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Maximising Deliberative Impacts

Democracy
Political Participation
Policy-Making
Maija Setälä
University of Turku
Maija Setälä
University of Turku

Abstract

There are disagreements on desired roles and impacts of deliberative minipublics in democratic systems. While some are concerned about the use of minipublics as ‘shortcuts’, mini-publics can arguably have ‘deliberative impacts’ by contributing to ‘deliberation-making’ in policy processes. This paper provides a distinction between deliberative, non-deliberative and anti-deliberative impacts of minipublics. Moreover, the paper identifies factors that that need to be taken into account when maximising deliberative impacts, namely i) policymakers’ incentives to engage with mini-publics’ reasoning; ii) the format and the transmission of minipublics’ output; iii) communication and interaction between minipublics and policymakers. The paper points out that different policy-making processes entail different incentive structures, which call for different designs for maximising deliberative impacts. For example, elected representatives typically lack incentives to engage with mini-publics’ reasoning, which can be addressed by designing communication and interaction between mini-publics and representatives. In direct democratic processes, in turn, designing the format and the transmission of minipublics’ outputs is the key to maximising deliberative impacts among mass publics.