Deliberation Under Pressure: Rethinking Deliberative Mini-Publics in Contexts of Backsliding

This paper investigates the role and realistic potential of deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) in contexts of democratic backsliding, a phenomenon marked by the erosion of institutional checks, executive aggrandizement, and the weaponization of the public sphere. Drawing on deliberative democratic theory, it examines how these citizen-centred innovations can contribute to democratic resilience when the very conditions that enable meaningful public reasoning and self-rule are deteriorating. Situating the analysis empirically in Central and Eastern Europe, a region marked by a well-documented democratic decline, the paper reveals a paradox: despite hostile political environments, DMPs are proliferating and increasingly hailed as tools of democratic resistance. Yet, their impact is ambivalent. They risk either becoming ephemeral acts of subversion, vulnerable to state repression, or durable but toothless institutions absorbed by illiberal regimes. This “deliberative vacuum” underscores a fundamental tension between deliberation’s normative aspirations and the political realities of autocratisation. To navigate this tension, the paper shifts focus from the formal organization of DMPs to the normative question of their mandate. It develops a typology of mandates—technical, educational, informational, militant, and oversight—and critically evaluates their capacity to resist domination and promote deliberative standards under backsliding conditions. While technical, educational, and informational mandates fall short of challenging entrenched power, militant mandates, though normatively compelling, carry significant social risks. In contrast, oversight mandates targeting corruption, clientelism, and political capture emerge as a pragmatic and promising strategy to empower citizens and rebuild the degraded infrastructure of democratic deliberation. This conceptual reframing avoids the pitfalls of both decontextualized optimism and blanket pessimism common in deliberation scholarship. It contributes to ongoing political science debates by demonstrating how DMPs can be meaningfully designed to serve as instruments of anti-domination, rather than symbolic gestures, even in illiberal contexts. Although centered on the CEE region, the framework has wider applicability to established democracies experiencing democratic erosion, such as parts of Western Europe. By critically interrogating the purposes and limits of deliberative innovation in backsliding democracies, this paper advances the theoretical understanding of democratic resilience and offers normative guidance for democratic innovation in politically adverse conditions.