Deliberative Democracy as a Reform Movement

Many organizations, actors and alliances across the globe have advocated for and implemented elements of deliberative democracy, effectively addressing policy, political and national issues. Examples include the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review, Participatory Budgeting (multiple locations worldwide, including “100 Percent” of some municipality budgets in Australia), the Danish Board of Technology’s Consensus Conferences, Deliberative Polls (even in China), Citizens’ Juries (in numerous democratic states), and grassroots Constitutional Conventions in Ireland, Iceland, and Belgium. It is unclear, though, whether such efforts collectively amount to a social movement. Institutionalization has been difficult to achieve, chiefly because power is rarely given up or shared. Nor can we say whether deliberative democracy initiatives have reached a tipping point at which current political practices might begin to take on a more deliberative form. For deliberative democratic principles and practice to occur and be sustained, social and political change organizations and government will need to work together.