Constitutional Deliberative Democracy in Europe by Min Reuchamps & Jane Suiter

Author:Min Reuchamps & Jane Suiter [Reuchamps, Min & Suiter, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785522024
Google: 55p7AQAACAAJ
Goodreads: 53162382
Publisher: ECPR Press
Published: 2016-01-15T07:42:10+00:00

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have tried to embed the findings on citizens’ involvement in deliberative constitution-making within the broader background of democratic-innovation research. Most findings in this edition go hand in hand with results on other forms of participatory, deliberative innovations. For example, the lack of impact on actual decision-making, be it on constitutional reform, regional policies or local problem-solving, can be found in almost all deliberative procedures. However, comparison of the cases in this volume with other cases of deliberative involvement reveals a clear research gap. Until now, research in democratic innovations has seldom compared the effects of democratic innovations taking place at different political levels and in different contexts. This is surprising, because it is intuitively convincing that, for example, deliberation on national versus sub-national topics as well as concrete problem-solving versus abstract, constitutional questions will most likely require different deliberative structures and generate different results.

Research in this field is just starting to tackle emerging normative as well as empirical questions, such as: should citizens (only) be involved in local decisions, because local topics are ‘closer to their lives’? Are they ‘more competent’ to discuss local, ‘down-to earth’ topics? Should they be involved in deliberation and decision-making considering the abstract guiding principles of a society, that is, the constitution? Is it more important to involve citizens in decisions about a society’s value-frame, manifested in its constitution? Should different forms and structures of deliberation be applied in these different contexts? How do the results of participatory deliberative procedures in these different contexts differ according to input, throughput and output legitimacy?

In addition to all these normative and empirical questions, another, future-oriented, conceptual realm of research has just begun. What would comprehensive systems, combining deliberative structures with direct-democratic instruments in a systematic way, look like? How can democratic innovations escape their limitation of being sporadic events? How can representative democratic institutions be more systematically connected to participatory innovations? No innovation can cure all the malaises of current representative democracies (Joas 2013) and this is also true for deliberative procedures in the context of constitutional reforms. The hopes pinned on deliberative procedures can only be fulfilled if participatory innovations are combined in such a way that their respective weaknesses and strengths can be balanced. One of the disadvantages of deliberative procedures is their small number of participants. They may be able to produce high-quality deliberation but it is obvious that they cannot legitimately make binding decisions about constitutional reform; these require a subsequent referendum or legislative action. With popular votes, the problem is the reverse: the entire electorate can take part but preferences might not be well thought through. Thus, neither deliberative procedures nor the aggregation of preferences (‘voting’) are optimal. However, intelligent, systematic combinations and ‘sequencing’ (Smith 2009) of different procedures could mitigate some of the weaknesses of each (Saward 2000).

The political impact of mini-publics is currently one of the most crucial issues within deliberative-democracy research. For example, studies describing and analysing the most famous example, the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral

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