Considering the vast literature on public deliberation and deliberative democracy, there’s surprisingly little research on how people actually reason when they meet in groups to discuss public issues. I was delighted, therefore, to read Brian E. Adams’ paper “Conversational Dynamics in Deliberative Forums: The Use of Evidence and Logic.”

Adams coded and analyzed transcripts of National Issues Forums. (For full disclosure, I sit on the board of the Kettering Foundation, which created and supports the NIF.) Participants voluntarily met for moderated discussions of immigration or energy policy. They tilted somewhat toward the upper end of the socioeconomic spectrum but they were diverse.

Adams doesn’t assess the quality of their reasons, seeing such judgments as too subjective, but he does ask whether participants made proposals and supported them with clear and relevant reasons. He codes just 10% of the statements as “free-floating” conclusions or definitions, without any reasons. But he thinks that the “deliberators were unable to articulate their arguments clearly and develop logically sound reasoning.”

Sometimes, I think, Addams is too stringent in his judgments. For instance, this is supposed to be an example of a person who was “unable to articulate” both evidence and a conclusion:

Yesterday the headlines in the newspaper were “Al Qaeda finds that the best way to get into the country now is the Mexican border.” And we talked earlier a little bit about removing the border guards to some extent. That simply is not going to fly in this country in this day and age. Your point about the illegal trafficking, hey, that’s how they’re going to come in. And so … [trails off] (George, Cedar Rapids)

This is not a highly articulate remark, but I don’t think that George actually had to state that because terrorists could cross the Southern border, we need to make security tight. He has left some premises unstated, but that is an appropriate way to talk when others share your premises. Arguments with implicit but understood premises are “enthymemes,” and they are OK.  Of course, whether terrorists really come across the Southern border–and whether they can be efficiently stopped–are different questions, but George potentially contributes that that discussion.

I also think it’s fine that many remarks are simply questions. For example, someone says, “One of the things that we typically don’t address is what are realistic expectations for healthcare?” Adams first analyzes this remark as “avoidance of reasoned argumentation” because it lacks a conclusion or proposal, but I would read it more as a “springboard to further discussion” (a point that Adams concedes a bit later on).

Overall, I’d say that a certain style of public rhetoric (with explicit premises leading to policy conclusions) is desirable, and we ought to teach it because it doesn’t come naturally. But it is not the only kind of rhetoric that contributes to public reasoning. Throwing in a fact, asking a question, expressing a doubt, telling a personal anecdote, offering moral support–these are also helpful forms of discourse.

Here is Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn) describing his own foray into participatory budgeting. (“Participatory budgeting” means recruiting deliberative groups of citizens to allocate capital spending on behalf of a government.) Lander does a nice job of presenting both the advantages and the limitations of this strategy. His is just one of 15 talks from “Frontiers of Democracy II” that are now online. They are wonderfully diverse in topic, format, and style, but all are concerned with engaging citizens in solving our most grievous problems.

Our colleague Eric Gordon, who runs the Engagement Game Lab, builds game-like environments that encourage people to discuss public issues in ways that are fun and motivating. The games also yield really good data for civil servants who want public input and enhance citizens’ relationships with each other.

Here are citizens playing a game that Eric built to collect public input for the Boston Public Schools. Parts of the game were played online and other parts were face-to-face.

At its heart, the game was a discussion of issues and priorities, but participants earned points and powers by completing various missions–all of which strengthened the dialogue. Eric sometimes builds role-playing into games, because pretending you are a fictional character can be a spur to thinking about civic issues.

Version of CommunityPlanIT will be played in Detroit, MI, starting on May 7, and in Quincy, MA, starting tomorrow. If you happen to reside in one of those towns, you should play. If you live anywhere and are interested in civic engagement, this is an experiment to follow.