Deliberation and polarization: a multi-disciplinary review

Didier Caluwaerts; Kamil Bernaerts; Rebekka Kesberg; Lien Smets; Bram Spruyt

doi:10.3389/fpos.2023.1127372

journal article Open Access Jun 29, 2023

Deliberation and polarization: a multi-disciplinary review

Didier Caluwaerts

Kamil Bernaerts

Rebekka Kesberg Lien Smets Bram Spruyt

Frontiers in Political Science Vol. 5 · Frontiers Media SA

View at Publisher Save 10.3389/fpos.2023.1127372

Abstract

In recent years, deliberative democracy has drawn attention as a potential way of fighting polarization. Allowing citizens to exchange arguments and viewpoints on political issues in group, can have strong conflict-mitigating effects: it can foster opinion changes (thereby overcoming idea-based polarization), and improve relations between diametrically opposed groups (thereby tackling affective forms of polarization, such as affective polarization). However, these results conflict with social psychological and communication studies which find that communicative encounters between groups can lead to further polarization and even group think. The question therefore arises under which conditions deliberative interactions between citizens can decrease polarization. Based on a multidisciplinary systematic review of the literature, which includes a wide diversity of communicative encounters ranging from short classroom discussions to multi-weekend citizen assemblies, this paper reports several findings. First, we argue that the effects of communicative encounters on polarization are conditional on how those types of communication were conceptualized across disciplines. More precisely, we find depolarizing effects when group discussions adhere to a deliberative democracy framework, and polarizing effects when they do not. Second we find that the depolarizing effects depend on several design factors that are often implemented in deliberative democracy studies. Finally, our analysis shows that that much more work needs to be done to unravel and test the exact causal mechanism(s) underlying the polarization-reducing effects of deliberation. Many potential causal mechanisms were identified, but few studies were able to adjudicate how deliberation affects polarization.

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Published: Jun 29, 2023
Vol/Issue: 5
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Authors

D

Didier Caluwaerts

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

K

Kamil Bernaerts

Vrije Universiteit Brussel; Department of Political and International Studies, University of Warwick

Cite This Article

Didier Caluwaerts, Kamil Bernaerts, Rebekka Kesberg, et al. (2023). Deliberation and polarization: a multi-disciplinary review. Frontiers in Political Science, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2023.1127372

Deliberation and polarization: a multi-disciplinary review

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