Deliberative Democracy, Under-Represented Groups and Inclusiveness in Europe

Abstract

In representative democracies, large segments of society are often under-represented in politics. In theory, deliberative procedures enhance the chances for such groups to be heard, understood, and taken into consideration in political decisions. So far, research has mostly focused on the recruitment stage and found random selection of participants as the best way to prevent exclusion. Less attention has been paid to the two following stages of deliberation: the event itself and its outcome. This special issue provides theoretical and empirical contributions to the burgeoning literature about deliberative democracy by focusing on group inclusiveness. The contributions approach inclusiveness in deliberative practices from several perspectives and brings together substantive empirical evidence about its functioning and main challenges in European countries.

Keywords:

• deliberative democracy
• inclusiveness
• societal groups
• decision-making
• Europe

The inclusiveness of deliberation

Ideally, the democratic procedures must be inclusive. Democratic decisions are understood as legitimate if and only if those subjected to them have the right, opportunity and capacity to participate in political decision making (Goodin and Dryzek 2006; Hendriks, Dryzek, and Hunold 2007). However, it is well known that the interest of several parts of the population are not taken into account in democratic decision making due to different exclusionary mechanisms (Bartels 2008; Rosset and Stecker 2019). As majority decisions form an important part of democratic procedures, the claims of smaller groups, such as ethnic or sexual minorities, tend to be overruled. However, also large parts of society are frequently underrepresented such as women, the working class, poor citizens and lower educated people (Giger, Rosset, and Bernauer 2012; Dahlerup and Leyenaar 2013; Ruedin 2013; Carnes 2016; Talukder and Pilet 2021). These forms of exclusion are mostly based on a (self-)perceived lack of political competence. Other groups are excluded due to their legal status (non-citizens) or the objective impossibility for them to participate even though they might be affected by political decisions such as the populations of other countries or the future generations (Harris 2021).

Theories of deliberative democracy focus less on the actual political decision than on the procedures foregoing this decision – they are talk-centric instead of vote-centric (Gherghina, Mokre, and Miscoiu 2021). The main aim of deliberative processes is, thus, to include citizens in all stages of the policy cycle, namely the definition of problems, agenda setting, formulation and implementation of policies, as well as evaluation of policies (Anderson 2011). In this vein, democratic rights of citizens should be enlarged and supplemented; the inclusion of those underrepresented in aggregative democracy does not form a main aim of the deliberative turn of democracy (Ehs and Mokre 2021).

Still, the claim for inclusiveness also applies to deliberative democracy (Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker 2012). This claim does not only come out of the general principle of equal participation opportunities but is also due to the specific deliberative requirement that a maximum of viewpoints should be taken into account (Goodin and Dryzek 2006). Arguably, however, deliberative procedures form even higher barriers for political participation than voting procedures or also direct democracy as deliberation calls for reflective public reasoning (Hendriks, Dryzek, and Hunold 2007). While one could argue that aggregate democracy merely requires an individual decision without any need for substantiation, deliberation needs “civility and argumentative complexity” (Dryzek 2019, 1144). One of the pioneers of deliberative democracy, James Fishkin, even claimed that democracy has been forced to choose between “mass participation” and “elite deliberation” (Fishkin 2009; Gerber, Schaub, and Mueller 2019).

Deliberative procedures enhance the chances for minorities to be heard, understood, and taken into consideration in political decisions. Ideally, in deliberations, all participants are granted the necessary amount of time and good-will to develop their arguments, so that, by the end, not a majority decision but consensus is reached (Habermas 1996). In this way, it can be expected that claims of minority groups will be included in the final decision (Benhabib 1996). The degree of inclusiveness of deliberative processes mainly depends on their organizational principles at three moments: the recruitment stage, during the event, and with regard to the outcomes (Beauvais and Bachtiger 2016). This corresponds with the general claim for three forms of democratic legitimacy – with regard to input, throughput and output (Schmidt 2013). Similarly, Young (2000) differentiates between external and internal inclusion whereas external inclusion is understood as the openness of deliberations to all affected (Mansbridge 2010; Curato 2017). However, this openness does not guarantee internal inclusion, i.e. equality of voice (Fraser 1992; Young 2000; Gerber 2015; Lupia and Norton 2017).

The relevance of this special issue

So far, research has mostly focused on the recruitment stage (Sintomer 2018) and found random selection as the best way to prevent exclusion (Fishkin 2011; van Reybrouck 2016). Less attention has been paid to the two following stages of deliberation. For the event itself as well as for its outcome, it is crucial that no individual or group dominates the debates (Gerber 2015). However, there is always a risk of domination in deliberative settings by individuals of higher social standing, with more knowledge about the topic, or of a certain gender (Karpowitz, Mendelberg, and Shaker 2012; Flinders 2016). The contributions to this special issue address some crucial aspects of deliberative democracy in terms of citizens’ participation and minority groups’ inclusion. Some of these focus on the event stage (in the order from the special issue: Harris, Allegretti, Hasić and Telalović, Trettel, and Orros and Tap), while others look at the outcomes (Strandberg et al., Pilet and Talukder, Mișcoiu and Gherghina, and Ehs and Mokre).

By analysing a series of mixed deliberations in 2018 about a proposed municipal merger in Finland, the article written by Kim Strandberg et al. focuses on the way differences between the deliberative capacities of citizens and politicians, and inequalities, such as gender gaps, impact the quality and the equity of deliberation processes (Strandberg 2021). David Talukder and Jean-Benoit Pilet approach the issue of the Belgian citizens’ support for deliberative democracy and more specifically of the attitudes of citizens from four disadvantaged groups – women, lower educated citizens, precarious employees and youngsters. They show that citizens’ support for deliberation is triggered by the lack of trust in the politicians’ competence, and that women and young citizens are more in favour of deliberation than the average population (Talukder and Pilet 2021). In her contribution, Clodagh Harris shows a similar interest related to the young generations’ involvement in deliberative democracy. By focusing on the Ireland’s Citizen Assembly on climate action (2016–2018), she investigates the way future generations were included in the debates and assessed the degree of legitimacy and intergenerational justice of these deliberative mechanisms (Harris 2021).

By focusing on the case of the France’s 2019 Great Debate, Sergiu Mișcoiu and Sergiu Gherghina’s contribution reveals the reasons for the lack of involvement of the ethno-culturally diverse and socially disadvantaged inhabitants of the French peripheries in this national public consultation: the re-legitimation function of the debate, its lack of inclusiveness, the mismatch of demands, and the format of the deliberative setting (Mișcoiu and Gherghina 2021). At their turn, but working on the debates and consultations prior to the election of the Vienna City Council (2020), Tamara Ehs and Monika Mokre analyse to what extent the innovative forms of democratic participation compensate the lack of voting rights of the non-national citizens. They use the assessment of the participatory project called “If no vote, at least voice” to draw wider conclusions about the question of underrepresentation of minority groups in “classical” politics but also in deliberative experiments.

How were the difficulties related to disadvantaged groups’ involvement in deliberation tackled? Giovanni Allegretti brings a substantive answer to this question by focusing his article on the surveys organized by the Portuguese Network of Participatory Local Authorities meant to assess the degree of inclusiveness of different participatory devices used at local levels. He demonstrates that, under the COVID-19 crisis circumstances, while the wider involvement of under-represented groups in participation has been a central topic, concrete measures for a broader inclusion such as the multiplication of the spaces of collective learning, are still to be revised before being implemented.

The inputs for stimulating the increase of the degree of inclusion in deliberative processes, or even the very organization of such processes, could be almost exclusively external to some national contexts. In their contribution, Jasmin Hasić and Aiša Telalović analyse the manner in which foreign government agencies support the creation and the functioning of diaspora-friendly democratic deliberation fora in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They compare several municipalities and cities, investigate the recently made institutional units and determine the motivations of local institutions to integrate diaspora(s) within the deliberation frameworks.

Martina Trettel focuses on the much more institutionalized deliberative processes held in 2015 and 2017 in the in the Italian Autonomous Region of Trentino - Alto Adige / South Tyrol with the aim to reform the region’s Statute of Autonomy in a quasi-deliberative way. While scrutinizing the procedures, the author identifies the internal and external factors that influence the legitimacy and the quality of the deliberative processes and inscribe them in a broader discussion about the nature and the frameworks of participatory democracy and constitution-making. The article written by Daniel Oross and Paul Tap illustrates how political parties can use deliberative practices to their own advantage. They focus on the National Consultation in Hungary and argue that this nation-wide procedure started as a promising way to provide citizens a bigger say in politics. However, over time the main government party made instrumental use of the consultation process and the latter completely lost its deliberative character. More specifically, the process was transformed from a talk-centric process into a highly effective strategic instrument that aggregates the preferences of citizens to realize the political aims of the government.

The articles included in this special issue provide an overview of group inclusiveness across deliberative democracy practices in Europe. They provide important lessons about the challenges faced by the organizers and participants, ranging from legal or design issues to individual motivations or legitimacy elements. Their findings provide a useful foundation for future research, which can illustrate how inclusive deliberative procedures can contribute to the functioning of political systems.

Acknowledgment

The authors are grateful to Angela Jain, the journal’s associate editor, for her constructive comments and excellent suggestions on earlier versions of this article. This article is based upon work from COST Action “Constitution-making and deliberative democracy” (CA17135), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).