This article shows how the principles of participatory deliberative democracy can serve as a guide for the institutional design of minipublics, while also discussing the obstacles such proposals are likely to face in becoming realised in practice. It does so by discussing the case of citizen-initiated citizens’ assemblies in Flanders, Belgium. This case represents an ambitious proposal that combined elements of petition, deliberation, public consultation and parliamentary deliberation to generate a robust deliberative system. Yet in the end it was soundly defeated in parliament. By studying the institutional specifics of this proposal as well as the macro-deliberative circumstances that led to its failure, this article presents a nuanced picture of the promises and pitfalls of institutionalising deliberative minipublics. It concludes with a call to ‘deliberative activism’.
Under what conditions can deliberative minipublics empower the macro-public of citzens? This is one of the issues that political theorist Cristina Lafont tackles in her book
This article contributes to this debate by providing an empirical case of a deliberative minipublic that was characterised by a strong participatory dimension, from its formation to its conclusion. I present the case of the citizen-initiated citizens’ assemblies in Flanders – an ambitious proposal that combined elements of petition, deliberation, public consultation and parliamentary deliberation, among others, to generate a robust deliberative system. I describe the ways in which this minipublic’s design brought Lafont’s prescriptions on the roles of minipublics to life through key design principles. I conclude, however, on a more sceptical note. In the end, this proposal was soundly defeated in parliament, even though a large majority of Flemish political parties had expressed support for the idea of a minipublic in some shape or form. I argue that the gaping distance between the proposal’s ambitions and its ultimate fate in parliament shows that, while participatory principles can provide a consistent guide when designing minipublics, the institutionalisation of such designs will face formidable obstacles in the real world. Overcoming these obstacles will require a broad coalition of academics, activists and citizens committed to seeing these principles realised in practice. The transformation of actual public opinion is thus not only the end-goal for a participatory approach to deliberative minipublics, but one of its preconditions as well.
Deliberative minipublics have a long history, one that even predates the ‘deliberative turn’ in democratic theory (
In order to make this transformation from innovation to institution a reality, it is necessary to address a number of weaknesses that minipublics currently suffer from. The first of these is that deliberative minipublics tend to be organised on an ad hoc basis. Often, they are convened on the initiative of policymakers when (and only when)
Impressive as they might be, the Irish examples show the limits of a non-institutionalised use of minipublics. While it might create a space for citizens to deliberate, it does not provide the tools through which citizens can demand that such a space be created in the first place. Nor can it ensure that the outcomes of their deliberations are not simply ignored. This top-down approach stands in tension with the emancipatory role that most deliberative democrats envisage deliberative minipublics to fulfil, since it reduces citizen participation to a favour granted
This view, however, is contested in deliberative theory. Lafont put forward arguably one of the most powerful critiques against granting decision-making powers to minipublics. The crux of Lafont’s argument is that empowering deliberative minipublics to decide public policy by themselves would force non-participants to blindly defer to the judgement of the minipublic. It is supposed to represent ‘what they would have decided if they had deliberated’, even though from the perspective of an individual citizen there is no reason to assume that this is the case. Since minipublics tend to use some form of non-unanimous decision-making, there is simply no way to know whether a non-participant would have ended up in the majority or in the minority after deliberating, since both majority and minority went through the same learning process and can therefore claim to represent what the public ‘would think’ after deliberating (
This posits a challenge for institutional design. Can minipublics be institutionalised in such a way that their design simultaneously addresses the weaknesses of a purely ad hoc use of minipublics, and takes into account the normative arguments against fully empowering them to make binding collective decisions? Can minipublics have some form of empowerment so that they are not irrelevant, but also be strongly connected to the wider public so as to live up to deliberative democracy’s participatory ethos? I argue that the citizen-initiated citizens’ assembly in Flanders addressed many of these dilemmas. Before I discuss the design in greater detail, however, it is important to be clear about what exactly the institutionalisation of minipublics entails (for a different, but somewhat overlapping set of criteria, see
In order to achieve the status of institution, rather than being seen as an innovation to deal with extraordinary circumstances, deliberative minipublics would have to become part of the ‘normal’ way of doing politics. A straightforward way to address the minipublic’s ad hoc and top-down character is to take the decision to organise a deliberative minipublic (at least partly) out of the hands of government by specifying the situations where minipublics are to be used (
Of course, this does not mean that going forward
Because of their ad hoc nature, the design of deliberative minipublics often varies from case to case. While this allows for experimentation and the discovery of new best practices, at the same time it undermines the legitimacy and status of deliberative minipublics from the perspective of the wider public. As Lafont argues, in order for citizens to be able to place their trust in deliberative minipublics, they first need to have a readily available understanding of what a deliberative minipublic is, how it functions, and what is to be expected of its outcome – which is impossible if their design is subject to constant change (
For minipublics to make the transition from innovation to institution, they should be able to assert a degree of autonomy vis-à-vis other institutions. Deliberative minipublics should be given enough powers so that the participants remain in control of their own deliberation and the process is protected from being co-opted by its organisers. Possible means to achieve this aim could include the right of participants to invite additional experts or to expand the agenda of the minipublic if they deem this necessary. Without such options, it would be all too easy for organisers to stonewall deliberations, forcing citizens to discuss some unimportant side-issue while the really pressing issues remain beyond their grasp. Under such conditions, public deliberation becomes little more than a PR operation intended to create the illusion of democratic engagement – or what Bächtiger and Parkinson have called ‘wallpaper democracy’ (2019: 82).
However, the fact that institutionalised minipublics need to achieve a degree of autonomy vis-à-vis other state institutions should not be taken to mean that they should assert this autonomy against the broader public (via the so-called shortcut approach). The requirement for autonomy concerns the internal workings of the minipublic and is a characteristic of institutionalisation, without which a minipublic would simply be an add-on to existing institutions. The relation of the minipublic to the wider public is a different question altogether and concerns the position of the minipublic within the deliberative system. Some designs for institutionalised minipublics stress the independence of minipublics from the broader public sphere. Philip Pettit’s ‘depoliticisation’ strategy is a prime example, since under his proposal it is precisely by isolating the minipublic from the idiosyncrasies of the public sphere that minipublics are presumed to be able to deal with morally contentious issues such as criminal law reform (
Let us now turn to the Flemish case in some more detail. In 2014 the Belgian autonomous region of Flanders received a number of new powers to shape its own political decision-making process (as did the other federated entities in Belgium). This led the Flemish parliament to undertake a broad-ranging debate on democratic renewal which took place over the course of 2017 and the beginning of 2018. As part of this debate, the Green Party introduced a Bill which sought to make it possible for 80,000 citizens to demand a citizens’ assembly on any topic belonging to the competencies of Flanders (hereafter called the Citizens’ Assembly Bill).
Robert Dahl considers ‘control of the agenda’ as one of the defining criteria of democracy. He argues that ‘the members must have the exclusive opportunity to decide how, and if they so choose, what matters are to be placed on the agenda’ (
The agenda initiative amounts to a collective right of petition. By gathering a specified number of signatures (80,000 in the Flemish case), citizens can require parliament to consider a proposal. The agenda initiative contributes to the deliberative system by encouraging the active involvement of civil society, and – at least in theory – promoting the responsiveness of empowered decision-making institutions towards discourses circulating in the public sphere (
The next step in the citizen-initiated citizens’ assembly addresses this weakness. It combines the sense of agency and citizen action embodied in the initiative process, something that is lacking in sortition (
An important caveat to make with regard to this proposal is that, while the citizen-initiated citizens’ assembly as a whole would serve an agenda-setting role by transmitting new issues, ideas and recommendations to parliament, the original initiative comes from
There are several reasons why this connection to the wider public through the instrument of petition is preferable to an autonomous agenda-setting role for the citizens’ assembly. Fundamentally, this institutional set-up offers a
The Citizens’ Assembly Bill addressed these fundamental democratic issues by creating a right for
Of course, simply because citizens put forward a petition, or raise new issues through the consultation procedure, does not mean that these ideas should be treated as the law of the land without further scrutiny. What is needed then is an additional filter, one that is not based on numbers or signatures but allows the widest possible range of perspectives and viewpoints to be represented, before these are structured and narrowed down in a discursive process. It is precisely this role which the citizen-initiated citizens’ assembly would be able to fulfil. It would act as something of a ‘discursive filter’ by passing calls for political action through a ‘deliberative sluice’.
The gathering of signatures forms a first test, where the initiative’s sponsors need to be able to show that their proposal addresses a felt need among a significant part of the citizenry. This is important since a deliberative system’s capacity to respond to these calls for action is necessarily limited in terms of time as well as the financial means available. There is thus a need for a procedure through which we can distinguish between those claims, ideas and proposals that enjoy a degree of support in society that warrants that they be taken seriously by the formal institutions of the state, and those that do not. The signature threshold is such a ‘claim-laundering’ process (
This idea of the deliberative assembly acting as an additional discursive filter on top of the signature threshold can be seen in the institutional specifics of the Citizens’ Assembly Bill, and most clearly in the composition of the assembly and the special role given to the sponsors of the initiative. According to the Bill, the assembly would include one to five of the initiative’s sponsors in addition to the other participants. This last addition is specific to the citizen-initiated nature of this deliberative assembly. The special status of the proposal’s sponsors gives institutional recognition to their claim to represent the voice of at least 80,000 of their fellow citizens. The initiative’s sponsors are thus given the right not only to address the deliberative assembly – like other interest or activist groups – but to actively participate in its deliberations. The automatic inclusion of the initiative’s sponsors in the deliberative assembly ensures that the petitioners’ views are taken up in the process, while the fact that they only occupy five seats out of more than a hundred makes it obvious that they will still have to try and persuade the other members of the assembly.
If they succeed in this endeavour, however, the fact that the initiative-takers are supported in their demands by a broadly representative sample of the population would give more credence to their claim to represent the public voice, and not just a vocal minority. Compared to the aforementioned agenda initiative, the government would therefore be in a better position to assess calls for political action. This is particularly so because the Citizens’ Assembly Bill proposed a mixed composition in which 75 seats would be occupied by randomly selected citizens and 25 seats would be assigned to members of the Flemish parliament. The presence of these elected representatives forms an instance of designed coupling (
Even if the government were ultimately to dismiss the assembly’s recommendations, it would not be without effect. Because of the broad representativeness of the assembly, its demands would no longer be able to be simply dismissed as unrepresentative or misguided. The citizen-initiated citizens’ assembly therefore not only forces petitioners to appeal to mutually acceptable reasons as to why collective action needs to be undertaken (
Perhaps just as important is how the interaction between outside groups such as those referred to by Lafont and a minipublic can help to overcome one of the biggest weaknesses that deliberative minipublics suffer from: their lack of visibility (
The promise of the Citizens’ Assembly Bill failed to materialise. It was soundly defeated in the plenary vote, with only the Green Party voting in favour. This might come as a surprise to some observers. Recently, Belgium has been considered a trailblazer in democratic innovations (
Democratic renewal features highly on the political agenda in Belgium. While the challenge of reconnecting citizens with the democratic process is not unique to Belgium, it is often felt as particularly acute for this specific polity. Not only is Belgium a deeply divided country where political parties and the media system are split along linguistic lines – so that there is little in terms of an overarching Belgian public sphere – but its political system is characterised by strong executives, weak parliaments and highly centralised parties (so much so, that it has even been termed a ‘particracy’) which leaves little room for citizen participation (
A brief review of the history of democratic innovations in Belgium is useful to illustrate this point. In the early 2000s government coalitions both at the federal and regional levels showed enthusiasm for instruments of direct democracy such as referendums and popular initiatives. However, few steps were taken to actually implement these proposals.
This recurring pattern raises the question to what extent (Flemish) political parties genuinely seek to give citizens control over policymaking through deliberative minipublics. The rejection of the Citizens’ Assembly Bill is a perfect illustration of the ‘participatory dissonance’ that these parties suffer from. While they may be formally committed to increasing citizen participation, when push comes to shove they are unwilling to actually share power with citizens (
The failure to institutionalise the Citizens’ Assembly Bill is not only attributable to parliament, however, but represents a broader failure to hold politics to account: elected politicians felt free to support the
This offers an important lesson to deliberative democrats that ‘neither ideas nor institutions are self-implementing’ (
The G1000 did have a lasting effect in a different sense, however. The organising committee behind the G1000 which consisted of artists, academics and public intellectuals continued to convene after the G1000 itself was concluded. This became a platform to campaign for more deliberative democracy in Belgium, which was one of the driving forces behind the implementation of a system of citizens’ assemblies in the small German-speaking community of Belgium, the so-called ‘Ostbelgien Model’ (
Public pressure can come from different spaces. Social movements and activist networks are obvious agents to exert public pressure. Although social movements have for a long time been derided by deliberative democracy scholars as partisan enclaves of like-minded activists, these enclaves provide both the motivational and organisational foundations necessary for sustaining the political campaign to institutionalise minipublics over the long stretches of time it will take to see those proposals realised (
Of course, citizens campaigning for more deliberative democracy may sometimes find allies in elected officials, civil servants or other actors operating from within the political system (the Irish assemblies mentioned earlier being a good example). Yet this is unlikely to prove a reliable strategy towards institutionalisation. As the literature on electoral reform has shown, reforms running against the self-interest of incumbents require external pressures to be successful (
While most deliberative democrats now agree that social movements have an important role to play in a well-functioning deliberative system, and while deliberative democratic scholarship has now started to seriously study social movements (
The story of the Flemish Citizens’ Assembly Bill is one of cautionary optimism. It is optimistic, because it shows how normative theories of deliberative democracy can serve as a practical guide when designing democratic institutions. It presents a picture of how minipublics can be adapted to serve the goal of democratic self-government without falling into the trap of the micro-deliberative shortcut that Lafont warns us about. At the same time, its ultimate failure constitutes a warning. The types of minipublics that are most promising for a participatory conception of deliberative democracy, namely those that lend citizens a voice to criticise, contest and challenge the status quo, will face the most uphill struggle to become institutionalised. If deliberative democrats want to see the promise of the deliberative wave realised, they cannot limit themselves to elaborating new institutional designs, but should also study (and support) the macro-political struggles and engage in the ‘deliberative activism’ (
A third referendum to lower the age-limit for the position of president was held at the same time as the gay marriage referendum, but this proposal did not receive a majority of the votes.
Lafont is right to highlight the troubling similarities between the logic of ‘embodiment’ which sometimes characterises arguments for an empowered use of minipublics and populism (
The author was not directly involved in the drafting of the Bill, but did provide legal advice and testimony to the Flemish parliament on this matter.
By way of example, in 2009 – in the context of a local referendum in the Flemish city of Antwerp – a group of citizens called Ademloos (‘without breath’) was able to gather 66,158 signatures to demand a referendum on the city’s plans to build a new highway bridge close to the city centre (
The exception to the rule is the Region of Wallonia, which introduced legislation in 2018 to make it possible for 60,000 citizens to demand a non-binding referendum:
At the time, Belgium was going through a deep and prolonged constitutional crisis. After the 2010 elections, it took more than 541 days to form a new government – giving Belgium the questionable honour of holding the world record in ‘government formation’. This sorry state of affairs threw the failure of traditional representative institutions into stark relief, and explains the considerable media attention for the G1000: it presented an alternative vision of what democracy could be like, at a time when many people had become disillusioned with traditional institutions.
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. A special shout-out goes to Nicole Curato for her generous advice and her support throughout the writing of this article.
The author has no competing interests to declare.