SGER: Assessing the Deliberative Quality and Impact of the Australian Citizens and Online Parliaments

在过去的20年里，协商民主已成为治理和决策的视角。当试图解决共同的问题时，民主审议的目的是将最严格的分析过程与平等和尊重的社会过程相结合，这样审议小组不仅会产生合理的决定，而且会在成员中产生良好的意愿。更大的目标是产生一个更广泛的社会或组织成员可以赞同和支持的决定。不幸的是，小规模讨论设计（如公民陪审团）的过程完整性与大规模设计（如审议性民意调查）的合法性力量之间存在紧张关系。解决这种紧张关系的一个希望是澳大利亚公民议会的创新设计，它将大规模的在线讨论与更密集的面对面审议相结合。本研究借由访谈、问卷调查、讨论记录等分析，试图回答两个关于公民议会的问题。首先，这种审议过程能否有效地将大规模在线审议的结果转化为最终的较小规模的面对面会议？其次，本研究探讨了在线和面对面的审议者的审议参与的相对影响：那些专门参加在线议会改变他们的长期公民态度和行为的方式与那些参加更密集的面对面的公民议会？这些问题的答案将有助于美国和地球仪的人们为大型组织和政府设计深思熟虑和有效的混合决策过程。无论这项研究的结果是验证还是质疑澳大利亚开发的特定设计，研究结果都将有助于面对面和在线技术的发展，从而以同时确保过程完整性和决策合法性的方式产生集体选择。

In the last 20 years deliberative democracy has emerged as perspective on governance and decision making. When attempting to solve shared problems, democratic deliberation aims to combine the most rigorous analytic process with an egalitarian and respectful social process, such that deliberating groups yield not only sound decisions but also good will among the membership. The larger aim is to generate a decision that the wider society or organizational membership can endorse and support. Unfortunately, a tension exists between the process integrity of small-scale discussion designs, such as Citizen Juries, and the more legitimizing force of large-scale designs, such as Deliberative Polls. One hope for resolving that tension is the innovative design of the Australian Citizens Parliament, which combines large-scale online discussion with more intensive face-to-face deliberation. Through analysis of discussion transcripts, interviews, and surveys, this study aims to answer two questions about the Citizens Parliament. First, can this deliberative process effectively channel the findings of large-scale online deliberations into a final, smaller-scale face-to-face meeting? Second, this study examines the relative impact of deliberative participation on online and face-to-face deliberators: Do those participating exclusively in the Online Parliament change their long-term civic attitudes and behaviors in the same way as those taking part in the more intensive face-to-face Citizens Parliament? Answers to those questions will help people in the United States and across the globe to design deliberative and effective hybrid decision-making processes for large scale organizations and governments. Whether the results of this research validate or call into question the particular design developed in Australia, the findings will aid the development of face-to-face and online technology that yields collective choices in ways that simultaneously ensure process integrity and decision legitimacy.