Deliberation and Policy-Making: Three Ways to Think About Minipublics’ Consequences

Abstract

Policy-makers are increasingly experimenting with various ways to involve citizens in policy-making. Deliberative forums composed of lay citizens (minipublics) count among the most popular of such innovations. Despite their popularity, it is often unclear in what ways such minipublics could affect policy-making. This article addresses this issue of conceptual ambiguity by drawing on an original systematic review of the literature. It shows that the literature has approached these consequences in three ways: congruence with decisions, consideration in the policy-making process, and structural change. The article discusses the implications for empirical research and points out trajectories for future research on deliberative minipublics.

The Closer, the Better? Comparing Advisory Councils at Different Government Levels

“…The fact that they do not need to answer questions from the administration can be used to their advantage; they are able to raise their own. This is a conclusion similar to that reached by Bua (2017) and resonates with recent research questioning the different meanings of deliberative outcomes (Jacquet & Van der Does, 2020).…”

Measuring the impact of consultative citizen participation: reviewing the congruency approaches for assessing the uptake of citizen ideas

“…This definition includes democratic innovations (Elstub & Escobar, 2019;Smith, 2009) but does not exclude other consultative participatory processes that do not seek to "innovate". 2 CPM can generate diverse important effects on politics and policymaking (see for instance Jacquet & van der Does, 2020a;Michels & Binnema, 2018), but their primary formal function is to provide decision-makers with citizens' recommendations, proposals and views (Geissel, 2012;Warren, 2009)which we will refer to under the umbrella term of citizen ideas. CPM's influence on policymaking thus depends on the discretion of decision-makers (Bua, 2019), meaning that the impact is indirect: citizens' ideas are transmitted to decision-makers, who subsequently decide whether or not to integrate them into public policy and laws 3 .…”

“…A few surveys have discussed these methodological implications and challenges. Scholars have criticized existing studies' narrow understanding of the impact and public policy (Abelson & Gauvin, 2006;Blondiaux & Fourniau, 2011;Chess, 2000;Mazeaud & Boas, 2012;Rowe & Frewer, 2004), and the focus on exceptional cases (Spada & Ryan, 2017), while others have specifically reflected on the methodological exercise of impact assessment (Font et al, 2016;Font & Smith, 2019;Jacquet & van der Does, 2020a;Richardson et al, 2019). However, these studies tend to reflect on their own methodology or to briefly discuss various approaches, but no research has yet collated them.…”

“…The most common methodology used to assess the uptake of citizen ideas is the congruency approach (Jacquet & van der Does, 2020a). In this approach, scholars examine the extent to which citizens ideas textually correspond to public policy documents and laws, and, if both coincide either literally or in intent, they suggest that the CPM has had an impact (Geißel & Heß, 2018;Pogrebinschi, 2013;Pogrebinschi & Ryan, 2018).…”

“…Earlier studies tended not to clarify at what point in the policymaking process the assessment was conducted, but analyzes now explicitly mention the phase. They commonly examine a single policymaking moment in order to measure the impact (Jacquet & van der Does, 2020a;Pogrebinschi, 2013), while a few others look at both the agenda-setting and the decision-making stages (Michels & Binnema, 2018;Pogrebinschi & Ryan, 2018) or the implementation stage (Font et al, 2018). Relying on Howlett et al's (2009, pp. 12-13) model of a policy cycle, this analysis examines official documents after two key moments: policy formulation and decision-making.…”