Deliberations

I was looking at the published report about representativeness from the Tomorrows' Europe Deliberative Poll. As a committed deliberationist, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak--I want participatory methods to work. But I want them to be meaningful for everybody in the community, not just for those who believe in the process. The report speaks about euro-sceptics, but this is only amongst the people who have already agreed to participate in the initial survey. They don't publish (they probably don't know) how many people were contacted to do the initial survey, and thus how many refused to participate. They are the cynics who may simultaneously feel that the whole deliberative process does not serve them properly and yet don't participate. Their cynicism needs to be counted. I believe that some of the answer to the representativeness problem could lie in trying to align the Deliberative Poll with electoral polling results. Consider asking initial survey participants which party they preferred in the last national election in their country of origin. Then compare the survey distribution in each country with the voting results of the entire national population, which is readily available. I would expect those who would agree to be surveyed would be more broadly socialist, but not completely. Importantly, we need to find enough people who agree to be surveyed so that the complete range of political views is represented. Mind you, there would never be enough from the extreme right who would participate. But we could at least try to shift the dial. So then stratify the initial survey results in each country by voting preference and draw a Deliberative Poll sample which distributes along the voting lines as well as the usual demographic dimensions. Such a methodology would at least attempt to bring the deliberating group closer to the broad population in terms of range of views. Political views have to be included in that mix.

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