69
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
1 collections
    1
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Flying Without Instruments? The Deliberative Turn of the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council

      1 , 2 , 3
      Journal of Deliberative Democracy
      University of Westminster Press

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisher
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          How does an established institution incorporate deliberation by randomly selected citizens? Can they deliberate on an equal footing with interest group representatives? How do the latter envision citizen participation? This article attempts to answer these questions by analysing the deliberative mini-public 'New Generations' set up by the French Economic Social and Environmental Council (ESEC) in 2020. A socio-economic consultative assembly, the ESEC was the subject of a legislative reform adopted in January 2021, which establishes the possibility for the Council to have randomly selected citizens deliberate alongside representatives of interest groups. Relying on semi-structured interviews (n = 15), surveys at multiple points in time (n = 190), direct observation (11 days) and content analysis, we illustrate the limits of the integration of citizen deliberation within the ESEC. Articulating a longitudinal macro perspective (on the institutional and legislative transformations of the Council) with a sociological microanalysis (of the 'New Generations' experiment) allows us to underline that in the current implementation of citizens' participation in the ESEC, the institution seems to be 'flying without instruments'. Indeed, with few references to legal frameworks or scientific guidelines, the Council relies mainly on private consultants to implement deliberative practices. We thus worry that within the current political context, citizen deliberation is on its way to become an ad hoc resource, used by interest groups and institutions to defend their causes in the public sphere, but not leading to a direct implication of citizens in the decision-making process. 

          Related collections

          Most cited references30

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: not found
          • Book: not found

          Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century

            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            Turning up the Heat: Partisanship in Deliberative Innovation

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Article: not found

              Institutions of Deliberative Democratic Processes and Interest Groups: Roles, Tensions and Incentives

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Journal of Deliberative Democracy
                University of Westminster Press
                2634-0488
                January 1 2023
                January 9 2023
                : 19
                : 1
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Philosophy, Université Paris-Est Créteil, France
                [2 ]History, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
                [3 ]Université de Lille (CERAPS), France
                Article
                10.16997/jdd.1100
                93b275f0-8aa6-4afb-8c9d-22bdd7731d20
                © 2023

                https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

                History

                Comments

                Comment on this article