The quest for requisite participation: the deliberative minipublic and its rivals

Deliberative minipublic are still en vogue - at least in some parts of democratic theory, as well as experimental corners of democratic practice. They work on two assumptions, which are critically assessed in this paper. First, they build on the - in itself valuable - notion that vital democracy comes with variety, approaching variety however in a rather biased way. Healthy variety is expected to follow from random-sampling or ‘lottery’ processes, producing minipublics that should be statistically-representative for a wider population - for which minipublics may ‘therefore’ speak. Second, they implicitly assume that building a more refined public opinion - through a process of deliberative participation - is the work of democracy. Both working assumptions imply grave limitations (beyond specific merits that will also be sketched). Democracy is not to be reduced to delivering ‘better views’, as if it were a social-science project with lay people. It is ultimately also getting things arranged and done with and for people concerned. For some matters of public concern, not randomly-selected participants, but expressly-selected and self-selected participants are legitimate as well as needed - as participants that bring in networks, resources and competences required for the societal challenge at hand. Investigating processes of (self)selection in cases of do-ocracy (with participants co-producing public value in practical ways) and vital-coalition democracy (with participants connecting vital resources in more strategic projects), the paper will revisit a theory of requisite variety, in democratic participation, that challenges and complements the theory of statistical variety underlying deliberative minipublics.