Institutional listening in deliberative democracy: Towards a deliberative logic of transmission
| Author | Mary F Scudder,Selen A Ercan,Kerry McCallum |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211060691 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211060691
Politics
2023, Vol. 43(1) 38 –53
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957211060691
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Institutional listening in
deliberative democracy:
Towards a deliberative logic
of transmission
Mary F Scudder
Purdue University, USA
Selen A Ercan
Kerry McCallum
University of Canberra, Australia
Abstract
This article explores the role of institutional listening in deliberative democracy, focusing particularly
on its contribution to the transmission process between the public sphere and formal institutions.
We critique existing accounts of transmission for prioritizing voice over listening and for remaining
constrained by an ‘aggregative logic’ of the flow of ideas and voices in a democracy. We argue that
formal institutions have a crucial role to play in ensuring transmission operates according to a more
deliberative logic. To substantiate this argument, we focus on two recent examples of institutional
listening in two different democracies: Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to
Child Sexual Abuse and the United States’ Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing for
Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. These cases show that institutional listening can take
different forms; it can be purposefully designed or incidental, and it can contribute to the realization
of deliberative democracy in various ways. Specifically, institutional listening can help enhance the
credibility and visibility of minority groups and perspectives while also empowering these groups
to better hold formal political institutions accountable. In these ways, institutional listening helps
transmission operate according to a more deliberative logic.
Keywords
deliberative democracy, deliberative system, listening, Royal Commission, Senate hearing,
transmission
Received: 2nd December 2020; Revised version received: 11th June 2021; Accepted: 12th August 2021
Corresponding author:
Mary F (Molly) Scudder, Department of Political Science, Purdue University, 100 North University Street,
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2050, USA.
Email: scudder@purdue.edu
1060691POL0010.1177/02633957211060691PoliticsScudder et al.
research-article2021
Article
Scudder et al. 39
In recent years, scholars and practitioners of democracy have turned to deliberative
democracy as a way to address the problems facing contemporary democracies, from
polarization to disengagement (Dryzek et al., 2019; OECD, 2020). Deliberative democ-
racy is:
grounded in an ideal in which people come together, on the basis of equal status and mutual
respect, to discuss the political issues they face and, on the basis of those discussions, decide on
the policies that will then affect their lives. (Bächtiger et al., 2019: 2)
In practice, this ideal usually takes the form of deliberative mini-publics, such as citizens’
assemblies, where a representative subset of the wider population comes together to
deliberate about issues of common concern (Curato et al., 2021). While mini-publics may
be the most well-known sites of deliberation, they are not a substitute for deliberative
democracy (Chambers, 2009; Scudder, 2021). As a larger, normative project, deliberative
democracy encompasses multiple other institutions and practices (Mendonça et al., 2020).
This broader view of deliberative democracy is captured most clearly in the idea of a
deliberative system (Mansbridge et al., 2012). On this account, deliberation need not be
designed or formally initiated, but is something that already occurs in multiple, partially
overlapping sites, including the media, parliament, committee meetings, and even pro-
tests (Barvosa, 2018). Few and perhaps none of these sites achieve all the ideal aspects of
deliberative democracy, but collectively they can foster inclusive and reflective discus-
sions on matters of common concern, thus contributing to the democratization of the
broader system (Elstub et al., 2016; Mansbridge et al., 2012).
There is ample debate among deliberative democrats in regards to what makes a delib-
erative system healthy, what the key sites of deliberation are, how these sites relate to
each other, and how they interact to yield democratic legitimacy (Bächtiger and Parkinson,
2019; Ercan et al., 2019; Hendriks et al., 2020; Owen and Smith, 2015). There are many
important components of a healthy deliberative system, including vibrant public space(s)
where opinions are formed and exchanged, and ‘empowered spaces’ where formal deci-
sions are made. In a healthy deliberative system, these spaces are connected to each other,
and there is ‘transmission’ between the public spaces and empowered spaces.
Transmission is at the centre of this larger view of deliberative democracy. It enables
the integration of various sites of deliberation into a functioning system and transforms
the communicative power generated in diffuse public spheres into administrative power
(Boswell et al., 2016). Without the transmission of ideas, proposals, and discourses
between sites, there can be no deliberative system. Despite the central role it plays in the
realization of large-scale deliberation, however, transmission has received only limited
attention in the literature (Boswell et al., 2016; Hendriks et al., 2020). Current accounts
of deliberative systems seem to rely on ‘communicative miracles’, as Hendriks et al.
(2020: 20) put it, for transmission to occur in deliberative democracy. There is little, if
any, attention to the institutional and political conditions or incentives and filters that may
enable or hinder the transmission of ideas from one site to another (Parkinson, 2012:
165). Emerging research on deliberative systems challenges this assumption and empha-
sizes the role of various actors in forging or ‘inducing’ connections across different sites
and thus enabling transmission within the system (Hendriks et al., 2020; Mendonça,
2016).
This article builds on these insights, further investigating the conditions required for
transmission. We do this, first, by focusing on the role of institutions in this process and,
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