Many parliaments around the world are undergoing a ‘participatory makeover’. Legislative institut... more Many parliaments around the world are undergoing a ‘participatory makeover’. Legislative institutions are opening their doors to the public through open days and communicating the latest ‘parliamentary updates’ via websites and social media. Many of these ‘community outreach’ activities may make parliaments more informative and publicly accessible, but their impact on democratic renewal is likely to be minimal. This paper argues that more meaningful steps towards ‘participatory parliaments’ could be made through improving the way legislative committees engage with the public. Drawing on insights from democratic theory, this paper argues that deeper more inclusive forms of public engagement in committees would help improve the epistemic, representative, and deliberative capacities of legislative committees (and hence the larger Assembly). More sophisticated approaches to engaging affected publics would enable committees to access relevant views and information and to better represent broader public interests (beyond their own constituencies and special interests) in their deliberations. Such qualities would enhance the public legitimacy and democratic effectiveness of committee procedures and their outputs. A number of strategies are put forward for how committees might broaden and deepen public engagement in their work.
Environmental politics is increasingly enacted online. New spaces of political communication, suc... more Environmental politics is increasingly enacted online. New spaces of political communication, such as websites, blogs, Facebook and YouTube, are changing the way environmental politics is practiced by providing an alternative platform for advocacy and mobilisation. But what other roles do online spaces perform in the enactment of contemporary environmental politics? This paper explores this question from the perspective of deliberative democracy. We study the performance of online spaces through a dramaturgical analysis of various websites, Facebook pages and YouTube clips active in a regional coal seam gas controversy in Australia. Our analysis finds that beyond interest advocacy and mobilisation online spaces play important performative functions by enlarging the stage of politics, re-casting the characters on the stage, enabling a diversity of performances, and re-scripting controversies. These functions have important democratic implications: they enable and shape the formation of deliberative systems that form around environmental issues, and influence who is seen as the legitimate participants, and how they engage in the controversy.
ABSTRACT Many governments have embraced the rhetoric of inclusive citizen engagement. Greater pub... more ABSTRACT Many governments have embraced the rhetoric of inclusive citizen engagement. Greater public involvement promises to strengthen democratic institutions and improve the quality of policy decisions and services. How do these aspirations sit alongside the reality of Australian federal politics? This article investigates the responses of elite policy actors to the Gillard government's proposal to conduct a citizens’ assembly on climate change in 2010. Drawing on over 200 media articles, the authors identify a series of procedural, institutional and political objections raised by elite commentators against the citizens’ assembly proposal. Many of these objections have little basis in the experience of deliberative designs in practice. Some, however, reflect the challenge of realising inclusive, deliberative governance in highly politicised contexts.2010200
... Strategic Uses of Public Deliberation ... would be to acknowledge that partisan actors are un... more ... Strategic Uses of Public Deliberation ... would be to acknowledge that partisan actors are unlikely to engage in public deliberation unless it speaks to their strategic interests ... The process was a kind of success for not just our organisation but also for the partici-pants and their report ...
Abstract Civil society remains,a murky concept,and the field of deliberative democracy,is as guil... more Abstract Civil society remains,a murky concept,and the field of deliberative democracy,is as guilty as any of using the term with limited critical discussion of what it includes, and what its normative,role encompasses.,This paper takes on this exploration,and in doing so reveals a number,of tensions within the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.,Amongst the growing,literature on deliberative democracy,there are two emerging,streams,of thought,and both have something,different to say on the role of civil society. There are micro deliberative democrats who,concentrate,on defining the procedural,conditions,of a structured deliberative forum,(Elster 1986; Gutmann,and Thomson,1996) and there are macro deliberative democrats who are more concerned with the messy, unstructured deliberation which,takes place in the public sphere (Dryzek 1990; 2000; Habermas,1996). These two streams,of deliberative democracy,implicitly offer contrasting,ideas on the role
Many parliaments around the world are undergoing a ‘participatory makeover’. Legislative institut... more Many parliaments around the world are undergoing a ‘participatory makeover’. Legislative institutions are opening their doors to the public through open days and communicating the latest ‘parliamentary updates’ via websites and social media. Many of these ‘community outreach’ activities may make parliaments more informative and publicly accessible, but their impact on democratic renewal is likely to be minimal. This paper argues that more meaningful steps towards ‘participatory parliaments’ could be made through improving the way legislative committees engage with the public. Drawing on insights from democratic theory, this paper argues that deeper more inclusive forms of public engagement in committees would help improve the epistemic, representative, and deliberative capacities of legislative committees (and hence the larger Assembly). More sophisticated approaches to engaging affected publics would enable committees to access relevant views and information and to better represent broader public interests (beyond their own constituencies and special interests) in their deliberations. Such qualities would enhance the public legitimacy and democratic effectiveness of committee procedures and their outputs. A number of strategies are put forward for how committees might broaden and deepen public engagement in their work.
Environmental politics is increasingly enacted online. New spaces of political communication, suc... more Environmental politics is increasingly enacted online. New spaces of political communication, such as websites, blogs, Facebook and YouTube, are changing the way environmental politics is practiced by providing an alternative platform for advocacy and mobilisation. But what other roles do online spaces perform in the enactment of contemporary environmental politics? This paper explores this question from the perspective of deliberative democracy. We study the performance of online spaces through a dramaturgical analysis of various websites, Facebook pages and YouTube clips active in a regional coal seam gas controversy in Australia. Our analysis finds that beyond interest advocacy and mobilisation online spaces play important performative functions by enlarging the stage of politics, re-casting the characters on the stage, enabling a diversity of performances, and re-scripting controversies. These functions have important democratic implications: they enable and shape the formation of deliberative systems that form around environmental issues, and influence who is seen as the legitimate participants, and how they engage in the controversy.
ABSTRACT Many governments have embraced the rhetoric of inclusive citizen engagement. Greater pub... more ABSTRACT Many governments have embraced the rhetoric of inclusive citizen engagement. Greater public involvement promises to strengthen democratic institutions and improve the quality of policy decisions and services. How do these aspirations sit alongside the reality of Australian federal politics? This article investigates the responses of elite policy actors to the Gillard government's proposal to conduct a citizens’ assembly on climate change in 2010. Drawing on over 200 media articles, the authors identify a series of procedural, institutional and political objections raised by elite commentators against the citizens’ assembly proposal. Many of these objections have little basis in the experience of deliberative designs in practice. Some, however, reflect the challenge of realising inclusive, deliberative governance in highly politicised contexts.2010200
... Strategic Uses of Public Deliberation ... would be to acknowledge that partisan actors are un... more ... Strategic Uses of Public Deliberation ... would be to acknowledge that partisan actors are unlikely to engage in public deliberation unless it speaks to their strategic interests ... The process was a kind of success for not just our organisation but also for the partici-pants and their report ...
Abstract Civil society remains,a murky concept,and the field of deliberative democracy,is as guil... more Abstract Civil society remains,a murky concept,and the field of deliberative democracy,is as guilty as any of using the term with limited critical discussion of what it includes, and what its normative,role encompasses.,This paper takes on this exploration,and in doing so reveals a number,of tensions within the theory and practice of deliberative democracy.,Amongst the growing,literature on deliberative democracy,there are two emerging,streams,of thought,and both have something,different to say on the role of civil society. There are micro deliberative democrats who,concentrate,on defining the procedural,conditions,of a structured deliberative forum,(Elster 1986; Gutmann,and Thomson,1996) and there are macro deliberative democrats who are more concerned with the messy, unstructured deliberation which,takes place in the public sphere (Dryzek 1990; 2000; Habermas,1996). These two streams,of deliberative democracy,implicitly offer contrasting,ideas on the role
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