Political Equality and the Empirical Analysis of Deliberation

This dissertation explores the existence and extent of political equality by race, gender, and education within democratic deliberation. Though deliberation has rapidly grown to prominence in academic political science and practical politics over the last few decades, critics have charged that members of traditionally disempowered groups are likely to be marginalized within deliberation. Yet, little empirical analysis has tackled the important task of judging this critique. I argue that providing a fuller empirical evaluation of political equality on demographic dimensions is a crucial step in developing our understanding of democratic deliberation. I evaluate political equality within deliberation by analyzing participants' attitudes about the process of the deliberation itself and their opinion change over the course of the deliberation in two Deliberative Poll datasets from 2004. In particular, I test whether women, African Americans, and the less educated find the deliberative process more useful, feel less respected and efficacious, and are more likely to be influenced by the presence and opinion of others. I find that members of these groups are more likely to find deliberation useful in helping them clarify issue attitudes, and that African Americans are more likely than other racial groups to feel efficacious within small groups. There is some evidence that women feel less efficacious and non-college graduates less respected, but these attitudes do not appear to affect participantsÌ¢‰âü judgments of the usefulness of deliberation. Contrary to expectations drawn from a body of research on small group settings, there is little evidence of an effect of group composition on attitude change during the deliberation. These results provide one of the first extensive empirical evaluations of political equality along demographic dimensions within deliberation. They reveal that Ì¢‰âÂ' within the Deliberative Polls Ì¢‰âÂ' criticsÌ¢‰âü fears about marginalization do not appear to be borne out. I argue that these results should guide further empirical analysis of political equality within deliberation, can advise practitioners in constructing deliberative bodies, and suggest that traditionally disempowered groups can be successfully integrated into democratic deliberation without the aid of 'enclaves.'