Collaboration, deliberation and participation in times of post-truth politics: the role of dialogue experts

Sustainability policy and research promote dialogue-based governance such as cross-sectoral collaboration, public deliberation and citizens’ participation.

An emerging group of governance practitioners, here termed dialogue experts, seek to realize such ideals in sustainability transformations.

These days the rise of on-line echo chambers, polarization and conspiracy theories poses challenges to dialogical ways of working.

In times of post-truth politics, the assumption that egalitarian dialogue practices ought to replace expert-rule and top-down power risks unwittingly contributing to further polarization, distrust and inability to make controversial, but necessary decisions.

This project aims to unpack, analyze and rethink the uneasy relationship between dialogue, expertise and power in sustainability transformations.

To do so we inquire into the practices of the street level workers of democracy: the dialogue experts who are charged with enabling collaboration, deliberation and participation.

Drawing on practice theory, science and technology studies, and power theory we develop a better understanding of expertise and power within theories of deliberative democracy and communicative planning.

Thereby the project develops knowledge that can be used by dialogue experts, governance practitioners and policymakers to make conscious choices in the design, facilitation and evaluation of sustainability dialogues.