Scaling and Innovation

This conference explores the connection between participation and deliberation in the light of these and other contemporary challenges. The aim is to facilitate a conversation between the fields of deliberative and participatory democracy, and in particular to open a discussion around the use of digital technologies to facilitate greater political engagement.

Call for Papers

Submission deadline: 1 March 2014

The intersection of participatory and deliberative perspectives and their key differences has long been an issue of vibrant discussion and debate. Today, however, both perspectives are being challenged by the increasing scale (and number of scales) at which political engagement is enacted and, at the same time, by decreasing levels of public enthusiasm for traditional modes of political engagement. In response, scholars and practitioners have begun to think much more systematically about the nature and role of (inter alia) contemporary protest movements, random assemblies or mini-publics, deliberative systems and trans-national networks. In principle, the proliferation of digital technologies and the Internet allows for additional methods and tools to be developed to both extend the reach of participatory processes and, in addition, secure the quality that deliberative democrats envision. Yet in practice, the seemingly ineluctable diffusion of technology inevitably raises a host of new and thought-provoking questions concerning who exactly is participating and why exactly governments should listen.

Themes include (but are not limited to):

Conceptual innovations: In what ways, if any, do the concepts of participation and deliberation need to be reframed in response to contemporary challenges and developments?
Practice and innovation: How can existing social and political institutions be reformed to better support democratic deliberation and participation? What might the deepening of a deliberative system involve?
Scaffolding political engagement: How can we develop tools and methods to encourage and support participation? How can these tools be embedded in already existing social and political structures? What have we learned about the architecture of deliberation and where do we go from here?
Democracy and scale: The proliferation of digital and online technologies opens up new possibilities for participatory methods and practices to engage a broader public. Can the quality of deliberation be correspondingly improved? What, if anything, is lost when we attempt to ‘upscale’ democracy?

Considering the possibilities that emerge with the use of technology in democracy, methodological considerations such as technology-mediated decision-making quality assessment will also be discussed.