Both the terms participatory and deliberative democracy refer to the direct involvement of citizens in political decision making, beyond choosing representatives through elections.

In both systems, citizens are empowered to let their voices be heard and weigh in on the way their community is governed.

Still, participation and deliberation are not the same. While participation focuses on empowering citizens to take action, deliberation focuses on discussion and debate between citizens and other stakeholders. While participation focuses on the actions themselves, deliberation focuses on the decision-making process that precedes policy-making.

Examples of participation include polling, idea collection, surveys, and participatory budgeting. A famous example of deliberation is Indian Parliament, a group of citizens that is called upon to deliberate on a course of action and formulate policy recommendations.

The main differences concern: (a) the numbers of participants; (b) the type of participation; and (c) how participants are selected. 

Numbers of participants

• Advocates of participatory democracy usually want to involve large numbers of people in political processes, ideally the entire citizenry, and its practitioners are ecumenical in their approach. The aim for them is to achieve breadth, with many participants - ideally, everyone affected by a particular decision, or all citizens (or residents) in a particular jurisdiction.
• Many advocates of deliberative democracy want to involve relatively small (but representative) groups of people, because it is very difficult to have deep deliberation among large numbers of people. Practitioners in this space are wrestling with the challenge of situating deliberation within a wider, deliberative system.

Type of participation

• Participatory democrats want more participation, in all aspects of politics (and sometimes in spaces beyond the political sphere, such as workplaces and universities), from all citizens who choose to be involved. They believe this is the essence of democracy—the only way to ensure that the ‘people rule’ is for them to be involved in making the decisions that affect them. Instead of specifying a preferred type of political participation, they embrace and encourage a diversity of opportunities for political engagement.
• In contrast, deliberative democrats have a specific view on the type of political participation they want citizens to be involved in: deliberation. Deliberation requires that participants: (a) become well informed about the topic, (b) consider different perspectives, in order to (c) arrive at a public judgement (not opinion) about "what can we strongly agree on?" They consider this to be a superior form of political participation as it leads to more informed and rounded public opinion, and, arguably, better decisions.
• Participatory and deliberative democrats therefore also favour different types of institutions and practices to promote these alternative approaches to political participation. For example, many participatory democrats see value in instruments of direct democracy which is exemplified by referenda or citizens’ initiatives [Swiss model]. It can be further exemplified by participatory budgeting which spread throughout South America, starting with Brazil in 1988 and is now spreading worldwide. Participatory budgets were designed to widen participation for lower socio-economic groups, by allowing them an opportunity to make decisions about a small proportion of a city’s spending.

Selection method

• Participatory democrats usually favor self-selected participation, in order to enable as many people as possible to share the experience. This enables easy recruitment, can be less expensive, and is seen as equitable. Deliberative democrats tend to favor random selection, in order to assemble a public body that is: representative of the public; able to consider perspectives; and not be vulnerable to being stacked by representatives of powerful interest groups.
• Many deliberative democrats believe that there is a trade-off between large numbers of participants and the quality of deliberation. Consequently, a strand of deliberative democracy wants to involve relatively small (but representative) groups of people in considerable depth.

The 3 desirable criteria of direct democracy (participation, deliberation, and equality) are all different vertices of the same triangle. Because deliberation requires more organisation, it is also harder to scale. That’s why it works best with small, representative samples of the population. Then again, as mentioned above, participation on its own doesn’t always guarantee deep or long-term engagement.

Participation used together with deliberation ensures meaningful engagement on a large scale, therefore giving a central place to citizens in the decision-making process.