Deepening and Connecting Democratic Processes. The Opportunities and Pitfalls of Mini-Publics in Renewing Democracy

Abstract

In recent decades, so-called “mini-publics” have been organized in many countries to renew policy making and democracy. One characteristic of mini-publics is that the selection of the participants is based on random sampling or sortition. This gives each member of the community an equal chance of being selected. Another feature is that deliberation forms the core of the process of how proposals are developed. In this paper, we investigate the possibilities and challenges of sortition and deliberation in the context of the call for a deepening of democracy and more citizen engagement in policy making. Based on extensive research on citizens’ forums (G1000) in The Netherlands, we show the potential of mini-publics, but a number of shortcomings as well. Some of these are related to the specific design of the G1000, while others are of a more fundamental nature and are due to the contradictory democratic values that deliberative mini-publics try to combine. One of these concerns the tension between the quality of deliberation and political impact. We conclude that combining institutional approaches could be a way out to deal with these tensions and a step forward to both deepen and connect democratic processes.

Institutionalising participation: The implementation of a civic web platform

“…These epistemological assumptions derived from the notion of participation seem to have attracted Habermasian views on the ethics of crowdsourcing (Schlagwein et al 2019) or Habermasian concepts such as technopolitics and democracy (Aragón et al 2017), or idealised forms of publics and the role of procedures (Michels and Binnema 2018). These assumptions, however, can lead to organisational designs of participation that overlook, downplay, or be used to discard certain voices.…”

Untitled

“…From the theoretical framework presented in the previous section, it is very clear that citizen participation in democratic practices is significant and hence calls for innovative ways to strengthening representative democracy (Grönlund, Bächtiger, & Setälä, 2014;Smith, 2009). Democratic innovations to be participative and inclusive must ensure the voices of voiceless within a given society are well linked up to an existing governance structure be it local or national level (Michels & Binnema, 2018). This means, participatory democracy should be considered as a creative, social process of gathering together nonconforming voices, different skills, thoughts, and experiences, as well as a multiplicity of goals, morals, and tenets, so as to reach best consensus.…”

El sorteo como herramienta de innovación democrática: el potencial de los minipúblicos deliberativos

“…Pero lo que estos minipúblicos tienen en común es que la selección de sus miembros se realiza por sorteo y que cada ciudadano tiene la misma oportunidad de ser seleccionado. Además, la deliberación es el motor del proceso decisorio, donde se prioriza el poder de las ideas y los mejores argumentos (Michels y Binnema, 2018).…”