Experts and evidence in deliberation: scrutinising the role of witnesses and evidence in mini-publics, a case study

Experts hold a prominent position in guiding and shaping policy-making; however, the nature of expert input to decision-making is a topic of public debate. A key aspect of deliberative processes such as citizens’ juries is the provision of information to participants, usually from expert witnesses. However, there is currently little guidance on some of the challenges that organisers and advocates of citizens’ juries must consider regarding expert involvement, including the role of the witness, issues around witness identification and selection, the format of evidence provision, the evidence itself, and how these factors affect the experience of the participants and the witnesses. Here, we explore these issues through detailed case study of three citizens’ juries on onshore wind farm development in Scotland, including interviews with the witnesses involved. This is complemented by examining a cohort of mini-publics held on energy and the environment topics, and, where possible, discussion with the program organisers. We identify a series of issues and sensitivities that can compromise the effectiveness and fairness of the evidence-giving in mini-publics, for the participants, the witnesses and the organisers. We recommend approaches and areas for future work to address these challenges. This is the first time that the ways of involving witnesses in such processes have been so comprehensively examined, and is timely given the increasing interest in democratic innovations such as mini-publics and the current discourse concerning experts

Rating the debates: The 2010 UK party leaders? debates and political communication in the deliberative system

Leader debates have become a pre-eminent means of campaign communication in numerous countries and were introduced in the UK relatively recently. However, the quality of such communication is, to put it mildly, open to question. This article uses the Discourse Quality Index (DQI) to assess the deliberative quality of the 2010 UK party leaders? debates. When scrutinized in isolation, and viewed through the full prism of the DQI categories, the quality of discourse evidenced in the debates is a relatively poor reflection of mainstream idealizations of democratic deliberation. However, when the analysis is rehoused within the wider project of constructing a deliberative system in the UK, and is given a comparative institutional dimension, the epistemic value of the debates is revealed. The relatively high level of justification employed by the party leaders suggests that the debates are a valuable means for the mass communication of reasoned defenses of manifesto pledges to the public sphere, and that they are likely to have a significant educative effect. Moreover, we argue that sequencing such debates with representative deliberative fora will force elites to improve the deliberative quality of their communication and enhance the reflective capacity of the viewing public

Mini-publics and policy impact analysis:filtration in the citizens' assembly on social care

The use of mini-publics to enable some citizens to feed policy recommendations into public policy processes is gaining popularity. However, assessing whether and to what extent mini-publics have policy impact is extremely challenging due to the complexity of policy processes. We make the case for a new approach to analysing mini-public policy impact with respect to an analysis of the journeys made by each mini-public recommendation, with a view to developing a better understanding of their influence within the specific policy context in which they operate. We propose that employing a ‘filtration’ lens enables a consideration of not only which recommendations are accepted, rejected or ignored by public authorities, but whether they are reconceptualised. We develop a framework that enables the classification of the recommendations and their policy journeys and apply it to the Citizens’ Assembly on Social Care, commissioned by select committees in the House of Commons. Through analysis of the grey literature around the case we were able to establish the type of journey each recommendation had undergone. This provided us with nuanced analysis of what was filtered out, where, how, by whom, and why. We therefore believe the framework is a significant addition to the toolkit of those researching mini-publics

The future of climate assemblies

Given the increase and spread of climate assemblies in recent times, and the related hyperbole that has followed, this chapter seeks to provide a critical examination of what they can contribute to democratising environmental and climate governance in practice. We assess the extent climate assemblies are, and can be, important new civic institutions for a climate-changed world. The chapter draws together the key lessons from practice to date and offers insights to inform research, policy, and practice on climate assemblies and environmental governance. In doing so we address two important questions for climate assemblies. Firstly, we consider to what extent the citizens’ assembly model of public engagement ‘works’ on the climate change issue. We outline what constitutes ‘working’ in this context and who climate assemblies ‘work’ for. Secondly, we make the case that five normative developments around the use of climate assemblies need to happen in practice if their potential to help democratise climate governance is to materialise. Whilst we do not claim that these will be the future developments of climate assemblies, we do identify emerging examples that relate to our normative proposals and consider the implications for the next generation of climate assemblies and research in this area

Deliberative innovations:Using ‘mini-publics’ to improve participation and deliberation at the Scottish Parliament

This paper introduces a range of democratic innovations known as‘mini-publics’ and outlines key features, how they work, and how they may improve opportunities for citizens to contribute to parliamentary deliberation.The idea of mini-publics was first proposed four decades ago by political scientist Robert Dahl(1989). Inspired by democratic ideals and social science principles, Dahl envisioned an innovative mechanism for involving citizens in dealing with public issues. He called it ‘minipopulus’: an assembly of citizens, demographically representative of the larger population, brought together to learn and deliberate on a topic in order to inform public opinion and decision-making.A growing number of democratic innovations have flourished around the world based on this idea(see Elstub 2014; Grönlundet al 2014; Elstub and Escobar forthcoming), from Citizens’ Juries, to Planning Cells, Consensus Conferences, Deliberative Polls and Citizens’ Assemblies(see Table 1). Mini-publics have been used to deal with topics ranging from constitutional and electoral reform, to controversial science and technology, and myriad social issues (e.g. health, justice, planning, sectarianism)

The present of climate assemblies

Climate assemblies are a fast-growing phenomenon in the fields of democratic innovation and environmental governance. These new civic institutions empower citizens to participate in evidence-informed deliberation to advance collective action on the climate and ecological crisis. Climate assemblies are part of ongoing efforts to democratise environmental governance and respond to the challenges of our climate-changed world. This introductory chapter provides a state-of-the-art overview of this emerging field of research and practice. We cover the history and development of climate assemblies, reflecting on the environmental, socioeconomic, and political contexts that explain their emergence. We also provide an overview of their characteristics, critiques, and impacts, and argue that practice is progressing faster than research. Then we outline how this book contributes to narrow that gap by focussing on both the internal and external dimensions of climate assemblies, and how they are intertwined. All chapters are introduced and summarised to offer an accessible guide to key insights, before concluding with reflections about the hope and hype that underpins the present state of the field

Democratic cultural policy : democratic forms and policy consequences

The forms that are adopted to give practical meaning to democracy are assessed to identify what their implications are for the production of public policies in general and cultural policies in particular. A comparison of direct, representative, democratic elitist and deliberative versions of democracy identifies clear differences between them in terms of policy form and democratic practice. Further elaboration of these differences and their consequences are identified as areas for further research

Cultivating autonomy : a case for deliberative and associational democracy

The thesis aims to justify liberal democracy on the cultivation of autonomy amongst its citizens. The potential of deliberative democracy and associational democracy to achieve this cultivation are then critically evaluated It is suggested that autonomy has intrinsic value and an intrinsic connection to democracy, particularly in Western democracies. Deliberative democracy is justified as the most suitable model of decision-making to cultivate autonomy due to its enhancement of public reason, speaker and hearer autonomy. All three factors therefore encourage reflective preference transformation. which is the defining mark of deliberative democracy. A perfectionist case of deliberative democracy is further presented and associations in civil society are evaluated as a location of deliberative democracy. It is argued that the associations can achieve this by fulfilling four functions: they can be venues for subsidiarity; provide information and representation; be schools of democracy; and locations for governance. The fulfilment of these functions enables the institutionalisation of deliberative democracy to overcome some of the threats of complexity, pluralism, size and inequality. However, not all associations can achieve all four functions and in order to do so, they must be internally democratic. The associations also need to pursue a dualist strategy in relation to the state. This involves a critical public sphere with informal networks of communication based upon the norms of deliberative democracy. The public sphere should then set the agenda for legislation through the `outside access model'. The second strand of the dualist strategy is to gain access to legislative arenas. Associational mediating forums with power devolved from the state, again based on the norms of deliberative democracy, are advocated as a suitable method by which to achieve this. This associational model differs from the neo-pluralist model of interest groups because it is based upon the norms of deliberative democracy and can therefore promote the common good and avoid the `mischief of factionalism'. Finally, a case study of the Stanage Forum is considered I suggest that it approximates the associational mediating forums and highlights where trade-offs between the ideal and practice need to be, can be, should be and will be made

Deliberative quality and expertise:Uses of evidence in citizens’ juries on wind farms

When addressing socio-scientific wicked problems, there is a need to negotiate across and through multiple modes of evidence, particularly technical expertise and local knowledge. Democratic innovations, such as deliberative citizens’ juries, have been proposed as a means of managing these tensions and as a way of creating representative, fairer decision making. But there are questions around participatory processes, the utilization of expertise, and deliberative quality. This paper considers forms of argumentation in the 2013-2014 “Citizens’ juries on wind farm development in Scotland.” Through a critical-interpretative research methodology drawing on rhetoric and argumentation, we demonstrate that arguments relating to the topoi of the environment and health functioned as de facto reasoning, whereas arguments using social scientific evidence around economics more prominently interacted with local knowledge. The findings offer implications for process design to improve and promote deliberative quality in mini-publics and other forms of participatory engagement on socio-scientific issues