Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 299
Deliberation is not a poll
Prepared lay citizens question plural expertise and own the final recommendations, creating deliberative evidence whose value depends on transparent recruitment, information design, and institutional uptake.
Premise
A consensus conference brings a small panel of lay citizens into sustained study of a complex public issue. Participants receive background material, identify the questions they consider important, question experts and stakeholders in public, deliberate among themselves, and produce a citizen-owned statement or recommendations. The Danish Board of Technology developed the modern citizen-panel form beginning in 1987 within participatory technology assessment. Its executive value lies in the designed interface between informed expertise and public judgment.
What the model is: Consensus Conference / Citizen Deliberation in Knowledge →
Continue in the series
- The essential model
- Why this matters
- Risks and limits
- Executive takeaway
- Key questions
- Selected sources
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- FamilyTool
- CategoryGovernance Institutions & Procedures
- DomainMedia, Publics & Society
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Tool
In this series, Tool names the editorial family primarily used to act on, examine, measure or organize communication. It includes instruments, methods, practices, protocols, codes and institutional arrangements. Membership does not certify effectiveness, portability or safe use in every setting.
Editorial orientation · Category
Governance Institutions & Procedures
Organizes authority, representation, participation, deliberation, collective decision or institutional resolution of conflict. Its contribution concerns who may act, speak, decide or challenge, and under what arrangements.