Does democratic deliberation change minds?

Gerry Mackie
Additional contact information
Gerry Mackie: University of California, San Diego, USA, gmackie@dss.ucsd.edu

Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 2006, vol. 5, issue 3, 279-303

Abstract: Discussion is frequently observed in democratic politics, but change in view is rarely observed. Call this the ‘unchanging minds hypothesis’. I assume that a given belief or desire is not isolated, but, rather, is located in a network structure of attitudes, such that persuasion sufficient to change an attitude in isolation is not sufficient to change the attitude as supported by its network. The network structure of attitudes explains why the unchanging minds hypothesis seems to be true, and why it is false: due to the network, the effects of deliberative persuasion are typically latent, indirect, delayed, or disguised. Finally, I connect up the coherence account of attitudes to several topics in recent political and democratic theory.

Keywords: deliberation; democracy; persuasion; change in view; coherence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1470594X06068301 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pophec:v:5:y:2006:i:3:p:279-303

DOI: 10.1177/1470594X06068301

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Politics, Philosophy & Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().