If no vote, at least voice? The potential and limits of deliberative procedures for the creation of a more inclusive democracy

Abstract

Our paper presents the results of the project If no vote, at least voice, conducted in the run-up to the municipal elections held in Vienna in 2020. It invited residents of the city who are not Austrian nationals and therefore ineligible to vote in municipal elections to raise issues with the political parties standing in the elections and garner responses from them. These issues were initially formulated by deliberative mini-publics. We discuss our findings against the backdrop of the – in no small measure socio-economically determined – increasing democratic deficit in contemporary migration societies. We also touch on the extent to which the Covid-19 crisis forced us to amend our procedures and exacerbated some of the challenges faced in this context.

Keywords:

• deliberation
• underrepresented groups
• voting rights
• migration societies
• socially imbalanced democracy
• digital gap

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/703093/umfrage/auslaenderanteil-in-wien/ (Accessed 30 August 2021).

2 This is a unique situation in the EU. Since the Treaty of Maastricht, EU citizens are entitled to vote and stand in local and municipal elections wherever they live. The German federated city state of Bremen offers an instructive point of comparison. There too, resident EU citizens who are not German nationals are ineligible to vote for the state legislature, but they do enjoy the right to vote and stand in the elections in the city state’s two municipalities, Bremen and Bremerhaven.

3 https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/703093/umfrage/auslaenderanteil-in-wien/ (Accessed 7 December 2020).

4 http://2015.mipex.eu/austria (Accessed 4 November 2020).

5 VfGH 30.6.2004, G 218/03 (Accessed 6 November 2020).

6 Gesetz über Petitionen in Wien (2013): https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/GeltendeFassung.wxe?Abfrage=LrW&Gesetzesnummer=20000324 (Accessed 6 November 2020).

7 https://www.wien.gv.at/petition/online/ (Accessed 24 April 2021).

8 In 2019, an amendment to the Federal Act on the Organization of Teaching and Education in Schools Governed by the School Organization Act stipulated that pupils “are prohibited from wearing items of clothing of ideological or religiously significance that cover the head until the end of the school year in which they turn ten” (BGBL I54/2019). In late 2020, when we had already completed our project, the Constitutional Court declared this amendment to be unconstitutional on the grounds that it “violates the principle of equality in the context of the right to religious freedom” (VfGH 11.12.2020, G 4/2020).

9 wahlkabine.at presents the questions to viewers in a changing randomized order.

Additional information

Funding

This article is based upon work from COST Action ”Constitution-making and deliberative democracy” (CA17135), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).

Notes on contributors

Monika Mokre

Monika Mokre is a political scientist and senior researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and also a member of COST-action CA17135.

Tamara Ehs

Tamara Ehs is a political scientist and consultant for democratic innovation and also a member of COST-action CA17135.