More competent thus more legitimate? MPs’ discourses on deliberative mini-publics

Abstract

MPs face a dilemma when it comes to deliberative mini-publics (DMPs): in a context of distrust they may see it as an opportunity to re-legitimize themselves and solve complex policy issues. But it could also challenge the quasi-monopoly they used to have on political decisions and undermine the role of the Parliament and the primacy of elections. The article is founded on 91 face-to-face interviews with French-speaking Belgian MPs sitting in federal or regional parliaments. First, we describe the profile of supporters of DMPs. We then identify three ideal-typical discourses: the power-sharing discourse, the consultative discourse, and the elitist discourse. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it analyzes the argumentative frames used by MPs to assess deliberative mini-publics using a large number of interviews.Second, it demonstrates that their discourses depend on their evaluation of ordinary citizens' competence to participate and on their resulting vision of representation. Political actors mainly perceive DMPs as power-sharing instruments that would alter their elected position and the legitimacy of the election.

Public support for deliberative democracy. A specific look at the attitudes of citizens from disadvantaged groups

“…2. Nevertheless, the deliberative processes (with randomly selected participants) are less current in the Dutch speaking community (Vrydagh et al 2020;Rangoni, Bedock, and Talukder 2021). 3.…”

Institutionalising participatory and deliberative procedures: The origins of the first permanent citizens’ assembly

“…For instance, participatory budgeting processes are mainly created by left‐wing local coalitions (Sintomer et al., 2016). The same ideological pattern also appears in support for the principle of a randomly selected legislative assembly (Jacquet et al., 2020) as well as mini‐publics (Rangoni et al., 2021). In the same vein, in a large survey with local European councillors, Heinelt (2012) found that left‐wing and female councillors are more in favour of participatory reforms than the others.…”

“…Second, some studies explore what political leaders expect from public participation in very general terms (Beswick & Elstub, 2019; Hendriks & Lees‐Marshment, 2019; Rangoni et al., 2021). Hendriks and Lees‐Marshment (2019) found that political leaders value the principle of public participation to collect information, connect with real people, check the feasibility of new policies and aid policy implementation.…”

“…The same pattern is observed in a survey in Finland that indicates that political elites support new opportunities for participation as long as they remain purely advisory (Koskimaa & Rapeli, 2020). This suggests that elites’ positive appraisal of public participation does not mean that they want to share power with ordinary people (though there are exceptions; Rangoni et al., 2021). Indeed, their many connections with citizens in the field (stakeholders, activists, lay citizens) place them in a privileged position and strengthen their role as the central decisionmakers (Schiffino et al., 2019).…”

The minipublic bubble: how the contributions of minipublics are conceived in Belgium (2001–2021)

“…For instance, several empirical studies investigate the support of the broader population for the concept of minipublics in general (e.g., Pilet et al, 2020;Germann et al, 2021) and for specific instances (e.g., Devillers et al, 2021;Pow, 2021). Scholars also survey how decision-and policymakers conceive the functions of minipublics (Beswick and Elstub, 2019;Bobbio, 2019;Rangoni et al, 2021) and participatory processes (Dean, 2019;Hendriks and Lees-Marshment, 2019), their support for minipublics (Jacquet et al, 2020;Koskimaa and Rapeli, 2020) and their motivations to institutionalize them (Macq and Jacquet, 2021). Some of these studies analyze decision-makers' attitudes regarding a specific case, such as the Belgian Ostbelgien-model (Macq and Jacquet, 2021) or a minipublic in a parliamentary committee in the UK (Beswick and Elstub, 2019), while the others surveyed the perceptions about more general and abstract conceptions of minipublics-in particular the authority they should have- (Jacquet et al, 2020;Koskimaa and Rapeli, 2020;Rangoni et al, 2021) and broader processes of participatory governance and public engagement (Dean, 2019;Hendriks and Lees-Marshment, 2019).…”