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In recent years, democratic theory has taken a ‘deliberative’ turn. Deliberative democrats tell us, most fundamentally, that we should shun merely adding up votes in favour of talking together. What especially distinguishes the deliberative democracy movement is its concern with finding ways of putting the theory into practice. A host of micro-deliberative innovations — Citizen's Juries, Consensus Conferences, Deliberative Polls — show us what deliberative democracy might look like in miniature.

Democratic theorists often place deliberative innovations such as Citizen's Juries, Consensus Conferences, Planning Cells, and Deliberative Polls at the centre of their hopes for deliberative democratization. This chapter charts the ways in which such mini-publics can impact on the ‘macro’ world of politics. Impact may come in the form of actually making policy, being taken up in the policy process, informing public debates, market-testing of proposals, legitimation of public policies, building confidence and constituencies for policies, popular oversight, and resisting co-option. Exposing problems and failures is all too easy; the chapter highlights instead cases of success along each of these dimensions.

This chapter explores ambiguities and contradictions in the thinking of Milton and other republicans, whose ideas about toleration came into conflict with their demands for freedom of conscience. Beginning with the politics of virtue whereby they strove to displace divine right with secular claims to an ethical absolute, the chapter demonstrates how republican requisites for both societal cohesion and free conscience were compromised by simultaneous commitments to temporal and eternal orders of value. Drawing on evidence of rhetorical strain in Milton's Readie and Easie Way, deliberative pathos in Samson Agonistes and Buckingham's The Rehearsal, and the devastating triumph of virtue over uncertainty dramatized during the Exclusion Crisis by Nathaniel Lee's Lucius Junius Brutus, the chapter demonstrates representative variations on the free conscience dilemma. Restoration era pressures for free agency are thus shown to be a struggle both for and against temporal reality, both for and against an eternal ideal.

This chapter discusses how US citizens love democracy in theory but hate it in practice. The problem is not with democracy as a concept. In practice, invitations into public life often amount to little more than clicking on an online petition. What people need are better opportunities to participate in ways that are personal, effective, and engaging. The chapter explains how democracy is not a static concept. Recently, visionaries have developed new ways to engage the public, including 21st Century Town Meetings, Citizens' Initiative Reviews of ballot measures, and Deliberative Polls that yield more informed public opinions across the globe.

The introduction provides an overview of the book’s argument for a right to education and how that right can be realized through democratic activism. The introduction first notes how rights discourse is increasingly used in education reform today despite challenges it faces. Two challenges are highlighted: from a practical perspective, educational rights have an uncertain place in the US legal system; and from a theoretical perspective, rights claims are in tension with the principle of majority rule. The introduction then explains the two questions the book addresses: What is the place of a right to education in a participatory democracy? And how can this right be realized? The rationale for using deliberative democracy as a framework for analysis is explained, and a brief overview of the chapters is offered. The introduction highlights the reciprocal relationship between the book’s theoretical arguments and case studies; the case studies of democratic activism showcase theory in action to some degree, but they also determine the practical value of theoretical arguments about educational justice. The analysis therefore considers how activism may bring democratic theory to fruition, and how theory may need to be revised given constraints advocates face as they press for education rights.

This chapter begins to advance the book’s main argument: that we should regard the education that prepares individuals for equal citizenship as a fundamental right that is shielded from majoritarian politics far more than existing practices permit, and far more than most theory recognizes is necessary. Concern for this right is motivated by the worry that leading accounts of democracy often fail to protect the interests of marginalized students. In this and subsequent chapters, arguments about a right to education are located in a deliberative democracy. As education scholars and reformers increasingly look to deliberative ideals to improve the education policy process, it is especially important to consider how well this approach to policy-making serves less advantaged students. The chapter first calls attention to the opportunities and challenges that deliberative theory presents for advancing just education policies. It next shows how leading conceptions of deliberation fail to ensure that all students receive a high quality education due to the wide discretion they give democratic bodies to determine public provisions for education. Finally, it discusses the unique relationship between educational opportunity and political equality, which underscores the need for a right to education that is set above democratic decision-making.

This chapter addresses the question: If we should treat education as a preconditional right to enable fair deliberative decision-making, what should this right include? Rights claims have become ubiquitous in education reform discourse, but little work to date has focused a philosophical lens on the substantive argument for a right to education, its democratic implications, and what this entitlement should include. This chapter begins with a brief overview of rights theory to call attention to how education is sidelined in existing accounts of welfare rights, and argues why it merits a place alongside the other social goods covered by this literature. The chapter next defends the deliberative view of citizenship as the proper framework in which to situate educational rights, and then turns to its educational demands. The general contours of this right are outlined by focusing on the civic skills associated with meaningfully exercising free speech and voting rights, which illustrate the conditions that facilitate equal citizenship. The chapter focuses in particular on the development of citizens’ cognitive autonomy and ability to use public reason as central to the meaningful exercise of political liberties.

In Chapter 5, I examine rights claims that are expressed and pursued outside courtrooms through a case study of a leading community organization, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth in San Francisco, that has long advocated for children’s rights in the education arena. The purpose of this case study is two-fold: to demonstrate how the rights claims I have argued for can be powerful tools in democratic politics in the US, and to suggest ways in which deliberative theory needs to be revised in light of the inequalities that advocates face as they employ rights claims. I consider what type of citizenship and view of politics Coleman’s efforts endorse, and how it uses rights discourse to advance its education reform goals. I also consider how deliberative ideals may need to be relaxed to make room for rights-based advocacy in non-ideal conditions.

The introduction introduces the topic and central argument of the book: that at the heart of the human embryo research debates was the question of how the public should reason together about a domain of science and technology that touches upon the most fundamental dimensions of human life. It introduces the methodological approach and coproductionist theoretical framework of the study. It introduces the idea of the “constitutional position of science” in American democracy, and illustrates the unacknowledged but constitutional position of scientific authority in John Rawls' idea of public reason.

Chapter 8 concludes by reflecting upon the scientific and political developments that ended the stem cell controversy of the 2000s. It argues that the most lasting consequences of this political moment lie less in the scientific and technological trajectories that it engendered, than in the imaginations—and institutions—of democracy that emerged out of it. It argues that the embryo debates reflect the dynamics of public reasoning in the United States about the meaning of emerging biotechnologies for democratic visions of progress and the good.

This chapter explains the concept of democratic deliberation and considers its implications for ethical review of human subjects research. Democratic deliberation is an ethical principle relatively new to research ethics. It involves a public exchange of ideas within and across groups of ordinary citizens, experts, and political representatives, and requires participants to engage actively with one another, to offer reasons that are acceptable and intelligible to their interlocutors, and to revise their decisions as new information and new perspectives come into view.Incorporating democratic deliberation into human subjects research would recommend greater inclusion of participants in the review process. This might be achieved by seating participants or their advocates on IRBs, and by otherwise involving them on advisory committees overseeing research. Such inclusion of research participants would follow the model of advisory committees elsewhere in the health care system, which include patients and other stakeholders. It would also counsel against exempting public benefits research, such as experimentation with Medicare and Medicaid benefits, from ethical review.

Chapter 2 examines some prominent models of multicultural coexistence, and defends deliberative models as most consistent with the demands of solidarity. Through their emphasis on reason-giving and empathetic imagining, deliberative models offer a basis for the practical and democratic realisation of solidarity’s core tenet of responsibility across difference. Nevertheless, it is also conceded that a deliberative approach brings with it its own set of problems that impede the expansion of solidarity. Specifically, where deliberation ensues from a starting point of marginalisation and disrespect, we can expect it to replicate, rather than overcome, these non-ideal conditions. The final section brings this problem to light in preparation for the subsequent chapters, which focus on how it can be overcome.

Chapter 3 analyses institutional designs that are supportive of solidarity. It challenges the view put forward by defenders of institutional homogeneity that group entitlements corrode solidarity by supposedly encouraging parochial behaviour over other-regarding behaviour. It is argued that this view is too one-sided, as it overlooks how group entitlements can compel majorities to orient themselves towards the concerns of marginalised minorities they otherwise have little incentive to respond to under majoritarian decision-making structures.

Chapter 4 explores the mechanisms through which political actors in positions of power can be influenced to dismantle unjust decision-making and legal structures from which they benefit. It is argued that when such actors are hostile towards principled reform and have the ability to withstand democratic challenges to their privileged position, a combination of civil disobedience and intervention by actors external to the society is required to compel them out of their intransigence. The chapter presents conditionality and transnational networking as practical expressions of this mode of structural change and considers how these practices can inform future efforts at principled reform.

Chapter 5 takes up the question of social transformation from the perspective of attitudes, social norms, and patterned behaviours at the everyday level. It examines how these can be altered to reflect a situation in which groups are encountering each other from the moral point of view when, previously, misconceptions, disparaging stereotypes or a history of violence left them harbouring dehumanising images of one another. The chapter presents in-group deliberation as a promising, yet underappreciated, vehicle for the achievement of such actor transformations. This claim is supported with reference to case studies showing that public sphere deliberations among like members are just as, if not more, consequential in fostering acceptance of outsiders than deliberations among unlike members, especially when antipathy defines group relations. What characterises such deliberations is the presence of ‘integrative leaders’, that is, individuals who take a leading role in persuading their group to develop a more enlarged and considered understanding of its relationship with another.

Chapter 6 reflects on and defends the book’s central claim that the deliberative approach offers the most appealing framework for the democratic expression of solidarity. It does so against agonistic assertions that deliberative democracy’s focus on the attainment of consensus takes away from the egalitarian expression of diversity. It is argued that a complete rejection of consensus is both unsustainable and undesirable from the very pluralist perspective agonists seek to uphold. In the place of agonists’ wholesale rejection of consensus, the chapter puts forward a conceptualisation of consensus that conceives it as a matter of degree. This conceptualisation not only better captures the complexity of human relations. It also allows us to distinguish the potential accomplishments of aspiring towards consensus from the potential hazards.