Generating Democratic Legitimacy through Deliberative Innovations: The Role of Embeddedness and Disruptiveness

Caluwaerts, Didier; Reuchamps, Min

doi:10.1080/00344893.2016.1244111

Cited by 33 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…As noted, there was no feedback to participants regarding how inputs were used to inform policy, nor any further consultation regarding how priorities for implementation were identified. There was also apparently no systematic process for informing participants that the final policy had been adopted, despite this being expected practice [41][42][43].…”

Section: Follow-through and Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making consultation meaningful: Insights from a case study of the South African mental health policy consultation process

2020

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Background It is widely recognised that mental health policies should be developed in consultation with those tasked with their implementation and the users affected by them. In the South African legislative context public participation in policymaking is assumed, with little guidance on how to conduct consultation processes, nor how to use consultation inputs in policy decisions. Methods The South African Mental Health Policy Framework and Strategic Plan was adopted in 2013 after an extensive consultation process. Focussing on the 2012 provincial and national consultation summit, this case-study conducted key informant interviews and undertook documentary analysis to explore the process through which consultation inputs were-or were not-transferred to inform this policy. Between 2013 and 2016 seven interviews were conducted, and 11 documents (policy drafts and summit outputs) and transcripts of 23 audiorecorded sessions from the national summit were analysed. Results Findings revealed that no substantive changes were made to the mental health policy following the consultation summits. There do not seem to have been systematic processes for facilitating and capturing knowledge inputs, or for transferring these inputs between provincial and national levels. There was also no further consultation regarding priorities identified for implementation prior to finalisation of the policy, with participants highlighting concerns about policy implementation at local levels as a result. This represents a lost opportunity for greater involvement of service users in policy development.

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Section: Follow-through and Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making consultation meaningful: Insights from a case study of the South African mental health policy consultation process

2020

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“…The approach suggested here instead entails to examine how features of participatory processes affect citizens' evaluations of them. Although differences exist in the proposed evaluation criteria (Geissel 2013), previous research on democratic innovations have established sets of criteria for evaluating the functioning of participatory innovations (Fung 2003;2006;Smith 2009;Geissel 2013;Rowe and Frewer 2000;Caluwaerts and Reuchamps 2016). All participatory processes constitute a bundle of different participatory features, or central design characteristics that determine what they can achieve.…”

Section: What Participatory Mechanisms Do People Want?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have examined similar issues from different perspectives. Some assess the merits of participatory mechanisms by assessing their pros and cons (Fung 2003;2006;Smith 2009;Geissel 2013; Rowe and Frewer 2000;Caluwaerts and Reuchamps 2016). This approach provides us with insights into what democratic benefits a participatory mechanism can provide but fails to consider how citizens evaluate these mechanisms and their characteristics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some, includingGeissel (2013), include criteria such as legitimacy and political support, but this is inappropriate for the present purposes since it constitutes a (possible) consequence of introducing a democratic innovation rather than a build-in feature. Agenda-setting is also included by some(Caluwaerts and Reuchamps 2016). However, since people in general are likely to always prefer an open agenda, it was less relevant to include here where the emphasis is on criteria where all alternatives may be considered preferable to some.…”

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confidence: 99%

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How citizens evaluate participatory processes: a conjoint analysis

Christensen

2020

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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This study examines how characteristics of participatory processes affect citizens’ evaluations of such processes and thereby establish what kind of participatory process citizens demand. The literature on democratic innovations has proposed different criteria for evaluating participatory innovations. What remains unclear, however, is how citizens evaluate these participatory mechanisms. This is here examined in a conjoint analysis embedded in a representative survey of the Finnish population (n = 1050). The conjoint analysis examines the impact of inclusiveness, popular control, considered judgment, transparency, efficiency, and transferability on citizens’ evaluations of participatory processes. Furthermore, it is examined whether the evaluations differ by the policy issues and process preferences of the respondents. The results show that people want transparent participatory processes with face-to-face interaction among participants and expert advice to deal with complicated issues. The participatory processes should also be advisory and should not include too many meetings. These effects appear to be uniform across policy issues and do not depend on the process preferences of citizens.

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“…Therefore, we join those authors who have shifted attention from the impact or "uptake" (Goodin and Dryzek 2006) of the micro world of mini-publics to the macro world of political decision making. This relates to a growing strand in the literature on deliberative democracy, which no longer sees mini-publics as isolated spaces with ideal conditions for respectful and inclusive reason-giving, but instead emphasizes the importance of a mini-public's embeddedness in the broader public sphere (Niemeyer 2014;Caluwaerts and Reuchamps 2016;Curato and Böker 2016). Several mechanisms are suggested for linking mini-publics to political decision-making to increase their impact (Lafont 2015; Hendriks 2016; Pogrebinschi and Ryan 2017).…”

Section: Connection With Politics and Decision Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Michels

Binnema

2018

Social Sciences

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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.

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Generating Democratic Legitimacy through Deliberative Innovations: The Role of Embeddedness and Disruptiveness

Cited by 33 publications

References 18 publications

Making consultation meaningful: Insights from a case study of the South African mental health policy consultation process

Making consultation meaningful: Insights from a case study of the South African mental health policy consultation process

How citizens evaluate participatory processes: a conjoint analysis

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

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