1 Developing deliberative democracy: A research report and a research agenda

In the last few years, deliberative democracy has developed rapidly from a “theoretical statement ” into a “working theory ” (Chambers 2003). Scholars and practitioners have launched numerous initiatives designed to put deliberative democracy into practice, ranging from deliberative polling to citizen summits (see Fung 2003; Melo and Baiocchi 2006; Parkinson 2006). At the same time, deliberation has made inroads in empirical (or positive) political science as well. A small but growing body of literature has tried to tackle this question of the connection between the normative standards of deliberation, how well they are met, and the empirical consequences of meeting them. Empirical research has peered into a variety of real-world settings, such as international negotiations (Risse 2000; Ulbert and Risse 2005; Panke 2006), national legislatures (Steiner et al. 2004; Mucciaroni and Quirk 2006), mediation processes (Holzinger 2001), ordinary citizens before elections and referenda (Kriesi 2005), social movements (Della Porta 2005), everyday talk (Searing et al. 2007), and formal settings such as deliberative opinion polls (Luskin et al. 2004). Efforts in this field have been accompanied by increasing methodological sophistication, not least involving several attempts to quantify the quality of deliberation (e.g., Holzinger 2001; Steenbergen et al