Value hierarchies and public deliberations : do people deliberate about core values?

Ever since Aristotle’s outline of the political animal in his Politics, the notion of dialogue as at the center of political life has been strong, and inspired a vibrant tradition within democratic theory to designate public deliberations as a cornerstone of participatory democracy and representative government. Although the literature on deliberation has grown rapidly over the past decades, it has mostly been theoretical. to date we also have a rather limited knowledge of the content of deliberative processes, i.e. what actually transpires when people deliberate on a given issue and how participants process the value-based appeals presented to them. This is surprising as the level of abstraction on which the deliberations revolve should have significant bearing on the outcomes in terms of value elicitation and –change. The purpose of this paper is to explore the content of a public deliberation. We do so in a case that should present ideal conditions for enlightened deliberations on core values: the planning of a large-scale on-shore wind-farm. Do the deliberations concern the value-conflicts presented by political elites and media (and subsequently applied to construct attributes in e.g. a choice experiments and non-market valuations)? Or, do deliberations rather revolve round more salient, issue-specific opinions? Furthermore, what does this tell us about the prospects for applying public deliberations as a tool for raising moral and value concerns, and for solving or amending values-based conflicts of interest?Godkänd; 2012; 20121002 (simonm