Democratic Innovations at a Time of Democratic Challenge: the Irish Experience of Using Constitutional Mini-Publics in Debates Over Constitutional, Institutional and Policy Reforms

The Great Recession affected Ireland more severely than most other European countries and produced a major challenge to party politics. This is reflected in dramatic vote shifts in the 2011 and 2016 elections, the worst vote shares for the established parties ever, sharp drops in various measures of citizen satisfaction, and the emergence of populist forces on the hard left. Ireland may not have experienced the banging of bin lids, and, for the most part, (to date) the left-populists are being held at bay, but there is no doubting the intense anger. This required a response from the political classes, a response that had to be in the form of a step change. This paper argues that from 2011 onwards the political classes rose to the challenge (not perfectly, and somewhat haltingly at first) in two main respects: (1) introducing a swathe of constitutional and political reforms and (2) including citizens at the heart of many of the debates over reform – the latter taking the form of constitutional mini-publics, which are the primary focus of this paper. We start by setting the context behind the creation of the Irish Constitutional Convention (2012-14) and its successor, the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (2016-18), reviewing their operation and organization, and assessing their outcomes. The paper then uses a mix of data (surveys of the national population and of members of the mini-publics; semi-structured interviews; analysis of media coverage, etc.) to examine their significance, addressing such questions as: why the established political class took this deliberative turn (twice), including the impact of growing populism; how political and journalistic critics of these mini-publics reacted to them over time; what the members of the mini-publics thought of them; and whether they registered at all with the average voter. The key question we seek to answer is the ‘so what?’ question: can it be concluded that these mini-publics ‘made a difference’? Evidence in this instance that they may have would be suggestive of a potential means by which liberal democracy can use processes like this to help rise to ongoing democratic challenges.