I refute the fact that Mini-publics are innovative in their principles, outcomes, and methodology and can assist improve democratic deliberation and participation and enhance democratic life. Therefore, I argue that this popular mini-publics method of implementing deliberation in practice cannot realize deliberative democracy in a manner that satisfies the deliberative democratic standard of legitimacy. Setälä and Smith (2018) claim that legitimacy of deliberative democratic obliges citizens to claim their justification rights actively against government official, where the mini public deliberation capacity of serving authorities undermines or side-lines (Setälä and Smith, p.30). Therefore, I suggest a substitute account of deliberative democracy with a specific eye to legitimacy. Whereby deliberative democracy is signified to political culture. In light to this, it is cultural facets such as social norms, ethos and personal understanding that constrain and shape political processes not institutional specificities that are influential for deliberation satisfying its legitimacy ambitions (Böker 2017, p.39). Consequently, deliberative democracy should put forward ways to open up political and social space for extensive citizen-led meetings and crucial scrutiny of representatives, instead of striving for establishment of institutional short cuts like public minis.
Setälä (2017) clearly show how even the most fundamental choices within mini publics design like duration of process, number of participants and the funding source hold an intense influence upon the contributions we can anticipate from deliberative activities to the lawful functioning of the entire democracy (Setälä, p.20).
Lafont (2015) also contend that deliberative democracy mini public process unavoidably prolongs societal discriminations. Consequently, they can cause misleading dialogue determined by discrimination s and not merits. As such, refute the fact that “Mini-publics are innovative in their principles, outcomes and methodology and can assist improve democratic deliberation and participation and enhance democratic life.” (Hendriks 2016, p.55) This is because min public still do not satisfy the democratic needs of a country because it cannot also address the cognitive challenges of democratic citizenship.
Secondly, I refute the claim that deliberative mini-publics can address the cognitive challenges of democratic citizenship. It is true that there have been democratic innovations of the past decade. One of the being deliberative mini publics that collect randomly chosen citizens to discuss the salient public matters with the purpose of creating some kind of “uptake” in the wider political system. The refute is supported by Jacobs and Kaufmann claims that the randomly selected individuals or the political representatives are always inspired by internal expectations such as desire of learning, civic duty and sociability together with external desires like voice and presence (Jacobs and Kaufmann 2018, p 10). Therefore, the general public I included basically perceive mini publics as a way to enhancing the connection between their representative and voter without neglecting the electoral delegation logic. As such citizens will have intricate and evolving democracy conceptions. I believe that mini public are far from addressing the cognitive challenges of democratic citizenship. This is because the mini publics aim is only to ensure citizens participate and their opinions and suggestions are part of the decision process. Bobbio (2019) argues against the most recent suggestion to add deliberative mini-public into partisan decision making processes like through deliberative polls, citizens assemblies and citizens juries (Bobbio p.43). One could contend that this deliberative mechanism is likely to minimize the legitimacy of the entire political system. This truly means that deliberative mini-public can never address the cognitive challenges of a democratic citizenships because their aim and desires cannot permit them to address these challenges so they just blanket that the mini public address cognitive challenges because it is participatory.
I refute the fact that public mini guarantee success than shortcomings. First public minis have participatory limitations especially in relation to being context specific. There exist other four constraints of participation like cultural, knowledge, financial and institutional. In light to this, whatever participation will achieve in terms of efficiencies and equity given the previous power relations and socioeconomic inequalities. As such scholars strongly says that participatory activities can design knowledge that reflect strongly existing gender and social relation power (Hendriks 2016 p. 45). However, mini public can be hindered by social dynamics of inclusion and exclusion at the community levels. This is because participation barrier may consist of financial costs, time, professional elitism, lack of skills and interests among planners and proponents and doubt about the outcomes of public involvement (Hendriks 2016, p.58). Therefore, I recommend that methods should be positive within a bigger frame that assist stakeholders to be identified and disputes potentially circumvented, resolved and defused. As such, I believe that mini publics techniques per se can never guarantee success in the democratic citizenship. It was revealed that projects executing diverse methods of communal participation, from the minor schemes to the new ones were performing better in terms of long term sustainability compared to mini public (Niemeyer and Jennstål 2018, p.335). Beauvais and Warren contend that mini public participations place impractical demands on people, with more tenacious demands on their time (Beauvais and Warren 2019, p.895). Non –participatory strategies for managing resources hold negative effects due to efficiency however the harm that poor participatory strategies do is important in setting expectations and norms for future participatory strategies so that even if they will be designed better and informed with right intentions it will be more fruitful than mini Publics (Bobbio 2019, p.46).
References
Lafont, C., 2015. Deliberation, participation, and democratic legitimacy: Should deliberative mini‐publics shape public policy? Journal of political philosophy, 23(1), pp.40-63.
Setälä, M., 2017. Connecting deliberative mini‐publics to representative decision making. European Journal of Political Research, 56(4), pp.846-863.
Setälä, M. and Smith, G., 2018. Mini-publics and deliberative democracy. The Oxford handbook of deliberative democracy, pp.300-314.
Böker, M., 2017. Justification, critique and deliberative legitimacy: The limits of mini-publics. Contemporary Political Theory, 16(1), pp.19-40.
Beauvais, E. and Warren, M.E., 2019. What can deliberative mini‐publics contribute to democratic systems? European Journal of Political Research, 58(3), pp.893-914.
Jacobs, D. and Kaufmann, W., 2018, March. Legitimate participation: The effect of a deliberative mini-public on the legitimacy of public decision-making. In IRSPM Conference.
Niemeyer, S. and Jennstål, J., 2018. Scaling up deliberative effects: Applying lessons of mini-publics. The Oxford handbook of deliberative democracy, pp.329-347.
Hendriks, C.M., 2016. Coupling citizens and elites in deliberative systems: The role of institutional design. European Journal of Political Research, 55(1), pp.43-60.
Bobbio, L., 2019. Designing effective public participation. Policy and Society, 38(1), pp.41-57.