Deliberative Democracy, Public Input, and the Trouble with Think Tanks

Deliberative democracy is, in its broadest formulation, an effort of inclusion, the attempt to address "public problems in ways that respect diverse interests and values" through the engagement of the citizenry in the discussion of public issues (Gastil and Keith, 2005). John Gastil and William Keith explore the history of deliberative democracy, noting that its trajectory has not traced the steady incline of progress but has undulated as the fortunes of political and social movements in support of mechanisms of direct democracy have fluctuated (Gastil and Keith, 2005).

So we should be mindful of the goals of new institutions and new types of institutions. The think-tank, the 1950s innovation currently seeing its star rise in Washington, is the paragon of faux-deliberation, in which political and social agendas are couched in the language of discussion and the imagery of dispassionate scholarship. This is the nature of think-tanks; they are no more to be faulted than are corporations that mask their profit motive in pretensions to social consciousness. But, like corporations, think-tanks should not be taken at face value, and the pabulum they offer about "discussion" should be rigorously examined. Whether their political orientation is Liberal or Libertarian, whether they profess political independence or they cop to partisanship, think-tanks have a vested interest in maintaining their own authority and in increasing the importance of the technical sphere, of expert advice.

The degree to which one finds this predilection bothersome depends, in part, on one's place on the continuum between populist and representative democracy. The think-tank's buttressing of its power is a move away from direct (populist) engagement with government toward representative democracy, toward the restriction of affairs of the state to the educated elite.

American history has seen the waxing and waning of public and political support for deliberative democracy. Deliberative democracy has been periodically enhanced by laws and actions such as "expanded voting rights," "the explicit rejection ... of government intrusions on the right to assembly," the increase of "information available to voters," and the solicitation of the input of the American citizen in programs such as the National Issues Convention, citizens' juries, National Issues Forums, and Depression-era forums sponsored by the Federal Forum Project (Gastil and Keith, 2005).

But these victories are counterbalanced, at least in part, by movements away from the deliberative democracy ideal. There is currently a trend of "increased concentration of media ownership" and, Robert Putnam argued, "a precipitous decline in 'social capital,'" and in war time "restrictions on civil liberties spring up" (Gastil and Keith, 2005). But, perhaps a larger menace to deliberative democracy is the proliferation of television and other forms of immersive and readily available entertainment-including the news media-that render the populace distractible and ill-inclined to engage in the substantive forums and discussions that are the foundation of deliberative democracy. Yet, Americans still yearn for the nourishment of dialogue and our ersatz world is happy to commoditize it, to transmutate it into an insipid buzzword for that longing.

Think-tanks are eager to assume the language of "dialogue." The American Enterprise Institute, the heavy-weight Conservative think-tank, touts its "ambitions for improving public dialogue" (AEI's Organization and Purposes, 2010) while the Center for American Progress, AEI's liberal counterpart, explains that it works "through dialogue with leaders, thinkers, and citizens" (About the Center for American Progress, 2010). The argument for expertise hinges on simplicity and efficiency and the idea that "the work [of government] was too complex to be run by democracy" (Gastil and Keith, 2005). This argument holds more water in this age of information proliferation where the swollen bureaucracy is increasingly reliant on Byzantine computations and information management systems to sustain societal infrastructure. But wariness is imperative when ceding direct citizen control of government to the meritocracy. In actuality, think-tanks do much to suppress the real dialogues that constitute direct democracy. In order to frame issues in the language of their worldviews, think-tanks remove analysis from the public sphere and create a specialized language that rings with the truth of expertise but is divorced from public input and, even, understanding. Think-tanks are the reification of Hyde's warning of the danger of elevating the technical sphere: they create expertise and judgments, but their value system derives from within and does not consider the public or private opinion. For those dedicated to a populist form of deliberative democracy where the voice of the citizenry permeates the corridors of power (mythopoeic as this pursuit is, it seems as deserving of faith as any), think-tanks are a step backward.

Work Cited

"About the Center for American Progress." Center for American Progress: Progressive Ideas for a Strong, Just, and Free America. Retrieved from: http://www.americanprogress.org/aboutus. Accessed on May, 2, 2010.

"AEI's Organization and Purposes." American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Retrieved from: http://www.aei.org/about. Accessed on May, 2, 2010.

Gastil, John and William Keith. "A nation that (sometimes) likes to talk." A Brief History of Public Deliberation in the United States. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2005.