PhD Proposal

For some reasons, I didn't add anything during the past 5 months. 5 months already...time flies.
And for some reasons, I need a change. Change? Yes, I can.
Got my PhD proposal finished. Post here to mark the milestone. But abstract only, the whole document has >5000 words (pretty long as a proposal)


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The Normative and Practical Content of Deliberative Monetary Valuation:
An Investigation into the Ideological Beliefs Influencing and Subjective Factors Associated with the Articulation of Environmental Values in Deliberative Settings


PhD Research Proposal

Alex Lo
Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences,
The Australian National University


Abstract
Deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) is a hybrid approach built upon the theory of deliberative democracy. It seeks to articulate money values of non-marketed public goods from small group deliberation. Yet current practice falls short of theoretical coherence and appear at odds with the deliberative political ideals. This creates a thin and fragile integrative basis for value plurality. A study is proposed to assess the present state of knowledge and examine the potential of a political model. This will involve separate investigation of the perceptions of practitioners and citizen deliberators concerning DMV processes and outcomes. The study will ascertain the ways in which deliberative value is defined in theory and its meanings in actual deliberation. For the former, data will be sought from a practitioners survey based on Q methodology. Deliberative forums are being planned for the latter. Two discussion groups are designed in accordance with democratic and decision-analytic principles respectively. They will be compared to distinguish the political strand of DMV from its more common counterpart of analytic deliberation. Two groups of local citizens will participate in a series of discussions about a water planning issue in Australia. Verbal protocols will be employed for analyzing the participant interviews to understand how people make sense of the valuation questions. Findings are expected to shed light on the principles and roles of DMV, and the potential of applying verbal protocol analysis to DMV research.