structed accordingly. Several jurors reported on the evaluation forms and in the focus group that
alternative spending possibilities should have been outlined explicitly. This suggests that jurors find it
difficult to consider relatively abstract notions such as ‘spend resources elsewhere’.
Written information is usually less approach- able in this sense than information from a well-
motivated speaker. Notwithstanding the jurors’ comments that they would have liked more writ-
ten information e.g. to outline alternative spend- ing possibilities, they appeared to ignore much of
what was provided, and there was some evidence of a few jurors concluding from the information
provided that they were incapable of forming judgements about it and instead withdrawing
from debate. Notably in the focus group, when asked how they would have reacted to an entirely
written presentation of option 1, the jurors in- cluding those who had been most insistent on
more written information imagined they would have reacted ‘What’s going on here then?…Forty
million quid, you’ve got to be joking…Spend the money on a hospital.’ As it was, the jurors made
clear in the focus groups that option 1 was fa- voured because of its broad concept and mode of
presentation, both of which captured the jurors’ imagination, rather than its precise details. The
experience of the Ely Jury suggests that no level and type of information provision can entirely
avoid the tension between equality of access to deliberation and ensuring jurors can deliberate
competently.
5. Representativeness
One strand running throughout most critiques of the CJ approach is its lack of representative-
ness. A CJ is perceived to offer the opinion of only 16 people compared to the legitimacy gained
by CVM with its broader base of respondents. This argument relies on twin claims which are
implicit in much CVM literature: i there is a ‘correct’ decision or a ‘true’ valuation; and ii a
more statistically representative sample comes closer to finding it Sagoff, 1998. But how repre-
sentative is the CVM alternative to CJs? Does it in some sense come closer to representing the
views of people? The problem is that people are often unable to represent their views through a
CV. They can express certain sorts of preferences, but not many of those preferences or judgements
that characterise environmental concern O’Neill, 1993; Aldred, 1996; Holland, 1997; Jacobs, 1997.
Equally, they need an institutional context that permits them to form and shape their preferences.
CVM does not offer this. Once the point that individuals will not bring to the decision process a
priori preferences has been accepted, then the ‘market analogy’ motivating CVM breaks down
Sen, 1995a. CVM is seen not to mimic the workings of a market where agents hold prefer-
ences a priori.
4
5
.
1
. Stakeholders A notable feature of the Ely CJ was that it
attempted explicitly to exclude from the Jury those with a private interest in the decision. In-
stead of bringing stakeholders with conflicting interests directly into a CJ, they were involved in
the advisory group that met with the objective of drawing up the Jury’s agenda. Thus they had an
opportunity to agree on the questions to be ad- dressed by the CJ, without necessarily having to
agree on the answers. This goes some way to- wards addressing a widely perceived problem of
the deliberative approach — that deliberative in- stitutions face a trade-off between representing
the interests of all relevant stakeholders, and rec- onciling these conflicting interests. Either the in-
stitution will be unrepresentative, or it will face an impossibility in resolving these entrenched confl-
icts. Even supporters of a deliberative approach to environmental decision-making acknowledge this
problem:
4
The appropriate analogy is not with the purchase of a familiar private market good for which the individual will have
previously formed preferences, but with a new, unfamiliar good about which the manufacturer is seeking opinions. For
example, when developing a new car, a manufacturer will not simply survey existing willingness to pay for the new model
compared to existing models, but actively encourage individu- als to develop their ideas about what they want from the new
model.
Where the issue to be addressed by a values Jury involves such difficult value conflicts a
proposal to build a ski area on a mountain of religious significance to American Indians,
members of the public are likely to quarrel with Jury membership, complaining that their partic-
ular interest is poorly represented. One may argue that Jury membership needs to be repre-
sentative…However, once Jury members are se- lected on the basis of the group they represent,
the Jury runs the risk of becoming a negotia- tion session among opposing points of view
rather than a Jury Brown et al., 1995: 129.
In the Ely CJ, the aim was to ensure that collecti6ely, the jurors gave voice to all relevant
interests and perspectives, rather than treating each juror indi6idually as the representative of a
particular interest or group. This objective shaped the Jury selection process.
5
.
2
. Jurors In designing the Ely CJ, the requirement that a
Jury be ‘representative’ of a defined community was interpreted in a particular way. No juror was
selected as the representative of a group or inter- est. However, the alternative approach of many
CJ practitioners, based on achieving a representa- tive sample of the local population, was also
rejected. While most practitioners acknowledge that a Jury of 16 cannot attain ‘true’ statistical
representativeness, they suggest some limited form of statistically based representativeness is achiev-
able. For example, Crosby’s favourite metaphor describes the Jury as ‘a microcosm of the public’
Crosby, 1996; Crosby, in press, suggesting the jurors mimic the demographic and other patterns
of the public as a whole. On this approach, a profile of the relevant geographic area according
to gender, age, ethnic background and other stan- dard criteria is built by drawing on demographic
data, and the Jury is then recruited to match these criteria as closely as possible. The design of the
Ely CJ rejected this approach, for two reasons. Firstly, the benefits of statistically based recruiting
are dubious for such a small sample. More impor- tantly, we did believe it important to try to have
all interests fairly voiced, understanding interests to be argumentative perspectives rather than
group opinions. Rather than statistical representativeness, the
underlying approach was to try to anticipate the particular private perspectives that might strongly
influence jurors’ behaviour, and ensure these were all adequately, but not excessively, represented
through the Jury. Thus representativeness is inter- preted in the CJ context as ‘fair representation of
all relevant perspectives’, where: i the set of perspectives is unique to each CJ, and carefully
chosen; and ii ‘relevant’ perspectives are those expected to influence juror behaviour. Both i
and ii inevitably involve judgements made by the organisers, but informed by the views of stake-
holders and the particular institutional context. In Ely, this approach led to the rejection of com-
monly used selection criteria such as ethnic back- ground and housing tenure in favour of the
criteria that were expected most to affect the outcome of the Jury, such as length of time
resident in the area, residential district and agri- cultural employment. Defining perspectives and
weighting a profile according to more sophisti- cated quantitative techniques such as attitude
scales would still be too coarse for local condi- tions, in addition to the inherent problems with
attitude scales.
The criteria are detailed in Table 1. The first column corresponds to a notional Jury size of 20;
this was the number initially recruited in order to ensure that around 16 would in practice attend.
The second column corresponds to the 16 actual Jury members who did attend.
In sum, interests are argumentative perspectives rather than groups or individuals; they are voiced
by a Jury collectively rather than individually, in the sense that jurors are not selected on the basis
of a one-to-one correspondence between particu- lar interests and particular jurors; in initiating a
valuation process, judgements about local condi- tions are unavoidable. Our approach implicitly
rejects the dichotomy between representing inter- est groups and representing the public at large
Crosby, 1996: 169. Although some advocates of CJs favour the former, they recognise the irresolv-
Table 1 Composition of the jury
Notional 20 Actual jury
9–10 9
Sex Men
10–11 Women
7 18–29
Age 6–7
7 30–50
7–8 6
6–7 51+
3 Occupational group
Min 4 AB
3 Min 4
C1 5
C2 Min 4
4 DE
Min 4 4
1–2 Employment
2 Farmers managerowner
Farm workers 1–2
1 6
Urban 7
Residential district 3–4
3 Rural area 1
6–8 Rural area 2
4 3–4
2 Rural area 3
2–3 Of those in rural areas:
2 Larger settlements in Fens
Smaller settlements in Fens 2–3
1 Elsewhere in Fens
5–6 4
1–2 2
Elsewhere outside Fens Time resident in area
3–5 Resident up to 5 years
1 Of those in the Fens
Resident 20+ years 3–5
3 2–3
Members of one or more 2
Environmental organisations
able conflicts that may result Brown et al., 1995. On the other hand, advocates of representing the
public at large appear over-optimistic about the extent to which this is possible with a sample of
16. Some critics recognise this and maintain fur- ther that the inconsistency between a CJ’s recom-
mendations and general public opinion represents ‘perhaps the most significant limitation of the CJ
model’ Armour, 1996: 184. Crucially, however, achieving such consistency is the wrong objective.
The legitimacy — or ‘validation’ — of delibera- tive institutions such as CJs is not grounded in a
‘microcosm of the public’ capturing ‘the voice of the people’ Crosby, 1996; Crosby, in press, nor
in them capturing ‘a better reflection’ of public opinion than standard polls. Rather it arises
through argument and mutual acknowledgement among the participants Estlund, 1993, 1997;
Bohman, 1998. Thus unlike CVM, an assessment of the representativeness of the valuation process
is inseparable from an assessment of its content, in this case the competence of the deliberation.
6. The standard of deliberation
