Literature Review9 min read
Deliberative Democracy in Practice
What two decades of citizen assemblies tell us about the promise and the limits of deliberation.
- Democratic Theory
- Participation
Deliberative democracy began as a normative ideal and has increasingly become an object of empirical study. This review organises the evidence from citizen assemblies, deliberative polls, and mini-publics conducted since the early 2000s.
The findings are cautiously optimistic: participants tend to become better informed and to moderate extreme positions. Yet the scalability of these forums, and their connection to binding decisions, remain unresolved.