“It’s not my job to engineer you an outcome”: integrity challenges in deliberative mini-publics

As the use of deliberative mini-publics becomes more widespread (OECD 2020), they face a number of threats to their integrity. The expansion of these practices has led to the professionalisation and commercialisation of participation (Bherer et al 2017a), which raises potential tensions between commercial and democratic interests (Hendriks and Carson 2008). Practitioners – the individuals and organisations who design, facilitate and deliver deliberative mini-publics, play a central role in the realisation of democratic ideals on the ground (Hendriks, Ercan and Boswell 2020), yet relatively little attention has been paid to them (Escobar 2022). This paper focuses on the experiences of practitioners as they navigate tensions between the commissioning body’s interests and demands, and the integrity of the deliberative process. Drawing on interview data with 22 practitioners, this paper provides a qualitative thematic analysis exploring how practitioners experience and respond to these tensions, and the limitations they face. References Bherer, L., Gauthier, M., and Simard, L. (Eds.). (2017). The professionalization of public participation. London: Routledge. Escobar, O. (2021): Between radical aspirations and pragmatic challenges: Institutionalizing participatory governance in Scotland, Critical Policy Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19460171.2021.1993290 Hendriks, C.M. & Carson, L. (2008). Can the market help the forum? Negotiating the commercialization of deliberative democracy. Policy Sciences, 41, 293. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40270972. Hendriks, C. M., S. A. Ercan, and J. Boswell. 2020. Mending Democracy: Democratic Repair in Disconnected Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press OECD (2020). Innovative Citizen Participation and New Democratic Institutions: Catching the Deliberative Wave. OECD.