Using Participedia to Study the Impacts of Mini-Publics

In this paper we reflect on our ongoing research investigating the impact of mini-publics using Participedia data. Participedia is a crowd-sourced, open source database documenting democratic innovations around the world where contributors can upload text, data and documentation on democratic innovations. We use this resource to study the broad impacts of five citizens' juries in South Australia that took place as part of a state government emphasis on involving the public in political decision-making. Whilst the policy uptake for these cases is high, our analysis reveals a more complex picture of the different ways in which mini-publics impact policy. We find that despite some limitations, Participedia is a useful starting point for qualitative researchers to analyse different aspects and impacts of participatory processes. Here we present our initial findings from Participedia on the impacts of the South Australian citizens' juries and consider the merits and limitations of using Participedia for qualitative research in this area.