To accomplish a just transition, energy scenarios is a helpful tool. Participatory and deliberative methods are increasingly used when constructing and assessing energy scenarios to improve the democratic legitimacy of the results. This article contributes to the scientific debate by analyzing how such methods can include considerations of justice issues in a more systematic manner. It is based on a study of four workshops conducted in Sweden, in which the participants discussed different energy scenarios from a justice perspective. It (...) discusses what can be achieved by methods for participatory-deliberative ethics assessment of the consequences of energy scenarios and how such methods should be designed. (shrink)

The deliberative ethics guidelines elaborated and implemented by members of the IFOM-IEO Campus (Firc Institute of Molecular Oncology (IFOM) and the European Institute of Oncology (IEO)). These should serve the dual purpose of establishing a minimal set of standard rules for bioethical debate and any ensuing decision-making process, especially for the perspective of providing real instruments to foster public engagement and public awareness on the ethical issues involved in biomedical research. It is shown that these guidelines instantiate the (...) scheme of one of the correct ways of debating formalised by the western thought. (shrink)

Difficult questions regarding the so-called limits of toleration or accommodation are inevitable in today’s diverse, immigration societies. Such questions cannot be satisfactorily answered through simple assertions of the majority’s will or by retreating to a defense of ‘core liberal values.’ Rather, dealing with the challenges of diversity in a manner consistent with liberal-democratic principles requires that decision-making concerning the terms of collective life be informed by sincere and respectful deliberation. But how and where do we go about engaging in such (...) deliberation? This essay suggests that the courts seem to offer an arena that is more conducive than other traditional democratic institutions in terms of enabling the type of dialogue and analysis essential to realizing meaningful deliberation. Paradoxically, then, the judicialization of politics can be understood to be an ally, not an enemy, of meaningful deliberation in diverse democracies. (shrink)

Ethics and the Community of Inquiry gets to the heart of democratic education and how best to achieve it. The book radically reshapes our understanding of education by offering a framework from which to integrate curriculum, teaching and learning and to place deliberative democracy at the centre of education reform. It makes a significant contribution to current debates on educational theory and practice, in particular to pedagogical and professional practice, and ethics education.

The objectives of this article are (i) to identify the most challenging ethical dilemmas and questions arising from the experiences of communities and professionals affected by or involved in volcanic eruptions, including risk management, the dissemination of information, and tourism; and (ii) to provide arguments for intercultural ethics to address these dilemmas. Intercultural ethics provide invaluable resources to disaster ethics across all three phases of the complete disaster management cycle. In this article, intercultural ethics is viewed (...) as an ethics grounded in ongoing dialogue, facilitating the examination and establishment of norms and a critical reflection on values and their evolution. This approach recognizes power dynamics that may influence fair participation in dialogues and aims to address them, while also integrating elements of deliberative ethics to ensure that dialogues genuinely contribute to legitimizing decisions. Intercultural sensibility helps bridge the gap between experts and non-experts in both directions (a) by emphasizing the duty of transferring scientific knowledge (for experts) and the responsibility of acquiring scientific literacy (for citizens); and (b) by highlighting the importance of a ‘knowledge dialogue’ that acknowledges the non-scientific knowledge of citizens, rooted in their cultural background and experiences of dealing with past disasters, and shaping life in volcanic territories. (shrink)

Poverty, inequality, violence, environmental degradation, and tyranny continue to afflict the world. Ethics of Global Development offers a moral reflection on the ends and means of local, national, and global efforts to overcome these five scourges. After emphasizing the role of ethics in development studies, policy-making, and practice, David A. Crocker analyzes and evaluates Amartya Sen's philosophy of development in relation to alternative ethical outlooks. He argues that Sen's turn to robust ideals of human agency and democracy improves (...) on both Sen's earlier emphasis on 'capabilities and functionings' and Martha Nussbaum's version of the capability orientation. This agency-focused capability approach is then extended and strengthened by applying it to the challenges of consumerism and hunger, the development responsibilities of affluent individuals and nations, and the dilemmas of globalization. Throughout the book the author argues for the importance of more inclusive and deliberative democratic institutions. (shrink)

This chapter talks about ethical deliberations that may be individual, potentially based on thought experiences or overhanging and discusses a real confrontation of evaluations and the deliberations of other individuals. This is one of the new elements introduced by participatory technology assessment (PTA), particularly in Europe. Stakeholder participation has been promoted by European agencies as a pillar of responsible research and innovation (RRI), confirming the need to consider the risks of exposure to the deliberations of others. The chapter describes the (...) resources offered by certain political philosophers who considered proposing the best possible systems for managing pluralism. It discusses the criteria of one of the most promising political theories: deliberative democracy. The qualification of this theory will prove useful in managing the cohabitation of individual and collective evaluation. The chapter considers a number of possible improvements to this theory, notably with regard to one of its major components: ethical arguments. (shrink)

Social norms are an important input for ethical decisions in any business context. However, the cross-cultural discovery of extant social norms presents a special challenge to international management because norms may be inscrutable to outsiders. This article considers the contribution of Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) to the analysis of social norms in business ethics. It questions the origins and dynamics of norms from a sociological perspective, and identifies a tension between prescriptive efforts to make norms obligatory and positivist (...) accounts that describe norms as evolving and unstable. In the presence of dynamic and incomplete norms, managers can either deliberate with stakeholders to make norms flexible or codify norms to make them rigid. This essay argues that deliberation is the only reliable method for anticipating emergent norms. (shrink)

As a field, ethics is driven by the desire to help guide human life and human activities. Yet, what are the standards or guideposts indicating that a given policy or practice change actually contributes meaningfully to such desires and aspirations? In other words, how do we know if we have achieved meaningful ethical outcomes and enactment processes? Unfortunately, there are many examples of ethically oriented actions that were well intentioned but carried out in a way that undermined some of (...) the values they intended on promoting or led to unexpected undesirable outcomes. In this paper, building on an account of ethics as a pragmatist pursuit of deliberative wisdom, I identify and discuss four procedural guideposts which can help evaluate if a process of inquiry is an ethical one oriented toward human flourishing. First, situational awareness and continuity designates the need to keep in sight the nature of the situation at stake to ensure that the enactment process does not derail from a cardinal human flourishing orientation. Second, a meaningful ethical enactment should distribute opportunities for participation such that it is not only one’s autonomy (e.g., the ethicist) that is developed and exercised but that positive relationships are also fostered through the growth of others. Third, enactments must strive for more than simple avoidance of encroachment of wrongs but aim for the promotion of praiseworthy practices that pursue what is envisioned as being the better and most compelling vision. Fourth, an ethics process should be conducive of personal growth and mutual learning. (shrink)

Integrative Social Contracts Theory is a popular framework to assist managers in making decisions on international moral dilemmas. Although the theory has been praised for its comprehensiveness and sophistication, commentators have raised concerns regarding the justification and identification of substantive hypernorms, fundamental moral principles valid across cultures. This paper introduces the deliberative test, a new method for testing the cross-cultural validity of ethical norms in ISCT. The test relies on the concept of Deliberative Capacity, arising from new developments (...) in system-level deliberative democracy research, which studies deliberation at the level of national societies and over time. Based on this recent stream of research, the deliberative test has the potential of providing better guidance for managers to decide which norms to follow in case of conflicting standards between home and host countries. (shrink)

Central to Aristotle’s Ethics is the virtue of phronēsis, a good condition of the rational part of the soul that determines the means to ends set by the ethical virtues. Central to the Rhetoric is the art of presenting persuasive deliberative arguments about how to secure the ends set by the audience and its constitution. What is the relation between the art and the virtue of deliberation? Rhetorical facility can be a deceptive facsimile of virtuous reasoning, but there (...) can be more fruitful connections as well. In particular, the experience of judging rhetorical arguments can aid in the development of phronēsis through exercising those aspects of phronēsis that are not so intimately tied to the ethical virtues. Judging the advice given by others leads to excellence in reasoning practically for oneself. (shrink)

The six papers in the 2014 clinical ethics number of the Journal get us back to the basics in the work of clinical ethics and clinical ethicists: getting clear about concepts that should be used in achieving deliberative clinical ethics. The papers explore the concepts of the best interests of the patient, health and disease understood in their proper relationship to autonomy in our species, the therapeutic obligation, and the therapeutic imperative. The final paper appraises the (...) systematic review, a scholarly tool for tracking the basic concepts of clinical ethics in the literature. (shrink)

In theory, HREC members should use the ethical guidelines in the National Statement on the Ethical Conduct of Research Involving Humans as the basis for their decisions, and researchers should design their research in accordance with these guidelines However, very little is known about what researchers and HREC members actually do in practice. In this paper, we report some of the key findings of the study “Human Research Ethics in Practice”, a qualitative interview-based study of health researchers and HREC (...) members in Victoria. The findings shed light on how researchers and HREC members conceptualise ethics, how they use the National Statement, and what deliberative strategies they employ to assess the ethical appropriateness of research studies. The findings also reveal differences and similarities between health researchers’ and HREC members’ perceptions of the roles of HRECs, and point to some sources of misunderstanding and tension. We examine the implications of some of these findings for the ways in which HRECs carry out their task, and research institutions support and promote ethical conduct in research amongst their staff and students. The focus of this study is on health research, but we suggest that the findings are highly relevant to all other research areas where human participants are involved. (shrink)

The empirical turn in bioethics and the deliberative turn in democracy theory occurred at around the same time, one at the intersection of bioethics and social science,1 2 the other at the intersection of political philosophy and political science.3–5 Empirical bioethics and deliberative democratic approaches both engage with immediate problems in policy and practice with normative intent, so it was perhaps inevitable that they would eventually find one another,6–8 and that deliberative research would become more common in (...) bioethics.9 This commentary responds to a paper by Ford et al, who ran a single jury of 18 people in Brighton in the UK in June 2018.10 The jury were asked to consider whether secondary research use of non-structured, free-text data from medical records should be permitted. I will consider three issues: the effort required in deliberative work, the challenge of sampling and selection of jurors and the basis for drawing normative conclusions from deliberative research. First: this report makes clear the effort involved in running a jury. These researchers contracted an external agency experienced in the method, established an oversight committee of policy-makers with power to act, developed expert witness briefs, selected witnesses and coordinated their testimony, and created a questionnaire to measure participants’ views, activities to support their understanding, and a scenario for consideration. …. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that we should reframe the presentation and defense of the program of discourse ethics and deliberative democracy (DEP) in such a way that we make clear its connection to the substantive moral ideas of solidarity, equality and freedom. This program basically says that we should, when we can, determine the validity of the norms regulating our social life through practices of public deliberation. If we want to understand why engaging in public deliberation makes (...) moral sense, or is obligatory, we need to make explicit the connection between the formal procedures of deliberation and our most basic substantive moral ideas of freedom, equality and solidarity. In order to unpack this claim, I construct what I call an expressive-elaboration model of the relation between substance and procedure in public deliberation. According to this model, we should see the two dimensions as working in tandem, in such a way that deliberative procedures are understood as the medium of expression and elaboration of our basic substantive ideas of solidarity, equality and freedom. The three ideas are expressed in the fact and form of deliberation, and elaborated in their changing and specific interpretations as topics and consequences of deliberative practices. To develop this model, I start with a consideration of certain insights of Kant's moral theory, and proceed to bridge the gap between Habermas's more formalistic and Rawls's more substantive neo-Kantian accounts of practical reason. The result is a straightforwardly substantive articulation and defense of the dialogic procedures of DEP based on the recognition of the fact of widespread moral disagreement and a fundamental project of justice demanding that we deal with that condition of disagreement by constructing social arrangements in which we include each other, solidaristically, as free and equal members. This morally substantive defense of DEP referring to the fact of widespread moral disagreement and the fundamental project of justice is different from, and more compelling than, other common, formalistic and prudential defenses of DEP. (shrink)

AbstractIn this paper I provide a decolonial critique of received knowledge about deliberative democracy. Legacies of colonialism have generally been overlooked in theories of democracy. These omissions challenge several key assumptions of deliberative democracy. I argue that deliberative democracy does not travel well outside Western sites and its key assumptions begin to unravel in the ‘developing’ regions of the world. The context for a decolonial critique of deliberative democracy is the ongoing violent conflicts over resource extraction (...) in the former colonies of Africa, Asia and Latin America. I argue that deliberative democracy cannot take into account the needs of marginalized stakeholders who are defending their lands and livelihoods. The paper contributes to the literature by (1) offering a critique of hegemonic models of democracy that cannot address issues of inequality and colonial difference and (2) offering possibilities to imagine counterhegemonic alternatives for a democratization of democracy from below. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy is one of the best designs that could facilitate good public policy decision making and bring about epistemic good based on Mercier and Sperber's (M&S's) theory of reasoning. However, three conditions are necessary: (1) an ethic of individual epistemic humility, (2) a pragmatic deflationist definition of truth, and (3) a microscopic framing power analysis during group reasoning.

Many of us care about the existence of ethical facts because they appear crucial to making sense of our practical lives. On one tempting line of thought, this idea can also play a central role in justifying our belief in those facts. David Enoch has developed this thought into a formidable new proposal in moral epistemology: that the deliberative indispensability of ethical facts gives us epistemic justification for believing in such facts. This chapter argues that Enoch’s proposal fails because (...) it conflicts with a central fact about epistemic justification: that the norms of epistemic justification have the content that they do in part because of some positive connection between those norms and the truth of the beliefs that these norms govern. Alternatives to Enoch’s attempt to defend the idea that deliberative indispensability confers epistemic justification fail for parallel reasons. The chapter concludes that deliberative indispensability does not provide epistemic justification. (shrink)

In “Developing a Reflexive, Anticipatory, and Deliberative Approach to Unanticipated Discoveries: Ethical Lessons from iBlastoids,” we proposed a RAD approach to meet the challenging issues...

Business firms play an increasingly influential role in contemporary societies, which has led many scholars to return to the question of the democratisation of corporate governance. However, the possibility of democratic deliberation within firms has received only marginal attention in the current debate. This article fills this gap in the literature by making a normative case for democratic deliberation at the workplace and empirically assessing the deliberative capacity of self-organised teams within business firms. It is based on sixteen in-depth (...) interviews in six German firms which practice various forms of self-organised teamwork. The article argues that self-organised teamwork can create a space for authentic, inclusive, and consequential deliberation by suspending authoritarian control structures within business firms. Finally, the article proposes the consideration of firms not only as necessary parts of a larger deliberative system but also as deliberative systems in themselves. (shrink)

Generally, public opinion is measured via polls or survey instruments, with a majority of responses in a particular direction taken to indicate the presence of a given ‘public opinion’. However, discursive psychological and related scholarship has shown that the ontological status of both individual opinion and public opinion is highly suspect. In the first part of this article I draw on this body of work to demonstrate that there is currently no meaningful theoretical foundation for the construct of public opinion (...) as it is typically measured in surveys, polls, or focus groups. I then argue that there is a particular sense in which the construct of public opinion does make sense. In deliberative democratic forums participants engage in dialogue with the aim of coming to collective positions on particular issues. Here I draw on examples of deliberative democratic forums conducted on the social and ethical implications of science and technology. Conversation between participants in deliberative democratic forums is ideally characterized by individuals becoming informed about the issues being discussed, respectful interactions between participants, individuals being open to changing their positions, and a convergence towards collective positions in the interest of formulating civic solutions. The end-product of deliberation on a given issue might thus be termed a deliberative public opinion. ‘Deliberative public opinion’ is neither a cognitive nor an aggregate construct, but rather a socio-historical product. Criteria for its legitimacy rely on the inclusiveness of diversity of perspectives and the degree to which collective positions are defensible to a larger society. (shrink)

Committees multiply in firms, whether stakeholder boards or committees, multi-stakeholder initiatives, ethics committees, or oversight boards. These arrangements aim to organise and legitimise the social and political activities of corporations. This article raises the question of the appropriate form of such governance structures. The examples above illustrate three possible ways of legitimising corporate quasi-public social and political activities: deliberation within the company, deliberation outside, and an approach we label _corporate constitutionalism_. While the first two models have been tested in (...) practice and assessed in theory, the third one is comparatively more recent, both in practice and in theory. This article focuses on the latter model and asks whether corporate constitutionalism offers a suitable addition, or alternative, to deliberation (with or within firms) for legitimising corporate quasi-public social and political activities. It examines the respective merits of the three models and argues that a corporate constitutional court may mitigate some of the limits of deliberative practices alone. It argues the court is needed in weak regulatory environments, whether they are failing or inherently limited. (shrink)

The increasing centrality of business firms in contemporary societies calls for a renewed attention to the democratization of these actors. This paper sheds new light on the possibility of democratizing business firms by bridging recent scholarship in two fields—deliberative democracy and business ethics. To date, deliberative democracy has largely neglected the role of business firms in democratic societies. While business ethics scholarship has given more attention to these issues, it has overlooked the possibility of deliberation within (...) firms. As argued in the paper, a combination of reforms based on the ideas of workplace deliberation and business deliberation is necessary in order to promote the prospect of deliberation in different business contexts. The paper also discusses the importance of more democratic firms for deliberative democracy at large and, in particular, for the recent debate on deliberative systems. Finally, the paper suggests new areas of investigation to better understand the prospect of democratic deliberation in business firms. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the recent creation of “iBlastoids,” which are 3-D structures that resemble early human embryos prior to implantation which formed via self-organization of reprogrammed ad...

In contemporary political theory, perfectionists believe that the state should promote substantive conceptions of the good through its legislation. Supporters of neutrality, instead, claim that the state should refrain from doing so. In this article I analyse perfectionism in relation to Jürgen Habermas’ theory of discourse and deliberative politics (1996) and critique Habermas’ distinction between ‘ethical’ and ‘moral’ discourses (1984, 1990). By relating Habermas’ theory to George Sher’s account of perfectionism (1997), I argue that we can establish the meta-ethical (...) grounds for a model of deliberation encompassing ethical matters (that is, questions concerning the good life) not confined to the limits of specific communities. I conclude by arguing that ethical deliberation is not only feasible but also desirable. Given the fact of ethical pluralism, and in order to show respect towards their fellow citizens, political perfectionists ought to be ready to show how their ethical claims (which they want to see translated into state policy) relate to deeper meta-ethical human goals on which we can ideally find a consensus through deliberation. (shrink)

This article aims to understand the concept of deliberative democracy elaborated by Jürgen Habermas, as well as observe its potentialities and fault highlighted by democratic theory the philosopher Iris Young. Habermas proposes the model of deliberative democracy as an alternative to the liberal and republican models. For Habermas, liberals exceed themselves on normative bases with individualistic ethical purpose, disregarding social rights; while Republicans suppress individual freedoms due to a communitarian ideal. In this context, he proposes deliberation as a (...) link between the constituted powers and the democratic formation of will, pointing out a way out for the liberal and communitarian extremes. Despite Habermas' advances, his theory has been the target of much criticism. Young, for example, sees the need for improvements in deliberative democracy, criticizing possible exclusionary cultural biases and errors in assumptions of a common element of understanding. (shrink)

One of the key questions to have exercised green political theorists in recent years concerns the relationship of the environment 'agenda' and democracy. Both environmentalists and democrats have a tendency to think of each other as natural bedfellows but in fact there is little theoretical or practical reason why they should be. Indeed some theorists have argued that the environmental movement has grown from fundamentally authoritarian roots and it is arguable that the only really effective way of implementing environmental politics (...) is by imposing them in an authoritarian manner. This book deals with the tensions between democracy and environmentalism from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives. (shrink)

The banner of deliberative democracy is attracting increasing numbers of supporters, in both the world's older and newer democracies. This effort to renew democratic politics is widely seen as a reaction to the dominance of liberal constitutionalism. But many questions surround this new project. What does deliberative democracy stand for? What difference would deliberative practices make in the real world of political conflict and public policy design? What is the relationship between deliberative politics and liberal constitutional (...) arrangements? The 1996 publication of Amy Gutmann and Dennis F. Thompsons Democracy and Disagreement was a signal contribution to the ongoing debate over the role of moral deliberation in democratic politics. In Deliberative Politics an all-star cast of political, legal, and moral commentators seek to criticize, extend, or provide alternatives to Gutmann and Thompson's hopeful model of democratic deliberation. The essays discuss the value and limits of moral deliberation in politics, and take up practical policy issues such as abortion, affirmative action, and health care reform. Among the impressive roster of contributors are Norman Daniels, Stanley Fish, William A. Galston, Jane Mansbridge, Cass R. Sunstein, Michael Walzer, and Iris Marion Young, and the editor of the volume, Stephen Macedo. The book concludes with a thoughtful response from Gutmann and Thompson to their esteemed critics. This fine collection is essential reading for anyone who takes seriously the call for a more deliberative politics. (shrink)

Habermas and Nino see human rights not as an external constraint on popular sovereignty, but rather as a key ingredient of true democracy. Yet, Habermas asserts that democratic deliberation involves moral, ethical, pragmatic, and negotiated matters, while Nino reduces democracy to moral deliberation. Habermass theory thus is more complex and takes more seriously the possibility that deliberative democracy may vary across societies. All the same, Habermas excessively limits the extent of legitimate variability inasmuch as he shares with Nino the (...) conviction that moral reasons are universal and ultimately decisive. Habermas and Nino converge, more fundamentally, when they exclude the non-deliberative (and non-dialogic) aspects of the democratic process. It is a mistake to disregard these elements or to characterize them as oblique manifestations of deliberation. By taking these features into account, a picture of democracy gains in plausibility and opens up additional space for diversity in democratic theory and practice. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose a model for understanding the relation between substance and procedure in discourse ethics and deliberative democracy capable of answering the common charge that they involve an ‘empty formalism’. The expressive-elaboration model introduced here answers this concern by arguing that the deliberative practical rationality presupposed by discourse ethics and deliberative democracy involves the creation of a practical medium in which certain general basic ideas of solidarity, equality and freedom (...) are expressed and elaborated in the context of widespread moral disagreement. In the course of this paper I propose an elucidation of these ideas and argue for the thesis that they are internally related to the endorsement of deliberative practical rationality. The three basic substantive ideas contribute to the determination of the existence, the form, the topics and intended outcomes, and the effects of the practice of public deliberation. This amounts to an elucidatory defense of deliberative practical rationality by explicating its substantive significance or point. Key Words: critical theory • deliberative democracy • discourse ethics • equality • freedom • Jürgen Habermas • practical reason • John Rawls • solidarity • substance and procedure. (shrink)

Drawing upon insights from virtue ethics, this essay develops a concept of collective identity specifically suited to deliberative democracy: a virtues-centered theory of deliberative justice. Viewing democratic legitimacy as a political phenomenon, we must account for more than the formal rules that must be satisfied according to deontological theories of deliberative democracy. I argue that common approaches to deliberative democracy are unable to account for the motivations of deliberation, or ensure that citizens have the cognitive (...) skills to deliberate well. Next, I engage with critics of deliberative democracy who have moved toward broader and more humanistic concepts of deliberation but have stopped short of conceiving of justice as a virtue and, in their own way, neglected questions of collective identity. I reconstruct justice as a virtue from a deliberative perspective, combining virtue ethics’ emphasis on habituation with a weaker sense of collective identity that allows for value pluralism and disagreement, consistent with deliberative democracy. That is, deliberative democracy requires a shared and habituated civic culture of mutual understanding of differences. Finally, drawing from discourse on race in contemporary American politics, I conclude with brief illustrations of the need for a collective identity based on mutual understanding. Although deliberative democracy does not require a thick or intense sense of social solidarity, it does need citizens to share habits, inclinations, and capacities to engage in communication across their differences. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to explore the effects of the Istitutional Forum, a recent governance innovation legislated in South Africa in 1997, as a mechanism that contributes toward the democratisation of university governance. Forums were established to confront the legacy of structured disadvantage and to reorient the educational experience towards greater horizontal accountability. The article provides commentary on the Forum’s impact vis-a-vis participative ethos and deliberative democracy against the backdrop of the South African government’s post-apartheid commitments. Findings (...) reveal challenges in the Forum’s make-up and implementation that are linked to its degree of influence. Ultimately, the conclusions convey perspectives on role ambiguity and conflictual power dynamics. (shrink)

Kantian and Hegelian responses to Greek ethics have been carried on—against the backdrop of Joseph Butler, J. S. Mill, Henry Sidgwick, T. H. Green, and others—right through the Twentieth Century. Although other philosophical notions have also been important in the historiography of Greek ethics—‘morality’, ‘ethics of virtue’, ‘contingency’—an overriding theme has been the notion that in Greek ethics a way was found to eliminate deliberative conflict, and to show that in the end all rational human (...) aims are reconcilable within a single notion of happiness of eudaimonia. Various harmonizing strategies have been attempted, and ascribed to the Greeks. (shrink)

Healthcare strikes have been a remarkably common and varied phenomenon. Strikes have taken a number of forms, lasting from days to months, involving a range of different staff and impacting a range of healthcare systems, structured and resourced vastly differently. While there has been much debate about strike action, this appears to have done little to resolve the often polarising debate that surrounds such action. Building on the existing normative literature and a recent synthesis of the empirical literature, this paper (...) will present a deliberative framework to assess the justifiability of strike action. I will first review the empirical literature that explores the impact of strike action, on patient outcomes and healthcare delivery. I will then discuss the debates that have occurred in this area, including an existing deliberative framework proposed by Selemogo (2014). I will argue that this framework is overly restrictive in that it could lead us to find otherwise justified strike action, unjust. I will then propose a framework that remedies these shortcomings. The framework outlines two broad conditions that should be met if strike action is to be justified. It then goes on to outline two deliberative, interrelated questions that should be used to assess whether strike action meets these conditions. For the purposes of this framework, healthcare strike action is justified when 1) it makes demands or raises grievances about some form of injustice, unfairness or threat to health and when 2) the risks in striking are proportionate to its demands or grievances. These two conditions should be considered in light of two further questions, namely, the 3) social and political context of the strike and 4) the characteristics of the strike. I will offer some further reflections on the application of this framework and its shortcomings. (shrink)

Gert Biesta criticises deliberative models of democracy and education for being based on an understanding of democracy as a ‘normal’ order, which involves certain ‘entry conditions’ for democratic participation. As an alternative, Biesta introduces the idea of democracy as ‘disruption’ and the associated subjectification conception of education both of which he draws from the work of Jacques Rancière. This paper challenges Biesta’s critique of deliberative democracy by demonstrating that the ‘entry conditions’ for deliberation serve an important normative function. (...) It is also suggested that Biesta’s critique dismisses some important dimensions of the deliberative model. The paper further contests Biesta’s conceptions of democracy and education by arguing, first, that his position involves certain contradictions that are problematic especially from a normative perspective. Second, the paper argues that Biesta’s conceptions of democracy and education might result in dismissing crucially important questions concerning the long-term evaluation and improvement of democratic and educational institutions. (shrink)

THIS ESSAY PROPOSES A CONCEPTION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN art and ethics that moves away from popular causative understandings. Turning to select themes treated in the work of the literary theorist Elaine Scarry, the moral and aesthetical theology of Jonathan Edwards, and finally the philosophical reflections of Marcia Muelder Eaton, a more positive theoretical account of the moral relevance of art and various aesthetic experiences emerge. Central to this account is the observation that art objects, specifically those objects that (...) can be judged as beautiful, provoke a number of deliberative practices. These practices range from the solitary to the relational. Special emphasis on the latter practices provide the conceptual space to reflect more imaginatively about the significance of art for the building of political community and the task of Christian ethics more generally. (shrink)

The ethics of dissent is developed in this book through a new interpretation of the German philosopher Jrgen Habermas' communicative ethics and his political ...

Much has been published about the ethical issues encountered by clinicians in genetics/genomics, but those experienced by clinical laboratory scientists are less well described. Clinical laboratory scientists now frequently face navigating ethical problems in their work, but how they should be best supported to do this is underexplored. This lack of attention is also reflected in the ethics tools available to clinical laboratory scientists such as guidance and deliberative ethics forums, developed primarily to manage issues arising within (...) the clinic.We explore what ethical issues are being experienced by clinical scientists, how they think such issues could be best analysed and managed, and whether their practice might be enhanced by more situated approaches to ethics deliberation and practice such as ethical preparedness. From thematic analysis of cases presented by clinical scientists at a specially convened meeting of the UK Genethics Forum, we derived three main ethical themes: (1) the redistribution of labour and responsibilities resulting from the practice of genomic medicine; (2) the interpretation and certainty of results and (3) the proposal that better standardisation and consistency of ethical approaches (for example, more guidelines and policy) could resolve some of the challenges arising.We argue that although standardisation is important for promoting shared understandings of good (including ethical) practice, supplementary approaches to enhance and sustain ethical preparedness will be important to help clinical scientists and others in the recently expanded genetic/genomic medicine environment foster quality ethical thinking. (shrink)

Over recent years support for deliberative democracy as a regulative ideal against which political and economic institutions should be judged has become the dominant tradition within political theory. Deliberative democrats such as Amy Guttman and Dennis Thompson argue that deliberative public decision making would bring with it important epistemological and ethical gains. Closer inspection of these claims, however, suggests that deliberative democratic arrangements are not only impractical but are fundamentally at odds with the epistemic and ethical (...) goals that their supporters seek to advance. Arrangements based on ?exit? rather than ?voice? may be better placed to meet these challenges in a world characterized by complexity and conflicting moral values. (shrink)

In this article a dialectical model for practical reasoning within a community, based on the Generic/Actual Argument Model (GAAM) is advanced and its application to deliberative dialogue discussed. The GAAM, offers a dynamic template for structuring knowledge within a domain of discourse that is connected to and regulated by a community. The paper demonstrates how the community accepted generic argument structure acts to normatively influence both admissible reasoning and the progression of dialectical reasoning between participants. It is further demonstrated (...) that these types of deliberation dialogues supported by the GAAM comply with criteria for normative principles for deliberation, specifically, Alexy’s rules for discourse ethics and Hitchcock’s Principles of Rational Mutual Inquiry. The connection of reasoning to the community in a documented and transparent structure assists in providing best justified reasons, principles of deliberation and ethical discourse which are important advantages for reasoning communities. (shrink)

Ethical theory examines human action in general terms, whereas moral judgment takes place in particular situations. These situations often cannot be subsumed easily under general norms and call for a delicate balance of norms and circumstances. I describe situations where opposing courses of action seem morally reasonable and I call them states of deliberative equilibrium. I review Aristotle’s and Kant’s conceptions of moral judgment and I offer a rule for stepping from deliberation to judgment in many situations of equilibrium.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs)—private governance mechanisms involving firms, civil society organizations, and other actors deliberating to set rules, such as standards or codes of conduct, with which firms comply voluntarily—have become important tools for governing global business activities and the social and environmental consequences of these activities. Yet, this growth is paralleled with concerns about MSIs’ deliberative capacity, including the limited inclusion of some marginalized stakeholders, bias toward corporate interests, and, ultimately, ineffectiveness in their role as regulators. In this article, (...) we conceptualize MSIs as deliberative systems to open the black box of the different elements that make up the MSI polity and better understand how their deliberative capacity hinges on problems in different elements. On the basis of this conceptualization, we examine how deliberative mini-publics—forums in which a randomly selected group of individuals from a particular population engage in learning and facilitated deliberations about a topic—can improve the deliberative capacity of MSIs. (shrink)

Using Hofstede's culture theory (1980, 2001 Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviours, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nation. Sage, NewYork), the current study incorporates the moral development (e.g. Thorne, 2000; Thorne and Magnan, 2000; Thorne et al., 2003) and multidimensional ethics scale (e.g. Cohen et al., 1993; Cohen et al., 1996b; Cohen et al., 2001; Flory et al., 1992) approaches to compare the ethical reasoning and decisions of Canadian and Mainland Chinese final year undergraduate accounting students. The results indicate that Canadian (...) accounting students' formulation of an intention to act on a particular ethical dilemma (deliberative reasoning) as measured by the moral development approach (Thorne, 2000) was higher than Mainland Chinese accounting students. The current study proposes that the five factors identified by the multidimensional ethics scale (MES), as being relevant to ethical decision making can be placed into the three levels of ethical reasoning identified by Kohlberg's (1958, The Development of Modes of Moral Thinking and Choice in the Years Ten to Sixteen. University of Chicago, Doctoral dissertation) theory of cognitive moral development. Canadian accounting students used post-conventional MES factors (moral equity, contractualism, and utilitarianism) more frequently and made more ethical audit decisions than Chinese accounting students. (shrink)