Deliberazione dei cittadini - Un confronto tra Istituzionalizzazione

This paper deals with the deliberative wave. More specifically, it asks the question if we have found a silver bullet to include the population in the political process and finally realise the ideal of Democracy humanity has dreamt about in its passive slumber. To do so it asks what Deliberation is. Looking at different parts of the literature to find the core of what Participation and Deliberation mean, and what finally divides them. It finds that while Deliberation and Participation embody functional terms in the English language, their theoretical conceptualization refers to modes of communication that are distinguished by reach and depth. Furthermore, they are in a sense co-dependent and coproducing, so they are often found together. Given this fact someone could assume they represent synergetic concepts but the pursuit of one largely excludes the other and is connected to diverging intentions. To differentiate these intentions the paper asks what can be pursued with the two distinct concepts and how they shape the political process. Public Value theory is consulted to find a distinction that can facilitate the differentiation of these two concepts in an institutionalised political space. Definitions in the literature include both a dimension in which Public Value is achieved when the will of the public is honoured and one that succeeds when the needs of the public are realised. Theories are ordered on a scale from one focus to the other and Public Value itself is distinguished to be either objective or subjective. This division in two categories is combined with deliberative and participatory modes of communication. The article argues that participation is fitting to create subjective Public Value and deliberation to pursue its objective counterpart. To observe these two case studies are consulted that are both realisations of a Citizens’ Assembly from recent years. The institutional setting is split into multiple parts and dimensions to draw a conclusion about their intention on creating subjective or objective Public Value. The criteria are based on a comparison with normative states and produce a final scoring of the deliberative or participatory intention. The respective scores are then processed through graphical representations to shine light on the implications of their interrelation. This constructs an argument that Deliberation as an institutional choice does not imply deliberation as the social mechanism of information processing.