Abstract:This article analyses the institutionalisation of public and civic forms of deliberation within the Scottish Parliament. The analysis focuses on the committee system of the Parliament and is constructed around a unique database, created by the authors, which records the nature of all deliberative instances involving parliamentary committees and members of the public/stake-holding groups between 1999 and 2009. Findings emerge from the data that are of relevance to two main audiences. First, those with a concern… Show more
“…Third, scholarship on the importance of scrutiny formats (Davidson and Stark ), and the acknowledged weakness of consociational legislatures, can be interpreted to develop a claim that: Consociational committee scrutiny is associated with formats that diminish capacity to scrutinize the powerful, particularly ministers and government officials (C7).…”
“…Third, scholarship on the importance of scrutiny formats (Davidson and Stark 2011), and the acknowledged weakness of consociational legislatures, can be interpreted to develop a claim that:…”
This article considers non‐legislative committee scrutiny at the Northern Ireland Assembly. The core question is: How is such committee scrutiny diminished through the consociational/power‐sharing context? The question is assessed in terms of three phases – selection, obtaining evidence, and evaluative – and through eight specific claims. Consideration is also given to the context of the absence of a formal opposition, ways in which politicians can circumvent consociational constraints, and connections to the current reform agenda at the Assembly. Overall, the study identifies significant support for the claims in terms of practice at the Assembly and suggests that these findings offer opportunities for other scholars to develop further the literature on consociational governance. There is also a clear association with wider issues of the balance of power between legislatures and executives more generally.
“…Third, scholarship on the importance of scrutiny formats (Davidson and Stark ), and the acknowledged weakness of consociational legislatures, can be interpreted to develop a claim that: Consociational committee scrutiny is associated with formats that diminish capacity to scrutinize the powerful, particularly ministers and government officials (C7).…”
“…Third, scholarship on the importance of scrutiny formats (Davidson and Stark 2011), and the acknowledged weakness of consociational legislatures, can be interpreted to develop a claim that:…”
This article considers non‐legislative committee scrutiny at the Northern Ireland Assembly. The core question is: How is such committee scrutiny diminished through the consociational/power‐sharing context? The question is assessed in terms of three phases – selection, obtaining evidence, and evaluative – and through eight specific claims. Consideration is also given to the context of the absence of a formal opposition, ways in which politicians can circumvent consociational constraints, and connections to the current reform agenda at the Assembly. Overall, the study identifies significant support for the claims in terms of practice at the Assembly and suggests that these findings offer opportunities for other scholars to develop further the literature on consociational governance. There is also a clear association with wider issues of the balance of power between legislatures and executives more generally.
“…DePER can be applied to institutions not explicitly connected to deliberative democracy, and different UK parliaments and committees in Westminster and Holyrood have already been reviewed on their deliberative potential (Steiner et al. ; Davidson and Stark ).…”
“…In addition, existing UK parliamentary institutions have been examined on their deliberative potential (Steiner et al. ; Davidson and Stark ). These experiments are occurring despite the absence of a comprehensive and systematic comparison of the problems faced for each mechanism, coordinated understanding of what each mechanism could realistically achieve, and information about how these various mechanisms relate to each other.…”
This article:• Presents a framework for comparing institutions and their ability to enact various norms of deliberative democracy across various stages of the policy process and different levels of governance. • Specifically contextualises this framework for application in the UK.A range of institutional mechanisms have been advocated to ensure the practical application of deliberative democracy, and these are now being employed in practice throughout the UK. However, different institutional mechanisms will be suited to the enactment of variant democratic principles and will be able to adapt to some features of complexity and not others. This means certain institutional devices will be able to operate effectively at different levels of governance, but not at others, and contribute to some, but not all, stages of a decision-making sequence, within different political systems. A comprehensive and systematic comparison of the relationship these institutions have to deliberative democracy is therefore required so that these institutions can be effectively sequenced to ensure all the key elements of deliberative democracy are enacted in the UK political system, at each level of governance and stage of decision-making. This article therefore develops the 'Deliberative Pragmatic Equilibrium Review' (DePER) framework to enable such a comparison of institutional mechanisms, with respect to how they enact key principles of deliberative democracy, by combining normative and empirical analysis through the employment of Fung's 'pragmatic equilibrium' approach. The framework is applicable to all political systems, but is here tailored specifically for institutional comparison in the UK, although it is not applied to concrete cases in this article.
Research Highlights and Abstract
This article:
Provides an overview of the development of deliberative and participatory democracy in the UK.
Critically analyses the success of consecutive UK national governments in fostering deliberative and participatory processes.
Surveys the development of deliberative and participatory processes in the UK at sub‐national and local level.
Provides a starting point for comparative politics on deliberative and participatory democracy between the UK and other polities.
This article responds to Michael Saward's call for a more context‐specific approach to the study of democracy by exploring developments in, obstacles to, and prospects for, a more deliberative and participatory model of democracy in the UK. A review is undertaken first of the New Labour and coalition governments' attempts at constitutional reform, in order to assess the implications these efforts have had, and continue to have, for the institutionalisation of such a model of democracy. Despite proclamations of lofty ambition successive UK governments have wrapped themselves in the straightjacketing logic of the Westminster model of parliamentary government. As a consequence their actual proposals lack ambition and are often incoherent. The story told in this respect is therefore one of largely unrealised rhetoric. The ‘largely’ qualifier is included, however, in recognition of the space created by Labour's constitutional reforms for participation at the peripheries of governance. The second section of the article focuses on these spaces by, first, commenting briefly on whether the participatory aspirations of the architects of Scottish devolution have been realised before, second, examining the use of specific deliberative mechanisms—such as citizens' juries, deliberative polls and participatory budgeting—at varying locations within the political system and in public agencies and services. Evidence of democratic innovation is presented; however, any optimism on this front must be tempered, as the power‐sharing potential of such mechanisms, and their capacity to move us towards a more comprehensive and joined‐up deliberative system in the UK, is hampered by the lack of a facilitating institutional landscape. Finally, an overview is provided of the three remaining articles that make up this special section on deliberative and participatory democracy in the UK.
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