecting the state- ments that represent possible discourses in the concourse, recruiting respondents, and interpreting the factor analysis. Dryzek and Niemeyer’s proposal does not indicate on what bases these choices should be made, thus leaving Q methodology open to conscious and unconscious biases of its practitioners.
Here, the so-called neo-Durkheimian aspects of CT can contribute to effec- tively scaling-out public deliberation. CTs notion of socio-cultural viability relies heavily on Emile Durkheim’s work on the interrelationship between “collective representations” and social structure (cf. Douglas, 1996). This is why, as we have
636 Policy Studies Journal, 42:4
mentioned above, CT stipulates that ways of organizing social relations are sup- ported by (and in turn shape) collectively shared perceptions, norms, and beliefs. Cultural Theorists call the set of predispositions that makes a particular way of organizing seem rational, obvious, or natural a “cultural bias”: viable combinations of social relations and cultural biases make up the contending ways-of-life dis- cussed in earlier sections. The theory therefore distinguishes between individual- istic, hierarchical, egalitarian, and fatalistic cultural biases, each encompassing a distinct view of nature, human nature, morality, risk, and technology. CT is explic- itly built on the assumption of “systemic constructivism” (Tilly, 2007). That is to say, the approach acknowledges that social domains are always pluralistic and changing. Yet, it also argues that part of this diversity emerges from the waxing and waning, as well as merging and splitting, of just four ways of life. Thus, debates that take place in social domains consist of discourses that reflect the cul- tural biases of these four ways of life (and any combinations thereof). For this reason, the typology of cultural biases has proven to be a useful heuristic in mapping the discourses of actors in hundreds of case studies of policy issues. (An overview is included in Wildavsky, 2006, pp. 347–402.)
This neo-Durkheimian feature of CT, then, supports scaling-out of public deliberation in two ways. First, CT can help strengthen “discursive representation” of Dryzek and Niemeyer’s proposal by ensuring that the inputs to deliberative processes about complex issues are suitably pluralist. CT’s classification of cultural biases could help organizers of discursive representation reliably identify the range of relevant discourses. Integrated Sustainability Assessments suggest one way of using CT’s ability to map the discourses that prevail in policy fields. When extracting stakeholders’ viewpoints with the help of focus group and dia- logue methods, practitioners of this approach use CT to ensure that they have captured the entire range of policy perspectives (Van Asselt & Rotmans, 2002). In this way, the approach would not replace Q methodology, but be a helpful addition to it. For deliberative processes about complex policy challenges in pluralist envi- ronments, CT’s map of discourses could either guide the choices of those imple- menting the method, or serve as a check on whether a discourse may have been overlooked. Such a combination of CT and Q methodology has already been successfully undertaken in analyses of a variety of policy decisions, including the siting of waste treatment facilities (Wolsink, 2004), airport expansion (Kroesen & Huys, 2009), and the installation of wind turbines (Wolsink & Breukers, 2010).
Second, in addition to inputs to public deliberation (i.e., discourses), CT suggests additional, albeit more indirect vehicles for building trust in and legitimacy of deliberative processes. As we have seen, Table 1 outlines design principles that emerge from and correspond to cultural biases of each way of life. In addition to ensuring sufficiently plural inputs to debate, then, practitioners can strengthen the legitimacy of deliberative processes among pluralist populations by using a wide plurality of design features. Indeed, this suggests that the Integrated Assessments method not only would be unlikely to generate the benefits of public deliberation (as we have seen), its processes and outcomes would also be unlikely to generate trust
Ney/Verweij: Cultural Theory and Complex Policy Problems 637
thereby undermining legitimacy in the wider community of citizens or stakeholders. So while Dryzek and Niemeyer (2008) are rightly reluctant to speculate about the structures of specific “Discursive Chambers,” our discussion point to a basic design principle: the generation of trust and legitimacy required for scaling-out public deliberation on complex issues into pluralist societies may be more likely, the more the design of deliberative processes incorporates features from contending ways-of- life (as specified in Table 1).
Conclusion
After some 25 years, the study and practice of deliberative democracy have reached an important juncture. Some deliberative processes seem to work better for addressing complex and uncertain policy problems than others, but it is not yet fully clear why or under what conditions. Moreover, even the processes that function best tend to accommodate only a few dozen to several thousand participants. Hence, it is also imperative to make a “systemic turn” to find ways of improving the represen- tativeness of and trust in public deliberation. In this article, we have spelled out the contributions that Cultural Theory can make to overcoming these two challenges. We have used CT’s analysis of social relations to formulate a falsifiable hypothesis about the designing of minipublics so as to secure the normative and practical benefits of public deliberation. In addition, we have employed CT’s treatment of people’s per- ceptions, norms, and beliefs to propose a fortification of the plan to scale up delib- erative democracy via discursive representation. Sass and Dryzek (2014, p. 18) have stated that “the study of deliberative democracy is best conceived as a normative project informed by empirical findings.” We agree that this normative and inductive project has made impressive progress. But perhaps the time has come to also con- sider how deductive approaches, such as Cultural Theory, can help this democratic project further along.
Steven Ney completed his doctorate in the policy sciences at the Department of Comparative Politics in the University of Bergen. Trained as a policy analyst at the University of London, Steven Ney has worked on a wide range of policy issues in a number of research institutes including the LOS Center in Bergen, the Interdis- ciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences (ICCR) in Vienna, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg. After spending four years from 2005 as an assistant professor of political science at Sin- gapore Management University, Steven Ney became assistant professor for policy science and social entrepreneurship at Jacobs University, Bremen in August 2009. Starting as a researcher of environmental issues, particularly climate change, Steven Ney has developed an interest in analyzing the way societies deal with complex and uncertain policy challenges. Specifically, he is interested in processes of institutional change and reform and recently has concentrated on social inno- vation and social entrepreneurship as a means of bringing about sustainable insti- tutional change.
638 Policy Studies Journal, 42:4
Marco Verweij is professor of political science at Jacobs University Bremen. In his research, he mostly focuses on the types of solutions that are required to resolve “wicked” (or “ill-structured”) policy problems, and the institutional settings in which such solutions are generated.
Notes
We would like to thank the reviewers as well as the editors, Chris Weible and Edella Schlager, for their constructive comments. A very special thanks goes to Brendon Swedlow whose critical eye, benevolent perseverance, and saintly patience have made this article possible.
1. For the remainder of the article, we use the terms “public deliberation” and “deliberative processes” interchangeably.
2. A number of methods for measuring the quality of public deliberation have been developed. For an overview see Black, Burkhalter, Gastil, and Stromer-Galey (2010).
3. It may be conceivable that deliberative processes in certain environments and for specific policy problems require not only elements of all four ways-of-life but also a particular combination of design choices from Table 1.
4. This is sometimes referred to as bringing about a “systemic turn” in the practice and theory of public deliberation.
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