In this narrative account, I reflect on my role as the chair of Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. This role is unique within the assembly model since it spans both the operation and delivery of the work, both member and overseer, and is both internally and externally facing. It is a multifaceted and sometimes ambiguous position, at times moulded by the chair themself. In this article, I share some considerations about the functions and challenges of the role, emphasising the part the chair must play in contributing to the work of the assembly, representing the assembly and its recommendations as they traverse through the political structures, and the personal costs and opportunities involved in the role.
This paper presents qualitative research on the facilitation of Policy Lab (PL) meetings held in a Belgian city. PLs are types of mini-publics that aim to apply a deliberative form of democracy by increasing citizens’ participation in the elaboration of new policies, tailored to their needs. PLs are held with the collaboration of specialized stakeholders and policymakers and include both plenaries and small group workshops. The investigated PL meetings aimed to involve migrant-background children with the aim to improve their integration in the local school system. In these PL meetings, stakeholders were adult migrants and members of education services. The paper focuses on the facilitation of the Belgian meetings, discussing the function of facilitation of migrant children’s participation in deliberative democracy. The analysis is based on the videorecording of two meetings. On the one hand, this analysis shows a directive form of facilitation limiting children’s agency, in terms of choices of ways and contents of their contributions to deliberations. On the other hand, it shows that the children are able to exercise agency and to make proposals to enhance the democratic development of school policies.
Facilitators of public meetings face the complex task of guiding participants through tensional phases of divergent discussions and convergent decision-making conversations. Their task becomes particularly demanding in the convergent phase, when participants have crucial opportunities to influence the meeting’s outcome, yet a structured communicative focus is required. This study analyzes how challenges for facilitators are discursively manifested during the convergent phase of public meetings and through which communicative moves these are addressed. The analysis identifies three recurring challenges for facilitators: topical detours, lack of concretization when formulating suggestions, and uncertainties about ownership of the process. The study contributes to research on facilitation in public meetings by providing empirical insights into the recurring challenges and communicative moves that emerge as facilitators lead meetings to closure, shedding light on the communicative norms and expectations on participants that guide interaction in the crucial convergent phase.
This article examines the interconnection of multiple deliberative spaces and non-deliberative components in the deliberative system and how they complement each other to improve the deliberative quality and the democratization of food safety governance. Using the controversy on the Taiwanese government’s lifting of the ban on food imports from Japan’s radiation-affected Fukushima region, it analyzes multiple communication and deliberative spaces, including discursive narratives by civic society groups, civic online communication platforms and social media, public meetings, the hybrid forum, and the 2018 national referendum. It presents the important role of civic society organizations in knowledge production and democratizing science. The hybrid forum facilitates multi-actor dialogues and collective exploration, fosters learning about uncertainties, integrates plurality of viewpoints to address specific controversies, and attains meta-consensus. It could enhance the interaction between science and policy, improving the connection between these two spheres in deliberative systems. Some communicative activities that appear to be of poor deliberative quality, or even non-deliberative, can be compensated for by high-quality deliberation in other spaces and thus contribute to the deliberative democratization of the governance system.
Despite growing interest in deliberative mini-publics (DMPs), the literature on their institutionalization and embeddedness suffers from conceptual ambiguity and lacks clear definitional frameworks. This study addresses these limitations through a systematic review of 75 studies. We synthesize existing conceptualizations, disentangle ‘institutionalization’ and ‘embeddedness’, and propose a novel conceptual framework to guide the identification of institutionalized and embedded deliberative mini-publics.
Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) interfaces, such as ChatGPT, Bloom, and Gemini, may offer transformative possibilities for deliberative democracy. We argue that deliberation scholars and practitioners should use GAI software to run simulations to complement existing deliberative processes. By simulations, we mean the use of GAI software to run hypothetical deliberations, either with or on behalf of human participants, to support rather than replace human judgment. We expand on the notion of a GAI deliberation simulation and showcase an example using GPT-4o. To illustrate the practical advantages of simulations, we showcase two use cases: training facilitators and providing time-sensitive policy consultation. We also address potential cautions and limitations surrounding GAI simulations, such as concerns about transparency and bias. We conclude by exploring the theoretical implications of GAI simulations for developing and refining models of deliberation dynamics.
We propose the concept of democratic transposition to describe how democratic innovations travel and take root in regions, countries, and contexts different from those in which they originated. In such processes, policymakers and practitioners should avoid democratic colonization—the uncritical transfer of models shaped by coercion or epistemic dominance. As an alternative, we advance the notion of deliberative innovation: the idea that innovation should itself emerge from a dialogical process among policymakers, local communities, and international peers. We argue that transposition is deliberative when actors display receptiveness (openness to feedback from both international peers and local communities), sensitivity (attentiveness to local contexts rather than reliance on one-size-fits-all approaches), and generativity (producing outcomes that are not only new but also valuable both locally and beyond). Drawing on four examples—Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and Chile—we illustrate how these experiences demonstrate the potential of deliberative innovation.
Proponents and critics of deliberative democracy alike often interpret the theory as revolving around the implementation of a practice of deliberation as modelled on the idealistic standard of Jürgen Habermas’ ‘ideal speech situation’. As well as an explosion of deliberative mini-publics in practice, such as citizens’ assemblies, this interpretation has given rise to a long-standing critique of deliberative democracy as setting a rigid, idealistic and exclusionary standard that undermines democratic politics more than advancing it. Unpacking the conceptual distinction between deliberation as a practice-to-be-implemented and deliberative democracy as a wider theory of legitimacy, here I present an alternative interpretation of Habermasian deliberative democracy as a political culture oriented toward resisting domination, to which a practice of deliberation modelled on the ideal speech situation is neither necessary nor conducive. Rather than orchestrating deliberation in this alleged textbook sense, deliberative democrats ought to nurture a general critical-democratic political culture in both the practice and the ongoing theoretical development of deliberative democracy.
This paper studies the role of public participation in the context of emergencies, such as pandemics. Two main challenges of democratic governance that can arise during acute crises are the uncertainty of information and the urgency of the situation. These challenges can lead to the technocratisation of emergency response and executive overreach that can undermine the democratic governance of a crisis. In response to this potential for the erosion of civil democracies in exceptional situations, this paper argues that the use of democratic innovations, such as public participation, should also be extended to exceptional circumstances to strengthen democratic governance in emergencies. The involvement of the general public in crisis management can generate a more efficient crisis response, build trust in public authorities, and increase public compliance. Moreover, public involvement during acute crises can increase communication between the official emergency response and citizens’ preferences. Deliberative practices are especially suited for emergencies due to their capacity to reduce many of the inequalities in citizen groups. A further benefit of deliberative processes is that they can stimulate and support informed public opinion by putting structures into place that acknowledge common interests and long-term policy preferences. The analysis of deliberative mini-publics organised globally in connection to the COVID-19 pandemic show varying and novel responses to the challenges of responding to acute crises. These deliberative processes demonstrate how citizen groups and public authorities can contribute to both responsible and responsive governance during crisis situations.
Critics of deliberative democracy fear that it may lead to the ‘domination of the more advantaged,’ where participants with less social advantage struggle to speak logically and defer to more advantaged peers. This study analyzed 9,810 speeches by 664 participants nested in 116 groups on an Online Deliberation Platform, using dictionary-based and machine-learning methods, along with Zero-Inflated Poisson and Zero-Inflated Beta regression models. The study also examined whether group opinion changes aligned with the pre-deliberation views of more advantaged participants. Findings show that while socially advantaged participants spoke more favorable to the traditional standards of deliberation, their opinions did not necessarily influence the opinions of less advantaged participants.
The global diffusion of participatory budgeting (PB) has attracted scholarly attention, particularly regarding how PB is institutionalised across different contexts. This article argues that institutionalisation requires both top-down and bottom-up efforts to introduce and promote PB, with media framing playing a crucial role in shaping how it is presented to the public. Using South Korea as a case study, this article analysed 28,480 news articles mentioning PB from 1991 to 2022, sourced from a digital news archive. A structural topic model was employed to identify major frames and trends in the extensive textual data. The analysis revealed 17 topics, with PB framed as a tool for regeneration and decentralisation strategies, distinct from the original Porto Alegre model. The findings also showed that media frames shifted after PB became mandatory in 2011 and varied between national and local newspapers, reflecting its dynamic nature. This study demonstrates the application of the media framing approach for both single and comparative contexts, offering a valuable framework for advancing research on the global diffusion of PB.
Mary Scudder’s Listening Act Theory gives reason to analyze more than the attitudinal or policy outcomes of deliberation, but also the relationships created in the processes of deliberation. This essay examines the connections between ilauditory acts of listening between government actors and Black leaders in Elgin, Illinois prior to and during the controversy in question. Employing participatory critical rhetoric, deliberations were explored by interviewing participants in situ. The argument is proffered that a history of deliberative engagement characterized by seriousness, humility, and attentiveness shaped the subsequent context. During an especially fraught controversy over a public mural depicting a lynch mob, the relationships that prior deliberations fostered contributed to a context more conducive to listening.
To effectively address grand challenges, such as decarbonization, digitalization and demographic change, engagement is required from diverse actors across policy-making, private business, academia and civil society. Contemporary transformation literature emphasizes Participatory Policy-making (PPM) instruments as critical tools in this process. PPM purportedly enhances both the effectiveness and efficiency of public policies while simultaneously strengthening their legitimacy – a function particularly valuable for socially contested policy issues. However, critical perspectives highlight various theoretical and practical concerns associated with PPM implementation. This article aims to contribute to deliberative theory and practice by presenting a risk-based perspective on PPM that examines intended effects in relation to unintended consequences and contextual factors. Drawing on the lessons learned during PPM projects in Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, and Switzerland, we explore the opportunities and challenges of introducing PPM instruments at the local level within transformative societal processes. Specifically, we investigate the implementation of a set of participatory instruments – such as stakeholder workshops, Delphi surveys, focus groups and citizen panels – over a three-year period from 2021 to 2023. We identify four key contextual conditions influencing the prospects for successful PPM: Local political situation, trust and social capital, institutional commitment, and deliberative capacities. Based on these findings, we develop a set of guiding questions, aimed to support practitioners to develop deliberative strategies that anticipate and mitigate unintended negative consequences, such as the deceleration of essential policy changes or the erosion of political legitimization.
