Dynamics of instituting mini-publics for a more participatory democracy

Working paper contextualizing a policy proposal of youth participants in IYTT’s International Youth Conference 2019 in terms of existing research and practice.

Abstract: This working paper foregrounds key dynamics to engage with when instituting deliberative processes called mini-publics with the aim of achieving a more participatory democracy. Mini-publics are deliberative forums in which 20–500 citizens, randomly-selected and filtered to match the overall population, investigate, deliberate, and make recommendations on public issues in order to improve decision-making and inform public opinion. ‘Instituting’ such forums is understood in two (potentially combined) modes: as enacting a one-time mini-public process or as formally institutionalizing such processes. Appeals to both have ascended in democratic theory and practice as a countermeasure to rising democratic deficits, and been encouraged by the relative success of recent citizens’ assemblies. The paper’s theoretical framework is based on the prevailing ‘systemic approach’ to deliberative democracy, in which mini-publics are understood as one component/site interacting—in various ways and to various degrees—with others within a wider system. The framework is then given a normative orientation around the potential of mini-publics to better empower citizens and thus generate a more participatory and citizen-responsive democracy, understood as a combinatory participatory-deliberative democratic system. Discussion of key dynamics in engaging citizens, civil society, governance, the media, and so on, driven by empirical examples, is then sorted under propositions linked with the two modes of instituting: how ad-hoc mini-publics can better engage with wider system dynamics and, how mini-publics can be institutionalized dynamically.

Keywords: mini-publics, institutionalization, participatory democracy, deliberative democracy, deliberative systems

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Geib, J. (2021). Dynamics of instituting mini-publics for a more participatory democracy. International Youth Think Tank (IYTT) – Working Paper No. 1. Available at: https://iythinktank.com/euro-youth-data/.