ISSN 0868-4871
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ISSN 0868-4871
The Raiting Of Impartiality, Equality And Achieving The Common Good In Several Methods Of Measuring Quality Of Deliberation

The Raiting Of Impartiality, Equality And Achieving The Common Good In Several Methods Of Measuring Quality Of Deliberation

Abstract

This study presents a comparative analysis of three different methods of measuring the quality of deliberation by their ability to resolve the main contradictions in the concepts of impartiality, equality and the common good in Jürgen Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. The analyzed methods — M.R. Steenbergen’s Discourse Quality Index (DQI); the DQI variant of André Bächtiger et al.; and the method used by Simon Niemeyer and John Dryzek — differ from the point of view of orientation toward the process / result of deliberation, which allows one to give a complex assessment of the effectiveness of one or another method of measuring the quality of discourse. The author concludes that each method contributes to the solution of deliberative theory’s problems of impartiality, equality and achieving the common good from different angles. Nevertheless, the question of uniting these methods into a single compromising instrument is still open, promising and relevant.

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Keywords: deliberative democracy; discourse quality index; measurement of deliberation

Available in the on-line version with: 15.02.2016

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Number 1, 2016