Expanding the Possibilities of Deliberation: The Use of Data Mining for Strengthening Democracy with an Application to Education Reform

Abstract

Deliberation is important for strengthening democracies and enhancing the legitimacy of public policy. However, deliberation has been constrained by limits of time, space, and human capacities for listening and processing information. In this article, the authors discuss a new technology-based tool and show how it can help to partially remove these constraints. Although the Internet already provides the means to deliberate without the need to meet at the same place and time, its conjunction with data mining solves the “large numbers deliberation dilemma” that arises when large amounts of data have to be processed. The author's proposal adapts particular data-mining techniques, which simulate the learning process of a human brain with almost infinite relational capacities. The methodology was applied in a real-world case of Chilean education reform and demonstrated its potential effectiveness.

Keywords:

• data mining
• deliberation
• education reform
• participation
• technological tools

The authors thank the Millennium Scientific Institute on Complex Engineering Systems and the project CIE-05 PBCT-Conicyt, which have partially funded this work.

Notes

1. For instance, a Rousseauian model of direct democracy requires overcoming disagreements to achieve the general good, and this is only feasible in isolation, as in that state each individual, free from passions and emotions, would get in touch with the “general good” as an outcome of his or her own reasoning.

2. An early application to political sciences is Laver et al. (2003), who used a basic algorithm to extract patterns from political discourses. We explain in the second last section why our methodology is superior and the other is not suitable for our purpose.

3. However, the organization of the Citizen Dialogs was intended to provide a feedback process, as is explained later in the article.

4. Puerto Montt, Viña del Mar, Valparaíso, Antofagasta and Santiago.

5. Same as for the first stage except for the replacement of Viña del Mar by Concepción.

6. Chile has extremely good databases for individuals as a consequence of a unique ID number used for all civic and even private purposes, including school enrolment and labor contracts.

7. Of course, if conclusions are generated for the second building process of the Citizen Dialogs, they might be contrasted with the clusters opinions obtained by applying data mining, to check for consistency and differences of both summary mechanisms.

8. This is consistent with the authoritarian and centralist traditions of the country. The school system is slowly incorporating democratic conflict-resolution methodologies.

9. Study day lasts from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.

10. At the time the interviews took place, the former undersecretary, Maria Ariadna Holnkron, was Minister of Education and the former Minister of Education, Sergio Bitar, was leaving his duties as coordinator of the presidential campaign of the newly elected president.

11. In Chile, there is no Common Law and therefore new issues, such as the protection of the right to education, need to be incorporated through new legislation.

12. Representation liberates citizens from their civic obligations, that is, having to discuss public affairs, thus allowing them to specialize or dedicate themselves to other issues (Macey 1994).

13. The requisite representative sampling of participants ensures that each citizen deciding not to participate will be replaced by a similar citizen, at least sharing similar interests regarding the issues being discussed.

14. And the available scientific evidence was integrated in the deliberation exercise through the participation of experts and the provision of information at the beginning of the process.