In the last 20 years deliberative democracy has emerged as perspective on governance and decision making. When attempting to solve shared problems, democratic deliberation aims to combine the most rigorous analytic process with an egalitarian and respectful social process, such that deliberating groups yield not only sound decisions but also good will among the membership. The larger aim is to generate a decision that the wider society or organizational membership can endorse and support. Unfortunately, a tension exists between the process integrity of small-scale discussion designs, such as Citizen Juries, and the more legitimizing force of large-scale designs, such as Deliberative Polls. One hope for resolving that tension is the innovative design of the Australian Citizens Parliament, which combines large-scale online discussion with more intensive face-to-face deliberation.
Through analysis of discussion transcripts, interviews, and surveys, this study aims to answer two questions about the Citizens Parliament. First, can this deliberative process effectively channel the findings of large-scale online deliberations into a final, smaller-scale face-to-face meeting? Second, this study examines the relative impact of deliberative participation on online and face-to-face deliberators: Do those participating exclusively in the Online Parliament change their long-term civic attitudes and behaviors in the same way as those taking part in the more intensive face-to-face Citizens Parliament? Answers to those questions will help people in the United States and across the globe to design deliberative and effective hybrid decision-making processes for large scale organizations and governments. Whether the results of this research validate or call into question the particular design developed in Australia, the findings will aid the development of face-to-face and online technology that yields collective choices in ways that simultaneously ensure process integrity and decision legitimacy.
