Deliberative appraisal methods

Ruth Shortall*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeChapterScientificpeer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Deliberative appraisal methods have gained popularity in recent years, due to an increased demand for public participation in government decision-making. There is a recognition that transportation policy appraisals need to take account of a diversity of views and disciplines, for which deliberative approaches are considered ideal. In comparison with other forms of citizen consultation or participation, deliberative approaches are regarded as the most promising in terms of fulfilling democratic ideals such as inclusiveness, equity and transparency. They are hence also likely to increase the legitimacy of decisions. Due to their unique characteristics, deliberative appraisal methods hold the potential to resolve some of the issues associated with commonly used traditional appraisal methods. Because of this, approaches that combine both traditional analytic and deliberative aspects are increasingly sought after, but remain in the early stages. Deliberation is based on the premise that a diverse group of citizens, if given adequate information, resources and time to deliberate on a given topic, can produce a rational, informed judgment. Participants must consider a question from multiple viewpoints, exchange perspectives, opinions, and understandings and think critically about all possible options. This process has been shown to build civic capacity, produce better decisions and provide unique and useful insights for policy-makers. A deliberative event may include a small group of participants or many hundreds. Purely deliberative approaches may result in qualitative outputs such as a verdict or report, whereas analytic-deliberative approaches may involve monetizing values, voting or ranking in order to reach workable recommendations. While the application of deliberative approaches in the transport domain is still in its early stages, this chapter provides an overview of the best-known deliberative approaches in use in policy-making today as well as introducing new developments in the physical and online spaces.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNew Methods, Reflections and Application Domains in Transport Appraisal
EditorsNiek Mouter
PublisherElsevier
Pages51-82
Number of pages32
ISBN (Print)9780323855594
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Publication series

NameAdvances in Transport Policy and Planning
Volume7
ISSN (Print)2543-0009
ISSN (Electronic)2542-9116

Keywords

  • Analytic-deliberative methods
  • Collective decision-making
  • Deliberative appraisal
  • Deliberative democracy
  • Deliberative methods
  • Digital deliberation

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