While reading the responses of both Young and Mansbridge to the first question concerning deliberative democracy, I began to form some questions of my own. While deliberation in essence is an efficient way to come to a decision, can we trust the perspective of the public to be honest and unbiased? Thankfully, Fung addressed my concerns in the next question in more concise language, and the responses made a number of suffient arguments. My fear was more or less an imaginary circumstance which involved a room full of participants in deliberation over the issues of a local community. Being from a smaller town, I am very familiar with the fact that popular issues tend to take priority over the less popular issues. Admittedly, I may have just made the most obvious point about politics (or human nature in general), but what I was actually attempting to reach was the idea that change comes from public perspective, and group perspective is attained when power has been displaced to it.
The questioned Fung asked was basically, “what about the little guy?” I was likewise worried that while the idea of a deliberative democracy is in the interest of benefiting the little guy, it could also be equally useful in creating multiple little guys. I know that my opinion seldom stretches the limits of my roommates attention let alone the powers that be, but an individual can be made to feel awfully small pretty quickly in a town that is ruled by the influence of a popular group. Mansfield mentioned the idea of “Trained Facilitators” to ensure that the balance of consensus was fairly maintained. I agree completely with this idea. It is likely that in the instance of the small community i mentioned that consensus is usually gained through credibility, and a credible faciliator would function to ensure that something like the tenure of a lifelong townsman is not mistaken for credibility and perverted into a tool to gain influence.
Other than the importance of honest perspective, the idea of deliberative democracy is something that I find hard to disagree with. Though I know little about politics, I am aware of the way community interacts whether its a small town or an entire county. Deliberation and discussion is an excellent method of informing communities and I believe that it would promote participation which could only benefit communities.
