ABSTRACT
When large groups of people assemble for the purpose of making a collective decision, they usually adopt some rules of procedure to govern how contributions to the decision-making process are made. These may be an implicit set of rules requiring that all attend to each speaker, that everyone be permitted to have a say, that debate may not be closed off, and that the decision be made by majority rule. They may be an explicit set of rules such as Robert's Rules of Order. Regardless of the informality or formality of the deliberative body, rules of procedure will exist (or, of course, they may evolve over the course of deliberation). These rules will govern the two important phases of deliberation: the information-gathering phase and the decision-making phase.
