All Mixed Up? Deliberations Between Citizens and Politicians

Abstract

Deliberations are rapidly moving beyond the lab and into society in which the main goal is to scale-up and connect deliberative practices to policy-making. This evolution also entails that policy-makers and citizens meet to deliberate on policies. These mixed-deliberations can have different goals. They may serve as places in which to so-to-speak “let out steam” or learn about an issue, arenas in which citizens and politicians gain an increased mutual understanding or, in some cases, even achieve direct legislative impact (e.g. Button & Mattson 1999). Mixed-deliberation are still quite rare occasions in which decision-makers and citizens meet and rationally discuss societal topics (Barrett et al. 2012). Mixed-deliberations, however, are not without their challenges. There a risk that politicians dominate the deliberation and leverage their knowledge and higher status to get their will across (Minozzi et al. 2015). Politicians are also often reluctant to sharing decision-making power and mixed-deliberations therefore run a risk of just paying lip service. Citizens, on the other hand, may care emotionally about the issue of deliberation (Morrell 2010; Strandberg & Berg 2019) and find it hard to be rational and open-minded in deliberating the issue at hand. They may also expect the deliberation to have direct tangible effects on decisions made, which is yet a rare thing to happen. This panel welcomes papers that concern mixed-deliberation practices on all levels of governance all around the world. We are interested in theoretical, methodological as well as empirical perspectives. The aim of the panel is to explore mixed-deliberations that have taken place all around the world from all possible angles, and draw upon the knowledge from these to establish which factors appear crucial in creating constructive and well-working deliberations between citizens and politicians.

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