When Policy-making out from the closed doors.
In 2007, for all the obvious reasons [1], the New Zealand government decided to discuss pre-birth testing. It was a glorious day for deliberative democracy too because all the coverages of pre-birth testing recommendations were started with deliberation and convention of New Zealanders’ perspectives. The deliberation process was depicted as a genuine endeavour to give consideration and nurture awareness of different aspects related to the pre-birth issue [2].
Didn’t it marvelous to see how a deliberation system chosen by New Zealand government on that time, could drive a comprehensive and fair overview about people’s perspectives [2] on this complex issue? According to the evaluation report conducted by the Bioethics Council New Zealand in 2008, there is a broad acceptance among New Zealanders that pre-birth testing has to be regulated [2]. It is likely that the approval was shaped and has a strong connection with the fact that this deliberation process promotes the awareness of cultural, spiritual, and ethical aspects of the pre-birth testing topic [2]. The acceptance was indicated as a deeper awareness of pregnancy and parenthood perceptions among New Zealanders based on multi issues related [2].
In other words, this was a fantastic example of how a good and focusing deliberation process could nurture awareness of raising multi-dimension aspects which go hand in hand with a complex issue.
Why bother stretching the comfort zone?
Deliberation is magical, indeed, however it could end up with brutal honesty. Pre-birth testing is one of the controversial and sensitive issues: there are various unpleasant perspectives, and unexpected emotions involve in this issue. On the other hand, in public deliberation, the participants could not obtain immune from propaganda and competing interests in this issue. This deliberation could end up in nuisance. Hence, an important question arises, why the government needs to attempt deliberation in the first hand?
Research shows that recently there is a trend of less trust issue for the government [3]. However, trust is essential if the government wants to success in implementing its policy in society [3]. Transparency may be one of the solutions to establish trust from the society towards their government, however it could not stand alone. The government needs to ensure their accountability by justifying their decisions and in return responding to the society’s perspective [3][4]. It is an essence of democracy [4]. The government could not stand alone; they have to listen to the society’s perspectives since society holds the real experience, knowledge and expertise in their daily life challenge [5]. By doing public deliberation, the government could weight alternatives consciously and intentionally in difficult decision-making to make it well targeted and less wastage of public resources in conducting the policy [5].
On that ground, when the government could go out from behind their closed doors and comfort zone by doing public deliberation — listening to the society’s voices, thinking and working out together, although it may lead to volatile change — it could lead to a quality and legitimacy decision-making: more feasible recommendations, more accountable, more inclusive, more just, and more balance [6]. This attempt also could obtain an intrinsic value of improving public-spiritedness and trust on governments as well as increase the sense of shared responsibility between government and the society [5][6][7].
What the question are we deliberating for?
If the public deliberation could produce a magical transformation in better policy-making, then it is important to emphasize the question to ‘when is a policy-making question appropriate for public deliberation?’ [7]. It has to be considered that public deliberation is not suitable for all policy topics [7][8]. Public deliberation is chosen if the method matches the expectation purpose of the deliberation [7]. For instance, there is decision-making that needs pure technical and scientific experts to answer it correctly instead of real-world knowledge in public [7][8]. In addition, there are several methods of collective decision-making which the government could use to generate general perspectives and attitudes in public, such as polls, surveys, voting and focus group discussions which make the decision-making more simple, easier, and also more accessible [7][8]. In other words, some issues could simply be decided by creating accepting or rejecting polls or survey, which meet normal and usual standards and have no further fatal implications in society [8]. Furthermore, if the government only want to deliver information regarding decision-making process to the society then they could choose campaign method in spite of public deliberation.
However, the characteristic of policy issues that conflicting public values, high controversy, a combination between expert and real-world knowledge, and low-trust in the government, are likely to suit the nature of public deliberation process [7]. Firstly, the nature of a controversial issue is likely to capture society’ attention and make them aware of that issue and tend to think about it. Public deliberation provides opportunity for the society to genuine participate thinking about the controversial topic. Nonetheless, public deliberation should begin in the assumption that the public knows and experience the topic in their everyday lives and the nature of controversial issue fit that assumption. Secondly, the deliberation process could assist society in identifying and discovering what is deeply valuable in a controversial topic, hence it could generate an excellent recommendation to act for the government [8]. Therefore, the nature of the issue will influence the chosen method of deliberation.
Furthermore, the question should be not stopped on ‘when is the policy-making question appropriate for public deliberation?’, the ‘when’ question should also be followed by the question of ‘when in the policy-making process should be deliberated?’ [7]. The timing also essential in chosen the deliberation method. The situation for the issue should have not been made or in the early stage of policy setting [8] to make the public deliberation effective. At some point, a public deliberation is a genuine place for the society to talk and discuss based on their values and perspectives, in order to influence on the decisions the government will make or how the future decisions are made [4]. It also means that to make it more effective, the framed timing of public deliberation should avoid political tension time to make it pure from the political agenda. Hence, timing also influences the chosen public deliberation method.
Deliberation breeds more deliberation
However, I consider that this two ‘when’ questions could not perfect determine ‘when is the public deliberation should be considered’. The entire process of public deliberation is dynamic [4]. For example, in public deliberation regarding pre-birth testing, the justifiable decisions/recommendations generated perhaps suffice today, still we cannot be sure that the decisions/recommendations are correctly in the future [4]. Therefore, another characteristic should be considered in deliberating, which is the issue could open the possibility of a continuing dialogue which society could re-evaluate previous decisions [4]. Recognizing that human understanding is imperfect, the deliberation provisional have to open for the challenges in the future, even though conclusions/recommendations made today have to stand for some period of time [4].
How to connect random dots in deliberation?
Technology enables the culture of enlightened, critical and reasoned on society, as well as it changes the interaction between the government and its citizens, and also the interaction among citizens [9]. At some point, technology becomes a tool for translating and facilitating so that people could participate in public deliberations from afar [10]. The government could facilitate online deliberation rather than face-to-face deliberation which tend to exclusive and often expensive. Moreover, face-to-face deliberation could involve high tension due to the amount of information and perspectives, which could result in a stuck deliberation.
On the other hand, online deliberation is likely as a magic bullet to provoke people to speak their mind and discuss with other people with less worrying of the risk such as in face-to-face deliberation [10]. Another benefit of online deliberation is people can contribute to public deliberation with no limited by the space and time [10]. For the government, the benefit is online deliberation could reduce the time framing to discuss and generates an idea for policy-making. And for sure, it also cut the budget, which is a good saving for another government’s program [11].
But unfortunately, the magic of online deliberation also could exclude people who have no access to this technology. Some people could not become aware and also could not participate in online deliberation merely because they are not using the internet or technology [12]. It has to be considered that there are considerable disparities in the behaviour of using technology which has strong correlation with demographic factors [12]. Furthermore, although online deliberation could increase the circulation and volume of ideas in one topic, it has limitation to enhance the quality of interactions and communication among human [13]. Therefore, the public deliberation should be not only relied in the online deliberation to cope all the perspectives.
Therefore, next time, the government should consider the rules of the game in the deliberation process. The government could create a pathway that could be involving and encouraging society to engage more, by perhaps mixing the face-to-face deliberation and online deliberation. In the end, it is the essential matter of democracy.
References:
[1] Toi te Taio the Bioethics Council New Zealand. (2008). The Report: Who Gets Born?. Retrieved from: https://pep.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/who-gets-born-jun08.pdf
[2] The Nathaniel Centre. (2008). Toi te Taio: The Bioethics Council Report — Who Gets Born?. Retrieved from: http://www.nathaniel.org.nz/press-releases/34-toi-te-taio-the-bioethics-council-report-who-gets-born
[3] Open Government Partnership. (2019). Deliberation: Getting Policy Out From Behind Closed Doors. Retrieved from: https://www.opengovpartnership.org/documents/deliberation-getting-policy-making-out-from-behind-closed-doors/
[4] Gutmann, (2009). Why deliberative democracy? Retrieved from: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/43751
[5] Andersson, E., Burall, S., and Fennell, E. (2012). Talking for a Change A Distributed Dialogue Approach to Complex Issues.
[6] Gutmann, A., & Thompson, D. (1997). Deliberating about Bioethics. Hastings Center Report. 27 (3), 38–41.
[7] Solomon, S. & Abelson, J. (2012). Why and When should we use public deliberation?. Hastings Center Report, 42 (2), 17–20. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3645483/
[8] Kettering Foundation. (2011). Naming and framing difficult issues to make sound decisions.
[9] Dunleay, P., Margetts, H., Bastow, S., and Tinkler, J. (2006). New Public Management Is Dead: Long Live Digital — Era Governance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory: J-PART, 16 (3), 467–494.
[10] Chadwick, A. (2006). Internets Politics; states, citizens, and new communication technologies.
[11] Mossberger, Karen., Tolbert, Caroline J., McNeal, Ramona S. (2007). Digital Citizenship. The Internet, Society, and Participation
[12] Mergel, Ines., Rethmeyer, R. Karl., and Isett, K. (2016). Big Data in Public Affairs. Public Administration Review, 76 (6), 928–937.
[13] Ercan, S. A., Hendriks, C. M., and Dryzek, J. S. (2019). Public deliberation in an era of communicative plenty.
