Article by Fionna Saintraint: “Governance decisions shape every facet of a deliberative mini-public: setting the remit, choosing the experts, identifying how, when and about what people deliberate, and ultimately how they reach and validate their final recommendations. Unsurprisingly, the rapid spread of mini-publics has brought with it a patchwork of process designs, each adapting to different political settings, purposes, and actors. Variations in recruitment, deliberation time, facilitation quality, and information provision reflect the distinct choices of the actors behind each process. However, scholars have observed a gap between DMPs’ normative aspirations and their performance in the face of real world challenges. For instance, the inclusion of marginalised voices is seen by many as a core tenet of DMPs, yet some scholars have found that in practice forums tend to reflect elite preferences. Growing use of mini-publics by public institutions has heightened concerns about cooptation by commissioning bodies or manipulation of processes to drive towards a particular outcome, ethical challenges which scholars of citizen engagement have long warned against.
If we want to understand how the mandates given to deliberative mini-publics become the procedural choices that characterise them, we must examine those calling the shots, to understand how various interests shape the deliberative process, beyond its deliberative quality. This matters because it helps ensure that those who hold power are answerable for decisions that either gate-keep or redistribute democratic authority. Studying governance helps us identify when participation looks inclusive but does in reality little to shift power, creating spaces where people can air grievances without the expectation of policy change. As well as looking at quality and impact, an assessment of governance also needs to be a conversation about integrity…(More)”.
