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Democratic Deliberation In The Wild: The Mcgill Online Design Studio And The Regulationroom Project, Cynthia R. Farina, Hoi Kong, Cheryl Blake, Mary J. Newhart, Nik Luka
Democratic Deliberation In The Wild: The Mcgill Online Design Studio And The Regulationroom Project, Cynthia R. Farina, Hoi Kong, Cheryl Blake, Mary J. Newhart, Nik Luka
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Although there is no single unified conception of deliberative democracy, the generally accepted core thesis is that democratic legitimacy comes from authentic deliberation on the part of those affected by a collective decision. This deliberation must occur under conditions of equality, broadmindedness, reasonableness, and inclusion. In exercises such as National Issue forums, citizen juries, and consensus conferences, deliberative practitioners have shown that careful attention to process design can enable ordinary citizens to engage in meaningful deliberation about difficult public policy issues. Typically, however, these are closed exercises-that is, they involve a limited number of participants, often selected to achieve a …
It's The Aggregation, Stupid! [Book Review], Josh Chafetz
It's The Aggregation, Stupid! [Book Review], Josh Chafetz
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This Comment reviews James Surowiecki's book, The Wisdom of Crowds (2004). It first situates Surowiecki's arguments with respect to traditional ideas of crowd stupidity, on the one hand, and Hayekian arguments about spontaneously ordering systems, on the other. Surowiecki notes that crowds can be both much smarter and much stupider than their component parts. The Comment examines Surowiecki's criteria for distinguishing smart crowds from stupid ones. It then applies those criteria to juries and theories of deliberative democracy, and makes several suggestions as to how we can structure deliberative institutions so as to make them wiser than their members.