Premium
“Deliberative Disagreement” in U.S. Health Policy Committee Hearings
Author(s) -
ESTERLING KEVIN M.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/j.1939-9162.2011.00010.x
Subject(s) - falsifiability , legitimacy , democratic legitimacy , political science , deliberative democracy , democracy , public administration , law , law and economics , sociology , epistemology , politics , philosophy
The exchange of rationales among debate participants is necessary for legitimacy in a deliberative democracy. I show that witnesses in congressional committee hearings tend to use falsifiable rationales when they encounter moderate levels of disagreement and shift to nonfalsifiable rationales when they encounter extreme disagreement. I use data from a coding of hearings testimony on the Medicare program, held between 1990 and 2003, as well as from a survey of participating witnesses measuring their perceptions of disagreement at the hearing. The results identify conditions that enhance falsifiable discourse and help to establish the empirical grounding deliberative democratic theory.