Politicizing Deliberation? A Study of Public Debates About Citizen Assemblies in France and the UK

Citizens’ Assemblies (CAs) have long been hailed as promising democratic innovations that might help address democratic deficits and design evidence-based policy solutions to complex problems. Critics in turn denounce a “short-cut” approach to democratic legitimacy, and the need for better linking mechanisms between mini-publics and maxi-publics for these to achieve democratic legitimacy. From an empirical perspective, however, there has been relatively little focus on the link between mini and maxi-publics, including the ways the mini publics themselves and the topics discussed within them, are politicised by various actors in public discourse. This paper addresses this gap by exploring the extent to which, and mechanisms by which, these innovations and the issues discussed within them contribute to public debate within wider society. We focus on the CAs on climate organized in France and the UK in 2019-2020, which had radically different approaches in terms of their design and mandate. Based on an original dataset of 1,175 media articles published in Le Monde, Le Figaro, The Guardian and The Telegraph, we use a mixed-method approach to analyse the politicization (or de-politicisation) of democratic innovations in these two cases. Specifically, we explore the data from four different angles: the salience of CA processes and outcomes, the sentiment ascribed to them, the diversity of actors involved in debating them, and the diversity of arguments these actors rely on. In so doing, the paper illuminates the ways CAs are portrayed, discussed and contested, providing insights into public perceptions of these initiatives and the challenges that their recommendations face. It also adds to an ongoing scholarly debate on the “scalability” of mini-publics, and their potential role within wider systems of representative politics.