Deliberative Democracy

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INTRODUCTION Deliberation and deliberative democracy have become a buzzword lately in the circles of political science scholars. Effects of deliberation on the way people form their opinions has become a salient area of research, as the hybrid field of political communication has been on the rise lately. The article which serves as an object of this critical analysis focuses on how various framing choices influence how we accept or reject the arguments presented by the politicians (and other entities which are a part of the decision-making process) and how they influence our opinions on various political issues - in other words, to examine the effects of deliberation on the formation of the public opinion. This essay will thus attempt to present …show more content…

The general idea of a deliberative decision-making process is that issues are discussed thoroughly and many points of views are being used in the arguments during the discussion. The decision is made after the discussion, favorably by consent. If consent is not attainable, decision is made by a majoritarian decision. This theory works with an idea that opinions are endogenous to the political processes – i.e. that politicians have an influence on shaping the opinion of the public during the political process (Hansen, 2007, p. …show more content…

On the other hand, this choice can be excused as there is no other option than just to focus on a very narrow and specific part of the whole phenomenon, if one wants to carry on the research as an experiment. Experimental conditions must allow the research to be controlled, and able to reproduce it and its results. This study achieves both of these conditions, thus securing internal validity of the research. On the other hand the external validity has also been strengthened (compared to previous research) in a way that a representative sample has been reached, gathering over 2000 responses. The response rate was 42% which also can be considered as sufficient enough to make generalizations. These are the main benefits the current research