The Embeddedness of Norms of Deliberation in Regulations on Public Consultations in the Multilevel Governance System

Representative democracy is extended with mechanisms of civic participation, and public consultations frequently engage lay citizens in decision-making in the European Union, its member states, and local governments. A conclusion from extant research is that the mismanagement of these processes can result in political frustration and withdrawal of citizens from political public life. Deliberation is expected to bring in better-informed opinions and political choices as well as trust in public institutions through promoting deliberative norms and practices. The aim of this paper is to explain the embeddedness of norms of deliberation in regulations on public consultations in the multilevel governance system. In a current study, we examine how public consultations are regulated in Germany and Poland, and how regulations at the country and local levels are consistent with the recommendations of EU institutions for the use of deliberation. Based on our conceptual and methodological framework for the analysis of legal documents, we refer to four norms of deliberation such as openness, inclusiveness, reflexivity, and reciprocity at consecutive stages of public consultations. These stages include planning of the process, expertise seeking and internal consultations of the consultation plan, recruiting of participants, knowledge sharing and opinion gathering, as well as reporting of results of conclusions. In our analysis, we focus on the issues of 1) how the norms are communicated (e.g., explicitly vs. explicitly); 2) how they are understood and operationalized across various levels of government 3) how they are prioritized, at what stage of the process, and in what context; and 4) how they may impact the procedures and processes. Besides, we have investigated who has the right to design the consultation processes and what their goals are. In the study, we have included ten documents issued by European institutions, national acts of law in Germany and Poland covering policy areas like ecology or land use and local planning, as well as 68 and 491 resolutions adopted by German and Polish local governments respectively. Direct references to deliberation occur, rather scarcely, in documents of both European and local institutions, while at the national level public consultations are characterized mostly in vague terms. There are also meaningful variations in patterns and definitions of deliberative norms used by different institutions. We have observed that although formal local regulations on public consultations are more broadly adopted in Poland than in Germany, those German local documents specifying guidelines for public consultations are more detailed. Furthermore, the presentation of deliberative norms in documents at various levels of governance can differ strongly. For example, we find tensions between demands for the openness towards popular participation in public consultations versus targeted or random selection of participants recommended in the model of deliberation. Our tentative findings show some openness of European institutions towards purposeful selection of participants in justified cases. In Poland and Germany, one can note wide variance in recommendations in this regard, with greater conservatism towards open public consultations in national level (and German state level) regulations.