What happens when ordinary Filipinos are given the chance to discuss the Philippines’ campaign against illegal drugs in a context governed by norms of inclusiveness, mutual respect, and collaboration? What issues will they cover? Can they overcome hyper-partisanship and anti-intellectual discourses that have shaped the Philippine public sphere in the past few years? Can we count on the collective wisdom of ordinary people?
This manual draws from the experience of a group of researchers and academics in implementing two deliberative forums on human rights from May to June 2021. Over three days, randomly selected Filipinos from all over the country coming from different walks of life were given the opportunity to listen to and engage with experts, deliberate with a diverse group of people about how the anti-illegal drugs campaign can be improved, and reflect on their own views.
A deliberative forum is a civic engagement strategy designed to bring communities together to diagnose the challenges of human rights. The goal is to create a safe space where participants coming from diverse backgrounds can exchange their views, listen to each other, and develop empathetic understanding to overcome disinformation and group polarization.
Deliberative forums take many forms. Deliberative polling and citizen assemblies are some examples. These forums have an established track record, based on scientific evidence, that when ordinary citizens are given the opportunity to engage in a respectful and reasonable discussion, they can process complex information, discuss morally divisive issues, and understand the perspective of the other.
A deliberative forum has two core design features: to serve as a mirror and a filter. Like surveys, its composition aims to mirror the wider society by drawing a representative sample of participants based on their demographic characteristics. Randomly selecting participants to join the forum is a way of operationalizing equality in deliberation — that everyone has an equal shot at getting a seat on the table. It is also a celebration of the role of ordinary citizens in democracies. While electoral politics emphasizes the need for leaders with special qualities, a deliberative forum celebrates the collective wisdom that ordinary citizens can generate, not because of their special abilities but because of their diversity. As philosophers put it, diversity trumps ability.
As a filter, a deliberative forum aims to distill participants’ opinions to considered judgment. This is what makes a deliberative forum a distinctive methodology. While surveys, focus groups, and interviews uncover what people think about an issue, a deliberative forum uncovers what people think about an issue when they have the chance to learn more about it, weigh different arguments, and reflect on their own views. Put another way, a deliberative forum captures the views of ordinary citizens when they are placed in a context conducive for reasoned discussion. The aim of deliberations is not to reach a full consensus, but to crystallize the extent of participants’ disagreements and understand people’s underlying reasons for their views.
The use of deliberative forum in policymaking has taken off around the world. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) calls this the “deliberative wave” or the surge of deliberative processes used for policymaking. Citizens’ assemblies, deliberative polls, and citizens’ initiative reviews have become institutionalized in countries like Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Ireland, Mongolia, the United States, and the United Kingdom, among others. Topics covered in these deliberations range from changing the constitutional provision on same sex marriage, abortion, and crafting society-wide policies on climate change.
In Colombia, deliberative forums are incorporated in peace processes to facilitate conversations between former guerillas and paramilitaries. All these examples signal that deliberative democracy is not a pie in the sky but a real-world political project that has taken off in different parts of the world.
This bespoke design addresses the I-ACT Project’s objectives of (1) building an evidence base for social and behavior change strategies and; (2) increasing citizen engagement in support of human rights through social and behavior change interventions.
