Mini-publics and the public: challenges and opportunities

Sarah Castell

Before we get into how to engage broader publics, I want to take a step back and ask what it is that we’re trying to achieve. From Involve’s point of view, we’d really like a vibrant democracy – where everybody can shape society and society works for everybody. We think a participatory democracy will help us achieve that.

That means having public engagement and deliberation embedded so that all people who have a stake in things can take part, at multiple points throughout policy and election cycles, with participatory institutions empowered to make a real difference.

How do we get there? One way is by persuading those who currently hold power to share that power through these participatory mechanisms, for which a mindset change is required. Another way may be from civil society, creating a movement, a public push towards a more participatory democracy. Both these routes require that the broader public is aware and engaged, and that there is wider societal awareness and acceptance around the role of participation and deliberation.

Stephen Elstub

I agree that we do want lots of different avenues for political participation. That’s also the sort of society and democracy that I would like to see. I take a deliberative systems approach where deliberation is something that we want within and between multiple venues, right across the political system, and these venues are all interconnected in meaningful ways. This requires an engaged public sphere.

For mini-publics specifically there are also practical reasons why it’s important that the public are aware of them. I think it can increase and improve recruitment and make recruitment more inclusive. At the moment it’s still only a very small percentage of people that accept the invitation, and I think better understanding of mini-publics amongst the public might change that.

It could also improve the uptake of recommendations coming out of mini-publics. If there is greater public awareness and the public are in favour of the process and its outcomes, then public authorities will feel under greater pressure to implement them.

In our study of Climate Assembly UK, the civil servants and the government departments we spoke to said that they weren’t going to act on the recommendations because it was too easy not to. Awareness of the Assembly was very low so they could just ignore it, and that’s exactly what they did. But they said if there had been greater public pressure they would have felt more bound to at least consider the recommendations.

In our study on the Citizens’ Assembly of Scotland we asked journalists, “why aren’t you reporting on this more?” And they said, “well, to be a news story, it needs to make a difference. It needs to have some impact. And then we’ve got a story, and we’ll happily report it.”

the public are only going to get to know about a mini-public if it gets media coverage, but the media will only cover it if it makes an impact. But it’s more likely to make an impact if the public are aware of it.

So there’s a real problem here: the public are only going to get to know about a mini-public if it gets media coverage, but the media will only cover it if it makes an impact. But it’s more likely to make an impact if the public are aware of it. That’s a tension that mini-publics need to overcome, because it’s important that they reach out to the public. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how inclusive the recruitment is and how well it’s done. It doesn’t matter how well designed the process is. It is still a small number of people involved, so we want mini-publics to be able to influence public opinion and stimulate public debate. And if they can do that, then it’s more likely to affect elite opinion and debate as well, and possibly policy.

One more thing is that, people in power aren’t in the habit of sharing power. And that’s why it’s very difficult. I think the politicians are mainly motivated around this because they hope it’s going to look good to the electorate and get them some votes, but they are also worried about low levels of trust in society and what the ramifications of that might be. But in general, people in power don’t give it away very easily.

Sarah

I think that tension around media reporting and impact is really interesting. I wonder how we turn that the other way? There could be some very simple strategies in practice, like saying that when a commissioner comes to us to deliver a process, they need to add in sufficient advocacy and comms budget to consider the wider impact on society that the process can have.

Some practitioners are in a position to ask for that, and some aren’t. Budget is set very, very tightly, particularly in local government spaces. Often the amount you have just about covers the tip of the iceberg of how it’s done, the recruitment costs, the costs of people getting there on the day, maybe some costs of writing a report. The benefits of communicating it and giving it legitimacy in the public space are not well understood so far, so often are not seen as valuable and worth paying for. More research into the benefits of this would be helpful.

On sharing power, yes, you are absolutely right that some politicians do not want to do this. But I think for lots of politicians, there is stuff they want to do. From their point of view, they didn’t get into politics just to tinker with things, but to address things they think are wrong in society and give people a better time. There’ll be issues that they’ve wanted to move on for years that are too ethically conflicted and too complicated to move forward. So the case to them is, this is a tool that can help them. It may push them into spaces of discomfort, but there are very concrete gains to be had to move on those thorny issues.

Stephen

I definitely think that there are scenarios where people in power can be convinced that this is a good thing to do; we wouldn’t be seeing any of these processes if that wasn’t the case.

But are they more likely to listen to a citizens’ assembly, or to someone who gives their political party £1,000,000? And therein lies the problem. There are broader systemic powers in place, where the state has imperatives to basically try and protect economic interests and will do that at all costs.

That’s a universal feature, so these are entrenched powers that we’re moving against. At the same time, the state does have to legitimate itself, and that’s a window of opportunity for democratic innovation.

I think trust has been a massive influence in many different places about why mini-publics have happened. I think politicians worrying about the consequences of low levels of trust and that they may lose power on a more permanent level because of it has been a key motivation. And if restoring that trust is an aim, then much more needs to be done to engage broader publics with mini-publics.

At least some politicians and parties are finally understanding that carrying on doing politics the way politics is being done, if the trust issues aren’t going to go away, must change and how they do politics must change.

There is some good research in this area, but we need much more. Part of the problem is that a lot of the research around public views on deliberative processes was done through experiments. It is useful, but it doesn’t quite tell us what will happen when mini-publics are communicated to the public in the messy real public sphere. Previously, there just weren’t that many well-known cases that we could actually do field research on. But that is starting to change.

There’s also more interdisciplinary work needed in this area. We need to improve how communication strategies around citizens’ assembly are done – there must be work that’s relevant in political communication studies and other fields who have this kind of insight.

Sarah

I think one of the challenges for us in the sector is that lots of people aren’t communications experts and some comms skills are seen as potentially ones that we almost want to put aside. Communication needs to be simple; what are the questions being asked, what is the jeopardy, what are the answers? This can feel at odds with the mini-public process, where we try to open up or problematise issues for deliberation. As you said earlier, Stephen, the media won’t cover something unless there’s a sense that there is news. So how do we create something newsworthy while still holding the process in good faith?

Communication needs to be simple and this can feel at odds with the mini-public process. How do we create something newsworthy while still holding the process in good faith?

There’s got to be a way that we make our peace with that to use communications skills and tools consciously and intentionally where they’re useful, instead of feeling that they in some way undermine our commitment to deliberation.

Stephen

I agree, there is a tension there. From my perspective, the most important thing to to do is communicate to people about the process and the reasoning behind the process of a mini-public. And those are probably not the things that a PR strategy would focus on because they’re not going to get exposure and notoriety. But maybe you need some of those other elements in order to bring attention to a mini-public in the first instance.

Sarah

Some processes are much more political and have more of an influence on debates in the public sphere – I’m thinking about the French Convention on Climate. But then the risk is that they become quite high octane and could polarise the debate more. Then you’ve got some processes that are designed to take the heat out and have a more pragmatic or measured approach. They are perhaps more helpful to policymakers, but they’re not going to move the dial of wider public opinion about big issues.

So I suppose our challenge is, which do we want mini-publics to be? More helpful for policy development, and perhaps a bit less newsworthy? Or high-octane, movement building assemblies that might have less influence on policy? Those are perhaps two extremes, and I think there’s probably a way of doing both, but as the sector evolves, we’re going to have to have these conversations more and more. For each process, the answer might be different. For each process, what are we trying to achieve?

Stephen

These are really important questions that could inform an agenda of more research we need to do in this area.

This goes back to what you were saying about planning and budgeting for communications in the commissioning of an assembly. Public authorities may be actually quite reluctant to do that precisely because of some of the points I was making earlier. If the public are aware of a mini-public, then they can’t ignore it. They may want to wait until they see what comes out of it before deciding what they want to act on, and they want to keep the possibility of ignoring it if they can.

The French Constitutional Convention on the Climate is an interesting exception because Macron is obviously a very high-profile politician and was personally associated with it, and he said he would implement the recommendations without filter and that made it newsworthy. It looked like something was going to change. And then, because they implemented only some of the recommendations and there was a filter on them, he got badly criticised and the citizens’ assembly may have actually done him more harm than good. So I can imagine that politicians may be reluctant for a lot of people to know about a mini-public until they have responded to it positively.

Sarah

I find it really interesting that the most powerful stories policymakers tell are around how passionate and dedicated participants are. They rarely say, “great, I had five more ideas for my net zero strategy.” What sticks with them is a very human and connective experience, it’s “well, I didn’t think people would be able to do this and I was so surprised and humbled.” They tend to talk about the process more than the output, and the reframing and the way they listened. This is what we want to communicate.

There’s something about that that allows policymakers to be more open and bring in a key mindset we think is important for doing this work. It can be hard as a politician to express that you do not have a clear idea – because people attack you. Talking about the process over the outcome means you assert that you are allowed to enter a discussion with citizens, without having everything nailed down beforehand. It allows for situations where the politician says “I’m going to open this discussion, with a question with the right scope – but within the scope, I’m gonna have this space with the public, we’re not quite sure what the outcome will be, but this is what the process is and this is what we trust in.”

But that is a big mindset shift and it doesn’t give you the antagonistic story that the media are looking for. It requires a culture change. Communication to the wider public needs to talk about the different mindsets and ways of being that mini-publics promote, as well as on the outputs they generate.

Stephen

I would take some positives from the Irish situation in the sense that citizens assemblies have been used relatively quite a lot there. Some of them have been quite high profile and my understanding is that public awareness of citizens’ assemblies in general as well as some specific processes, has been quite high. So that would suggest that maybe permanence is part of this solution. But I don’t want to read too much into one case.

I think that ultimately greater public engagement with mini-publics will deter political opportunists from misusing these processes as well. It doesn’t mean that everything that comes out of a mini-public has to be acted upon, but it does mean that it can’t just be ignored either.

About the Authors

Stephen Elstub is a Professor of Democratic Politics, Newcastle University and editor of the De Gruyter book series on Citizens’ Assemblies and Mini-Publics. He has research interests in the theory and practice of deliberative and participatory democracy.

Sarah Castell has been the Chief Executive of Involve, the UK’s leading public participation organisation and an independent charity, for the last three years. Involve works to make public participation and deliberation an everyday part of democracy, to help meet the challenges of the 21st century. Sarah has a background in deliberation, transformative scenario planning and futures, and social research.

Acknowledgements from the Editor

This piece is part of the Digest’s curated conversation series, where practitioners, scholars, advocates and critics meet to converse on the topics that matter to them in the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.

I’d especially like to thank members of the Democracy R&D Network; the idea for this series came about through an open space workshop at the DRD Conference in Copenhagen, and it was through the Network that I was able to reach so many people. I’d like to acknowledge and thank all the people who came forward to take part in this series and the collective effort that has gone into the careful planning, recording and editing of each piece.