The Character of Deliberation: Equality, Argument, and the Formation of Public Opinion

Political deliberation is an instrument by which to inform citizens and invigorate public opinion. Deliberation can only properly attain these goals if the discussion reflects a number of normative characteristics, including equality and rationality. Deliberation exhibits equality if all participants' voices are heard. Deliberation is rational if, in the context of discussion, it contains reasoned argument on matters of public policy. These two characteristics of deliberation are connected to larger issues with regard to public opinion formation. Equality is connected to the matter of conversational hegemony and concerns over whether the formation of public opinion is dominated by the elite. The question of deliberative rationality is concerned with the importance of political sophistication and political conversation. As this paper will detail, there are two convergent literatures, one arguing that rational political talk must be preceded by the attainment of political sophistication, the other advocating the importance of prior political conversation as the primary prerequisite to opinionation. This paper will describe a project in political deliberation where actual discourse was coded in conjunction with the gathering of individual level survey data on deliberative participants. Using these data in combination, tests of the equality principle and reasoned argument were conducted and a model of deliberative dialogue tested, supporting the following conclusions: first, deliberation exhibits a high degree of equality; second, it is political conversation, rather than sophistication, that prepares individuals to participate in deliberation and affords citizens the skills to do so well.