Public deliberation and policy design

What role can deliberative democracy mechanisms perform in relation to policy design? This article reports findings from an experiment which was conducted to answer that question. The experiment brought together a random sample of the public who debated public policy questions online and face-to-face. Three key findings emerged. First, deliberative democracy mechanisms are different from more typical participatory policy design tools because they offer something more dynamic than a ‘snapshot’ of public opinion. Second, public deliberation can contribute evidence to policy analysis processes that is more considered because it emerges from a process of citizen sensemaking. Finally, unique forms of policy relevant data can be produced by analyzing the justifications that citizens use to convince others during policy deliberations. These findings suggest that allowing citizens to “talk policy” through deliberative democracy mechanisms can produce unique forms of policy knowledge.