Deliberative minipublics are often critiqued for being disconnected with mass democracy. This is problematic from the perspective of legitimacy. If ordinary citizens are not aware of the existence of minipublics, how can citizens consent to the process and outcomes of these processes? One possible design innovation is to widen the pool of citizens randomly invited to take part in minipublics. While not all invited individuals will be selected to join minipublics, inviting a large pool of people, at the very least, may trigger their curiosity to closely observe and scrutinise the debates and recommendations of their fellow citizens.
Our article examines the viability of this design feature using the case study of the citizen panel ‘Make Your Brussels – Mobility’. We focus on a group of 336 people who accepted the invitation to participate in the citizen panel but were not among the 40 people selected to participate. We have two major findings. First, despite their initial interest in taking part in a minipublic, these citizens did not follow up on their interest in the minipublic. Second, these citizens do not perceive citizen panels as capable of delivering consensual outcomes. We conclude the article by drawing out implications for deliberative practice, especially in enhancing the legitimacy of minipublics.
The growing literature on minipublics has generated debates about the extent to which these democratic innovations can be considered legitimate. While some studies find that participants in minipublics view the process as legitimate, other scholars argue that these processes continue to suffer from legitimacy deficits because they are disconnected from mass democracy (
One way of addressing this deficit is to generate wider awareness of the existence of a minipublic. From a design perspective, this can be done by deepening the pool of citizens randomly invited to join a minipublic and, in so doing, generate interest among the invited population to learn about and monitor the conduct and recommendations of these small-scale processes of democratic deliberation. We think this is a plausible strategy to connect minipublics to mass democracy. While not all invited individuals will be selected to join the minipublics, inviting a large pool of people, at the very least, may trigger ‘invited but not selected’ citizens’ (or non-participants’) curiosity to closely observe or scrutinise the deliberations and recommendations of their fellow citizens. That way, minipublics are not islands of deliberation isolated from the wider public sphere. Instead, they can be subject to the democratic oversight of fellow citizens who do not take part in them.
This article examines the viability of this design feature. We investigate how citizens who were invited to join a minipublic and expressed interest in being part of it perceive the legitimacy of the minipublic. We argue that this group of non-participants is of special interest when it comes to investigating ways to connect the minipublic and the broader public. If this specific sub-group of the population which is aware of the minipublic closely follows its process and outcomes and perceives it as legitimate, then this might suggest that raising awareness of the minipublic by widening the pool of invited participants could stimulate its legitimacy in the eyes of the population who did not participate.
Our investigation is contextualized using the case study of the citizen panel ‘Make Your Brussels – Mobility’ (see below for more information about this panel). We focus on a group of 336 people who accepted an invitation to participate in the citizen panel but were not among the 40 people selected to participate. Based on survey results among 209 out of the 336 non-participants, we investigate whether these people who were aware of the citizen panel also followed its work and whether this has implications for their perception of the panel’s legitimacy.
This article starts by defining minipublics and then presents the literature about people’s awareness of these deliberative processes and how they perceive their legitimacy. In this framework, we describe the case under study, the citizen panel ‘Make Your Brussels – Mobility’, as well as its participants and the respondents to our survey. The results are then presented and discussed along three dimensions of legitimacy: input, throughput and output. Our study reveals two main findings. First, awareness of the existence of the minipublic among non-participants did not trigger subsequent attentiveness to this process and its results, thereby generating a lack of knowledge and understanding of the process among our respondents. Second, non-participants do not perceive that the process of such a panel is able to deliver consensual outcomes and make its participants move beyond their individual interests. We conclude our paper by drawing out the implications of our findings for the practice of democratic deliberation.
Deliberative minipublics are gatherings of people representing a microcosm of society to deliberate on a particular subject for one or several days to formulate policy proposals (
The literature has made progress in ascertaining the basis of minipublics’ legitimacy among participants. Perceived diversity and effectiveness in providing a forum for a deliberative exchange of ideas tend to be viewed as legitimate justifications for their recommendations to weigh on public decisions (
There are two conditions necessary for minipublics to secure legitimacy in the political system. First, people who do not participate (non-participants) in a minipublic must be aware of the minipublic’s existence. Second, non-participants should have the opportunity to scrutinise the deliberations and recommendations of minipublics before they can endorse them. Achieving these conditions poses a challenge for deliberative democrats. Indeed, minipublics often fail to go beyond the enclosed space of their deliberations and reach out to the wider citizenry (
Meanwhile, within the scholarly literature there have been attempts to examine how the wider population can gain knowledge about minipublics. These results were either obtained from an experiment (
Our article aims to extend these developments in the scholarly literature by focusing on a ‘real-world’ minipublic. We focus on citizens who were invited to join a minipublic, expressed interest in being part of it, but were eventually not selected by the organizers to participate. We think this group is an important subject for investigation because it represents citizens who showed initial interest in being part of this democratic innovation. Through this group, we can investigate whether interest in taking part in a minipublic leads to an interest in learning more about the process and outcomes of the minipublic, even among those who were not ultimately part of it. This, we think, can also help us understand how non-participants perceive the legitimacy of the process as they look in from the outside.
This scholarly interest has clear implications for deliberative practice. If our sub-group of non-participants shows interest in monitoring the process and outcomes of the minipublic and perceives the process as legitimate, then we have an empirical basis to make a case for a design innovation that oversamples or expands the number of citizens randomly invited to join a minipublic.
Before we move to our empirical case, we would first like to discuss how we define legitimacy in our work. Following deliberative scholars who have examined the legitimacy of minipublics (
Input legitimacy rests on the inclusiveness of the minipublic. Since not all those who are subject to the decision can deliberate about it, the minipublic has to encompass the diversity of opinions, ideas and backgrounds present in the wider public. Making sure that all opinions are represented not only fosters more legitimate (
Throughput legitimacy refers to the ability of the procedures to guide the deliberations, to foster openness towards the others’ arguments, and even to persuade participants in the light of better arguments (
Output legitimacy, as understood here, rests on two elements (
Before moving to the description of the case, it is important to note that minipublics need not (or cannot) simultaneously score highly on all three dimensions of legitimacy because there are often trade-offs (
In June 2017, the Parliament of the Brussels Capital Region in Belgium organized a citizen panel about mobility issues in and around Brussels. The ‘Make Your Brussels – Mobility’ panel operated within the framework of the new ‘Good Move’ mobility plan of the region.
The citizen panel met four times in the Parliament of the Brussels Capital Region, on 21 and 28 October (morning) and on 18 and 19 November (whole day). All the deliberations of the panel were moderated by trained facilitators and went from small-group discussions to plenary sessions. Insights from experts and stakeholders were also provided. Several votes structured the deliberations to select demands and practical recommendations, which were then submitted to the whole group of panellists for approval. At the end of its four meetings, the panel submitted to the parliament a ‘citizen resolution’
The recruitment process started with 8,000 randomly selected residents of the Brussels Region (see Figure
The recruitment process.
The data in the next section present the results of an online survey conducted in June 2018 among the 336 remaining people who agreed to participate but were eventually not selected to compose the final panel (referred to as the ‘non-participants’). In the end, 209 out of the 336 respondents initially surveyed answered the questionnaire, which leaves us with a response rate of 62.2%.
In terms of sex, the respondents were split almost evenly between men and women. In terms of socio-demographic background, the sample of respondents (see Tables A.1 to A.3 in the appendix) has a clear and significant over-representation of highly educated and older people in our survey group. Although random sampling aims to reach a diverse group of people, there is no obligation for them to accept the invitation. This conforms to the trend that younger and less educated people are less likely to accept the invitation to participate (
The respondents to our survey who are among the 336 non-participants not only differ in terms of education and age but also in their self-perception (Table
Internal political efficacy of the non-participants.
Disagree | Median option | Agree | Missing | |
---|---|---|---|---|
I think I am better informed about societal issues and politics than most people | 20.6% (43) | 19.6% (41) | 59.3% (124) | 0.5% (1) |
I think I understand the mobility issues Brussels is confronted with pretty well | 10.5% (22) | 5.7% (12) | 81.4% (170) | 2.4% (5) |
Support for citizen panels among the non-participants.
Disagree | Median option | Agree | Missing | |
---|---|---|---|---|
If I am randomly selected again to participate in such a panel in the future, I would agree to participate | 3.4% (7) | 4.8% (10) | 73.6% (154) | 18.2% (38) |
We should gather citizens again to discuss societal issues, like we did with the citizen panel | 3.4% (7) | 6.2% (13) | 73.2% (153) | 17.2% (36) |
Parliaments should be composed of elected representatives and randomly selected citizens instead of only elected representatives | 23.4% (49) | 10.5% (22) | 63.6% (133) | 2.4% (5) |
One of the normative arguments backing the organization of minipublics and their linkage with the broader population is the fact that they could potentially stimulate debates in the broader public and even eventually help citizens to position themselves on the issue discussed (see e.g. Mackenzie & Warren 2012;
To investigate how citizens who are aware of the process evaluate it, our analysis relies on their perceptions of the input (composition of the panel), throughput (perception of how the deliberations were conducted), and the output (quality of and support for the recommendations it produced). Depending on these results, we will investigate the extent to which being aware of the existence of a minipublic can generate support for its results, thereby studying the legitimacy upon which a minipublic rests. If people who are aware of the process tend to trust the participants, consider them legitimate and endorse the results, then this awareness should lead to the broad support a minipublic needs to build its legitimacy to determine political decisions. Awareness would thus be the key to generate support for the minipublic’s process, participants and outcomes and thereby allow it to contribute to the overall deliberative quality of the system by fuelling it with largely supported recommendations. However, as we will see in this paper, awareness is not synonymous with follow-up or knowledge of the process. If our respondents are aware of the existence of the process, they are not necessarily knowledgeable about precisely how it functioned, how it was composed, or what sort of impact its results were deemed to have. On the one hand, this lack of knowledge explains the high rates of missing and median options in the following tables. On the other hand, it encourages us to interpret our results cautiously, keeping in mind that respondents might use feelings to position themselves, and not thorough assessments based on the actual presence or absence of the elements expressed in the following questions.
Table
Evaluation of the Brussels Mobility panel among the non-participants.
Disagree | Median option | Agree | Missing | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Overall, my feelings about the citizen panel are positive | 5.7% (12) | 15.8% (33) | 59.3% (124) | 19.1% (40) |
I have positive views of the process of the citizen panel | 18.2% (38) | / | 62.2% (130) | 19.6% (41) |
I have positive views of the organization of the citizen panel | 17.2% (36) | / | 62.7% (131) | 20.1% (42) |
First, the legitimacy of a minipublic can come from its composition, from the trust and the legitimacy people assign to the participants of the minipublic based on their characteristics. In this case, as we can see in Table
Perceptions of input legitimacy among the non-participants.
Disagree | Median option | Agree | Missing | |
---|---|---|---|---|
I think the participants of the citizen panel accurately represent the diversity of the Brussels population | 8.6% (18) | 33.5% (70) | 39.7% (83) | 18.2% (38) |
The participants have different opinions about mobility in Brussels | 4.3% (9) | 29.2% (61) | 59.8% (125) | 6.7% (14) |
The participants of the citizen panel do not have enough expertise to express their views on mobility issues | 43.0% (90) | 25.8% (54) | 13.0% (27) | 18.2% (38) |
I think the participants have as much legitimacy as elected representatives to express their views about mobility issues | 11.0% (23) | 10.0% (21) | 50.6% (106) | 28.2% (59) |
Diversity is not sufficient to ensure trust in the minipublic and its recommendations. This diversity must be articulated in deliberations that aim to formulate recommendations to enhance the common good. In other words, the deliberations among the participants have to be based on the public interest, not on each participant’s individual interests, and reflect a consensus among the participants in order to foster trust among the wider public (
Perceptions of the deliberative quality among the non-participants.
Disagree | Median option | Agree | Missing | |
---|---|---|---|---|
The participants do not pay attention to what others say. They just came to defend their own opinions | 25.8% (54) | 25.4% (53) | 41.7% (87) | 7.2% (15) |
The participants focused on their individual interest rather than on the common good | 22.0% (46) | 23.4% (49) | 47.8% (100) | 6.7% (14) |
The participants are sincere. They do not hide their true opinions | 12.9% (27) | 23.9% (50) | 56.5% (118) | 6.7% (14) |
It is difficult, maybe even impossible, to find solutions on which everyone agrees | 14.8% (31) | 17.7% (37) | 60.8% (127) | 6.7% (14) |
The participants did not change their minds, even if the others presented good arguments | 29.7% (62) | 34.0% (71) | 29.6% (62) | 6.7% (14) |
Our results (see Table
Perceptions of output legitimacy among the non-participants.
Disagree | Median option | Agree | Missing | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Even if I did not participate, I followed the work of the citizen panel closely, for instance through the media, social networks, friends, and/or the parliament website. | 51.2% (107) | 12.0% (25) | 29.2% (61) | 7.7% (16) |
The citizen panel forgot important issues when it comes to mobility in Brussels | 30.1% (63) | 27.3% (57) | 23.4% (49) | 19.1% (40) |
I totally agree with the recommendations made by the citizen panel | 13.9% (29) | 21.0% (44) | 45.4% (95) | 19.6% (41) |
I think the majority of the citizens agree with the recommendations made by the citizen panel | 9.6% (20) | 24.4% (51) | 46.4% (97) | 19.6% (41) |
I think good decisions were made by the citizen panel | 4.3% (9) | 20.1% (42) | 54.1% (113) | 21.5% (45) |
I have positive views of the results of the citizen panel | 17.7% (37) | / | 60.8% (127) | 21.5% (45) |
The recommendations of the citizen panel should be turned into laws | 10.5% (22) | 17.2% (36) | 52.6% (110) | 19.6% (41) |
Follow-up attention to the minipublic among the non-participants.
Yes | No | Missing | |
---|---|---|---|
Have you read the final report? | 30.6% (64) | 62.2% (130) | 7.2% (15) |
As shown in Figure
Support for the panel’s proposals among the non-participants.
1= Creating a digital platform gathering all the information about public transport (timetables, routes, prices, etc.)
2= Reducing the number of parking spaces in favour of a better public space
3= Obliging all public transport operators to use the MOBIB card to provide their services
4= Creating a central authority in charge of coordinating and supervising all mobility actors
5= Implementing a toll for citizens who do not live in Brussels and using its profits to invest in better public transport infrastructure
To sum up, the support among non-participants for the recommendations issued by the panel ‘Make Your Brussels – Mobility’ cannot be attributed to their greater knowledge or follow-up attention to the process or the outcomes it produced. Their initial awareness did not turn into greater interest in the work of the minipublic. Neither does awareness lead to stronger support for the recommendations made by the minipublic. Therefore, awareness among non-participants does not necessarily support the legitimacy of the minipublic in making public decisions, because awareness does not seem to increase the support for the process and outcomes of the minipublic.
This paper aimed to examine the link between the awareness and perceived legitimacy of a minipublic among a specific subset of the wider public, namely those who were invited but not selected to partake in a minipublic. The interest of this group lies in its members’ awareness of the minipublic’s existence. Since they are aware of it, and more importantly were interested to take part in it, we proposed that they would be more likely to have followed its processes and developed opinions about it. Based on this assumption, we suggested that we might use the oversampling of participants to expand awareness about minipublics in the broader population, in order to eventually trigger support for them and their results among the broader population, hence securing their legitimacy to weigh on public decisions. However, our findings tend to limit the desirability of this suggestion for two reasons.
First, we assumed that awareness of the existence of such a minipublic would be key. Subsequently, this awareness would lead to support for the minipublic’s recommendations. However, our results show that a majority of the non-participants did not closely follow the work of the minipublic, despite indicating their willingness to participate when they received the invitation from the President of the Parliament of the Brussels Capital Region. One could speculate that this attitude can be explained by the disappointment they felt because they were not selected to actually participate in the minipublic. Furthermore, non-participants who followed the process and results of the minipublic did not express greater support for its recommendations. Hence, the assumption that awareness would go hand in hand with support does not seem to hold. Based on our exploratory results on this particular section of the population, we assume that awareness is insufficient to trigger interest and legitimacy.
Second, previous empirical studies have shown that minipublics can be used by the wider population as trusted information proxies to debate and position oneself on the issue under discussion. However, our results show that this is unlikely, at least in this particular case. In the first place, there was a lack of knowledge and follow-up attention to the process among our respondents: they were not aware of how the participants deliberated, the arguments exchanged, and the grounds on which recommendations were accepted or rejected. Consequently, this made them less likely to use the minipublic as a source of information or a basis for broader deliberations about mobility. Moreover, not only did they lack knowledge about the process, but they also seemed to have a low opinion of the aspects building its legitimacy: almost half of our respondents believed that participants would focus on their individual interests instead of advancing the common good. Moreover, more than two thirds believed it is ‘difficult or maybe even impossible’ to make mutually acceptable decisions. Therefore, it is hard to envision how they could trust the minipublic to deliver consensual recommendations they could use to position themselves on an issue.
What are the implications for deliberative practice? Our findings suggest that broadening the pool of randomly invited citizens may be useful in generating awareness about the minipublic but it is insufficient to ensure citizens’ close attention to the conduct and outcome of minipublics’ recommendations. A mere invitation to participate therefore does not create a ripple effect of interest and trust in the proceedings and outcomes of a minipublic among the wider public.
Instead, our suggestion to secure the legitimacy of a minipublic and support for its recommendations among initially aware and interested citizens is to significantly publicize the process, its outcomes and its role in policy-making, and to actively involve citizens beyond its participants not only as spectators but also as active participants in the minipublic. More generally, channels of communication might be created to directly connect the minipublic (and its discussions) to the wider public (through media campaigns advertising the project, or through livestreams of the minipublics’ debates, among others). More interestingly, this greater communication might be organized the other way around, from the general public to the minipublic. This could allow the broader population to directly fuel the minipublic debates by making comments, bringing additional ideas or even voting on the recommendations produced by the minipublic through an internet platform. Eventually, a greater part of the population would not only be aware of the minipublic, but also included in it, thereby increasing its outreach and legitimacy as the quantity and diversity of voices it encompasses grows.
This article investigated an often overlooked category of individuals in the study of deliberative democracy: those who were invited but not selected to take part in minipublics. Our study finds that people who were invited to, and hence made aware of the existence of, a minipublic do not closely follow its process and recommendations nor positively evaluate the different aspects of the minipublic.
One direction for future research is to analyse factors that could strengthen the link between the minipublic and its non-participants, whether these are invited but not selected citizens or members of the wider public. Developments in institutionalized forms of deliberative democracy such as the Ostbelgien Modell (
(Some respondents did not indicate their age, sex or education level when answering the questionnaire, which explains why some tables add up to 206 or 204 instead of the expected 209.)
Samples disaggregated by sex.
Sex | |||
---|---|---|---|
Men | Women | Total | |
Brussels’ population | 586,625 (48.9%) | 612,101 (51.1%) | 1,198,726 |
Self-selected drawn from 1st stage random sampling | 202 (53.6%) | 175 (46.4%) | 377 |
Participants drawn from 2nd stage random sampling | 21 (52.5%) | 19 (47.5%) | 40 |
Respondents to our survey | 104 (50.5%) | 102 (49.5%) | 206 |
χ2 (1, |
Samples disaggregated by age group.
Age | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
17–24 | 25–34 | 35–50 | 51–65 | 66+ | Total | |
Brussels’ population | 108,352 (11.7%) | 204,444 (22.0%) | 267,194 (28.7%) | 192,057 (20.7%) | 157,682 (17.0%) | 929,729 |
Self-selected drawn from 1st stage random sampling | 9 (2.4%) | 31 (8.2%) | 118 (31.3%) | 130 (34.5%) | 89 (23.6%) | 377 |
Participants drawn from 2nd stage random sampling | 5 (12.5%) | 10 (25.0%) | 12 (30.0%) | 6 (15.0%) | 7 (17.5%) | 40 |
Respondents to our survey | 0 (0.0%) | 12 (8.9%) | 56 (27.4%) | 80 (39.2%) | 56 (27.4%) | 204 |
χ2 (4, |
Samples disaggregated by educational attainment.
Education | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Primary | Secondary | Higher | Total | |
Brussels’ population | 348,181 (36.8%) | 255,389 (27.0%) | 342,689 (36.2%) | 946,259 |
Self-selected drawn from 1st stage random sampling | 9 (2.4%) | 70 (18.6%) | 298 (79.0%) | 377 |
Participants drawn from 2nd stage random sampling | 5 (12.5%) | 20 (50.0%) | 15 (37.5%) | 40 |
Respondents to our survey | 1 (3.8%) | 24 (11.6%) | 181 (87.9%) | 206 |
χ2 (2, |
The Brussels Parliament dedicated a page of its website to this citizen panel:
The mobility card, MOBIB, is used in Brussels for public transportation.
The content of the citizen resolution is available on the Parliament website:
The resolution of the special committee can be found here:
We recognise that one limitation of this study is the lack of survey data that can allow us to compare the views of non-participants to the views of the wider population. As the next section demonstrates, respondents of our survey are highly educated and politically active and interested citizens which might make their perceptions significantly different from those of the wider population.
On both items, respondents were asked to position themselves on these statements using a scale from 0 (completely disagree) to 10 (completely agree).
On the first item, respondents were asked to position themselves on this statement using a scale from 1 to 5: 1 (completely disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (agree), 5 (completely agree).
On the two last items, respondents were asked to position themselves on these statements using a scale from 0 (completely disagree) to 10 (completely agree).
On the first item, respondents were asked to give their feelings about the panel as a whole and its process on a five-point scale: 1 (very negative), 2 (rather negative), 3 (neither negative nor positive), 4 (rather positive), 5 (absolutely positive).
On the last two items, respondents were asked to give their satisfaction with the results of the citizen panel on a four-point scale: 1 (not at all satisfied), 2 (rather unsatisfied), 3 (rather satisfied), 4 (absolutely satisfied).
On the first and last item, respondents were asked to position themselves on this statement using a scale from 1 to 5: 1 (completely disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (agree), 5 (completely agree).
On the second item, respondents were asked to position themselves on these statements using a scale from 0 (completely disagree) to 10 (completely agree).
On all these items, respondents were asked to position themselves on these statements using a scale from 0 (completely disagree) to 10 (completely agree).
On items 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7, respondents were asked to position themselves on this statement using a scale from 1 to 5: 1 (completely disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neither agree nor disagree), 4 (agree), 5 (completely agree).
On the first item, respondents were asked to position themselves on these statements using a scale from 0 (completely disagree) to 10 (completely agree).
On the sixth item, respondents were asked to give their satisfaction with the results of the citizen panel on a four-point scale: 1 (not at all satisfied), 2 (rather unsatisfied), 3 (rather satisfied), 4 (absolutely satisfied).
Respondents had to indicate to what extent they were favorable to those reforms, using a five-point scale: 1 (not at all favorable), 2 (rather unfavorable), 3 (neither favorable or unfavorable), 4 (rather favorable), 5 (absolutely favorable).
The Parliament of the Brussels Capital Region and PartiCitiz, the organizer of the citizen panel ‘Make Your Brussels – Mobility’, has allowed the collection of data in order to feed an evaluation of the overall process. This article will thus directly feedback ongoing reflections and discussions about how to organize deliberative democracy. The authors wish to thank Anissa Anaan, Camille François, Clémentine Jacques, Laura Pascolo, Thomas Somme and Arnaud Taymans for their assistance in the data collection and coding. The authors also express their gratitude to the editors of this Journal as well as to the reviewers for their insightful suggestions and comments that eventually yielded a manuscript worth publishing. All remaining errors are the sole responsibility of the authors. This research was partly funded by a grant from the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique-FNRS, Belgium, under grant number CDR J.0061.18.
All authors have contributed to the design and implementation of the research, to the analysis of the results and to the writing of the manuscript.
The authors have no competing interests to declare.