What Constitutes Effective Citizen Deliberation?

by CMF Research Assistant on April 04, 2022

Members of Congress engaging their constituents in a meaningful, substantive manner is a key tenet of American representative democracy. However, only a small percentage of constituents directly participate in the policy process, with many others instead relying upon voting, donating, or protesting as their primary means of political expression. In our 2021 report The Future of Citizen Engagement: Rebuilding the Democratic Dialogue, we propose ten principles for modernizing and improving the relationship between Congress and the People. Our discussion of principle four outlined the importance and benefits of using citizen deliberations to engage with constituents. But what constitutes effective citizen deliberation and how can Members of Congress use it to better engage their constituents in their decision-making processes?

Current methods of constituent engagement used by Members of Congress, such as town hall meetings and email surveys, are participatory and not deliberative. They are open to anyone but attended only by those who choose to do so. Participatory constituent engagement tends to attract individuals who wish to air a specific grievance or defend the position of their Member from those who disagree. They engage those who are already engaged. Research indicates that it is rare for participatory forums to result in productive deliberation and substantive policy recommendations.

For a constituent event to truly be deliberative, a representative sample of constituents must engage with each other and their Member of Congress on a chosen policy issue. In the book Politics with the People: Building a Directly Representative Democracy, based on research conducted in partnership with CMF, the authors describe five criteria for directly representative institutions (quoted from the book):

  • Inclusion: "The institution should provide equal access and voice to and attract a wide cross-section of constituents."
  • Informed Justification: "The institution should encourage constituents to proceed on the basis of reliable, balanced, and relevant information, and cultivate a willingness to participate in the discussion effectively and constructively."
  • Good Reason-Giving: "The institutional design should promote high quality exchanges between elected officials and their constituents."
  • Promoting Legitimacy: "The process should encourage the trust and legitimacy that can sustain the deliberative process when participants are not able to reconvene."
  • Scalability: "The institution should be scalable so that a meaningful number of constituents can participate, and the process can perceptibly ramify through the larger deliberative system."
The presence of all five criteria would significantly increase the quality of a deliberative institution and represents the ideal. Including some of them and working toward including all of them would be an important step in the right direction. Ideally, citizen deliberation helps connect constituents to their Members of Congress through research-based discussion on a particular issue. If the participants can compromise and come to agreement, they can create specific policy recommendations as well. If the purpose of the citizen deliberation is preserved, organizers can scale or adapt the structure of the deliberation to fit the needs and desires of any constituency.

In their 2020 report Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave, the OECD lists the necessary structural components of a citizen deliberation: learning, deliberation, and the development of collective recommendations. These components are the barebones framework that the five criteria listed above are built upon. In the learning stage, it is extremely important that constituents are educated on the topic prior to participating in deliberations so that they can effectively contribute meaningful ideas to the discussion. The event organizers should provide participants with clear and concise educational materials prior to the event. We have found that even a 2-5 page nonpartisan overview based on policy reports by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) provide constituents with knowledge and confidence they can use to fully participate in a deliberative event.

Dialogue between groups of constituents and their Member of Congress is necessary in true citizen deliberation. A diverse, representative sample of constituents needs to constructively discuss the policy issue with their Member to try to find common ground from which to make recommendations. The participants will explain their recommendations directly to the Member and the Member will gain valuable insights into how and why certain decisions and recommendations were made. The personal involvement of the Member with their constituents also allows them to see firsthand why constituents care about the issue at hand and hear specific stories as to how they would be affected by certain policies.

When deliberative processes are visible to the entire constituency—when people see themselves represented in the process—collective recommendations carry the full weight of the represented constituency. As a result, they benefit from the greatest source of trust and legitimacy for policy recommendations or proposals: the People. Allowing constituents to make recommendations directly to their Member of Congress includes them in the policy process and lets them feel personally connected to the work their Member is doing in Washington D.C.

While the OECD report describes twelve different deliberative models in detail, their report emphasizes the fact that the models were each developed and adapted to meet the needs of the constituents who participated. There is great opportunity for innovation and experimentation in the field of citizen deliberations, especially with the recent advances in video conference technology and more widespread comfort with them caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Hosting multiple citizen deliberations will allow congressional offices to find what structures work best for them and their constituencies.

CMF has conducted extensive research on the effectiveness of online deliberative townhalls as part of the Connecting to Congress initiative. As more constituents gain access to high-speed internet and grow accustomed to using video conferencing platforms, the possibility of hosting virtual deliberative town halls with a representative group of constituents grows greater than ever before. In our report on online town halls, we have laid out some recommended steps for running an online deliberative town hall in a way that will maximize positive impact on constituents, and our toolkit for improving telephone town hall meetings provides pragmatic guidance and tools you can use to improve video and in-person meetings, as well.

Additional Resources
CMF Research Assistant, Ian Chenoweth, authored this post. Ian is a junior at Valparaiso University majoring in political science with a concentration in public policy and administration and a minor in French and a heavy interest in data analysis and visualization. After graduation Ian plans to pursue a master's degree in public policy.
 
citizen engagement, congressional operations