| Popis: |
The study of deliberative democracy stands today at a methodological cutting edge. Here, perhaps uniquely, normative theory, practitioner invention, and empirical analysis all depend actively and recursively on one another. Conscious synergy permeates this volume. Empirical scholars need normative theory to identify ‘success.’ They need practitioner innovations for analytically fruitful variation. Practitioners, for their part, need normative and empirical guidance to experiment and improve what can be done. Theorists need both practitioner advances and empirical analyses to probe analytically and build upon the implicit and evolving norms behind deliberative practice. Even more unusually, individual scholars who begin with one method increasing frequently take up the goals and tools of other methods in their quest for understanding and better practice. Why this synergy? Increasing demands for democratic legitimacy are driving practical innovation across the globe. Assessing the new deliberative forums that arise from these demands and the deliberative systems of which they are a part, practitioners, theorists and empirical scholars are asking both ‘What do we want to achieve?’ and ‘What produces -- or hinders -- what we want to achieve?’ The goals include greater epistemic creativity and accuracy, contributions to human development, and, most importantly, increases in perceived legitimacy backed by normative legitimacy, to undergird the many new laws and regulations (with the accompanying increases in government coercion) that human beings will require as we become increasingly interdependent. |
