Roundtable: Where are we now - deliberation and participation ten years into the systemic turn

Abstract

This year marks the 10th anniversary since a group of deliberative democracy scholars published a seminal manifesto on deliberative systems. The book propelled a ‘turn’ for the field, shifting the focus from normative-theoretical reflections and empirical research focused on one-off deliberative experiments towards analysis of the deliberative characteristics of political systems as a whole (Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012). Since then, the field has continued to expand, and to some extent transform, to account for plural explorations of how to connect different institutions and practices, including micro-level small-group deliberations to broader institutional contexts and ongoing democratic disputes. While the incorporation of deliberation to varied institutional setting tends to motivate optimistic assessments, many uncertainties have emerged over the years, beginning with Chambers’ (2009) and Pateman’s (2012) signaling of the troubling distance between the interests of deliberative democrats and the actual challenges of mass democracies. Further critiques to deliberative systems include the neglect of alternative forms of citizen participation (Boswell 2016; Dean 2016; Pogrebinschi, 2018), the field’s concern with novelty in institutional design and ‘neat’ playing fields (Grönlund et al. 2014), the missing linkages to non-deliberative participation (Bussu 2020), sites and elements within systems that are neither deliberative nor democratic (Owen and Smith 2015), and questions of epistemic inequality (Moor, 2016). Lafont’s (2020) recent account of mini-publics as ‘democratic shortcuts’ further interrogates the very foundational assumptions of the field. Issues new and old, such as epistemic injustice, inequality, trust in institutions, and authoritarian impulses, have become more salient (or more evident) during the pandemic, posing unique challenges to the work of deliberative democrats. This panel offers a reflection on the 10th anniversary of the deliberative systems manifesto, gathering together reviews and reflections that take stock on developments (Vyrdagh et al.), addressing how the very definitions of deliberation and participation impact on research and practice (Bächtiger, Bussu et al.), and how to assess the impact of systems on representative democracies (Geißel, Bussu et al.).

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