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Deliberative Quality and Expertise: Uses of Evidence in Citizens’ Juries on Wind Farms

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Stephen ElstubORCiD

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Abstract

When addressing socio-scientific wicked problems, there is a need to negotiate across and through multiple modes of evidence, particularly technical expertise and local knowledge. Democratic innovations, such as deliberative citizens’ juries, have been proposed as a means of managing these tensions and as a way of creating representative, fairer decision making. But there are questions around participatory processes, the utilization of expertise, and deliberative quality. This paper considers forms of argumentation in the 2013-2014 “Citizens’ juries on wind farm development in Scotland.” Through a critical-interpretative research methodology drawing on rhetoric and argumentation, we demonstrate that arguments relating to the topoi of the environment and health functioned as de facto reasoning, whereas arguments using social scientific evidence around economics more prominently interacted with local knowledge. The findings offer implications for process design to improve and promote deliberative quality in mini-publics and other forms of participatory engagement on socio-scientific issues.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Drury SAM, Elstub S, Escobar O, Roberts JJ

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Journal of Deliberative Democracy

Year: 2021

Volume: 17

Issue: 2

Online publication date: 02/12/2021

Acceptance date: 15/06/2020

Date deposited: 31/07/2020

ISSN (electronic): 2634-0488

Publisher: University of Westminster Press

URL: https://doi.org/10.16997/jdd.986

DOI: 10.16997/jdd.986

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