On Mon, 26 Sep 2011, Eric Beck wrote:
> I think there is lots of value in Michael P.'s diagnosis that the
> occupation is trying to craft direct democracy (though I hate that term)
One quibble: IIUC, deliberative democracy is different than direct democracy. In direct democracy, we all have to take part for it to be democratic. But I think one of the premises of deliberative democracy is that it works kind of like a jury: that if you have a representative part of the community, and they truly deliberate -- talk things through to conclusions by responding to each others' points -- that they will come pretty similar conclusions. So that the goal is not the vote but the conclusions. And unlike direct democracy, it does have an implicit representative relation to the larger society. IIUC, it conceives of itself as a fundamental alternative to a poll. Instead of asking what everyone thinks and leaving it at that, it brings the various views together in order for them to develop through interaction into a deeper, common understanding -- which they would then say was implicit in the original distribution of views.
FWIW, there has been small current of people (mostly in communication department IIUC) who have periodically organized these kind of "public dialogues" precisely to use them as ways of getting at "true" public opinion about certain issues, like the Iraq war, or the distribution of wealth. They never got much press, but were kind of interesting exactly like juries often are -- that ordinary people can be surprisingly reasonable, reflective and serious when they feel that's what's called for.
Michael