This article explores the issue of what we call “deliberative drift”: the emergence of deliberation in a non-deliberative setting. The literature on deliberative democracy has tended to focus upon practices taking place in specifically deliberative settings. We ask whether deliberation cannot logically occur elsewhere in the policy process, or, more specifically, can politics based on bargaining and aggregation be transformed (or drift) toward deliberative practice? In pondering this question, Habermas's argument that a communicative rationality underpins deliberation is useful, as it demarcates deliberative from other practices by a willingness of participants to cast aside fixed preferences. While procedures and institutional designs are inflexible, the orientations or rationalities of individuals may be much more malleable. We explore one empirical case in which what started as negotiating and instrumental processes drifted toward a deliberative practice. We speculate that the rationalities that participants bring to their interaction, and the ways in which those rationalities change with the development of trust between participants, are as important in determining whether deliberation occurs as is the setting within which the interaction takes place.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

There have been a number of surveys of people's housing-tenure preferences in the last few years, all of which show large majorities preferring to own rather than rent their dwelling. Debate rages, however, about how the survey findings should be interpreted. The theoretical debate has not been helped by the limited information supplied in many of the surveys. Using data in the 1978 General Household Survey (GHS), Littlewood made a more detailed analysis of tenure preferences, providing a basis for future longitudinal studies of changing tenure preferences. In the 1988 GHS, respondents were asked the same questions as in 1978 about their housing-tenure preferences. The findings of the 1988 survey have been analysed and, in this paper, those findings are compared with the results of Littlewood's analysis of the 1978 data and provide some important information which can contribute to a theoretical understanding of changing tenure preferences and to the debates about the meaning of expressed tenure preferences. Where possible Littlewood's methods have been replicated; where this was not possible, an attempt has been made to give an explanation in the appropriate part of the text. Also, Littlewood's analysis has been extended in certain areas. However, it is argued that although some important information is provided in this paper, if an understanding of the significance of people's housing-tenure preferences is to be achieved, more in-depth interviewing of a qualitative or discursive nature is needed.

The authors examine whether private tenants receiving housing benefit have sought to take advantage of the perverse incentives which exist in the scheme. They look at recipients' reasons for moving to their present accommodation, whether they shopped around for accommodation, whether they moved upmarket to better accommodation, and whether they paid a premium for their accommodation compared with nonrecipients. It is concluded that, despite the perverse incentives, recipients had not generally moved to take advantage of the scheme, had shopped around for accommodation, and were not paying a ‘housing benefit premium’. Although some recipients were paying over the odds for their accommodation this reflected their poor position in the housing market compared with nonrecipients rather than a deliberate attempt to take advantage of the scheme.

No abstract

No abstract