Decolonizing Deliberative Mini-Publics

Deliberative mini-publics are portrayed as empowering spaces where a group of ordinary citizens representative of the wider population can reach considered judgment and provide recommendations to public authorities. These portrayals, however, need to be interrogated. For whom are these spaces empowering? Do all citizens (or colegislators) hold equal power to legitimize or endorse a decision or institution? Whose considered judgments and performances are considered legitimate by public authorities and process experts? Which voices and bodies are systematically rendered unheard and invisible as these processes claim to champion diversity? This paper answers these questions by drawing on various perspectives of decolonial theory. It argues that deliberative mini-publics, in their current formulation and scope, are complicit to maintaining the privileges of White western democratic theory and practice, as well as the dependencies to systems of domination, racialization and exploitation. It examines the scope and design features of mini-publics – from random selection to facilitation to presentation of expert evidence – and demonstrates how these features, despite good intentions, further entrench dominant epistemologies that maintain today’s global racial order. The paper concludes by exploring the debate on the extent to which this democratic innovation can be reformed or ‘decolonized’ and reflects on the role of scholars and practitioners of public deliberation in decolonizing democracy.