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Dimension: Scalability

Scale out

Ability to accommodate large numbers of people into a process whilst retaining high deliberative quality.

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Maturity
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Importance
Neglectedness
Transnational
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How this is performed now...

Process organizers
Process organizers take processes that work for smaller numbers and apply techniques that support the efficient and fair inclusion of more people. There are early explorations into how digital technologies can support this, but real ground-changing work is limited.
Citizens' assembly organizers
Citizens' assembly organizers use techniques like dividing responsibilities for entire sections of the issue into subgroups and using technology to more efficiently aggregate views to include more people directly in the deliberative process.

Related Product Gaps

There are no related product gaps at the moment.

Related Goals and Research Questions

Goal: Participants in scaled-out processes who experience meaningful individual contribution and impact

What process design features enable participants at scale to perceive their input as meaningful and consequential, compared to large-group formats without such features?

Political Science Psychology
Related Capability: Scale out

What group-building and trust-formation mechanisms sustain high-quality deliberation as synchronous group size increases beyond typical face-to-face thresholds?

Psychology
Related Capability: Scale out

How can we foster the group building and trust that is necessary for high-quality deliberation as group sizes increase?

Psychology
Related Capability: Scale out

Goal: Scaled-out processes that engage a diverse cross-section of society

Which recruitment, access, or participation-support interventions (such as remuneration levels, scheduling flexibility, multilingual facilitation, or accessibility accommodations) most effectively reduce barriers to participation for structurally marginalized populations as processes scale, and what trade-offs do these interventions create with cost and facilitation complexity?

Statistics & Sampling Political Science
Related Capability: Scale out

How does scaling out affect who participates in the deliberative process?

Statistics & Sampling Political Science
Related Capability: Scale out

Related Resources

G1000's large-scale deliberative process

704 randomly selected citizens partook in a Citizens' Summit held on November 2011 around social security, immigration and distribution of wealth in times of financial crisis. More than 6000 participants took part in an earlier phase to select those 3 topics.
Experimental Practice
G1000

Five dimensions of scaling democratic deliberation: With and beyond AI

This paper provides an expanded definition of scale for democratic deliberation by breaking down the concept across five dimensions: scaling out (increasing deliberator numbers), scaling up (higher governance levels), scaling across (increasing number of processes), scaling deep (increasing impac...
Research
DemocracyNext

Stanford Deliberative Polling Methodology

A random, representative sample is first polled on the targeted issues. After this baseline poll, members of the sample are invited to gather at a single place for a weekend in order to discuss the issues. Carefully balanced briefing materials are sent to the participants and are also made public...
Experimental Practice
Stanford DDL