The Cycle of Deliberative Inquiry:
The Four Key Tasks of Deliberative Practice
(developed by Martín Carcasson, Colorado State University, comments welcome: cpd@colostate.edu)
The cycle of deliberative inquiry highlights
the four key tasks of deliberative practice.
The overall idea here is that each time a full
cycle is exercised well—i.e. high quality
deliberation is practiced—the quality of a
community’s conversation about a particular
issue is improved. All four tasks are critical.
The word “inquiry” focuses on the notion of
the quest for better information or wisdom.
Too often, in our dominant political systems,
information is used as ammunition rather
than enlightenment. Too few are truly
utilizing a process of inquiry, and instead are
“researching” for information that supports
positions already held. Deliberative inquiry,
on the other hand, focuses on asking good
questions and gathering useful information
to support better decision-making and
problem-solving, regardless of the
position(s) supported. The four tasks are:
1. Deliberative issue analysis: Involves researching issues from an impartial perspective to better understand
the issue and to ultimately provide the community with material to structure productive deliberation.
Deliberative events often utilize a “backgrounder” or “discussion guide” that provides an overall structure to
the event. The terms “naming” and “framing” are sometimes used to describe the work often accomplished
during this task.
2. Convening: High-quality deliberation relies on diverse audiences, thus one of the key skills of deliberative
practitioners is to develop and attract broad audiences to events to be part of the discussion. Individual
meetings may call for particular audiences (such as experts or specific stakeholders) or for more of a general
public audience.
3. Facilitating interactive communication: Deliberative inquiry relies on key communication processes that
can get the most out of a group of diverse participants coming together to discuss a key issue and move the
discussion forward. “Interactive communication” here means communication that actually involves people
going back and forth speaking and listening (unlike one-way communication which involves one side
speaking and the other listening, such as through media, or at certain public meetings where participants can
approach the microphone one at a time to express their opinion to an audience without much, if any,
interaction). Debate, deliberation, and dialogue are all forms of interactive communication, and, depending
on the situation, each has the potential to improve the conversation. Once again, skilled, impartial facilitators
and notetakers are critical to achieving the potential of any interactive communication process.
4. Reporting: Lastly, deliberation needs skilled, impartial analysts to utilize the information captured at events
to better inform the decision-making process, so that the hard work completed by the participants in the
forum can be shared more broadly in the community. Those reports then feed back into the deliberative
analysis, to improve the quality of any subsequent deliberative events on that topic.
Basic Features of Scientific, Strategic, and Deliberative Inquiry
Unfortunately, most inquiry on public issues is not purposefully deliberative. Most inquiry is either scientific or
strategic. Scientific inquiry is a particular sort of inquiry that focuses on rigorously discovering valid
information about empirical (i.e. observable and generally quantifiable) issues. It is very useful, but limited in
important ways because it tends to avoid values and emotions, since such things are not observable. Strategic
inquiry is inquiry that focuses on developing evidence or arguments for a particular pre-set point of view, and
thus politicizes the inquiry process. Deliberative inquiry seeks to avoid the problems and limitations of these
other forms, while utilizing their best features.
Scientific Inquiry
Strategic Inquiry
Deliberative Inquiry
Overall goal
Discovery of valid information
Supporting particular points of
view, winning arguments
Improving public decision-making and
problem solving, clarifying choices and
their consequences
Primary
Question
What is?
What evidence is available for my
point of view? (or against the other
side)
What should we do? What are our choices
and their implications?
Primary
method
Scientific observation
Strategic research or invention1
Facts and
fact
questions
Focus of the work
Utilized as ammunition in the
broader debate
Tough
choices and
tradeoffs
Often bracketed and avoided
due to unscientific nature
Often avoided or framed
strategically
Common
ground
Scientifically valid facts are
common ground
Utilized if useful, often ignored,
misrepresented, or manufactured
Open ended research and facilitation of
interactive communication
Used as a common base to start from, but
focus is often more on values (one important
product of deliberation is the identification
of key fact questions that can then be
examined in more detail through scientific
inquiry to improve subsequent
deliberations)
Often the focus of the research (to uncover
and assist communities to work through
them)
Issues are framed to start at a common
point, and process seeks to build additional
broad support
Narrow, specific expertise is
Strategic, audience often limited in
required to be a part of the
Primary
terms of those that already agree or
Broad, seeks to connect public, government,
conversation, at times targeted
audience
target audience in the middle, rarely and expert sources in the conversation
to government officials, rarely
seriously address opposing views
to the public
More descriptive than
Scope of
proscriptive, so may avoid
Often limited by strategic goals and Broad, based on the notion of democratic
involved
specific suggestions for
use of blame game or "magic bullet" governance and inclusion, considers all sort
stakeholders solutions. When offered,
solutions. Often specifically seek to of potential actors (individuals, nonprofits,
in the
solutions may be narrowly
exclude particular audiences that are businesses, groups, and governments at all
analysis and defined in terms of policy
opposed.
levels)
solutions
changes privileging
governmental solutions.
1
Invention is a term used by rhetorical scholars, and involves the development of arguments. It does not imply the fabrication of
evidence, but rather the development of a broad range of arguments in support of a proposition. Aristotle, for example, distinguished
between “artistic” proofs, which involved the use of tropes or commonplaces to create arguments (such as metaphors, examples,
narratives, maxims, etc.), and inartistic proofs, which primarily involved the use of outside evidence such as testimony.