Does democratic deliberation lead to more long-termism? A literature review

Several innovations have been proposed to overcome the problem of democratic short-termism. Especially innovations that rely on the principles and practices of deliberative democracy received much attention, as they hold a promise to make people more future-regarding. We conduct a systematic literature review to test whether deliberation lives up to its promise. Specifically, we are interested in the deliberative conditions that promote future-oriented outcomes and that lead to the inclusion of future-oriented perspectives. Additionally, we want to know how the causal mechanism between deliberation and future-oriented outcomes can be explained. We find that deliberation better succeeds at promoting future-oriented perspectives than producing future-oriented outcomes, and identify four conditions that can explain the variation in the results of our data. We also find that the literature fails to explain the causal mechanisms that lie behind the promise of deliberative democracy. Consequently, we provide avenues for future research.