This Is Not News

As my noodling about deliberation intersects with my near-obsessive following of Democratic presidential delegate selection results, it is probably worth examining the undercurrent of controversy about the use of caucuses in some states to select delegates. The argument for caucuses is that they encourage interaction between voters, encourages people to stand behind their choices, and allows for some chance of voters persuading each other to change their minds. All of these are similar to the advantages proposed by deliberation. Many supporters of Hillary Clinton’s campaign have pointed out a potential downside – there is a limited time window and a long time commitment required than in a straightforward election. This drives down participation because some people are unwilling or unable to participate. As much as I have enjoyed Barack Obama’s advantage in garnering support from caucus states, I can definitely see the point here and would certainly support any state that wanted to move from a caucus to a primary. So do various deliberation schemes suffer from the same problem? Well, if you’re doing a deliberative panel to work on a specific issue, you’re going to need to build some support for lost wages, child care concerns, and similar considerations. If you wanted to do a larger-scale deliberation project, you’re probably going to need to space it out over a period of days. I think participation is worth the costs, but it’s worth looking at the practical examples in order to appreciate just how large that cost is.