Democratic panacea or Trojan horse? Should elected representatives take part in deliberative democracy?

Representative democracy is allegedly in crisis with an increasing distance between citizens and their representatives. One response to this disconnection is to randomly select citizens to participate in the decision-making process through so-called 'deliberative mini-publics' that have now been widely used across the world.

Yet, these mini-publics usually lack any political impact, that is their results are not taken into account. Recently, inorder to address this issue, some deliberative mini-publics have been composed of both randomly selected citizens and elected representatives. This hybrid composition raises two research questions: how does this affect the quality of deliberations and what is the effect on the political impact? This project builds on the comparative analysis of four in-depth case studies(two made of citizens only, and two made of both representatives and citizens) to answer these important questions for the renewal of democracy.

Contact: Sophie Devillers

F.R.S. - FNRS | FRESH 2018 - 2022 mandate