by Lucy J. Parry, Nicole Curato and John S. Dryzek
Proponents of deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) highlight their ability to break political deadlock, provide informed citizen input into policymaking, and bring diverse, considered perspectives into decision-making. DMPs are composed of randomly selected citizens convened to deliberate upon and yield policy recommendations.
Some suggest that DMPs face risks of being used instrumentally by decisionmakers to bolster popularity or legitimacy. This is exacerbated because governance decisions around DMPs are often opaque or ad hoc. As their popularity increases, so too do these risks. Unlike other forms of political participation, such as elections, there are no generally accepted standards to uphold integrity of DMPs. To what extent can challenges in their ethics and governance be monitored and mitigated?
In our recent article published in Policy & Politics, we found divergent views on this question. We used Q methodology to map shared viewpoints on the integrity and governance of DMPs, with members of the DMPs community: practitioners, researchers, advocates and policymakers involved in their study, design, implementation and promotion. Our study identified five viewpoints on the integrity and governance of deliberative mini-publics as follows.
Rule-Bound Professionalism seeks to cultivate collaborative relationships with policymakers to help improve decision-making through deliberation. It is hopeful about the future of DMPs and feels that effective standards and best practice can uphold integrity. Any actors who might be tempted to violate them can be convinced not to do so.
Professional Autonomy is attuned to the ethical problems that arise during DMPs. To maintain integrity and good practice, Professional Autonomy seeks coalitions of practitioners, publics, and academics to constitute and advance an autonomous realm of democratic practice, with greater distance from governments.
Structural Constraints asserts that integrity can only be upheld by confronting the power dynamics and structural inequalities that shape deliberative practice. Governance of DMPs should be vested in the hands of the citizens who participate – not professionals, which represents a contrast with the first two viewpoints.
Against Uniformity wants to cultivate partnerships with government, making relationships closer rather than more distant. This means dealing with governments in a contextually-specific way. Uniform standards could undermine integrity because they are likely to be modelled on Global North cultural and political practices.
Community Context prioritises the community as a yardstick for integrity. Similar to Against Uniformity, it is contextually specific, but, instead of seeking partnerships with established centres of power, it seeks a new configuration with community at the centre. A strong indicator of integrity is how much the process meets the needs of the community.
Our study indicates divergent views on how challenges in the integrity and governance of DMPs should be managed. The community of practice now faces a delicate series of choices about whether to move toward global standards, or to stress contextualized monitoring with scope for variation and judgment in how deliberative principles are applied and protected – and by whom. Here it is not necessary to seek some once-and-for all, universally applicable choice. Rather, these tensions can be productive. They offer evidence to support practitioners, participants, researchers and policymakers to be fully aware of the dilemmas, threats, possibilities and trade-offs that apply in managing the ethics and governance of deliberative mini-publics.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Parry, L. J., Curato, N., & Dryzek, J. S. (2024). Governance of deliberative mini-publics: emerging consensus and divergent views. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000043
If you enjoyed this blog post, you may also be interested to read our latest Special Issue articles on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis:
Lewallen, J. (2024). The influence of conflict on agenda setting in the US Congress. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000047
Sørensen, E., & Warren, M. E. (2024). Developing a theory of robust democracy. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000050
Verschuere, B., Roets, A., Steyvers, K., Wauters, B., Berkvens, L., De Smedt, N., Goutry, W., Pittoors, G., Van Severen, R., & Haesevoets, T. (2024). Analysing policy actors’ preferences for different modes of governing in local government. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000048
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 