Can Deliberative Governance Become Inclusive?

In a series of our earlier papers [1-4] we have developed a concept and a model of large-scale online deliberation, which could accommodate any number of participants who deliberate on a given issue altogether as one undivided body, in one common "virtual room", rather than divided into several small groups. This approach indeed requires a rather specific procedural framework, and an ICT-system to support and enforce those procedures. It provides for a meaningful participation of any size, open to any citizen in a given constituency, therefore preserving their equal political rights. Rights, however, do not imply capabilities; a person may be authorized to do something, but not being able of doing that thing. Both the representative model and the referendum-based direct model of democratic governance provide every citizen with a very basic right---that of casting their vote. This basic right is indeed inclusive, for, the act of voting can be performed even by the least prepared and least capable person; yet, one can ask how meaningful is the act of such an unprepared vote. The deliberative model, in contrast, is rather demanding; it requires from those who decide to participate in a deliberation a high level of factual preparedness and of argumentative and rhetoric capabilities. It is somehow elitist, in comparison with e.g. the representative model. A question therefore remains---can we make our deliberative model inclusive, and what this inclusiveness should mean with regard to different levels of personal capabilities?

In this paper, we are trying to answer these two questions. We discuss and compare various causes of non-participation, and also various levels of involvement in a deliberative participation. We argue that, regarding such a demanding activity as is political deliberation, trying to achieve equal and uniform inclusion makes no sense. Instead, inclusiveness should be understood as providing every individual with as much possibilities and help, as he/she is capable and willing to make use of. Providing help to those who are willing to deliberate (on a given issue) but are not capable enough is indeed a much more difficult task than simply providing everybody with equal procedural possibilities. To this end, we introduce a mechanism of argumentative facilitation, through a voluntary aid, brought by more (rhetorically and argumentatively)capable participants to their less capable peers. We expect that our method will provide not only for increased inclusiveness of participation in online deliberation, but also for complementing online deliberation by expanding it offline at the "last mile", with small face-to-face groups connected to the main online community through one or more group facilitators, or coaches.