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Who moderates the moderators? The effect of non-neutral moderators in deliberative decision making

Who moderates the moderators? The effect of non-neutral moderators in deliberative decision making
Who moderates the moderators? The effect of non-neutral moderators in deliberative decision making
Ideal deliberative democracy seeks to employ unbiased moderators. Yet, a large literature in the field of mediation suggests the elusiveness of perfect neutrality. Our study thus addresses the following question: when moderators of deliberations express their own views – even in a limited manner – can they change the preferences of participants? Using a novel experimental design in a real deliberative decision-making process, we find that moderators can significantly influence the attitudes and behaviors of participants by expressing views in a constrained manner. The results of our study have implications for refining epistemic conceptions of deliberative democracy and for designing more precise empirical investigations of the effects of deliberative processes on attitudes and behavior. The results also warn of a simple mechanism by which interest groups might hijack the deliberative decision-making processes used in community driven development projects all over the world.
1937-2840
Spada, Paolo
aa830424-63f7-4baa-aecc-0bba595b8221
Vreeland, James
53881b7c-dd97-42be-b347-6b5da8c0222e
Spada, Paolo
aa830424-63f7-4baa-aecc-0bba595b8221
Vreeland, James
53881b7c-dd97-42be-b347-6b5da8c0222e

Spada, Paolo and Vreeland, James (2013) Who moderates the moderators? The effect of non-neutral moderators in deliberative decision making. Journal of Public Deliberation, 9 (3), [3].

Record type: Article

Abstract

Ideal deliberative democracy seeks to employ unbiased moderators. Yet, a large literature in the field of mediation suggests the elusiveness of perfect neutrality. Our study thus addresses the following question: when moderators of deliberations express their own views – even in a limited manner – can they change the preferences of participants? Using a novel experimental design in a real deliberative decision-making process, we find that moderators can significantly influence the attitudes and behaviors of participants by expressing views in a constrained manner. The results of our study have implications for refining epistemic conceptions of deliberative democracy and for designing more precise empirical investigations of the effects of deliberative processes on attitudes and behavior. The results also warn of a simple mechanism by which interest groups might hijack the deliberative decision-making processes used in community driven development projects all over the world.

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Published date: 2013

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 434775
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/434775
ISSN: 1937-2840
PURE UUID: 0bd11779-30b3-4bd4-8af2-ffc387d18aa0
ORCID for Paolo Spada: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7050-2079

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Date deposited: 09 Oct 2019 16:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:39

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Contributors

Author: Paolo Spada ORCID iD
Author: James Vreeland

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