@article{2022:schmittbeck:prerequisi,
title = {Prerequisites of deliberative democracy: Inclusivity, publicity, and heterogeneity of German citizens’ everyday political talk},
year = {2022},
note = {Departing from a systemic perspective, the paper aims to contribute to
a better understanding of ordinary citizens’ everyday political talk
from a deliberative democratic point of view. Drawing on unique survey
data collected in Germany it examines three prerequisites of
deliberative democracy as a model of democracy that is rooted in
political discussions among the citizenry at large: (1) The
prerequisite of inclusivity expects citizens’ engagement in everyday
conversations to be widespread and egalitarian. (2) The prerequisite
of publicity demands citizens to be mutually aware of each other’s
political perspectives. (3) The prerequisite of heterogeneity
necessitates that the standpoints to which citizens are exposed when
communicating about politics reflect society’s political pluralism.
Analyses of citizens’ communicative engagement in their overall and
core networks suggest basically positive diagnoses for all three
prerequisites, but with severe limitations on closer inspection. The
paper furthermore shows that with regard to everyday political talk
social inequality gives rise to political inequality, and demonstrates
how these effects are mediated by variations in citizens’ endowment
with cultural and social capital.},
journal = {SCM Studies in Communication and Media},
pages = {7--72},
author = {Schmitt-Beck, Rüdiger},
volume = {11},
number = {1}
}