What Does It Mean to Deliberate?
A Study of the Meaning of Deliberation in
Academic Journals and the On-Line
Publications of Membership Associations
Prepared for the
Kettering Foundation
by
John Gastil and Todd Kelshaw
Department of Communication
Box 353415, Seattle, WA 98195
ph: (206) 543-4860
[email protected]
Acknowledgments
Thanks go to John Dedrick for the initial conceptualization and
design of this report. In addition, John Klockner of the University of
Washington assisted with the Internet searches on deliberation.
Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1
1. Academic Publications on Deliberation................................................................... 5
Table 1. Articles Using the Term Deliberation ........................................................ 7
Figure 1. Conceptual Linkages Among Fields that Use the Term Deliberation... 15
2. The Use of the Term Deliberation on the Internet ............................................... 20
Table 2. Membership Associations in the United States ....................................... 21
Table 3. Websites Mentioning Deliberation, Community, Political, or Election... 23
Table 4. A List of Membership Associations Websites Mentioning Deliberation . 25
3. Case Studies of Membership Associations ........................................................... 26
The American Medical Association ......................................................................... 27
The Community Policing Consortium ..................................................................... 37
The International City/County Management Association ..................................... 41
The American Association of School Administrators ............................................. 46
Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 53
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 1
Introduction
Language constrains and enables social action, and this Kettering Foundation
research report explores the emerging meaning of the term deliberation in academic
journals and the on-line publications of membership associations. This emphasis on
the use of words and phrases is not new to the Foundation, which has studied
concepts such as “benchmarking” and “civil society” to explore how the use of those
terms changes the actions taken by individuals and organizations. For instance, an
essay by George Frederickson, which drew upon his research for the Foundation,
argued that if a government agency talks about “benchmarks,” it becomes more
inclined to look for quantitative program evaluation tools, and these, in turn, lead to
the collection of relatively stark, short-term performance data, rather than more
subtle, qualitative, and long-term indicators.1
There are numerous instances of language influencing even the course of
human history, such as when Marx widely disseminated the idea of economic
classes and Freud’s popularized the notion of a subconscious mind beyond our
immediate control. In both cases, previously existing ideas found clear expression in
an influential scholar’s words and, eventually, worked their way into not just the
larger academy, but also into professional and public associations and the larger
public’s mind. In these examples, one new vocabulary facilitated a reinterpretation
of history and a new plan for social change, whereas the other offered a novel
explanation for why humans persist in their most destructive—and often selfdestructive—behaviors. With the passage of time, these ideas have become
commonplace in American language and cultural beliefs (e.g., middle class and
subliminal advertising). Though our society has not adopted precisely the meanings
the authors intended, these words have changed how we think and act.
Frederickson, H. G. (2001, March/April). First there’s theory, then there’s practice. Foundation
News and Commentary, 37-41.
1
Meaning of Deliberation - 2
Recognizing the power of language, some social movements have directed
considerable energy toward changing the words people use to describe each other.
Perhaps the most striking modern example is the feminist movement, which has
persuaded many societies to replace gender-biased terms with novel ones. Though
these changes are not adopted by all, for many speakers, flight attendant replaced
stewardess, fire fighter replaced fireman, letter carrier replaced mailman, and so
on. Many publication manuals and style guides now require authors to eschew the
once-popular generic he with alternatives, such as s/he, he/she he or she, or the
plural they.2
Other times, social movements have tried to change not the words we use but
the meanings those words carry. Clear examples of such efforts come from minority
groups that attempt to recast derogatory words and phrases. For instance, dyke was
an unambiguously derogatory term used to mean lesbian until members of the
lesbian community embraced the label by referring to themselves as dykes in a way
that connotes power and confidence, as in the title of a widely-read comic strip by
Alison Bechdel, “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Again, the presumption is that words
have power, and if derisive terms lose their original meanings, the groups hurling
those insults lose some of their verbal ammunition.
As all of these examples suggest, it is important to take stock of the words a
society uses and the meanings it attributes to those words. Changing vocabularies
and definitions doesn’t have a direct material consequence, but linguistic changes
can alter how a public thinks, what it sees, and what actions it chooses to take.3
2 One of this report’s authors devoted his first publication to this issue, reporting the results of an
experiment that showed that different pronouns caused individuals to understand sentences
differently (e.g., the use of the generic “he” caused study participants to imagine men—not men and
women). See Gastil, J. (1990). Generic pronouns and sexist language: The oxymoronic character of
masculine generics. Sex Roles, 23, 629-643.
3 One can make a much stronger argument about the connections between language and other social
structures, as is done by Anthony Giddens and numerous other social theories. Richard Brown goes
even farther, arguing that society itself can be understood as a text, and this makes sees language
and society overlapping concepts, rather than related concepts. See Giddens, A. (1984). The
constitution of society. Berkeley: University of California Press; Brown, A. (1987). Society as text:
Essays on rhetoric, reason, and reality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Meaning of Deliberation - 3
For the Kettering Foundation, one word that is worth studying is deliberation.
Many of the Foundation’s projects aim to promote public deliberation. Though their
ultimate goal is to promote effective deliberative practice, a secondary goal is to
improve the public’s understanding of and familiarity with the term itself. One
assumption underlying this secondary goal is that deliberation is more likely to be
practiced if it is also named. Thus, at this stage in the Foundation’s projects, it is
useful to step aside from the question of whether deliberation is being practiced to
examine whether the term deliberation is being used. If it is being used, who is
using the term? What do they mean by it? How does the use of the term inform their
deliberative practice?
These are the general questions that led to the development of the current
research project.4 To make this project manageable, it was necessary to narrow the
scope of our research to address two related but distinct questions:
1. How is the term deliberation used in English language articles in
scholarly journals?
2. How is the term deliberation used in membership associations
based in the United States?
In tracing the use of the term deliberation, our first goal was to identify the
various academic disciplines that employ the term. Most major membership
organizations are linked to these fields, directly or indirectly, and the associations
may adopt the conceptions of deliberation that are presented in relevant journals.
For instance, some members of the American Medical Association read journals on
medical ethics. Judges refer to law journals, school administrators refer to
educational journals, and public managers refer to administrative and policy
science journals. Other, more academic journals focused on fields in the social
Though indirectly, this research is also an extension of the previous study we co-authored for the
Foundation. In that study, we explored the different forms of deliberation that involved both citizens
and officeholders. Though not conceived of in this way, that study clarified a set of different
understandings of what it means to “deliberate” in these settings. Thus, the present study extends
our work from the sphere of government to academia and membership associations. See Gastil, J., &
Kelshaw, T. (2000, May). Public meetings: A sampler of deliberative forums that bring officeholders
and citizens together. Report prepared for the Kettering Foundation.
4
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Meaning of Deliberation - 4
sciences and humanities can also have an indirect impact on professions and the
members of professional associations. Such influence comes both from
groundbreaking articles, such as Robert Putnam’s original “Bowling Alone” essay,5
as well as from less publicized but influential writings, such as Lynn Sanders’
widely-circulated critique of deliberation.6
The second question we address concerns the use of the term deliberation in
membership associations in the United States. In designing this report, it was
assumed that the term is gaining currency in many organizations’ stated procedural
ideals and methods, but it was also presumed that the term continued to have a
wide variety of meanings. Our aim was to learn the status of deliberation in these
associations’ public discourse. In the second section of this report, we describe the
process we used for selecting four membership associations for further study. The
third section then reviews the use of deliberation by membership associations in
their on-line publications.
As we discussed in our initial meetings with the Foundation, we have kept the
focus of the second research question narrow by looking only for organizations made
up of large memberships, primarily within the United States. We hoped to learn
how the term deliberation has come to be used in novel contexts, so we excluded
from consideration those organizations whose central mission has been and
continues to be promoting deliberation (e.g., League of Women Voters). Also, our
study focuses on membership associations, so we have excluded nonprofits and
other organizations that are not based on broad memberships (e.g., Study Circles
Resource Center, America Speaks). We mention some of these organizations in the
Internet searches in the second section of this report, but we excluded them from
consideration for the case studies in the third section.
The case of Putnam is particularly relevant, as it introduced into the wider professional and public
vocabulary the term social capital. Putnam, R. D. (1995). Bowling alone: America's declining social
capital. Journal of Democracy, 6, 65-78.
6 Sanders, L. M. (1997). Against deliberation. Political Theory, 25, 347-376.
5
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Meaning of Deliberation - 5
-1Academic Publications on Deliberation
In tracing the use of deliberation, our first step was identifying the various
academic and practical fields that employ the term. Most major membership
organizations are linked to these fields, directly or indirectly, and the associations
may adopt the conceptions of deliberation that are presented in the most relevant
scholarly journals, as well as other academic and professional publications.
For our purposes, an academic field is defined as a social context for
interpretation that marked by specialized patterns of communication that cohere
with delineated areas of scholarship and practice.7 Our goal in this part of our
research were to identify the fields that use the term and to note the word’s common
(or even standardized) meanings within each. To accomplish this, we used the
Expanded Academic Index (an on-line article database) to identify journal articles
that include the term deliberation in their titles or abstracts.
The search, conducted in April, 2001, produced a list of over 400 articles. Each
of the titles and abstracts of these articles were examined for potential inclusion in
this report. Two criteria were used to cull irrelevant articles from this list:
1. Is the term used in a substantive way? Many articles used the term
in the title without intending it to be central to the content of the
essay (e.g., “Jury starts deliberation in flight attendant-tobacco
case”). Using this criterion, a large percentage of the articles were
excluded, particularly in the field of law.
2. Does the term refer to human activity? Many articles within the field
of artificial intelligence forefront deliberation, but the term signifies
a special kind of computer—rather than human—activity. Such
occurrences of the term were excluded from our list, as we deemed
them irrelevant to the research project.
Toulmin, S. (1958). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See also Inch,
E. S., & Warnick, B. (1998). Critical Thinking and Communication (3rd ed.) Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
7
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Meaning of Deliberation - 6
After excluding irrelevant articles, a list of 180 publications was sorted into 14
academic and professional fields: business and management, communications,
education, environmental studies, law, medical ethics, philosophy, policy analysis,
political communication, political science, public administration, sociology and
cultural studies, speech communication, and theology. Clustering the articles in this
way made it easier to distill a smaller number of meanings for the term
deliberation, as each field tended to conceptualize the term in only one or two ways.
Table 1 presents the full list of 180 articles, sorted alphabetically by field name
then chronological from most- to least-recent. This list shows which fields consider
deliberation routinely or only occasionally, what time periods saw heightened use of
the term, and how the term’s meaning differs according to its context and field. In
addition, the list in Table 1 demonstrates the ways in which different fields’
concerns may overlap, or otherwise remain distinct.
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 7
Table 1. Articles in the April, 2001 Expanded Academic Index Using the Term Deliberation
Field
Business and
Management
Journal (Date of Publication)
Academy of Management Review (10/00)
Journal of International Business Studies
(Summer, 00)
Association Management (8/99)
Industrial and Labor Relations Review (7/98)
Journal of Marketing Research (5/97)
Administrative Science Quarterly (9/94)
Journal of Business Strategy (9-10/90)
Byte (10/88)
Compensation and Benefits Review (7-8/87)
Communications
Cultural Studies
Education
Vital Speeches (7/96)
Management Review (2/90)
Critical Studies in Mass Communication
(3/98)
Journal of Communication (Spring/96)
News Media & the Law (Winter/94)
Theory, Culture & Society (2/97)
Social Theory and Practice (Fall/95)
American School & University (7/99)
Educational Leadership (4/98)
Educational Leadership (2/97)
Educational Leadership (2/97)
Educational and Psychological Measurement
(10/96)
American Journal of Education (8/94)
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Article Title (Authors)
The problem of search and deliberation in economic action: When social networks really
matter (Rangan, S.)
Search and deliberation in international exchange: Micro foundations to some macro
patterns (Rangan, S.)
ASAE's new model of decision making. (American Society of Association Executives:
Tecker, G., Bower, C., & Frankel, J.)
Can strategic participation be institutionalized? Union representation on American
corporate boards. (Hunter, L.W.)
Deliberate product definition: customizing the product definition process. (Kalyanaram,
G. & Krishnan, V.)
Organizational routines as grammars of action. (Pentland, B.T. & Reuter, H.H.)
If you're a big fish, be wary of small ponds: Former managers of large firms managing
smaller companies. (Shostack, G.L.)
The right tool for the right job. (Begeman. M.L. &; Conklin, J.)
Compensation management: cases and applications: the point-factor job evaluation
system: a step-by-step guide, part 1. (Plachy, R.J.).
Leadership: seven behaviors for muddling through. (no author cited)
Stagnation through deliberation (Fagiano, D.)
Another materialist rhetoric. (Greene, R.W.)
Populistic deliberation and talk radio. (Page, B.I. & Tannenbaum, J.)
Closed session violated law, high court rules (no author cited)
Moral deliberation and political judgement: reflections on Benhabib's interactive
universalism. (Hutchings, K.)
Political equality and the funding of political speech. (Brighouse, H.)
Closing doors. (Kennedy, M.)
The music of deliberation: Use of deliberation in schools’ community involvement.
(Beck, T.)
The art of deliberation: Schools and their diverse populations (Parker, W.C.)
Civic education - what roles for citizens? (Tyack, D.)
Deliberation and resolution in decision-making processes: a self-report scale for
adolescents. (Friedman, I.A.)
Assessment policy as persuasion and regulation. (McDonnell, L.M.)
Meaning of Deliberation - 8
Field
Environmental
Studies
Journal (Date of Publication)
NASSP Bulletin (2/94)
Educational Leadership (2/93)
Journal of Teacher Education (11-12/ 87)
Environment & Planning A (7/00)
Environmental Ethics (Summer/99)
Law
BioScience (6/98)
Environmental Politics (Winter/95)
Environmental Ethics (Fall/95)
Environmental Ethics (Winter/94)
Environmental Ethics (Summer/89)
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
(Fall/00)
Columbia Law Review (5/00)
ABA Journal (9/99)
Columbia Journal of Law and Social
Problems (Spring/99)
Harvard Law Review (11/98)
The National Law Journal (6/98)
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
(Fall/97)
Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law
Review (Winter/97)
American Criminal Law Review (Fall/96)
California Law Review (7/96)
The National Law Journal (10/95)
Harvard Law Review (4/94)
Harvard Law Review (2/94)
New York University Law Review (10/93)
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Article Title (Authors)
Institutionalizing school improvement: a recipe for success. (Renihan, P.J. & Renihan.,
F.I.)
Creating benchmarks for science education (Ahlgren, A.)
Reflective teacher education and moral deliberation. (Liston, D.P. & Zeichner, K.M.)
'Engaging the public': information and deliberation in environmental policy. (Owens, S.)
Pragmatism in environmental ethics: democracy, pluralism, and the management of
nature. (Minteer, B.A. & Manning, R.E.)
Science, values, and biodiversity. (Dietz, T. & Stern, P.C.)
The greening of participatory democracy: a reconsideration of theory. (Hayward, B.M.)
Caring relationships with natural and artificial environments. (Field, T.)
Hannah Arendt and ecological politics. (Whiteside, K.H.)
Postmodern environmental ethics: ethics as bioregional narrative. (Cheney, J.)
The necessity for constrained deliberation: Creating a political environment receptive to
general social improvement. (Epstein, R.A.)
Deliberating about dollars: the severity shift. (Schkade, D., Sunstein, C.R., & Kahneman,
D.
Opinions with style; scholar says Court has embraced O'Connor's 'minimalism.' (France,
S.)
The counter-majoritarian difficulty in focus: Judicial review of initiatives. (Pak, M.).
Foreword: the limits of Socratic deliberation. (The Supreme Court 1997 Term) (Dorf,
M.C.)
'We did seriously exacerbate the divisions.' (Interview) (Coyle, M.)
Balancing away the freedom of speech. (Case Note) (Barry, A.R.)
The final freedom: maintaining autonomy and valuing life in physician-assisted suicide
cases. (Kleinberg, R.D. & Mochizuki, T.M.)
The deliberative lottery: a thought experiment in jury reform. (Lichtman, D.G.)
Public deliberation, affirmative action, and the Supreme Court. (Symposium: RaceBased Remedies) (Sunstein, C.R.)
Speedy O.J. trial raises doubts; some wonder: is a quick decision better than none at all?
(Cox, G.D.)
Well-being and the state. (Symposium: Changing Images of the State) (Sunstein, C.R.)
Civic republican administrative theory: bureaucrats as deliberative democrats. (no author
cited)
(Bruce) Ackerman's proposal for popular constitutional lawmaking: can it realize his
Meaning of Deliberation - 9
Field
Journal (Date of Publication)
Stanford Law Review (7/93)
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
(Winter/93)
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
(5/92)
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
(5/92)
University of Pennsylvania Law Review
(5/92)
Harvard Law Review (1/90)
Medical Ethics
Yale Law Journal (6/85)
Journal of Medical Ethics (6/00)
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
(8/99)
British Medical Journal (4/99)
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
(4/99)
Journal of Medical Ethics (10/98)
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
(8/98)
Journal of Medical Ethics (8/98)
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
(4/98)
The Medical Journal of Australia (3/98)
MedSurg Nursing (2/98)
Journal of Medical Ethics (10/97)
Science (7/97)
The New England Journal of Medicine
(4/17)
The Hastings Center Report (11-12/95)
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Article Title (Authors)
aspirations for dualist democracy (Weiser, P.J.)
Can virtue be taught to lawyers? (Symposium on Civic and Legal Education) (Gutmann,
A.)
'The Federalist Papers': the Framers construct an orrery. (Symposium: The Legacy of the
Federalist Papers, the Eleventh Annual National Federalist Society Symposium on Law
and Public Policy - 1992) (Bruff, H.H.)
Just health care rationing: a democratic decisionmaking approach. (The Law and Policy
of Health Care Rationing: Models and Accountability) (Fleck, L.M.)
Combining deliberation and fair representation in community health decisions. (The Law
and Policy of Health Care Rationing: Models and Accountability) (Nagel, J.H.)
The emergence of extralegal bias during jury deliberation. (MacCoun, R.J.)
The constitutional concept of public discourse: outrageous opinion, democratic
deliberation, and Hustler Magazine v. Falwell. (Post, R.C.)
Public administration and public deliberation: an interpretive essay. (Reich, R.B.)
Public deliberation and private choice in genetics and reproduction. (Parker, M.)
Looking to Hume for Justice: On the Utility of Hume's View of Justice for American
Health Care Reform. (Churchill, L.R.)
Effect of discussion and deliberation on the public's views of priority setting in health
care: focus group study. (Dolan, P., Cookson, R., & Ferguson, B.)
Improving our aim. (Bioethics and the Press) (Fleck, A.L., Tomlinson, T.)
A novel approach based on rational non-interventional paternalism. (Bioethics of the
Refusal of Blood by Jehovah's Witnesses, part 2) (Muramoto, O.)
Body measures: phenomenological considerations of corporeal ethics. (Fielding, H.A.)
Should bioethical deliberation consider dissidents' views? (Bioethics of the Refusal of
Blood by Jehovah's Witnesses, part 1) (Muramoto, O.)
Impartial principle and moral context: securing a place for the particular in ethical
theory. (The Chaos of Care and Care Theory) (Carse, A.L.)
Why Australia needs minimum standards of deliberation for public health. (Gaughwin,
M.D.)
A road map for navigating end-of-life care. (Rushton, C.H. & Scanlon, C.)
Should informed consent be based on rational beliefs? (Savulescu, J. & Momeyer, R.W.)
Ethical and policy issues of human cloning. (Shapiro, H.T.)
Whither scientific deliberation in health policy recommendations? Alice in the
Wonderland of breast-cancer screening. (Fletcher, S.W.)
Structured deliberation to improve decisionmaking for the seriously ill. (Dying Well in
Meaning of Deliberation - 10
Field
Philosophy and
Ethics
Journal (Date of Publication)
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
(8/94)
The American Psychologist (5/94)
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
(12/93)
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy
(8/91)
Canadian Journal of Philosophy (12/00)
American Philosophical Quarterly (1/00)
Ancient Philosophy (Spring/99)
American Philosophical Quarterly (4/98)
The Philosophical Quarterly (4/98)
Philosophy (10/97)
Inquiry (6/97)
Ethics (4/97)
Philosophy Today (Spring/97)
Ancient Philosophy (Spring/97)
Inquiry (3/97)
Canadian Journal of Philosophy (9/96)
Research in Phenomenology (Winter/96)
The Journal of Philosophy (11/95)
Philosophy (4/95)
Ethics (10/94)
Policy Analysis
Ethics (7/93)
Journal of Common Market Studies (12/99)
Policy Studies Journal (Autumn/99)
Policy Sciences (6/99)
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Article Title (Authors)
the Hospital: The Lessons of SUPPORT)(Study to Understand Prognosis and
Preferences for Outcomes and Risks of Treatment) (Emanuel, L.L.)
Just caring: Oregon, health care rationing, and informed democratic deliberation. (Fleck,
L.M.)
Exploring the postmodern: perils or potentials? (Gergen, K.J.)
After the fall: particularism in bioethics. (Wildes, K.W.)
Committees and consensus: how many heads are better than one? (Caws, P.)
Outline of a theory of reasonable deliberation. (Laden, A.S.)
Emotional reason: how to deliberate about value. (Helm, B.)
The role of universal knowledge in Aristotelian moral virtue. (Walsh, M.M.)
The middle ground in moral semantics. (Phillips, D.)
Integrity, practical deliberation and utilitarianism. (Harcourt, E.)
Moral incapacities. (van den Beld, T.)
(Mark Thomas) Walker on the voluntariness of judgment. (Stein, C.)
Moral deliberation, nonmoral ends, and the virtuous agent. (Isaacs, T. & Jeske D.)
Decision, deliberation, and democratic ethos. (Other Openings: Selected Studies in
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, vol. 22) (Mouffe, C.)
What is moral authority? 'Euboulia,' 'synesis,' and 'gnome' vs. 'phronesis.' (Louden,
R.B.)
The discourse principle and those affected. (Skirbekk, G.)
Natural law and public reason in Kant's political philosophy. (Weinstock, D.M.)
Authentic existence and the political community. (Topic: Reason and Community)
(Held, K.)
Argument and deliberation: a plea for understanding. (Wright, L.)
Moral incapacity. (response to Bernard Williams, Proceedings of the Aristotelian
Society, vol. 93, 1993) (Taylor, C.)
Kantian constructivism and reconstructivism: Rawls and Habermas in dialogue.
(McCarthy, T.)
Managing deliberation: the quandary of democratic dialogue. (Post, R.)
Harmful tax competition in the EU: policy narratives and advocacy coalitions. (Radaelli,
C.M.)
Integrating Technical Analysis With Deliberation in Regional Watershed Management
Planning: Applying the National Research Council Approach. (Webler, T. & Tuler, S.)
The shaping of collective values through deliberative democracy: an empirical study
Meaning of Deliberation - 11
Field
Journal (Date of Publication)
Policy Sciences (8/96)
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law
(Spring/96)
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law
(Spring/96)
Political
Communication
World Press Review (11/91)
Political Communication (10-12/00)
Political Communication (4-6/00)
Political Communication (1/99)
Political Communication (7-9/95)
Political Science
Political Theory (12/00)
The Journal of Politics (11/00)
American Political Science Review (9/00)
American Journal of Political Science (7/00)
The Review of Politics (Summer/00)
Political Studies (3/00)
The Journal of Politics (11/99)
The Journal of Politics (8/99)
The Journal of Politics (8/99)
American Journal of Political Science (4/99)
PS: Political Science & Politics (12/98)
Journal of Democracy (7/98)
The Journal of Politics (5/98)
PS: Political Science & Politics (3/98)
Canadian Journal of Political Science (12/97)
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Article Title (Authors)
from New York's North Country. (Pelletier, D., Kraak, V., McCullum, C., Uusitalo, U.,
& Rich, R.)
Is there a key to the normative budgeting lock? (Meyers, R.T.)
Publicity-stunt participation and sound bite polemics: the health care debate 1993-94.
(Disch, L.)
Lawmakers' views on the failure of health reform: a survey of members of Congress and
staff. (Hansen, O., Blendon, R.J., Brodie, M., Ortmans, J., James, M., Norton, C., &
Rosenblatt., T.)
Nuclear waste: steady progress to a known solution. (Bayne, P.)
Media framing and effective public deliberation. (Symposium on Communication and
Civic Engagement) (Simon, A. & Xenos, M.)
Race and public deliberation. (Mendelberg, T. & Oleske, J.)
Increasing political sophistication through public deliberation. (Gastil, J. & Dillard, J.P.)
Speedy deliberation: rejecting "1960s programs" as causes of the Los Angeles riots.
(Page, B.I.)
Representation as advocacy: a study of democratic deliberation. (Urbinati, N.)
Representation by Deliberation: Changes in the Rules of Deliberation in the U.S. House
of Representatives, 1789-1844. (Fink, E.C.)
The Dynamics of Collective Deliberation in the 1996 Election: Campaign Effects on
Accessibility, Certainty, and Accuracy. (Huckfeldt, R., Sprague, J., & Levine, J.)
Why Respect Culture? (Johnson, J.)
Liberalism and Parental Control of Education. (Ruderman, R.S., Godwin, R.K.)
Citizens' Juries and Deliberative Democracy. (Smith, G. & Wales, C.)
Homeric 'Thumos': The Early History of Gender, Emotion, and Politics. (Koziak, B.)
Should blacks represent blacks and women represent women? A contingent "yes."
(Mansbridge, J.)
Politics, speech, and the art of persuasion: toward in Aristotelian conception of the public
sphere. (Triadafilopoulos, T.)
Inquiry into Democracy: What Might a Pragmatist Make of Rational Choice Theories?
(Knight, J. & Johnson, J.)
Changing post-totalitarian values in Russia through Public Deliberation Methodology.
(Frost, S. & Makarov, D.)
Mongolia: democracy without prerequisites. (Fish, M.S.)
Political goals and procedural choice in the Senate. (Binder, S.A. & Smith, S.S.)
If it ain't broke bad, don't fix it a lot. (House of Representatives) (Evans, C.L. & Oleszek,
W.J.)
Reconciling parliament and rights: A.V. Dicey reads the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Meaning of Deliberation - 12
Field
Journal (Date of Publication)
Journal of Peace Research (11/97)
Political Theory (6/97)
The Journal of Politics (11/96)
Campaigns & Elections (5/96)
The Journal of Politics (5/96)
The Quill (3/96)
Political Theory (2/96)
National Civic Review (Winter-Spring/96)
PS: Political Science & Politics (6/95)
American Journal of Political Science
(11/94)
National Civic Review (Fall-Winter/94)
American Political Science Review (9/94)
Political Theory (5/94)
The Journal of Politics (2/94)
British Journal of Political Science (1/94)
American Journal of Political Science (2/91)
PS: Political Science & Politics (12/90)
Public
Administration
Journal of Democracy (10/98)
Administrative Law Review (Summer/00)
Philosophy & Public Affairs (Winter/00)
Ethics & International Affairs (Annual 1999)
Public Administration Review (1-2/98)
Philosophy & Public Affairs (Fall/97)
Administrative Law Review (Summer/97)
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Article Title (Authors)
Freedoms. (Ajzenstat, J.)
Deliberation, leverage or coercion?: the World Bank, NGOs, and global environmental
politics. (non-governmental organizations) (Nelson, P.J.)
Against deliberation. (Sanders, L.M.)
The Environmental Promise of Democratic Deliberation. (book reviews) (Disch, L.J.)
Vote-by-mail: is it good for democracy?: an 'anti' perspective. (Ornstein, N.J.)
Beyond friendship: Aristotle on conflict, deliberation, and attention. (Bickford, S.)
People spoke; who listened? ('public journalism' and the National Issues Convention)
(Burke, T.)
Political consequences of pragmatism. (Knight, J. & Johnson, J.)
Public journalism and public deliberation. (Mathews, D.)
Teaching the art of public deliberation - National Issues Forums in the classroom.
(O'Connell, D.W. & McKenzie, R.H.)
The heavenly chorus: interest group voices on TV news. (Danielian, L.H. & Page, B.I.)
Community change through true public action. (Conversations on Renewal) (Mathews,
D.)
Thoughtless assertion and political deliberation. (Orlie, M.A.)
Aggregation and deliberation: on the possibility of democratic legitimacy. (Knight, J. &
Johnson, J.)
The problem of the noble and the practicality of Platonic political philosophy. (Lutz,
M.J.)
Responsiveness and deliberation in divided government: presidential leadership in tax
policy making. (Weatherford, M.S.)
The cognitive and affective bases of political tolerance judgments. (Kuklinski, J.H.,
Riggle, E., Ottati, V., Schwarz, N., & Wyer Jr., R.S.
Interests and deliberation in the American Republic, or, why James Madison would
never have received the James Madison Award. (Wilson, J.Q.)
Oldspeak vs. Newspeak. (Is Ethiopia Democratic?) (Joseph, R.)
Public purpose and private service: the twentieth century culture of contracting out and
the evolving law if diffused sovereignty. (Guttman, D.)
Democratic deliberation within. (Goodin, R.E.)
Reckoning with past wrongs: a normative framework. (Crocker, D.A.)
Political prudence and the ethics of leadership. (Dobel, J.P.)
Limits to health care: fair procedures, democratic deliberation, and the legitimacy
problem for insurers. (Daniels, N. & Sabin, J.)
The political roots of the judicial dilemma. (response to Richard J. Pierce, Jr.,
Meaning of Deliberation - 13
Field
Journal (Date of Publication)
Parliamentary Affairs (4/97)
Canadian Public Administration (Spring/97)
Public Administration Review (3/97)
Social Service Review (12/96)
International Journal of Public
Administration (9/96)
Philosophy & Public Affairs (Fall/95)
Constitutional Commentary (Summer/95)
Journal of Japanese Studies (Summer/95)
Brookings Review (Spring/94)
Journal of the American Planning
Association (Spring/94)
International Journal of Public
Administration (1/94)
Constitutional Commentary (Winter/93)
Public Administration Review (1-2/92)
International Journal of Public
Administration (6-8/98)
Journal of Public Administration Research
and Theory (7/97)
Argumentation and Advocacy (Spring/95)
California Journal (2/92)
Argumentation and Advocacy (Fall/91)
Sociology / Social
Psychology
Social Education (9/00)
Ethnic and Racial Studies (1/00)
The Journal of Social Psychology (2/98)
The Social Studies (1-2/97)
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Article Title (Authors)
Administrative Law Review, vol. 49, p. 61, 1997) (Melnick, R.S.)
Public administration and government 1995-96. (Gray, A. & Jenkins, B.)
Public inquiries. (Schwartz, B.)
Public deliberation: an alternative approach to crafting policy and setting direction.
(Roberts, N.)
Democracy at century's end. (Elshtain, J.B.)
Regulation and its modes: the European experience. (Special Issue on The Challenges
Facing Public Administration in a Changing World) (Majone, G.)
Contractualist liberalism and deliberative democracy. (Weithman, P.J.)
Unnecessary and unintelligible. (Constitutional Stupidities: A Symposium) (Graber,
M.A.)
Rigidity and inefficiency in public works appropriations: controversy in reforming the
budgeting process in 1994. (Hatch, W., Hiromitsu, I.)
Shipshape? A progress report on congressional reform. (Mann, T.E. & Ornstein, N.J.)
Representation in comprehensive planning: an analysis of the Austinplan process.
(Beatley, T., Brower, D.J., & Lucy, W.H.
Managerial behaviors, motivations, and computerization in public agencies. (Special
Issue on New Information and Public Sector Productivity) (Chen, F.F. & Klay, W.E.)
Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform. (Fitts, M.)
State budget deliberations: do legislators have a strategy? (Stanford, K.A.)
Technology as a topic for moral deliberation. (Zinke, R.C.)
The implications for democracy in a networked bureaucratic world. (O'Toole Jr., L.J.)
Learning public deliberation through the critique of institutional argument. (Doxtader,
E.)
California's legislative process. (no author cited)
Constraining open deliberation in times of war: presidential war justifications for
Grenada and the Persian Gulf. (Special Issue: Argumentation and Public Controversy)
(Olson, K.M.)
Developing strong voters through democratic deliberation. (Hess, D.)
Contesting the limits of political participation: Latinos and black African migrant
workers in Israel. (Kemp, A., Raijman, R., Resnik, J., & Gesser, S.S.)
Decision making by Chinese and U.S. students. (Harris, K.L. & Nibler, R.)
Citizen participation and the Internet: prospects for civic deliberation in the information
age. (White, C.S.)
Meaning of Deliberation - 14
Field
Journal (Date of Publication)
Sociological Perspectives (Summer/96)
Sociological Perspectives (Summer/95)
Speech
Communication
Human Relations (8/94)
The Journal of Social Psychology (8/92)
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
(8/91)
The Southern Communication Journal
(Winter-Spring/00)
Communication Research (12/99)
Communication Education (7/99)
Communication Monographs (12/98)
The Quarterly Journal of Speech (11/98)
Communication Quarterly Winter/90)
Theology
Journal of the American Academy of
Religion (Winter/97)
Religion (10/97)
Journal of Biblical Literature (Summer/96)
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Article Title (Authors)
Teetering at the top of the ladder: the experience of citizen group participants in
alternative dispute resolution processes. (Wondolleck, J.M., Manring, N.J., & Crowfoot,
J.E.)
Transactions in symbolic resources: a resource dependence model of congressional
deliberation. (Johnson, D.E.)
A definition and illustration of democratic leadership. (Gastil, J.)
Legal reasoning and jury deliberations. (Rotenberg, K.J. & Hurlbert, M.J.)
Procedural influence in small-group decision making: deliberation style and assigned
decision rule. (Kameda, T.)
Combining passions and abilities: Toward dialogic virtuosity. (Pearce, W.B. & Pearce,
K.A.)
Understanding Deliberation: The Effects of Discussion Networks on Participation in a
Public Forum. (McLeod, J.M., Scheufele, D.A., Moy, P.; Horowitz, E.M., Holbert, R.L.,
Zhang, W., Zubric, S., & Zubric, J.)
The aims, methods, and effects of deliberative civic education through the National
Issues Forums. (Gastil, J. & Dillard, J.P.)
Jurors' intuitive rules for deliberation: a structurational approach to communication in
jury decision making. Sunwolf & Seibold, D.R.)
Democratic deliberation in a rhetorical republic. (Ivie, R.L.)
"The verdict is in: a study of jury decision making factors, moment of personal decision,
and jury deliberations -- from the jurors' point of view." (Pettus, A.B.)
Moments for transformation: the process of teaching and learning. (Soleau, J.K.)
The fundamental unity of the conservative and revolutionary tendencies in Venezuelan
Evangelicalism: the case of conjugal relations. (Smilde, D.A.)
Rhetorical suspense in Romans 9-11: a study in polyvalence and hermeneutical election.
(Cosgrove, C.H.)
Meaning of Deliberation - 15
It is useful to review the different meanings of deliberation in each of these
fields, but before doing so, we wish to emphasize that many of these fields are
linked to one another in terms of their areas of study, theories in use, and technical
terminology. Some fields, such as medical ethics, draw upon other fields’ literature:
medical ethics, for example, draws upon philosophy. Some fields are explicitly
designed to bridge disciplines, such as political communication, which connects
political science with communications (and speech communication). Other fields
necessarily connect with other fields, though they aren’t dependent upon them: for
instance, policy analysis has logical links to public administration, law, political
science, economics, and sometimes environmental studies. Figure 1 summarizes the
strongest connections among these fields.
Figure 1. Conceptual Linkages Among Academic Fields that Use the Term Deliberation
Cultural
Sociology
Studies
Medical Philosophy
Ethics
Political
Science
Political
Comm
Environ.
Public Studies
Admin
Law
Communi- Speech
cations Comm
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Policy
Analysis
Economics
Business
& Mgt.
Meaning of Deliberation - 16
Though Figure 1 shows many linkages among the academic fields that use the
term deliberation in their journal articles, each field assigned a different meaning to
the word. Business and management uses deliberation in relation to topics such as
leadership, decision making, organizational design, and negotiation. Typically,
deliberation is a simple, straightforward term that means “reasoned choice” or
“careful problem analysis.” It is seen as a virtue, but only when used judiciously as
a means of planning efficient action. Complex business or management problems
require deliberation, but an organization should not become bogged down in endless
discussion and fail to act in a timely manner.
Cultural studies is a complex field that includes a variety of schools of critical
theory as well as cultural theorists who find themselves adrift outside of traditional
disciplines. The search engine we used may have underestimated the size of this
field’s literature, as the Expanded Academic Index has a stronger coverage of social
scientific than humanistic fields. In any case, the two articles found in this field
lobby for the infusion of deliberation in political and public processes, as democratic
deliberation is considered in line with egalitarian social orders, which are highly
valued.8
The Expanded Academic Index identifies only two articles that pertain to
deliberation in the field of communications (i.e., the study of mass media, public
relations). These two articles use the concept is different ways: One approaches
deliberation as a populistic socio-political enterprise, whereas the other maintains a
traditional legalistic conception according to which juries and judicial bodies
deliberate toward some kind of decision.
The field of education had nine journal articles published between 1987 and
1999 that deal with deliberation in educational contexts. Applications include
community involvement in school curricula, enhancing cultural diversity in
Other works in this field, however, have cautioned against confusing the ideal conception of
deliberation with its actual practice in hierarchical societies. For example, see Simpson, L. C. (1986).
On Habermas and particularity: Is there room for race and gender on the glassy plains of ideal
discourse? Praxis International, 6(3), 328-340.
8
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 17
educational settings, civic education programs, and other applications pertaining to
decision-making practices in small group settings.
Environmental studies tends to see deliberation as a democratic political
practice. In the deliberative process, decision-making bodies, which may include the
lay public or be limited to scientific or policy experts, are expected to confront and
work through diverse opinions on difficult issues. The field overlaps with public
administration and policy analysis in the sense that environmental problems are
inherently tied to public interests. Thus, there is often attention given to the
democratic quality of decision-making practices.
The field of law maintains an internally traditional and coherent
understanding of deliberation as the discursive process through which juries or
judicial panels reach verdicts. These forms of legal deliberation normally occur in
closed deliberation rooms, private quarters, or other non-public settings; thus, these
forms of legal deliberation are qualitatively distinct from the arguments that take
place in open courtrooms or other public arenas. Journal articles in the legal field
tend to concern the quality of juries/justices and their deliberations, as well as
lawyers’ skills for influencing juries in their subsequent deliberations.
Although the field of medical ethics is prone to conceive of deliberation as a
private, rational, and moral decision-making mode (in line with a particular
tradition in the field of philosophy and ethics, to which this field is linked), the
published literature demonstrates a strong bent towards understanding
deliberation as collaborative and discussion-based. For example, article titles and
abstracts pair the word deliberation with focus groups, committees, and discussion.
Deliberation in this field has applications in both specific medical cases and in
regard to public policy.
Articles in philosophy and ethics treat deliberation in two distinct ways. In one
conception, deliberation is a private practice that emphasizes reason and moral
judgement—as exemplified in “Moral deliberation, nonmoral ends, and the virtuous
agent” (Isaacs & Jeske, 1997). The second conception replaces agency with interagency, and pairs deliberation with concepts such as “democratic dialogue” (Post,
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 18
1993). The latter conception is the one that is primarily manifested in the field’s
related areas of medical ethics, political science, and cultural studies.
Policy analysis sees deliberation as a democratic process tied to public interests
and decision making, whether including the lay public or policy experts. The term is
highly valued and placed in opposition to devalued terms such as “publicity-stunt
participation and sound-bite polemics” (Disch, 1996). The field views deliberation as
relevant to environmental law, medical ethics, and other public policy areas.
The three articles within the field of political communication, which draws
upon scholars in communications, speech communication, and political science, deal
exclusively with deliberation as a celebrated type of democratic discourse. The
articles’ goals concern improving deliberation (e.g., making it more democratic) and
recognizing the benefits of and appropriate sites for deliberation. Just as the field
bridges disciplines, so does its use of the term deliberation bear resemblance to uses
in political science, communications, and speech communication.
Political science is a field that is prone to inherit a traditional understanding of
deliberation as a private, rational process through which individuals make informed
voting decisions. Thus, the term deliberation is sometimes qualified with words
such as “collective” and “public” to designate a conversational mode. In many cases,
though, political scientific conceptions of deliberation have come to transcend
private action to focus on group interaction, and they do not require modifying
words to advance this meaning. In this sense, the norm in recent and contemporary
publications is an understanding of deliberation as a social and often public process
that accompanies specific “deliberative democratic” ideals about how governments
and publics should optimally function in relation to one another.
Public administration shares with political science and policy analysis a sense
of deliberation as a public, politically relevant, and conversational process. In this
field’s journal articles, deliberation is typically valued, as evidenced by titles such as
“Democracy and deliberation: New directions for democratic reform” (O’Toole, 1997).
There is also a sense that deliberation has not been the traditional mode of public
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 19
political process, as suggested by “Public deliberation: An alternative approach to
crafting policy and setting direction” (Roberts, 1997).
Sociology and social psychology are linked but somewhat distinct fields, but we
have brought them to emphasize their common conception of deliberation. The
articles in this field tend to view deliberation as the discussion process that occurs
in small group decision making, as with juries, legislatures, and other task-oriented
bodies. Some articles, however, have a broader conception of deliberation more
analogous to that found in political science.
In speech communication (a diverse field combining the study of rhetoric with
social-scientific research on face-to-face and on-line communication and other
affiliated studies), the deliberation-related literature is similar to that of political
communication and political science, insofar as it treats deliberation as a valued
social process. Often the term deliberation is paired with dialogue, a word that has
seen heightened popularity in recent years within this field. Accordingly
deliberation is seen as an egalitarian decision-making mode, in which the quality of
the decision is directly tied to the quality of the process.
Finally, in theology, deliberation is used to designate a private, contemplative,
and spiritual/moral process of decision making and meditation. The introspection
that characterizes deliberation marks it as much different than the interaction of
deliberation as it is conceived in other fields, such as speech communication, yet it
is similar to some writings within the field of philosophy and ethics.
This review of the academic literature suggest that there is no single, coherent
definition of deliberation across these diverse fields, and a single understanding is
unlikely to emerge. At the same time, there is a widely-shared core notion of
deliberation that is centered in political science but branches out into philosophy,
law, public administration, policy analysis, political communication,
communications, and speech communication. This understanding of deliberation is
similar in important ways to the concept of public deliberation articulated by the
Foundation and suggests that, at a minimum, the potential for shared meanings for
the term, as used by Kettering and the scholars and practitioners in these fields.
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 20
-2The Use of the Term Deliberation on the Internet
With a sense of the breadth of potential meanings and uses of deliberation
across various professional fields, we turned our attention to how the term is used
by membership associations in the United States. Before we could select a set of
case studies for analysis in the third section of this research report, we had to first
identify a wider range of candidate organizations and scrutinize their on-line
publications for references to public, political, or community deliberation. Two
separate Internet searches were conducted in very different ways to arrive at a list
of membership associations that might be appropriate for subsequent case study.
In looking strictly at the organizations’ websites, we made the assumption that
on-line materials posted by organizations are representative samples of their ideals,
goals, and practices. In other words, the uses and emphases of deliberation that
appear in a given association’s on-line literature were assumed to indicate that
group’s understanding of and relative concern for deliberation. Such an assumption
may have been unwarranted just five years ago, but organizations have
dramatically increased the depth of their websites in recent years, and it is now
customary for membership associations to make available on-line mission
statements, major policy documents, meeting minutes, newsletters, and other
organizational publications.9
The first Internet search used two search engines (Google and Altavista) to look
for uses of the keywords membership association, professional association,
membership organization, and professional organization, limiting the search to
English language (or bilingual) sites. The results of these searches were then pared
down to a list of 38 membership associations using these criteria: Each association
had to be located within the United States, relatively prominent (rather than a
In the introduction of the third section, we make a more generic argument for the use of published
materials to understand an association’s discourse. Here, we argue note that such documents are
readily available on-line.
9
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 21
professional niche), and socially/politically efficacious in some way. The final list,
shown in Table 2, was also designed to represent a wide range of organizations,
representing many of the previously identified fields. Some organizations were
removed from the list if their respective field was already over-represented. Some
were included in this list even though their explicit emphasis on public deliberation
would later exclude them from consideration as a case study (e.g., America Speaks).
Table 2. A Selection of 38 National/Prominent Membership Associations
in the United States
Group
Web Address
1. American Bar Association
2. American Medical Association
3. National Education Association
4. American Association for the Advancement of Science
5. National Rifle Association
6. American Nurses Association
7. American Public Health Association
8. American Association of University Women
9. American Association of Retired People
10. National Association of Broadcasters
11. National Governors Association
12. American Political Science Association
13. American Association of School Administrators
14. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
15. American Educational Research Association
16. Unitarian Universalist Association
17. National Association of County Officials
18. Air and Waste Management Association
19. Seventh Generation Fund
20. U.S. Golf Assoc. Center for Individuals with Disabilities
21. American Family Association
22. National School Boards Association
23. Telecommunications Industry Association
24. National Association of the Deaf
www.aba.org
www.ama-assn.org
www.nea.org
www.aaas.org
www.nra.org
www.nursingworld.org
www.apha.org
www.aauw.org
www.aarp.org
www.nab.org
www.nga.org
www.apsanet.org
www.aasa.org
www.ascd.org
www.aera.net
www.uua.org
www.naco.org
www.awma.org
www.7genfun.org
www.usga.org
www.afa.net
www.nsba.org
www.tiaonline.org
www.nad.org
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 22
Table 2. (cont.)
Group
25. Modern Language Association
26. American Society of Association Executives
27. International City/County Management Association
28. Association of Trial Lawyers of America
29. Motion Picture Association
30. National Communication Association
31. America Speaks
32. Minneapolis Telecommunications Network
33. National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments
34. Center for Process Studies
35. USA Engage
36. Community Development Society
37. The National Campus Compact
38. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Web Address
www.mla.org
www.asaenet.org
www.icma.org
www.atlanet.org
www.mpaa.org
www.nca.org
www.americaspeaks.org
www.mtn.org
www.ncims.org
www.ctr4process.org
www.usaengage.org
www.comm-dev.org
www.compact.org
www.cpsr.org
A second Internet-based list was created by identifying organizations that
referred to deliberation somewhere in their websites. Whereas the first search
ensured a list of membership associations (some of which may not refer to
deliberation), this search only found websites that made reference to deliberation
(though some may not be membership associations). A preliminary set of four
searches were conducted using the Google search engine, which permits
downloading complex search results in the form of text files, which can then be
compared to one another. The first search produced a list of the 1,000 web pages
with the most prominent use of the term deliberation, excluding those that also
used the terms court, artificial, jury, and legal (to reduce the number of pages
referring to deliberation in relation to artificial intelligence or court proceedings). A
series of three other preliminary searches produced similar lists for community,
political, and election, using the same exclusions mentioned above. Crossreferencing these four preliminary searches, a final list of 113 websites was created
that included any web page referencing deliberation and any one of the other three
terms (community, political, or election). This list is presented in Table 3.
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 23
Table 3. A List of 113 Websites that Use the Terms Deliberation, Community,
Political, or Election
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
advertising.utexas.edu
artsci.wustl.edu
bostonreview.mit.edu
chicagotribune.com
csf.colorado.edu
dwardmac.pitzer.edu
forum.swarthmore.edu
home.freeuk.net
hypatia.ss.uci.edu
ideas.uqam.ca
ispp.org
ksgnotes1.harvard.edu
members.aol.com
netec.wustl.edu
pegasus.cc.ucf.edu
politicalscience.uchicago.edu
pup.princeton.edu
web.polmeth.ufl.edu
wizard.ucr.edu
www.aera.net
www.ama-assn.org
www.angelfire.com
www.aph.gov.au
www.arabicnews.com
www.arts.monash.edu.au
www.arts.ualberta.ca
www.auburn.edu
www.brook.edu
www.btinternet.com
www.capitol.state.tx.us
www.carleton.ca
www.clas.ufl.edu
www.co.thurston.wa.us
www.comm-dev.org
www.
communitypolicing.org
www.computer.org
www.constitution.org
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
www.cs.cmu.edu
www.cs.virginia.edu
www.csbsju.edu
www.csj.org
www.duke.edu
www.emory.edu
www.fas.org
www.fordham.edu
www.fsu.edu
www.gn.apc.org
www.health.gov.au
www.journals.uchicago.edu
www.ksu.edu
www.lgu.ac.uk
www.loc.gov
www.loka.org
www.lwv.org
www.marxists.org
www.math.harvard.edu
www.maxwell.syr.edu
www.mcn.org
www.missouri.edu
www.multied.com
www.newschool.edu
www.northwestern.edu
www.nyu.edu
www.oregonlive.com
www.polisci.umn.edu
www.political-theory.org
www.politicalindex.com
www.polsci.ucsb.edu
www.poynter.org
www.puritansermons.com
www.
ruralchallengepolicy.org
www.sagepub.co.uk
www.sas.upenn.edu
www.shef.ac.uk
www.spc.uchicago.edu
76. www.theatlantic.com
77. www.ttu.edu
78. www.uiowa.edu
79. www.un.or.id
80. www.un.org
81. www.unc.edu
82. www.upenn.edu
83. www.usask.ca
84. www.usc.edu
85. www.vuw.ac.nz
86. www.wmich.edu
87. www.yale.edu
88. www.zdnet.com
89. www3.oup.co.uk
90. depts.washington.edu
91. usinfo.state.gov
92. web.mit.edu
93. www.agora.stm.it
94. www.apsanet.org
95. www.bu.edu
96. www.ci.cambridge.ma.us
97. www.cios.org
98. www.columbia.edu
99. www.cpsr.org
100. www.essex.ac.uk
101. www.georgetown.edu
102. www.pbs.org
103. www.princeton.edu
104. www.prospect.org
105. www.salon.com
106. www.stanford.edu
107. www.state.tn.us
108. www.ukans.edu
109. www.umich.edu
110. www.geocities.com
111. www.indiana.edu
112. www.state.ma.us
113. www.washingtonpost.com
Many of the organizations shown in Table 3 did not meet the basic criteria for
inclusion in this report. Some were not membership organizations, and some were
located outside the United States. Others had only regional prominence, or they
were nationally renown but already known to have deliberation as their focus.
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Meaning of Deliberation - 24
In addition, we chose to exclude from the list of potential case studies all
academic membership organizations (e.g., American Political Science Association or
the National Communication Association). This is consistent with the original
design of the study. Though it was useful to review conceptions of deliberation in
academic journals, it would be less than intriguing if the members of the
professional associations sponsoring those same journals used terms in their
association newsletters, brochures, and reports in a manner resembling their
journal discourse. Instead, the third section of this report seeks to understand how
the term has been appropriated outside the confines of academia, though such uses
of the word may very well be shaped by academic discourse.
After culling academic and non-American membership associations from the
list, we scrutinized each website to make certain that there were a sufficient
number of occurrences and uses of the term deliberation, as well as text that was
relevant to the practice of deliberation (even if not using the term, per se). Many
sites provided internal search mechanisms (such as Google software) that allowed
us to hunt for deliberation and its variants, such as deliberative. For those that did
not have internal search capability, we used the Microsoft Internet Explorer “find”
function, as well as old-fashioned, ocular exploration. For each instance of
deliberation or a variant, we read the surrounding text to understand the term’s
context and meaning.
Our evaluations were both quantitative and qualitative: How often did the
website use the term deliberation, and in what manners? In working toward our
eventual shorter list, we excluded organizations that used the term too infrequently
or for whom the term’s use was strictly incidental (i.e., those cases where a
synonym, such as discussion, could replace every use of deliberation without any
loss in meaning). We also strove to develop a diverse list of organizations, in terms
of geography, linkages to the aforementioned academic fields, and size/prominence.
Our resulting list includes 37 organizations (see Table 4). Most of these are
American membership associations, but some are deliberation-minded nonprofits/civic organizations (20, 22, 24, and 30 in Table 4) or government bodies that
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Meaning of Deliberation - 25
emphasize deliberation (31-37). (Although the non-profits and public bodies are not
within the scope of the current study, we included them for future reference.)
Table 4. A List of Membership Associations (and Some Public/Nonprofit Entities)
that Use Deliberation in their Websites
1. American Medical Association
2. National Education Association
3. American Association for the Advancement of Science
4. American Nurses Association
5. American Public Health Association
6. National Governors Association
7. American Political Science Association
8. American Association of School Administrators
9. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
10. American Educational Research Association
11. Unitarian Universalist Association
12. Seventh Generation Fund
13. National School Boards Association
14. Telecommunications Industry Association
15. American Society of Association Executives
16. International City/County Management Association
17. Association of Trial Lawyers of America
18. National Communication Association
19. National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments
20. USA Engage
21. Community Development Society
22. The National Campus Compact
23. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
24. The Loka Institute
25. The Community Policing Consortium
26. Computer Society
27. Federation of American Scientists
28. International Society of Political Psychology
29. The Rural School and Community Trust
30. The National Political Index
31. Commonwealth of Massachusetts
32. United States Department of State
33. City of Cambridge, MA.
34. United Nations
35. U.S. Library of Congress
36. Texas State Legislature
37. State of Tennessee
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-3Case Studies of
Membership Associations
From the list of relevant organizations shown in Table 4, we identified a
handful of membership associations for case study. We specifically sought to choose
organizations that represented a wide range of fields, had different organizational
structures and processes, and had different professional goals. In consultation with
the Foundation, we chose four organizations for further study: the American
Medical Association (AMA), the Community Policing Consortium (CPC), the
American Association of School Administrators (AASA), and the International
City/County Management Association (ICMA).10
Our investigations of these organizations focused on how they used the term
deliberation in their published materials. This emphasis on written, published
documents is consistent with our general goal of understanding how the term
deliberation is used in each organization’s wider discourse. Just as a review of
journal articles is a window into the meanings of the term deliberation in academic
circles, so does a review of an organization’s publications reveal its understandings
of the term. For each of the four membership associations studied herein, on-line
publications are the set of shared materials to which all members have equal access.
Each organization’s articles, editorials, essays, brochures, handbooks, and
proceedings, collected at a central website, constitute a communal text that both
reveals and reproduces the membership’s common vocabulary. By reviewing the
content of this shared text, we can see how the term deliberation is used
We also selected some “back-up” case studies, in case those selected proved less interesting than
we had hoped. Had the AMA case revealed nothing, we would have studied the American Nurses
Association. Had the AASA not proven to be a good case, we would have studied the National
Education Association. Had either of the other two cases failed, we would have added to our list of
cases Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
10
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Meaning of Deliberation - 27
unselfconsciously by organization members with no foreknowledge of the present
study’s purposes. We can also discover how these organizations describe their
deliberative practices, regardless of whether they use the term deliberation or one of
its conceptual cousins to describe them.11
As we examine each case, we review how the organization explicitly uses the
word deliberation, but we also explore the implicit understandings of the term. We
also consider whether the organization appears to deliberate internally or promote
public deliberation, even if it does not call such practices by that name. To the
extent possible, we also consider what effect the use of the term deliberation may
have had on the organization and its members. After reviewing the fourth case, we
offer a conclusion that brings these four case studies together and summarizes the
main findings of this research report.
The American Medical Association
Of the four cases we examine, the first is most distinct from the civic
organizations typically associated with public deliberation. Recall that the purpose
of this research project has been to explore the reach of the term deliberation
beyond the core organizations that practice and preach deliberative politics. The
American Medical Association (AMA) is a professional association of clinical and
research physicians, and although some of its activities may logically entail
deliberation, it would be noteworthy to find deliberation within this association.
Our reviews of these organizations’ documents are complemented by a limited number of
interviews. Our original study design placed greater emphasis on telephone interviews with
association members, but for the reasons explained above, our final report relies primarily on written
documents. Aside from the theoretical rationale for the emphasis on publications, as a practical
matter, we found it very difficult to conduct useful interviews with organization members. This was
partly because respondents had only tacit knowledge of the term deliberation; it was not something
that they could talk about explicitly. Moreover, it was almost impossible to reach the associations’
national representatives and officials, and conversations with public relations professionals were not
illuminating. Speaking with individual members within the organization also proved less than
fruitful, as none felt confident speaking about the general practices of the larger organization. Thus,
an interview-based study would need to focus on a local chapter and rely upon the participants’ own
discourse, rather than asking them to consider the meaning of terms, such as deliberation, that they
do not commonly employ or use only as vernacular terms.
11
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Meaning of Deliberation - 28
Founded in 1847, the AMA’s basic mission is “to act as the unified voice of
physicians working together to improve health care across the country.”12 As a
collective of professionals the organization is committed to a variety of concerns,
including the advocacy of public policy, medical research, patient services, and the
contemplation of ethical issues relevant to judicial and public policy, as well as
hands-on medical practice.
Within the AMA’s membership culture, deliberation has two distinct,
specialized meanings depending on the context in which the term is applied. The
Association’s official web-posted statement of “key objectives and strategy” explicitly
identifies and describes two “areas of involvement” that foster the term’s respective
meanings: (a) organizational policy development and (b) medical consultation in
clinical (i.e., non-organizational) settings.13 Because these two areas of involvement
and their treatments of deliberation differ in significant ways, we explain each
separately below. For each area we identify and describe the explicit and implicit
meanings of deliberation, explain in practical terms how it is used, and to what
effect. This exploration of two distinct uses of the term makes this first case study
the most extensive of the four.
Organizational Maintenance and Policy Making
In the area of organizational maintenance and policy development, deliberation
consistently signifies a democratic form of discussion that grounds the Association’s
internal governance and external advocacy activities. This meaning of deliberation
is wholly governmental in significance, insofar as it coincides with formalized
parliamentary procedures and the bureaucratic institution of rational-legal policies
as decided and implemented by the Association’s various official bodies. In this
American Medical Association, Record Management and Archives (updated 2002, January 30).
“Illustrated highlights of AMA history.” http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/1915.html. Note
that all sources cited as html text (i.e., those with an http: citation) have web addresses that are
subject to change. If the web address given is a broken link, search for the document by name either
in a conventional search engine (e.g., www.google.com) or using the search tools provided at the root
website (e.g., in this case the root address is www.ama-assn.org).
12
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Meaning of Deliberation - 29
sense, the term is used very frequently in council reports and other memoranda to
describe a process that
draws on the knowledge, experience, and concerns of physicians, the
Federation, and experts in a variety of fields. [Policy] is carefully
developed, subject to intense scrutiny and review, and often forms the
basis for nationally accepted public policy positions. . . . AMA policy is
forged through the democratic process of the House of Delegates, the
deliberations of AMA’s Board of Trustees, Councils, Sections and Special
Groups, and staff research and analysis.14
Judging by the frequency of its use and the advocacy of “efforts to encourage
more deliberation among [officers] over critical and often divisive issues,”15
deliberation is a visible and apparently valued term in the context of the AMA’s
internal governance and policy development. The value placed upon the term
overlaps with the Association’s favorable attitude toward democratically inclusive
approaches to problem solving and respect for formal mechanisms (e.g., the division
of labor across councils and boards) that are adopted from standard American
governmental and bureaucratic models.
Although (and perhaps because) the term deliberation is used so frequently in
the Association’s memoranda and explanations of policy derivation, it is typically
used in a casual manner and without explicit definition; as “primitive” terminology
that is “accepted as commonly understood or as a given.”16 But the term is often set
within descriptive language that permits a clear sense that deliberation signifies a
special form (or combination of forms) of contemplative, decision-oriented
discussion. Deliberation by official decision-making bodies in the AMA is
necessarily a formal enterprise that mirrors the rigor of scientific method. Although
exact deliberative processes are not specified in the organization’s memoranda—and
American Medical Association (2001, June 7 updated). “Key Objectives and Strategy.” Available at:
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/1912.html.
14 Ibid.
15 American Medical Association, Ad Hoc Committee on Structure, Governance, and Operations
(1998, Nov. 24). “Report on the Ad Hoc Committee on Structure, Governance, and Operations.”
Available at: http://www.ama-assn.org/meetings/public/int1998/reports/bot/botrtf/botrep24.rtf.
16 Chaffee, S. H. (1991). Explication. Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications. p. 7.
13
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such processes likely differ among different decision-making bodies—descriptions
typically refer to the incorporation of wide-ranging testimony and research,
suggesting that deliberation may comprise roundtable conversation as well as
hearings and other formal presentations before the various bodies. Formal reviews
(both internal and external) are used to validate the bodies’ deliberative processes
and conclusions. In this sense, the lack of an explicit definition of deliberation
suggests that the term is used to designate an assortment of discursive practices
(e.g., discussion, debate, informative presentation, etc.) that, in sum, enable
informed decision making and policy making that is discerning and purposeful
rather than whimsical and arbitrary. The noteworthy implication is that
deliberation is not treated as a specific kind of talk that occurs within the broader
context of policy derivation. Rather, it is a mix of various types of discourses that, in
sum, contribute to informed decision making.
As a primitive term, deliberation (as it is used in policy construction and formal
decision making processes) lacks an explicit definition. But the regularity of
contextual usage allows certain understandings of the term’s implications. In the
context of policy development, deliberation appears to revolve around certain
democratic ideals that are invoked implicitly yet consistently in the literature. Two
recurring ideals that require mention are inclusion of diverse perspectives and
rationality. Together, these ideals concern the roundness, fairness, and
investigative rigorousness of deliberation. Specific examples from the published
official literature point to the importance and recurrence of these democratic ideals
for the Association’s policy development. Four examples are provided below:
“[One responsibility of the Board is to insist] that external and internal
stakeholder input is solicited and considered during deliberations over
key policy or strategic issues.”17
American Medical Association, Ad Hoc Committee on Structure, Governance, and Operations
(1998, Nov. 24). “Report on the Ad Hoc Committee on Structure, Governance, and Operations.”
Available at: http://www.ama-assn.org/meetings/public/int1998/reports/bot/botrtf/botrep24.rtf.
17
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Meaning of Deliberation - 31
“Over the course of its deliberations, the panel heard from a number of
sources reflecting a variety of views on the moral status of the embryo and
the ethical acceptability of using embryos for research purposes.”18
“In future deliberations it would be useful if the committee would include
representation from the primary care research community so that
procedures can be developed that both assure individual subject
protection and also facilitate the development of the research base for
primary care.”19
“The undersigned physician organizations have followed the Medicare
Payment Advisory Commission’s (MedPAC) deliberations on graduate
medical education very closely. We continue to have significant concerns
about MedPAC’s approach and urge you and other Commissioners to defer
further action until additional impact studies can be completed.
Specifically, we believe that the Commission should examine the impact of
its proposal on residency training, not just on the financial implications
for hospitals that provide that training.”20
These quotations reveal the assumption that the confrontation of diverse and
perhaps conflicting perspectives and evidence are crucial to a decision’s ultimate
legitimacy. The process—in this case, a deliberative process—of talk and rational
consideration of facts and opinions is perceived as integral to the eventual product.
This conception is in line with Habermas’ “ideal speech situation,” according to
which a wide range of evidentiary support and reflective reason are used by
participants as a collective to gird certain policy propositions and denounce others,
and ultimately to prepare a sound (and preferably consensual) decision.21 As a
democratic type (or assortment of types) of discourse, there is a high value placed
upon inclusion of diverse perspectives.
The AMA uses deliberation as an official process for its various decision-making
bodies, such as the Board of Trustees, seven Councils with specific missions, and the
Gianelli, D. M. (1999, August 2). Panel takes middle road on stem cell research. AMNews.
Beasley, J. W. (1999, May 12). Primary care research and protection for human subjects [Letter to
the editor]. Journal of the American Medical Association 281(18).
20 Joint letter to MedPAC from numerous organizations, including the AMA. Available at:
http://www.acponline.org/hpp/sign-on.htm.
21 Habermas, J. (1984). Theory of communicative action, Vol. 1 (T. A. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston:
Beacon Press.
18
19
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Meaning of Deliberation - 32
House of Delegates. In making decisions, the Board members cast votes, although
such meetings are closed and individuals’ votes are not recorded for public record.
According to recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on Structure, Governance,
and Operations, the opening of the Board’s voting to public scrutiny might “disrupt
the Board’s consensus approach to decision-making and to its efforts to engage in
open and frank deliberations.”22 This implies that deliberation both precedes and
accompanies voting.
The stated preference for a consensus approach to decision making is
noteworthy because it renders the deliberative process more complex than simple
debate, in which antagonistic arguments are permitted to merely bump heads in
preparation for voting. It also suggests that deliberation is more sophisticated than
voting, which is a non-synthetic decision-making method. The consensus approach
requires deliberation to take place not only prior to decision making but also during
it. Just as juridical terminology designates deliberation as a specific occurrence of
talk that accompanies consensus-making (or the inability to reach consensus),
deliberation in the AMA’s governmental practices is discussion-oriented,
considerate of disagreement, and strives for agreement and resolution. It is a
synthetic discursive process. But whereas juridical deliberation occurs after the
presentation of arguments, evidence, etc. (which are discourses that have their own
labels in courtroom procedure), deliberation in the AMA’s practices has broader
application. Here, the term deliberation is applied in a much more sweeping
manner. It includes the pre-decision gathering of information, arguments, and
evidence, as well as the decision making process itself. In both stages of decision
making, deliberation invokes inclusiveness, diversity and conflict, and movement
toward shared organizational goals.
The official literatures pertaining to the AMA’s governmental procedures and
policies refer to deliberation regularly, but it does not overtly describe the perceived
American Medical Association, Ad Hoc Committee on Structure, Governance, and Operations
(1998, Nov. 24). “Report on the Ad Hoc Committee on Structure, Governance, and Operations.”
http://www.ama-assn.org/meetings/public/int1998/reports/bot/botrtf/botrep24.rtf.
22
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Meaning of Deliberation - 33
effects of deliberation; nor does it offer clear evaluation of the deliberative process or
its products. However, the commitment to deliberation as a policy making process
suggests high confidence in deliberative outcomes. If anything, the literature urges
more deliberation rather than less insofar as deliberation is believed to entail
inclusive and rational discourses.
Medical Consultation and the Management of Ethical Matters
Ethical consultation in patient care is the second context in which the AMA
uses the term deliberation frequently. The sense of deliberation in this context is
extraordinarily different from its use in organizational and policy arenas. When
deliberation is used in the policy sense, it typically occurs in an AMA memorandum
or other bureaucratic organizational venue; or in a news article concerning AMA
policy and procedures. By contrast, when deliberation is used in the ethical or
practical sense, it is more likely to reside in an academic or professional article on
the AMA website.
To illustrate this contrast, take the example of the Association’s Ethical and
Judicial Affairs council. This group and related panels deliberate according to the
understanding of the term as it is used in organizational contexts, as evidenced in
this news item: “Over the course of deliberations, the panel heard from a number of
sources reflecting a variety of views on the moral status of the embryo and the
ethical acceptability of using embryos for research purposes.”23 But within the area
of medical ethics in practice, deliberation has a very different meaning. Typically in
this context, deliberation signifies the process of constructive, collaborative
discussion between medical practitioners and patients towards the goal of making
informed (often joint) healthcare decisions. Deliberation in this sense is a highly
valued concept in medical practice, and embraces a relatively new paradigm that
de-centers or tempers clinicians as decision-making authorities. As one writer
observes,
23
Gianelli, D. M. (1999, Aug. 2). Panel takes middle road on stem call research. AMNews.
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Meaning of Deliberation - 34
While in some emergency situations the model of activity-passivity [in
which doctors have decision-making authority] will always be appropriate,
the more collaborative model of mutual participation developed by Szasz
and Hollander and the deliberation model of Emanuel and Emanuel seem
to be gaining wider acceptance as we face the millennium. Few would
contend that paternalism is as prominent in the patient-physician
relationship today as it was in the 1950s, but how far have patients and
physicians come in the direction of mutual participation? . . .. If full,
honest, and respectful disclosure of each person’s ideas, concerns, and
expectations helps to define a collaborative, deliberative relationship, are
we there?24
This author concludes that there is still work to be done to fashion “patientphysician communications [as] uniform, deliberative, collaborative dialogue,”25 but
the author also suggests that the ideal is in place—along with a solid understanding
of what deliberation means in the context of ethical healthcare practice.
Deliberation is further clarified in the distinction between informative,
interpretive, and deliberative models of behavior for the clinician-counselor. As
Wilfrond and Baker describe the former two models, informative behaviors concern
“employing nondirective techniques” and interpretation involves a “joint exploration
by the physician and the patient to identify the patient’s values and to identify
which decisions would be most consistent with those values.”26 Deliberative models
preserve interpretation’s emphasis on joint exploration, but go further to allow “the
physician to challenge the patient about which values are the most admirable.”27
Deliberation in this sense is a kind of understanding that is forged “between the
patient or proxy and physicians about what care would be considered futile and
what care falls within acceptable limits for the physician, family and possibly also
the institution . . .”28 Although the practitioner’s authority is not central to the
Lang, F. (2000, January). The evolving roles of patient and physician. Archives of Family
Medicine, 9 (1).
25 Ibid.
26 Wilfond, B. S., and Baker, D. (1995). Genetic counseling, non-directiveness, and clients' values: is
what clients say, what they mean? Journal of Clinical Ethics, 6, 180-182.
27 Fernandes, A. K. (1998). Ethical principles in balance: Genetic testing in the genetic age. MS
JAMA Online.
28 JAMA (1999). Health care institutions should provide process for disputes about futile care: the
AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs recommends a new approach. JAMA, 281, 937-941.
24
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Meaning of Deliberation - 35
decision-making process, she or he is not wholly submissive to the patient’s
demands either. Rather, deliberation strives for balance—an egalitarianism that
maintains deliberation’s traditional connection to democratic ideals and practices.
Occasionally, the term deliberation is used so casually that it seems to imply a
private, intra-personal, introspective process of rational discovery. For example, in
describing a patient’s right to decide treatment, one author defines “autonomy” in
this way: “to act in accordance with rules, principles, plans, and projects that one
has chosen for oneself after some degree of rational deliberation.”29 But a survey of
the medical-ethical field’s large body of literature concerned with deliberation
reveals a consistent, and often implicit, understanding that deliberation is
inherently a joint enterprise, typically between clinician and patient.
The “communitarian approach to patient counseling,” as described by Brenner,
raises implications of clinician-patient deliberation as it pertains to patients’
decision making autonomies.30 Brenner describes a “dialectical phase” of patient
counseling that is composed of three dimensions: “dialogue,” “mutual selfdiscovery,” and “decision making.”31 Deliberation is the thread that ties these
aspects of dialecticism together. Thus, by addressing the connections between
dialogue, mutual self-discovery, and decision making, the implications of
deliberation may be teased out.
In dialogue, patient, physician, and family communicate: the “patient-familyphysician triad enters into a dialogue in which patient values relevant to the
clinical situation are examined.”32 Dialogue leads to mutual self-discovery, in which
the involved parties come to understand their individual values, how these values
inform each other, and how they apply to their combined senses of the issues.
Values may be prioritized, and new values may be developed. This process leads to
the telic component of the dialectical process: decision making. Ultimately, the
Kim, S. J. (1999, Nov. 3). The choice. MS JAMA Online.
Brenner, M. J. (1998, Nov. 4). When prophesy precedes care: A communitarian approach to patient
counseling. MS JAMA Online.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
29
30
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Meaning of Deliberation - 36
patient has decision making autonomy, but it is according to an “informed consent”
that takes place “through a process of moral development.”33
Throughout this process, deliberation cements the steps together. The
addressing, ranking, and formation of values, for example, “takes place through
deliberation.”34 The implicit meaning of deliberation in this sense concerns the
application of reason; discursive collaboration; and emergent co-construction of
shared understandings. Deliberation is the backbone of the communitarian
approach to patient counseling.
Deliberation takes place in a variety of clinical settings and occasions. For
example, the communitarian form of counseling described above occurs prior to
patients’ decisions to be genetically tested for certain untreatable illnesses.
Deliberation also takes place during a “mediation process for considering medical
futility” as prescribed by the AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.35 This
mediation process is alternatively referred to as “the four steps for deliberation and
resolution.” In both examples, deliberation serves as a precursor to resolution (i.e.,
decision making). It necessarily involves collaborative discourse between patient
and physician (with family members participating too, in some cases) towards the
establishment of shared understanding and informed, rational decision making.
A particular effect of deliberative practices in clinical/consultative contexts is
the de-centering of the physician as a decision-making authority. The American
medical establishment in general recognizes that relationships between patients
and physicians are changing, as are their respective roles in decision making
practices. As Lang notes, this change is towards “mutual participation,”36 and
mutual participation entails communicative qualities that are deliberative.
Ibid.
Ibid.
35 JAMA (1999). Health care institutions should provide process for disputes about futile care: the
AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs recommends a new approach. JAMA 281, 937-941.
36 Lang, F. (2000, January). The evolving roles of patient and physician. Archives of Family
Medicine, 9(1).
33
34
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Meaning of Deliberation - 37
Deliberation in this sense entails—at least in part—egalitarianism and joint
responsibility for decisions.
Although “the state of patient-physician communications is still a distance from
uniform, deliberative, collaborative dialogue,”37 the practical concern with
communication issues in the medical field is a noteworthy advent. In recognizing
the importance of communication processes for the provision of quality medical care,
medical practices become more humanistic. Rather than being treated as an
objective science devoid of subjective variables such as values and emotions, the
medical field is being reconceived as a site of interpersonal discovery, deliberation,
and joint decision making.
The Community Policing Consortium
For the second case study, our attention moves from an association of health
providers to one of law enforcement officials. Once again, we look for the term
deliberation in a setting normally overlooked in academic and philosophical
discussions of public deliberation. The police are responsible for enforcing the law,
not discussing its merits. Yet some modern understandings of law enforcement posit
that the police and the larger community must come to understand one another’s
responsibilities and roles, and this search for mutual respect and comprehension
may require public deliberation. One membership association that attempts to
explore this public-police connection is the Community Policing Consortium (CPC).
The CPC is administered and funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office
of Community Oriented Policing Services. It is an association of five nongovernmental professional associations: the International Association of Chiefs of
Police, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the
National Sheriffs’ Association, the Police Executive Research Forum, and the Police
Foundation. The association’s central mission concerns the advancement and
application of community involvement in the management of law enforcement
issues—an agenda that that the Consortium views as revolutionary.
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Meaning of Deliberation - 38
With regard to the four membership associations that we have selected as case
studies for this research project, the CPC is noteworthy due because of its emphatic
commitment to deliberative democratic issues and practices, as generally conceived
by the Kettering Foundation. For example, efforts to “[give] citizens a voice in
policing policy”38 and to employ “cooperative models” of law enforcement39 are everpresent themes throughout the association’s various and extensive newsletters,
bulletins, and other published and web-based literature.
What makes this case interesting, however, is the rarity of the word
deliberation in the association’s vast body of distributed written material. The label
collaborative problem solving (alternately called cooperative or community problem
solving) is the association’s popularized name for those discourses that might be
termed deliberation or dialogue in other organizational cultures. Such problem
solving is consistently and explicitly something that is assumed to take place during
communication. When the association explains that its mission is to change police
organizations from a “military model” to a “communication model” of “participatory
management,”40 its is assumed that communication is “the foundation for
cooperation, coordination, collaboration and change.”41
In this section, we tease out the explicit and implicit significances of
deliberation in the published discourse of the CPC. In discussing the meanings of
the term, we aim to explicate the connection between the use (or absence) of this
word and the Consortium’s priorities with developing community partnerships,
enabling innovative and inclusive problem solving, and changing policing
management from an “autocratic” to a “collaborative” style.42
Ibid.
Graves, M. (2000, Sept./Oct.). Giving citizens a voice in policing policy. Community Policing
Exchange (Ph. VII, No. 32).
39 Muscato, J. (1998, Summer). Toward a cooperative model of law enforcement. Sheriff Times (Ph. V,
No. 2, Issue 7).
40 The police organization in transition: Section C: Managing transition—the human side. Available
at: http://www.communitypolicing.org/pforgtrans/secc.html.
41 About community policing. Available at: http://www.communitypolicing.org/about2.html.
42 The police organization in transition: Section C: Managing transition—the human side. Available
at: http://www.communitypolicing.org/pforgtrans/secc.html.
37
38
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Meaning of Deliberation - 39
In conducting our initial search for the term deliberation across the World Wide
Web, the site for the Community Policing Consortium was identified as a user of the
word, though we recognized that deliberation appears only rarely as a noun
(deliberation) or a verb (deliberate) and far more commonly as an adjective
(deliberate) or adverb (deliberately). When used as an adjective or adverb, the term
invokes a “purposeful” and “careful” quality, as in this advice for agency managers:
“Deliberately co-opt those who have been identified as antagonistic to the change
process.”43
In the lectures, bulletins, announcements, handbooks, newsletters, and other
literature that is authored by the association and its immediate affiliates, the term
deliberation is rarely used as a noun or verb. When deliberation or deliberate does
occur, it is typically in newsletter articles that use the term in the voice of persons
described in the articles. For example, the newsletter article, “Democracy: Partners
in deliberation” is about the Kettering Foundation and the National Issues Forum
program. The article adopts language endemic to Kettering scholarship—such as
the phrases public deliberation and deliberative democracy—but leaves them
undefined. Below are three examples of usage in this article:
“The KF brings people back into the town square to deliberate issues of
mutual concern and form public policy . . ..”
The National Issues Forums Institute aims “to teach people how to
become convenors—that is, they learn how to set up . . . a forum, conduct
deliberations and serve as moderators.”
“Through measured deliberation, where emotion is controlled and logic
prevails, citizens forge new, positive relationships with the police and
learn to work together for mutual benefit.”44
Neither here nor in other texts where the term occurs is the term deliberation (or
the verb form, deliberate) defined in any explicit manner.
43
44
Ibid.
McVey, S. (1998, Winter). Democracy: Partners in deliberation. Community Links (Ph. V, Vol. 3).
Kettering Foundation Report 10/31/2003
Meaning of Deliberation - 40
What interests us in this particular case is not the conceptual and practical use
of deliberation as a term, since the word is simply not used in any significant ways
within the Consortium’s discourse. Rather, what interests us is the association’s
understandings and applications of practices that are not deliberative in the
association’s verbiage, yet which are largely consistent with the ideals of so-called
deliberative democracy scholars and practitioners.
In those rare instances when the word deliberation is used, the lack of explicit
definition implies an understanding of deliberation as coherent with the
Consortium’s mission to advance “cooperative,” “collaborative,” or (alternately
called) “community” problem-solving. Tied to this mission is a sense that
communication should promote both quality in relationship development and
decision making, and revolve around individuals’ understandings of shared
(community) goals. Both of these prescriptions are grounded in the Consortium’s
“essential and complementary core components: community partnership, problem
solving and change management.”45 Thus, community policing is defined as
a collaborative effort between the police and the community that identifies
problems of crime and disorder and involves all elements of the
community in search for solutions to these problems. It is founded on
close, mutually beneficial ties between police and community members.46
Inclusion of diverse perspectives and experiences is central to this kind of problem
solving: “Community policing seeks the input and talents of all members of the
community . . ..”47
It is very important to emphasize how communication (of which deliberation
and collaborative problem solving are facets) is viewed as central to processes of
community partnership, problem solving, and change management in the
Consortium’s conception. Indeed, the so-called “tools” that the Consortium provides
About community policing. Available at: http://www.communitypolicing.org/about2.html.
Ibid.
47 Ibid.
45
46
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Meaning of Deliberation - 41
for community policing programs are mostly related to the building of collaborative
communication skills.48
With this in mind, it should be noted that we did find one exception in the
Consortium’s literature. An affiliated newsletter article uses the word deliberation
in a manner that implicitly denounces communication as secondary to action. Note
deliberation’s devaluation in the following usage:
A domestic violence study group was formed after a woman was shot to
death by her husband . . .. The man had just been released from jail on a
$50,000 bond, although charged with multiple counts of burglary with a
weapon and a violation of a domestic injunction. In spite of this tragedy,
the group formed only to deliberate whether the community needed a task
force to study domestic violence. In the south, you don’t just go jumping
into things.49
The writer’s chief concern is this particular group’s topic of deliberation, not
necessarily the deliberation itself. Nonetheless, there is clearly an implied division
between talk and action in this account, and an obvious preference for the latter.
This use of deliberation—as an isolated event—is not particularly congruent with
other implied meanings of the term (and collaborative communication in general)
throughout the Consortium’s literature. It is, however, noteworthy in considering
the implicit meaning of the term within the organization’s discourse.
The International City/County Management Association
The third membership organization we consider, the International City/County
Management Association (ICMA) , recognizes the value of both talk and action, and
it merits inclusion in this report for two reasons. First, it organized a profoundly
deliberative two-year discussion among its members on the nature of their
profession. Second, in a manner analogous to the CPC, it chose to not label this
deliberative process as deliberation. Before discussing this two-year program, it is
useful to review briefly the history of the ICMA and the general use of the term
deliberation in its publications.
48
Available at: http://www.communitypolicing.org/Toolbox.html
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Meaning of Deliberation - 42
The ICMA aims to facilitate network connections and information/idea
exchanges among local government managers and administrators in the United
States and abroad. The association was founded as the International City
Managers’ Association in 1914 “at a time when only 32 local governments in the
United States and Canada had adopted the council-manager plan.”50 In 1969 it
redefined itself to include public officials working outside the council-manager
model, and in 1991 it changed its name yet again to embrace officials working in
county government.51 Its current membership includes over 8,000 administrators
and assistants, and it is largest local government management association in the
United States.52
The main activities of the ICMA are producing publications, organizing
seminars, and providing direct assistance to managers and administrators who
wish to learn about the practices and successes of other government professionals
across the globe. A typical ICMA activity is the annual Best Practices Symposium,
which “offers in-depth case studies, facilitated small group discussions,
comprehensive written materials, and extensive opportunities for information
sharing” on local government policies and programs.53
The ICMA recognizes deliberation as an essential part of both its internal
governance and of public management, but it does not afford the term any special
significance. As used in ICMA documents, deliberation generally connotes careful
consideration of an issue or a formal decision-making process. For instance, in an
article on strategic planning in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, the ICMA notes that
Blagoevgrad’s presiding council “did not deliberate on the submitted strategic plan”
McFadden, M. (1998, Spring). The little group that couldn’t. Community Links (Ph. V, Vol. 4).
From the official history of the ICMA; http://www.icma.org/go.cfm?cid=1&gid=2&sid=2.
51 Ibid.
52 Streib, G., Slotkin, B. J., & Rivera, M. (2001). Public administration research from a practitioner
perspective. Available at: http://www.gsu.edu/webfs01/pad/padgds/public_html/Docs.html.
53 Quote is taken from a summary of the 2002 symposium available at:
http://www.icma.org/go.cfm?cid=2&gid=11.
49
50
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Meaning of Deliberation - 43
because the council had its attention focused on an upcoming election. Deliberation
was not possible because the council did not have the requisite time and focus.54
Another example denotes a similar meaning. In an article archived by the
ICMA’s Center for Performance Measurement, the authors refer the inclusion of
citizens in “public budget deliberations” to heighten their understanding of fiscal
constraints and the best recognized government practices.55 Here, deliberation is
juxtaposed with a reference to public involvement, but the phrasing (i.e., public
modifying deliberations) suggests that budget deliberations can go on with or
without the public—that deliberation refers to the weighing of budget priorities
rather than the persons who happen to engage in that weighing.
A third and final example comes from an ICMA handbook on the closure and
reuse of military bases. The handbook explains that the federal Defense Base
Closure and Realignment Commission “reviews a list of . . . recommended bases for
closure and deliberates publicly on the final outcome of the list.”56 Later, the
handbook describes the Commission’s activity, noting that it “holds regional
hearings . . . and undertakes public deliberation of [sic] alternatives.”57 In a later
section, the handbook notes that any financial assistance received by communities
from the Department of Defense should not be taken into consideration “by the
Commission in its deliberations.”58 These three uses of the term illustrate the
ICMA’s understanding of deliberation as a careful weighing of relevant evidence,
but the persistent use of the term in conjunction with public suggests that
deliberation, at the very least, is well-suited to public participation. It might be the
case that the ICMA implicitly defines government deliberation as an activity that
ICMA. (2002). Blagoevrad, Bulgaria/Auburn, Alabama Strategic Planning. Available at:
http://www.icma.org/go.cfm?cid=1&gid=3&sid=229&did=890.
55 Wray, L. D., & Hauer, J. A. (1996). Best practices reviews for local government. Public
Management. Archived at http://www.icma.org/go.cfm?cid=1&gid=3&sid=101&did=113.
56 ICMA. (1998). ICMA base reuse handbook, chapter 1, section 1.1. Available at:
http://www.icma.org/basereusebook98/ch1sec11.htm.
57 Ibid. Perhaps one should not read too much into a grammatical error in preposition use, but
accidentally typing (and publishing) “deliberation of” rather than “deliberation on” is consistent with
our view that the term deliberation is used casually in passages such as these.
54
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Meaning of Deliberation - 44
should directly involve the public, but the ICMA does not explicitly define
deliberation in this way.
Beyond the use of the word, per se, much of what the ICMA does, promotes, and
studies is deliberation. The clearest instance of deliberation involving the ICMA is
noteworthy because the ICMA did not label it as such. In 1991 the Executive Board
of the ICMA set up a Task Force on Continuing Education and Professional
Development, which was asked to (a) define the requisite competencies of a local
manager and (b) clarify how ICMA could help to cultivate those skills. The two-year
investigation headed by this Task Force came to be known as the “Dialogue on the
Profession.” When the Task Force presented its final set of recommendations to the
Executive Board in 1994, it had convened dialogues at two ICMA annual
conferences and 35 state and affiliate meetings, and it had conducted two
membership surveys. The Board adopted its recommendations, which established a
list of professional competences (discussed below) and a new educational branch,
the ICMA University. Prior to this Dialogue, the ICMA had not gathered its
membership together in this way, and the Dialogue stands out as a unique event in
the modern history of the organization.59
Why was this period of intense internal deliberation on the nature of the
profession labeled dialogue, rather than deliberation? One possible explanation is
that dialogue has a meaning that connotes exploration, openness, and the
presentation of multiple perspectives, whereas deliberation connotes the weighing
of relatively pre-defined forms of evidence and a formal decision-making process.
This interpretation is consistent with the use of deliberation in ICMA documents,
and it fits the role of the Task Force, which was given the assignment of facilitating
an open conversation and making recommendations, rather than weighing evidence
ICMA. (1998). ICMA base reuse handbook, chapter 1, Section 1.3. Available at:
http://www.icma.org/basereusebook98/ch1sec13.htm.
59 Streib, G., Slotkin, B. J., & Rivera, M. (2001). Public administration research from a practitioner
perspective. Available at: http://www.gsu.edu/webfs01/pad/padgds/public_html/Docs.html.
Background on the Dialogue was also obtained in a telephone interview with Michelle Frisbee,
Washington D.C. office of the ICMA.
58
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Meaning of Deliberation - 45
and making a decision. After all, the Task Force was advisory to the Board, so the
Task Force—and the members participating in its public activities—were having an
exploratory dialogue prior to the Board conducting official deliberations oriented
toward reaching a final decision.
In any case, dialogue continues to trump deliberation in ICMA discourse. For
instance, ICMA Executive Director Bill Hansell used the term in a 1999 editorial.
He explained that in his two columns on reforming the council-manager model of
city government, his “intention was to energize a dialogue in the profession about a
series of changes in the original model charter that have occurred or are being
considered” (italics added for emphasis). He added that he was “pleased that an
exciting, vibrant, and largely constructive discussion has been occurring” since the
publication of his two editorials.60 If Hansell intended to spark dialogue and was
pleased that exciting, vibrant, and constructive discussion ensued, this suggests
that he might equate dialogue with lively, open, productive discussion. It is
probably no coincidence that following the aforementioned Dialogue on the
Profession, Hansell uses nearly identical terminology (substituting in for on) in his
editorial. The success of the two-year Dialogue reinforced the value of the term
itself, as well as the essential management practices that the Dialogue identified.
The final list of competencies identified by the Dialogue on the Profession
further underscores both the importance of deliberation in the ICMA’s work and the
conspicuous absence of the term in its discourse. The members of ICMA agreed that
17 practices are part of effective local government management. Some of these have
no direct bearing on deliberation (e.g., staff effectiveness, functional and operational
expertise, and human resources management); however, at least four of these
practices directly relate to the promotion and practice of deliberation within local
government or between citizens and public officials:
Hansell, B. (1999, July). Revisiting the reform of the reform. The editorial originally appeared in
ICMA's Public Management; http://www.icma.org/go.cfm?cid=3&gid=13&sid=163&did=321.
60
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Meaning of Deliberation - 46
•
democratic advocacy and citizen participation (requires “commitment
to democratic principles” and “skill in group dynamics, communication,
and facilitation”)
•
policy facilitation (requires “skill in communication, facilitation, and
consensus-building techniques”)
•
citizen service (“providing responsive, equitable services” and
“assessing community needs”)
•
initiative, risk taking, vision, creativity, and innovation (“ability to
create an environment that encourages initiative and innovation”)61
As the Kettering Foundation understands the term, deliberation is part of what
the ICMA refers to as democratic advocacy and citizen participation, and it is
certainly part of the policy facilitation process. Citizen service, as defined by ICMA,
could involve deliberation on the public’s needs, and deliberation within government
would be one means of sparking creativity and innovation. Yet the word never
appears. Communication and consensus-building are more common terms in this
list of competencies.62
Thus, the ICMA believes that the practice of deliberation is a vital part of its
internal decision-making process, and it views deliberation as essential to city and
county management. Nevertheless, deliberation is not understood to be a term that
is central to describing and defining the association’s activities.
The American Association of School Administrators
Like the ICMA, the fourth and final case we consider is a membership
organization that works with public officials. The American Association of School
Administrators (AASA) is also like the ICMA and CPC in that it both recognizes the
ICMA. (1994). Practices for effective local government management. Available at:
http://icma.org/go.cfm?cid=7&gid=71.
62 On the other hand, this same list also excludes the words “dialogue” and “discussion.” The
importance of this list is underscored by the fact that it was used subsequently by a policy researcher
to critique past public administration research and suggest gaps in the literature (i.e., those ICMA
competencies that had not received sufficient attention in the literature published to date). See
Streib, G., Slotkin, B. J., & Rivera, M. (2001). Public administration research from a practitioner
perspective. Available at: http://www.gsu.edu/webfs01/pad/padgds/public_html/Docs.html.
61
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important role of deliberation in its work and usually assigns no special significance
to the term itself. Founded in 1865, the AASA brings together over 14,000
professionals involved in education from across the United States and other
countries. The AASA ’s mission is to “support and develop effective school system
leaders who are dedicated to the highest quality public education for all children.”
The AASA focuses on “improving the condition of children and youth, preparing
schools and school systems for the 21st century, connecting schools and
communities, and enhancing the quality and effectiveness of school leaders.”63 The
third of these four emphases closely aligns with the notion of public deliberation,
and we will return to that connection later in our discussion.
Before doing so, however, it is useful to begin with a review of how the AASA
typically refers to deliberation in its published newsletters, reports, and policy
documents. The most common use of the term refers simply to group discussion and
decision making. Thus, an article on the use of hand-held voting devices by the
AASA Delegate Assembly makes reference to the “assembly deliberations” without
qualifying or elaborating upon the term in any way.64 In this same way, a policy
proposal argues that the American Board for Leadership in Education should “begin
assembling exemplars . . . and commission policy papers that might inform the early
deliberations of the new Board.”65
Two other AASA documents serve to clarify the term somewhat by
distinguishing deliberation from the final stage of decision making and from policy
implementation. An editorial on the AASA website explains, “Typically, the
superintendent recommends, the board members deliberate with one another and
About the AASA. Available at: http://www.aasa.org/about/index.htm.
Chion, L. (2001, February 16). High-tech streamlines delegates' work. The Conference Daily.
Available at: http://www.aasa.org/publications/conference/2001/fri_delegatecolor.htm.
65 Mandel, D. R. (2000, January 26). Recognizing and encouraging exemplary leadership in America’s
schools: A proposal to establish a system of advanced certification for administrators. Report
prepared for the National Policy Board for Educational Administration. Available at:
http://www.aasa.org/issues_and_insights/prof_dev/professors/certification_admin.htm
63
64
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Meaning of Deliberation - 48
the superintendent, and then they reach a board decision.”66 This passage makes a
clear distinction between deliberation and decision making. Another excerpt from
the same essay further distinguishes deliberation from subsequent action
(implementation): “Further, the board/superintendent team uses the vision to guide
its deliberations, decisions, and actions.”67 This separation of deliberation from
action is consistent with the use of the term deliberation in the membership
organization’s policy platform: “AASA believes student achievement is the highest
priority of public education and calls upon all parties (e.g. legislatures, boards,
teachers, families and community members) to make student learning foremost in
their deliberations and actions”(italics added for emphasis).68 In addition, this
platform item indicates that the AASA views deliberation as essential for a variety
of stakeholders, including government, educators, communities, and families.
Though deliberation is not a central term in the aforementioned AASA
documents, it does make some cameo appearances. Moreover, there is an additional
set of AASA publications that show the potential for a more subtle understandings
of deliberation among school administrators. The School Administrator is a monthly
magazine that provides AASA members with relevant editorials, book reviews, and
essays. Within this publication, deliberation is a recurrent theme. Though some
articles in this on-line magazine treat deliberation as an important but unspecified
discussion process,69 others offer some clarity as to the meaning of the term.
For instance, in an essay on public involvement in school board decision
making, Mahoney explains that his own board “believed in engaging the community
in important deliberations.” The board “opted to give stakeholders the opportunity
to understand the situation and offer suggestions before making a decision.” At
successful community gatherings, the meeting agendas set aside a “time for
Goodman, R. H., & Zimmerman, W. G. (no date). Thinking differently: Recommendations for 21st
century school board/superintendent leadership, governance, and teamwork for high student
achievement; http://www.aasa.org/issues_and_insights/governance/thinking_differently.htm.
67 Ibid.
68 AASA 2000 Platform; http://www.aasa.org/government_relations/policy/platform2000.htm.
69 For example, Kentta, B. (1997, March). How district staff can help schools create and operate site
councils. The School Administrator; http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/1997_03/kentta.htm.
66
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information sharing and a time for group decision making.” The result of this public
involvement was the passage of tax referendums, and Mahoney concluded that
“when community residents are given timely and accurate information, they will
thoughtfully consider the data and offer appropriate solutions that reflect the
thinking of the general public.” The superintendent’s role in this process, he
explained, was to encourage the board to “demonstrate leadership” and share its
power with the community.70 For Mahoney, school board deliberation is most
effective when it includes the larger public, though the emphasis is on the
transmission of information from the board to citizens, as opposed to a two-way
deliberation that weighs values as well as facts.
The idea of a deliberative exchange does appear in other writings, and when it
does, it is apparent that this more complex understanding is linked to authors’
readings of other, often scholarly writings on deliberation. In an article on how
schools can promote civic development, Schaps and Lewis make reference to John
Dewey, Thomas Jefferson, Louis Brandeis, and Michael Sandel. Quoting the latter
source, the authors explain that moral virtue comes from a social bond, cultivated
by “deliberating with fellow citizens about the common good and helping to shape
the destiny of the political community.”71 Drawing on insights such as these, the
authors argue that schools have a responsibility to cultivate democratic citizens and
must, therefore, reexamine “every aspect of school organization and climate—from
discipline policy to fund-raising strategy.”72
In a book review, deliberation once again enters the conversation taking place
in the pages of The School Administrator. The reviewer introduces readers to an
Mahoney, J. W. (1999, February). Engaging the public in taxing situations. The School
Administrator. Available at: http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/1999_02/foc_Mahoney.htm.
71 Quotation from Sandel, M. (1996, March). America’s search for a new public philosophy. Atlantic
Monthly. As cited in Schaps, E., & Lewis, C. L. (1998, May). School improvement initiatives can
recognize the school’s potential to promote civic development. The School Administrator. Available
at: http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/1998_05/Schapps.htm.
72 Schaps, E., & Lewis, C. L. (1998, May). School improvement initiatives can recognize the school’s
potential to promote civic development. The School Administrator. Available at:
http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/1998_05/Schapps.htm.
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idea from a book that advocates “leadership through empowerment and cooperative
planning.” As the reviewer explains,
The twin bane of many administrators, conflict resolution and consensus
building, provide the most concrete and useful ideas. The deliberative
opinion caucus, a unique approach for engaging large numbers of
community representatives in improvement efforts, is especially well
described [in the book].73
Proposals like the “deliberative opinion caucus” go far beyond a simple
understanding of deliberation as committee meetings or information exchange. This
book review exposes readers to a conception of deliberation that comes very close to
the understanding of public deliberation advanced by the Kettering Foundation and
other deliberation scholars, including ourselves.74
This affinity between selected AASA texts and Kettering’s conception of
deliberation is not altogether surprising when one recognizes that some members of
the AASA have come in contact with the Foundation. One contributor to The School
Administrator, Harris Sokoloff, has worked with the Foundation on the public’s role
in public education. In a September, 1999 essay, Sokoloff recommends a
“deliberative approach” to reducing youth violence. Specifically, he recommends
community issue forums based on the National Issues Forums model. This form of
deliberation does not require an immediate decision but does ensure “vigorous
discussion.” After one of the model forums Sokoloff describes, he explains,
No specific policy decisions were made, yet the room was full of electricity.
People who never before had spoken at a public event had made new
connections and were talking about continuing the conversation and
working together to build parent networks and other support structures
for children outside of school.75
The book being reviewed is Cano, Y., Wood, F. H., & Simmons, J. C. (Eds.) (1998). Creating high
functioning schools: Practice and research. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. The review appears
in the May, 1999, issue of The School Administrator. Available at:
http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/1999_05/book_reviews.htm
74 Burkhalter, S., Gastil, J., & Kelshaw, T. (in press). The self-reinforcing model of public
deliberation. Communication Theory.
75 Sokoloff, H. J. (1999, September). Rallying a community around youth violence. The School
Administrator; http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/1999_09/mathews_side_sokoloff.htm
73
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In a School Administrator essay the following year, Eastridge and O’Callaghan
mention the Kettering Foundation by name. Their lighthearted piece, “Getting
caught in your underwear,” warns against finding oneself unprepared for solving
complex public problems. Referring not only to the Foundation but also one of its
favorite phrases, the authors write,
The Kettering Foundation and other public policy think tanks say the
reason we get caught in our underwear is that our society now faces a
growing number of wicked problems that cannot be resolved in the same
way that many problems have been resolved in the past. Wicked
problems, they say, are not easy to define. They often defy logic, have
many origins and are deeply embedded in human nature and social
culture. (italics added for emphasis)76
Despite Eastridge and O’Callaghan’s familiarity with Kettering and its
preferred terminology, the term deliberation takes a back-seat in this article to
dialogue. Thus, the authors explain that to avoid getting caught in our proverbial
underwear,
We need to engage in meaningful dialogue . . . Practically speaking,
dialogue is a process of connecting with issues of mutual concern and
grappling with them until there is some closure. In working through the
issues, citizens become actively engaged and involved with one another.
Generally, people who are engaged have all the information they need
long before they are willing to confront the cross pressures that entangle
them.77
The term deliberation does enter this article subsequently, but only as a
modifier of dialogue. Eastridge and O’Callaghan explain that “the need for
deliberative dialogue in our schools and nation has never been greater than it is
today” (italics added for emphasis). Demonstrating the secondary status of
deliberation in that phrasing, in the next two paragraphs, the authors twice use a
modification of this phrase and call for “meaningful dialogue.”78
Eastridge, H. E., & O’Callaghan, W. G. (2000, December). Getting caught in your underwear. The
School Administrator. Available at: http://www.aasa.org/publications/sa/2000_12/coleastridge.htm.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
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Thus, even in a membership association that publishes essays with richer
conceptions of deliberation—in this case traceable back to the Kettering
Foundation—the term deliberation does not play a primary role in the discourse of
its members. As in the Eastridge and O’Callaghan essay, it appears that terms such
as dialogue supplant deliberation in the vocabulary of AASA members. As just one
more instance of this pattern, we reviewed the most recent issue of another of the
association’s publications, the AASA Professor. We found five separate references to
dialogue but no mention of deliberation.79
A brief interview with Doyle Winter, the Executive Director of the Washington
Association of School Administrators (an affiliated organization), confirmed the
marginal status of the term deliberation within the AASA. He explained that
deliberation is “not a common term in education.” Dialogue, he suggested, is a more
common word because of its emphasis on intense, two-way conversation oriented
toward understanding more than deciding. A dialogue “doesn’t necessarily result in
a decisions at that time,” whereas deliberation is undertaken “with the intent to
make a decision.”80
79
80
The AASA Professor is available at: http://www.aasa.org/publications/tap/index.htm.
Telephone interview with Doyle Winter.
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Conclusion
To summarize, this report began with an overview of the importance of
language in shaping a society’s beliefs and practices. Because it matters what words
we use and what we mean by them, it has been useful to examine the prevailing
understandings of deliberation, a word central to many of the Kettering
Foundation’s projects. This research report has undertaken such an examination by
focusing on how the term is used in scholarly journals and selected membership
associations based in the United States.
Our review of recent journal articles found numerous articles using the term
deliberation in a variety of ways across different academic fields. Among these
different conceptions, the one most relevant to the Foundation’s work is a widelyshared core notion of deliberation that can be found in political science, political
communication, communications, and speech communication, as well as philosophy,
law, public administration, and policy analysis. Articles published within these
fields conceive of deliberation as an open process designed to bring together diverse
stakeholders for the careful consideration of relevant information and diverse
viewpoints on important public issues.
A search of Internet websites found thousands upon thousands of instances of
the term deliberation, with the preponderance of these uses being irrelevant to the
Foundation’s understanding of the word. Nevertheless, by combining the term
deliberation with other words, such as community, political, and election, it was
possible to isolate a limited number of websites likely to use the term in relevant
ways. A subset of these websites was identified to study the meaning of deliberation
in membership associations within the United States.81 From this subset, four
organizations were chose for case studies: the American Medical Association (AMA),
The parameters of this study required setting aside some non-membership organizations that
made frequent reference to deliberation. Future research might examine the understanding of this
term in the official bodies, such as the United States Library of Congress and nonprofit/academic
associations, such as the National Campus Compact.
81
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Meaning of Deliberation - 54
the Community Policing Consortium (CPC), the American Association of School
Administrators (AASA), and the International City/County Management
Association (ICMA). The first of these cases was quite distinctive, whereas the other
three had much in common.
We found the most complex and detailed conceptions of deliberation in the
AMA, which could be said to have two distinct uses for the term. In some cases, the
term deliberation is used in reference to organizational maintenance and policy
making. In these settings, deliberation is a “primitive” term that is “accepted as
commonly understood or as a given.”82 In these cases, deliberation is simply
contemplative, decision-oriented discussion. Deliberation is an umbrella term that
encompasses an assortment of discursive practice, such as discussion, debate, and
information exchange, that enable informed, reasoned decision making. Thus,
deliberation includes the pre-decision gathering of information, arguments, and
evidence, as well as the final decision making process itself, and it invokes
inclusiveness, diversity and conflict, and movement toward shared goals.
In other instances, the AMA more carefully defines deliberation in reference to
the joint decision making that occurs between doctors and patients when their is an
ethical dilemma or other complex medical problem that requires careful discussion.
Here, deliberation refers to more intimate, interpersonal forms of communication,
such as dialogue and mutual self-discovery. The emphasis is on values, moral
inquiry, and judgment, rather than information exchange and rational decision
making. Because doctors are often expected to render authoritative expert
judgments, it is noteworthy that the AMA views such joint deliberation between
doctor and patient as essential to the delivery of medical care.
The other three cases had many similarities. First, the CPC, ICMA, and AASA
all saw deliberation as part of their internal governance processes as well as a
procedure suited to public participation. Unlike the AMA, these organizations more
frequently (though usually implicitly) linked deliberation with the public. For
82
Chaffee, S. H. (1991). Explication. Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications. p. 7.
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Meaning of Deliberation - 55
example, the ICMA sometimes used deliberation to denote simply the careful
weighing of relevant evidence, but it would repeatedly use the term in relation to
public or community involvement. suggests that deliberation, at the very least, is
well-suited to public participation. Other times, particularly in CPC and AASA
documents, deliberation would be linked directly and explicitly with public
engagement.
Despite this common theme, the second similarity among the CPC, ICMA, and
AASA is the absence of a systematic definition of the term. The CPC, for example,
would emphasize the need for cooperative, collaborative, or community problem
solving, but it never clarified the role of deliberation in such processes. Though an
occasional essay or article would consider deliberation in more depth, those
documents would stand alone, unintegrated into the central set of terms used by the
members of these associations.
A third common characteristic of the CPC, ICMA, and AASA discourse was the
frequent discussion of deliberative activities called by other names. In particular,
dialogue was a frequent substitute for deliberation. Before we began this study, we
had experienced tension between these two terms in our own work when critics of a
theoretical essay we had written on deliberation challenged us to clarify how, if at
all, deliberation differed from dialogue. Reviewers were ultimately satisfied by our
argument that dialogue could be part of the deliberative process, but early reviews
clearly questioned the value of refining the definition of the deliberation at all.83
Based on our readings of these associations documents, it appears that
deliberation and dialogue are competing for market share in the discourse of public
participation, and dialogue, as it is commonly understood, has two profound
advantages. First, it emphasizes open exploration rather than decision making, and
government bodies prefer the latter connotation when working with a public that it
hopes will advise but not seek to control the governance process. Second, dialogue is
a more fluid, undefined term to which one can attach new meanings, whereas
83
Burkhalter et al. (in press). The self-reinforcing model of public deliberation. Communication Theory.
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deliberation has a pre-set primitive meaning that denotes the weighing of evidence
and implies the importance of reaching a final decision. Thus, it was logical that the
ICMA would call its two-year reflection period a Dialogue on the Profession because
the process was meant to be exploratory and only advisory to an official board,
which would then deliberate and make final policy decisions. The vernacular
definition of deliberation is not fixed, however, and some of the AASA essays we
reviewed clearly distinguish the deliberative process from the decision making
process.
Finally, the CPC, AASA, and ICMA all had links of one kind or another to the
scholarly and foundation literature on deliberation, and these links influenced the
discourse that appeared in CPC and ICMA documents. What is most interesting
about these links, however, is how little impact they have on the organizations’
discourse. The CPC website, for instance, used the term deliberation in a broader,
richer manner only when quoting Kettering Foundation documents. Though it may
be flattering to have one’s words cited, it is higher praise to have them repeated
spontaneously, which suggests that the speaker may have been influenced by them.
An even more striking example was the essay on the ICMA website that used some
of the preferred language of the Foundation but then downplayed deliberation in
relation to dialogue. Thus, even in membership associations that publish essays
with rich conceptions of deliberation that sometimes trace back to the Kettering
Foundation, the term deliberation plays only a minor role in their members’
discourse.
What are the practical implications of this research project? We might advise
caution in attaching too many programs to the term deliberation, which appears
weighted down by the burden of its basic, mundane denotation of careful problem
analysis and decision making. One might attach loftier meanings to it yet never see
the term, in common discourse, rise above its more modest definition. After all, jury
deliberation—and now the deliberative aspect of artificial intelligence—continue to
reproduce the pre-existing understandings of deliberation as little more than
information processing and decision making. Moreover, its recurrent use as a
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Meaning of Deliberation - 57
generic label for legislative, board, and committee meetings adds little to this
simple conception of deliberation.
On the other hand, it is clear that the discourse of deliberative democrats has
begun to seep into the language of both academics and, to a lesser extent, prominent
membership associations. The frequency of deliberation in scholarly journal articles
is striking, particularly when one notices that the term was relatively rare just ten
years ago. It may take time for these academic fields to work out their own
understandings of the term, and it should not be altogether surprising that
professional associations have not attached great significance to a familiar word
onto which scholars are attaching new but inconsistent meanings. Perhaps patience
and clear, consistent use of the term, along with the regular juxtaposition of it with
public, community, and political will make it possible for deliberation to take on a
richer meaning in the discourse of not only academics and professionals but also the
public as a whole.
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