Climate Ethics: Structuring Deliberation by Means of Logical Argument Mapping

One of the first things President Obama did after coming to office was the establishment of the Office of Public Engagement. As described on its Web site, this office "is the embodiment of the President's goal of making government inclusive, transparent, accountable and responsible." The Office of Public Engagement is supposed to "create and coordinate opportunities for direct dialogue between the Obama Administration and the American public, while bringing new voices to the table and ensuring that everyone can participate and inform the work of the President."¹

As the president explained in his memorandum on transparency and open government, "Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge."² Indeed, knowledge is widely dispersed in modern societies. We find it not only in a growing number of scientific disciplines but also outside of academia in highly educated and skilled individuals and in local communities that know how policy decisions materialize "on the ground."

For the scientific debate on "deliberative" or "participatory democracy," President Obama's initiatives are exciting news. Finally, so it seems, after Jürgen Habermas (1989) complained nearly fifty years ago that in capitalist societies the critical discourse of the public as the foundation of democratic decision making tends to be marginalized by the politicking of lobbies, private interests, and administrations, we see an attempt to "establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration," as the president writes.³

From a theoretical point of view, the central idea of "deliberative democracy" can be summarized by a definition formulated by Andrew Smith:

Theories of deliberative democracy offer a vision of political decision making in which citizens are able to consider relevant matters from multiple points of view, critically converse with one another about options before them, and seek to enlarge their understanding of whatever matters are under scrutiny. These decisions are intended to be procedurally fair and, in the case of epistemic theories of deliberative democracy, to meet with widespread and uncoerced agreement precisely because they are improved in their epistemic quality. Under the best of circumstances, deliberation converges on the best available ideas on offer: on a presumably correct political decision.

(2007, 259)⁴

However, it is far from clear how large-scale deliberation and participation might be possible. There are at least two problems, one of quantity and the other of quality. Regarding the first one, Peter P. Swire, who was involved in the New Media team that operated the Web site change.gov during the Obama/Biden transition and developed whitehouse.gov, describes the challenge the administration is facing regarding the use of participatory Web 2.0 technologies as follows: the Obama/Biden "campaign learned how to cope with a motivated group of just over 10 million individuals. After Election Day, the transition and later the administration had to respond to the concerns of over 300 million Americans, as well as interested persons in other countries."⁵ There is no question that participation poses an enormous challenge. How can it be possible to structure a huge amount of input without frustrating both overwhelmed politicians and potentially millions of engaged citizens?

The problem of the quality of deliberation becomes visible in case studies that looked at projects that are already well established. In one of these, Coelho, Pozzoni, and Montoya (2005) analyze the working and efficacy of a "management council" in the municipal health system of São Paolo. The council has been set up according to the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, which "established mechanisms for citizens to participate in the formulation, management, and monitoring of social policies" (Coelho et al. 2005, 174). Half of the councilors in this study represented organizations from civil society, and the other half comprised health professionals and representatives of governmental institutions and of public and private providers of health services. Based on an analysis of the council minutes and interviews with councilors, the authors show that positions in the council deliberations were perceived as being more important...