The EDDA Research Center at the University of Iceland hosts an international conference titled The Future of Deliberation. Exploring Political, Social and Epistemic Control. The conference will take place on 3 June 2023 in Veröld – House of Vigdís at the University of Iceland. This is the concluding event of the Democratic Constitutional Design (DCD) Research Project which received a Grant of Excellence from the Icelandic Research Fund and whose principal investigator is Jón Ólafsson.

The hope that broad public deliberation and greatly increased public engagement in policy- and decision-making will lead to large scale democratic reform – even bring about democratic renewal that may pull liberal democracy out of its current crisis – has characterized democratic theory and democratic innovations for some time. However, in spite of intense grassroots activity and worldwide interest in democratic reform, the opposite seems to be the case. Trends toward authoritarianism have grown, also inside the borders of stable representative democracy – populism has become a fixture in the political landscape even in countries that have remained strongly committed to welfare and political equality. The conference will explore the future of deliberation as a key component of democratic innovation and reform, critically question innovations and the ideal of deliberation itself.

Speakers include Robert Talisse from Vanderbilt University, Just Serrano Zamora from the University of Málaga and Cricket Keating from the University of Washington.

The conference programme is available here.