CONCEPT
Deliberation Condition
Fung's second condition: participation must be structured so participants engage with relevant information, hear competing perspectives, and refine their positions through dialogue — distinguishing deliberative from merely aggregative mechanisms.
The deliberation condition distinguishes participatory mechanisms that transform opinion into considered judgment from those that merely collect pre-formed preferences. Voting, polling, and open public comment are aggregative: they register what participants think at the moment of input without improving the quality of that thinking. Deliberation, by contrast, creates conditions under which participants encounter balanced information, hear competing perspectives, and develop nuanced positions responsive to the full range of relevant considerations. The evidence from deliberative polling across dozens of applications shows that this process produces predictable shifts — toward greater nuance, greater awareness of trade-offs, and greater willingness to modify positions in light of evidence. These are precisely the qualities AI governance decisions require.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The distinction between deliberative and aggregative participation is substantive, not procedural. Aggregative mechanisms measure pre-existing preferences; deliberative mechanisms construct considered judgments. Research on deliberative polling by James Fishkin has documented the specific ways in which informed deliberation changes participants' views — not toward predetermined conclusions