Anticipating Transnational Publics

Abstract

This article evaluates mini-publics as a potential means of realizing deliberative democratic values in transnational contexts. A mini-public is a group of citizens that is chosen by random or near-random selection to debate matters of public concern in a suitably structured deliberative environment. The argument of the article is that minipublics can be an important deliberative resource, but only as supplements to rather than replacements for alternative means of reforming transnational institutions. These forums can be used to prefigure transnational publics, but entrenched institutional assumptions about the delineation and definition of these publics must be subject to critical scrutiny by other elements of a transnational deliberative system. This argument is developed through a critical engagement with the literature on minipublics, an analysis of a prominent example of a transnational mini-public, and a defense of the role of civil society as a resource for counteracting the shortcomings of mini-publics.

Public Spheres for Deliberation on Nature? Democratic Qualities of Visitor Centres in Sweden

“…Through developing the democratic aspects of NI encounters, both the meaning constructed through these experiences, and the societal function of naturum can be strengthened. In this sense, we perceive naturums comparable to mini-publics in that they are not regarded as "[…] full instances but as incomplete parts of a wider system of deliberative democracy" (Böker & Elstub, 2015, p. 139), denoting a microcosmic deliberative environment (Smith, 2013) that can contribute to the overall capacity of the deliberative system.…”

The Implications of Victimhood Identity: The Case of ‘Persecution’ of Swedish Hunters

“…But the partisans who initiate the mini-public are required to submit to critical adjudication by their non-partisan (randomly selected) peers. This stress on the non-partisan composition of mini-publics ensures that subsequent deliberations cannot be driven exclusively from any one or other partisan perspective (Smith 2013). But it also ensures that the judgements produced by the mini-public cannot be easily dismissed by the partisans who initiated the critical deliberation process as merely the product of 'out-of-touch,' judicial elites, as opposed to a representative sample of their citizen peers.…”