Political Deliberation Page 1 of 27 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2014. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy ). Subscriber: Princeton University Library; date: 16 October 2014 Print Publication Date: Sep 2013 Subject: Political Science, Political Behavior Online Publication Date: Dec 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199760107.013.0022 Political Deliberation C. Daniel Myers and Tali Mendelberg The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (2 ed.) Edited by Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, and Jack S. Levy Oxford Handbooks Online Abstract and Keywords Deliberation plays an important role in a number of political institutions and is also an increasingly common way that citizens participate in politics. This chapter divides political psychology research on small-group deliberation into three clusters of variables: the context in which deliberation takes place, the process by which deliberation proceeds, and the outcomes that deliberation produces. The existing literature shows that deliberation can have meaningful effects on important outcome variables like policy attitudes, citizen knowledge, and subsequent political engagement. However, research on how the context and process of deliberation produce these outcomes is still in its infancy. This chapter argues that as the political psychology literature on deliberation matures, it must pay more attention to process and context questions, in large part because the normative value of deliberation depends less on what the outcomes of deliberation are than on how those outcomes are produced. Keywords: deliberation, deliberative democracy, group processes, political participation, democratic theory 1. Introduction Deliberation is an increasingly common form of political participation (Jacobs, Cook, & Delli Carpini, 2009) and already plays a role, direct or indirect, in society and politics. Government bodies use deliberative forums to consult citizens in various policy decisions (Gastil, 2000; Karpowitz, 2006; Rosenberg, 2007). For example, citizen deliberations in Chicago provide input on school and police issues, a process that has deepened citizen engagement with both institutions (Fung, 2004). Juries make decisions that affect industry, commerce, rights, and a variety of life outcomes for people and organizations (Gastil, Deess, Weiser, & Simmons, 2010). Some deliberating groups issue official recommendations that can become the basis of constitutional change (e.g., the British Columbia constitutional assembly) (Warren & Pearse, 2008). Deliberation is increasingly featured in developing or postconflict societies as a way to repair breaches of trust and establish democratic procedures or institutions (Humphreys, Masters, & Sandbu, 2006), while many localities in the United States organize deliberating groups to encourage dialogue across racial lines (Walsh, 2007). Finally, deliberation is used to measure considered public opinion in environmental, health, and urban planning policy (De Vries et al. 2011; Forrester, 1999; Owens, 2000). However, deliberation is more than just another form of political participation. Deliberation is a longstanding element of, and has played an increasingly important role in, democratic theory (Thompson, 2008). From Aristotle’s vision of the polity (Wilson, 2011), to grass-roots visions of American democracy in the writings of Tocqueville, deliberation has been identified as significant to democratic societies. However, the last several decades have seen a “deliberative turn” in democratic theory (Dryzek, 2000) that has increased the emphasis on deliberation, in contrast to other features of democratic government such as free and fair elections. Much of the empirical research on deliberation in political science takes this recent scholarship as its inspiration and point of departure. We will discuss this literature in greater depth below.