Deliberation

(deliberative)

Some help in understanding deliberation in the context of politics can be found in thinking of it in terms of the deliberation of a jury in a criminal trial and in considering the idea of deliberative democracy, which has become quite popular over the last decade. Somewhere in the middle is the idea of parliament as a deliberative body, and it is with this that this entry concludes.

In our legal system, jurors are asked to decide between two representations of an event. In a criminal court, the prosecution's role is to convince the members of a jury that a person is guilty of committing a crime. The defence's role is to convince those same members of the jury that there is sufficient doubt about this person's guilt with respect to committing the crime that s/he should be found ‘not guilty’. After the prosecution and defence have presented their cases, the members of the jury consider the persuasiveness of the two sides. The members of the jury weigh up the evidence, or deliberate (think of the female figure holding the scales that is a common depiction of the role of the court), and come to a conclusion as to whether the prosecution has proven the acccused's guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Support for, and theories of, deliberative democracy begin from a dissatisfaction with representative democracies in which voters make political choices on the basis of limited evidence and little consideration.