Recipes for Transnational Public Spheres: Design Choices and their Consequences

Roxana Joyce Chen (Harvard University), John Dryzek (University of Canberra), Archon
Fung (Harvard University), Sean Gray (Memorial University), Azucena Morán (Research
Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam), Jon Stever (Innovation for Policy Foundation)

What forms of citizen participation are possible and desirable to organize at the transnational

level? Are there distinctive recipes for designing citizen forums and other participatory

mechanisms beyond the nation-state and, if so, how can the quality of transnational civic

engagement be evaluated and improved? Two decades ago, Archon Fung published the

pioneering survey, “Recipes for Public Spheres” (2003), with the aim of documenting the

different design choices facing those committed to improving citizen engagement at the

domestic level. We believe that the field of democratic innovations has now moved far

enough into the transnational realm that a new map is required to keep pace with the growth

of institutional designs in this realm and the associated enlarged ambitions of democracy

reformers.

This article analyzes several dimensions of transnational mini-publics with the aim

of drawing out their unique design challenges, trade-offs, and plausible effects on domestic

and global politics. The emergence of transnational deliberation was anticipated by scholars

(Dryzek et al. 2011), given the increasing recognition that national political decisions have

implications beyond political borders and the awareness of the global interconnectedness of

many critical social challenges—such as human migration, economic inequality, human

health and security, and environmental concerns such as biodiversity loss and climate

change. Of the participatory and deliberative democratic innovations documented by the

OECD between 1979 and 2021, the first recorded transnational public deliberations took

place in 2007 (OECD 2021) and practice has expanded since then. A number of

transnational (and multilingual) mini-publics have now been held, mostly in Europe,

drawing participants from multiple countries. In 2021, for example, the European

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Commission convened the Conference on the Future of Europe, while the first global,

sortition-selected citizens’ assembly—the Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological

Crisis—took place. Other global processes are in the works as we write. We believe it is

instructive to take stock of lessons learned and undertake a comparative survey of

transnational mini-public innovations, with a view to clarifying design choices and

informing future practice.

Mini-publics can be defined as structured deliberative forums composed of lay

citizens, often (but not necessarily) selected using stratified random sampling.1 Such forums

can be created to 1) educate the public, 2) align public policies with reflective citizen

preferences, 3) involve the public in government problem-solving, and 4) incorporate citizen

opinions into policy agendas (Fung 2003; Smith and Ryan 2014). Beyond their political

relevance, transnational mini-publics deserve particular analytic attention because they have

several unique features not shared with their national or subnational counterparts. For one,

because of their transnational—sometimes even global—scope, these mini-publics do not

interface with a sovereign authority, meaning that they confront design challenges beyond

the experience and scope of mini-publics at the national and sub-national levels. The Global

Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis, for example, sought to manage

unprecedented levels of linguistic heterogeneity by pairing assembly members with English

translators and establishing common non-verbal means of facilitating their participation in

discussions (Global Assembly 2022). Some transnational assemblies have integrated

multiple linked forums held simultaneously in different countries and across different levels

of government. These unique characteristics of transnational mini-publics have generated

1
Some existing cases, however, conform only to a looser definition: “carefully designed forums where a
representative subset of the wider population come together to engage… in discussions in one or more issues”
(Curato et al. 2021). For the purposes of this paper, we define mini-publics as expansively, in order to capture
all these possibilities.

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corresponding innovations in practice, as well as consequences for global democratic

governance, all of which require closer examination.

The contribution of this article is to provide the conceptual and normative tools for

appraising the democratic potentials of transnational mini-publics. From the perspective of

democratic institutional design, the additional complexities of organizing effective public

deliberation at the transnational and global levels makes “best practices” much harder to

identify. The universe of empirical examples of transnational mini-publics is growing, but

still relatively small. Further, many cases of innovation were designed for specific contexts

that problems that defy easy generalization. Adopting a similar strategy to Fung (2003), we

focus our attention on laying out different design choices faced by the organizers of

transnational mini-publics, in order to understand key variations in the purpose, operation,

and contributions of these unique forums. In doing so, we are less interested in making

sweeping summary judgements, than we are in capturing the variety of ways such forums

can be configured and the results. We wish to demonstrate how conceptual clarification and

systematic comparison of design choices for transnational mini-publics and their

consequences can inform the political theory of global governance, while also serving as a

concrete tool for practitioners looking to improve the quality of transnational civic

engagement and public deliberation more generally.

The rest of the paper unfolds as follows. In the first section, we review the emerging

literature on transnational and global citizen deliberation and the governance challenges to

which it responds. In the second section, we turn to consider five different dimensions along

which important design choices for transnational mini-publics must be made. While some of

these choices parallel those familiar in the design of domestic mini-publics, the challenges of

conducting public deliberations at a different scale give these factors a different valence and,

in many instances, the choices that designers face are entirely new. In the third section, we

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review the trade-offs that exist between the design choices, connecting our conceptual

analysis to recent real-world experiences of transnational mini-publics from the standpoint

of participants. In doing so, we present several hypotheses about how institutional design

choices render mini-publics more or less likely to fulfill their stated goals in advancing

democratic governance across borders and beyond the state. In the fourth section, we

highlight possible unintended effects of transnational mini-publics, as well as offer ways to

guard against these impacts.

1. Why Transnational and Global Deliberation?

Our investigation into transnational mini-publics as part of a movement to democratize

global governance, also involving transnational and global civil society, as well as actors in

the domestic public spheres (Kraft-Kasack 2008; Kuyper and Wolkenstein 2018; Smith

2013; Zürn 2018). Skeptics may (understandably) balk at the suggestion that there is

anything coherent enough to be labelled a singular “democratization movement”. There are,

to be sure, diverse histories, interests, and agendas of those who are pushing for greater

citizen engagement and deliberation at the global level. Equally, some impulses for reaching

for transnational mini-publics are at cross-purposes, or reflect competing visions of global

democracy, including those of democratic theorists, practitioners, politicians, international

organizations, non-governmental organizations, and transnational activists.

Still, reflecting on the slow but steady proliferation of transnational mini-publics

over the past two decades, there are clear commonalities. Beyond a shared belief in the value

of increasing public engagement in global governance, the conveners of transnational

mini-publics are also united in seeing these forums as an increasingly important tool for

advancing their political agenda. What’s the appeal of staging a deliberation across multiple

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countries or jurisdictions? And what do the conveners of these processes hope to

accomplish?

For international organizations such as the United Nations (UN) or World Bank, the

turn to transnational mini-publics is largely a response to persistent democratic deficits.

Simply put, transnational and, especially, global mini-publics are one way to discharge an

obligation to the emerging global norm of inclusive citizen participation. Granted, this norm

may be more powerful in some areas of global governance (climate change, biodiversity, the

regulation of emerging technologies) than others (trade, economic and financial governance,

security), especially when it intersects with considerations of national interest and state

sovereignty. The UN, for example, is composed of member countries each with their own

agendas, and is not a democratic body in the conventional sense. While in the UN General

Assembly each member state has a vote, greater power rests with the five permanent

members of the Security Council. And of course many of the members of the UN are not

themselves established democracies. All of this makes the participation norm harder to

realize, institutionally speaking, even as it heightens demands for more direct public

involvement.

Other international organizations with global reach are no better—and often

worse—when it comes to inclusive participation. Yet, demands for citizen participation in

global governance, whether or not they are couched in the language of democracy, are

increasingly felt, which in turn explains the appeal of transnational mini-publics. For

example, the process that yielded the 2015 UN Sustainable Goals featured unprecedented

efforts to involve citizens on the part of UN departments and agencies, including outreach to

community-level actors, stakeholder consultations, and extensive use of opinion surveys. Yet

the difficulties of coordinating this kind of public outreach on a global scale, coupled with

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participation bias and a lack of deliberative thinking, ultimately undermined the democratic

credentials of the process (Fox and Stoett 2016).

For global governance advocates, the appeal of transnational mini-publics stems

from similarly hard lessons about the weakness and ineffectiveness of many existing

governance arrangements (outside of areas such as trade and finance) in protecting affected

constituencies across borders. Mini-publics may be a mechanism for those affected to

project their voice and influence on a global stage, filling an institutional void. Emerging

policy areas, such as the regulation of genome editing, or the policing of artificial

intelligence, not only lack clearly defined state positions, but also well-formed civil society

organizations. As such, these areas provide a golden opportunity for public agenda-setting

through transnational deliberative innovations—ideally, in a way that counteracts the

dominance of a few powerful states in global decision-making.

Global governance advocates also appeal to transnational mini-publics as a way of

correcting for exclusionary biases in global civil society, recognizing that civil society has

often substituted for direct citizen participation when it comes to thinking about global

democracy. NGOs and advocacy groups such as Oxfam, the Climate Action Network, and

Amnesty International, have accomplished much on behalf of their donors and those whose

interests they speak for. But organized civil society is not the same as the citizenry. In the

same way that national democracy relies on but should not depend solely upon the activities

of interest groups and social movements, global democracy should not rely primarily on the

activities of global civil society. Also needed, is the voice of lay citizens, who can bring to

bear a diversity of judgments across competing positions and reflective capacities that can

be missing in civil society activists committed to their various causes.

This last point is especially important when considering the different priorities,

histories, and critical perspectives of activists from the Global South, who often point to the

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ways that global society—in its current incarnation—is controlled by, and reflects the

viewpoints of, well-resourced groups from the Global North. Not only this, but many

countries are entangled in ongoing structures of colonialism, cultural imperialism, and

territorial dispossession, raising valid fears about who is given a seat at the table, and under

what conditions (Xón Riquiac 2024 [Forthcoming]).2 Arguably, transnational and global

mini-publics, if critically transformed in the narrowness of its design and normative premise,

may prove useful as an antidote to the domination of Global North epistemologies in

governance in general, and civil society in particular.

Finally, and perhaps because of their increasing prominence in other circles,

democratic theorists have also taken a keen interest in mini-publics as a potential means of

strengthening democratic values in a context where traditional democratic institutions, like

elections, are unavailable. Global elections remain a truly distant prospect, the existence of a

dogged Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (that would be directly

elected) notwithstanding. The European Union is, of course, an important exception on this

point, given elections to the EU Parliament. Yet, even here, the disconnect between ordinary

citizens and EU parliamentarians is wide and growing—visible, for instance, in low voter

turnout rates and public distrust, as well as attacks from populist politicians and

governments at the state level (Bellamy and Kröger 2016).

Why might transnational mini-publics do a better job of connecting citizens to

governance, according to democratic theorists? The simplest answer is legitimacy: collective

decisions will be seen as legitimate to the degree they involve effective participation on the

part of those affected by them, or their direct representatives. While global governance has

in the past been largely immune to democratic considerations, there is no reason why the

standard of democratic legitimacy should not apply globally.

2
With the important exception of Indigenous representatives, who are often present in these international
forums as the ancestral leaders of their communities and legitimate systems of governance.

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 Further, mini-publics have several epistemic advantages over more conventional

democratic mechanisms (e.g., elections) which may make a legitimacy boost more likely.

For instance, the use of random selection and targeted recruitment strategies can be used to

overcome persisted biases, including the over-representation of privileged groups, or the

dominance of certain national interests, languages, and perspectives (Stevenson 2016).

Advancing citizen deliberation through mini-publics also provides a means of combining

insights from scientific experts, policymakers, with members of lay-publics, in a way that

facilitates mutual learning and consciousness-raising. Indeed, some democratic theorists

suggest that mini-publics may be instrumental to achieving global justice, insofar as these

forums provide opportunities for poor and marginalized groups historically excluded from

governance processes to critically examine themselves what global justice means, and how it

should be pursued (Wisor 2012).

In sum, we can identify the appeal of transnational mini-publics as part of a wider

movement to democratic global governance, pursued by politicians, scholars, activists, and

other actors to different degrees, and to different ends. But to assess the democratic

potentials and pitfalls of this turn to mini-publics, we need to know more than just the

aspirations of their convenors. When it comes to institutional design, form ideally follows

function. So, the success or failure of these innovations should be determined, not just by

considering the motivations of the actors involved, and the problems they are seeking to

solve, but also their design choices.

How do we ensure that the right kind of institutional design is selected for a specific

problem? We’re now at a point in the development of these innovations that we can draw

some general lessons from past experiences to produce a set of guidelines for academics and

practitioners looking to put their own transnational mini-public into the field, to identify

trade-offs, and to guard against any unintended consequences.

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 2. Institutional Design Choices

Imagine, then, that you are an activist or political leader looking to organize a citizen forum

across multiple countries and that you are in a position—with sufficient financial backing

and stakeholder support—to actually implement the project. You decide to convene a

mini-public that will bring citizens together in a transnational context and place them in

dialogue, perhaps, with international actors and organizations on some important

cross-border concern. The organizational logistics would be daunting. But, ideally, much

like its domestic corollary (Fung 2003), this transnational mini-public will contribute to the

democratic project of building a more participatory and inclusive global public sphere, not

just by informing discussion and debate, but also by projecting citizen voices in an

appropriately representative manner into global decisions and policies. In designing your

transnational mini-public, there are several choices and trade-offs that you will have to

consider in the course of your planning, depending on what you hope to accomplish.

A. What? Topic

The first important institutional design choice of a transnational citizens’ assembly is its

topic. Transnational mini-publics span a broad spectrum of topic areas: some, like the Global

Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis or the Global Citizens' Assembly on

Genome Editing, aim to foster discussion about far-reaching topics like the environment,

regulation of emerging technologies, digitalization, migration, and global health (Curato et

al. 2023; Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, Global Assembly

2022). Others, like the Consultation of Indigenous Peoples on the Right to Food or the

European Citizens’ Deliberation on Brain Science, seek to gather public opinion on fairly

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technical, regulatory topics (LATINNO; Community Research and Development

Information Service).

While a transnational mini-public’s topic does not alter its underlying frameworks

and rules, its subject can influence its design—especially its pedagogy and composition.

Equally importantly, topic choice can shape the function of a mini-public. On one hand,

highly technical topics may be better geared toward the generation of precise policy

recommendations, in the service of agenda-setting or legitimation of an option. On the other

hand, more accessible topics with greater public salience may allow participants to assess

policies, share policy preferences, or even form recommendations for cross-jurisdictional

co-governance. In general, transnational mini-publics are most influential when lay citizens

(as opposed to professional stakeholders like politicians and global civil society) have

embodied knowledge of the matter at hand or can acquire sufficient understanding of the

topics under consideration to offer distinctive contributions such as information about how

they are affected by policies or public decisions; contending values and ethical

considerations; or popular insights into the phenomenon derived from the epistemic

advantages that citizens often have (Brown 1997; Epstein 1996). From a theoretical

perspective, more accessible topics are also plausibly more conducive to higher-quality

deliberation—that is, deliberation that is more equal, inclusive, reasonable, and rational

(Fung 2003)—albeit at the expense of providing detailed, technical advice (though there is

no evidence on this matter).

B. Where? Scale

A transnational mini-public’s scale also shapes its democratic attributes. To start, regional

initiatives like the Cross-Border EU Citizens’ Dialogue—though generally smaller than

globally-representative mini-publics—bring together participants that are more likely to

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share culture and language, as well as political and economic circumstance (European

Commission 2019; Morán and Ross 2021). Members of regionally-convened transnational

mini-publics may thus find it easier to communicate, share experiences, and form

streamlined preferences and recommendations during the participatory process, increasing

the body’s overall deliberative quality. Furthermore, regional transnational bodies can be

more likely to be forums of empowered decision-making. This is because it is easier to hold

officials accountable to a mini-public’s proposals when specific governments actually have

the jurisdiction to implement them (Smith 2013). Moreover, since regional forums often

convene in response to topics that are already salient on a regional policy agenda, officials

have a stronger electoral incentive to empower the mini-public with substantive,

decision-making influence.

Yet, transnational mini-publics are slowly but increasingly convening at the global

level to include people from many continents and countries, on topics such as the Earth’s

changing climate. These deliberations create substantive exchanges between citizens with

different cultural perspectives, political alignments, socioeconomic backgrounds, and

education levels. Configured properly, these conditions could reinforce democratic values

like legitimacy, mutual respect, and authenticity (Berg and Lindskog 2018; Stevenson and

Dryzek 2012); as well as make any resulting policies more rational, representative, and

autonomy-preserving (Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008). However, as the scale of deliberation

expands, so too does the risk of excluding marginalized viewpoints. Translational and global

forums may hinder reasonable deliberation, create cultural and linguistic barriers to

communication, or unintended security concerns that limit people’s ability to engage in

deliberation (Dryzek et al. 2011; Veloso et al. forthcoming). Moreover, given that

jurisdiction over global governance rests (often weakly) in the hands of many scattered

actors and institutions, it is more difficult to meaningfully integrate outputs of a

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transnational mini-public into an empowered public space—thereby limiting its impact

(Smith 2013; Kraft-Kasack 2008).

C. Who? Sponsoring Organizations and Stakeholders

As with domestic mini-publics, sponsors can adopt a wide variety of governance roles (as,

for instance, initiators, funders, or assessors), but have the most sway over the democratic

outcome of a mini-public as agenda-setters, information providers, or process designers.

However, sponsors of transnational mini-publics face a particularly pressing charge of

preserving deliberative integrity (Parry and Curato 2022). Although the onus of coordinating

a mini-public with fair evidence, framing questions, and deliberation processes falls on

organizing bodies at the local and national levels as well, transnational mini-public

organizers must create deliberative conditions reflecting the wide spectrum of linguistic,

social, educational, and economic differences among participants.

Transnational mini-publics are generally convened by state and international

institutions, civic organizations, or a mixture of the two. Part of the reason is about capacity:

entities such as the EU, UN, World Bank, or national governments have the financial muscle

needed to initiate and fund such events. Furthermore, their negotiated international status

lends legitimacy to the assemblies they convene, while their sensitivity to political pressure

renders them more likely to link mini-publics into empowered public spaces (Smith 2013).

The role of governmental entities as initiators and sponsors can be a design

challenge, especially on policy areas or topics where the sponsor is perceived to have an

interest. Critics from global civil society and marginalized groups often (rightly) worry that

having sponsors involved in organizing an assembly will also mean that the sponsors get to

control the agenda for discussion, the participants who are recruited (and excluded), the

information that is provided, and the range of acceptable outcomes (see, e.g Pateman 2012;

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Young 2001). If sponsors can set the parameters for discussion, then they can steer

deliberations in a predetermined direction, which undermines the autonomy of the process

and the perceived legitimacy of its results.

Though these concerns are not unique to transnational and global assemblies, they

are certainly plausible.3 To take just one example, consider the tensions that existed between

sponsors and organizers of the 2021 Conference for the Future of Europe sponsored by the

European Commission. Sponsoring member states disagreed with its partners in the

European Parliament and key stakeholders from civil society about whether the conference

should be empowered to discuss more radical kinds of treaty changes, versus “a

policy-focused fine-tuning of the European Council’s own (strategic) agenda” (Centre for

European Policy Studies 2022). Eventually, the disagreement led to some sponsoring

member states “discrediting the conference” on the grounds that it had been “hijacked.”

As this case demonstrates, organizational sponsors and stakeholders need to think

carefully about their role and to be transparent in their aims and goals for the assembly so as

to proactively identify conflicts of interest and work through them. There are a range of

options that designers can also use to avoid accusations of undue influence. One option is for

sponsors and stakeholders to delegate the design of the assembly so that it’s out of their

hands. Using a two-step process, for example, a group of citizens could be convened to

agree on the principles and structure that would govern the assembly, with a second group

then selected to participate in the work of the assembly itself (see Karpowitz and Raphael

2014). Because the design choices are insulated from sponsors, it is harder for the system to

be manipulated.

3
See also Extinction Rebellion’s exit from the Stewarding Group of Scotland’s Climate Citizens Assembly in
2020, driven by the Assembly becoming “increasingly controlled by the Secretariat, which [...] use[d]
government processes, ways of working and attitudes towards the scale of the crisis” (Extinction Rebellion
Scotland 2020).

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 A less demanding option to avoid the influence of sponsors and funders is to increase

the independent, agenda-setting powers of assemblies. When participants can control topics

for deliberation, invite their own experts and speakers, engage with civil society groups, or

revisit the terms of their mandate, they also gain a degree of autonomy from organizers and

other vested interests that may permit more radical proposals to be considered (Sintomer

2023; Malkin et al. 2023). From a design perspective, the trade-offs are primarily practical.

Are sponsors, funders, and other key stakeholders looking to crowdsource ideas or generate

broad consensus across multiple countries, jurisdictions, or publics? Or, is the goal more

limited and narrow, for example, to get feedback on a specific policy item? There is also a

risk that an overly expansive agenda will make it harder to deliberate any specific topics.

In addition to questions of how to insulate transnational assemblies from sponsors

and stakeholders, designers should also consider how equipped sponsors are to support the

assemblies’ efforts. Often, the multifaceted nature of their mandate also means that

governmental bodies may lack the bureaucratic focus or practical expertise to convene truly

representative, inclusive transnational mini-publics. Moreover, a governmental entity’s

incentive to improve its public image often limits the scale and topic of the mini-publics it

convenes to what is politically expedient. The European Union, for example, primarily funds

regional forums centered on issues prominent on the European political agenda—such as

democracy, health regulations, and climate policy (European Commission).

Conversely, civic organizations might possess the technical expertise and focus

needed to design high-quality deliberation at the transnational level. Moreover, their political

independence from official government bodies may place fewer constraints on the possible

topic and scale of mini-publics that they convene. The trade-off, of course, is that without

the official backing of the government, these forums may exert little influence over the

relevant policymakers. They may also struggle to generate sufficient attention in global civil

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society, and possess fewer funding capabilities for large transnational forums than their

governmental counterparts (Riedy and Herriman 2011; Brassett and Smith 2010).

In sum, the organization and sponsorship of transnational and global forums can pose

many dilemmas, primarily due to the tradeoffs between securing influence and ensuring

democratic accountability, especially when compared to more traditional government

structures. Even in cases where the organizers of such innovations aren’t officially aligned

with a government, the financial support of states and international institutions may still

render these processes susceptible to ideological or structural manipulation by

commissioning bodies (Smith 2013). For example, a recent assessment of the governance of

the Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crises, which was convened solely by

civil society organizations, demonstrated challenges of “inclusion, contextualisation,

transparency, and conflict resolution” (Ross et al. 2023).

D. How? Process Innovations from Transnational Deliberation

Compared to local and even national mini-publics, transnational mini-publics generally

encompass much greater diversity of nationality, language, and geography. These

dimensions of diversity in turn require innovations in the process of conducting transnational

mini-publics for them to be representative, inclusive, authentically deliberative, and

legitimate.

i. Participants and Recruitment

A major challenge in the emerging effort to create transnational mini-publics is to constitute

an appropriate body of participants. But far more than for more delimited mini-publics, it is

difficult both to determine who ought to be included in any particular transnational

mini-public and then to actually recruit those people—or representatives of them—to

participate. On the normative challenge, sub-national and national mini-publics often operate

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against a mature background of understandings about what appropriate inclusion looks

like—for example, a statistically representative sample of the population (perhaps through

random selection) or relatively well-understood groups. Such understandings often include a

shared sense of who has been historically excluded (e.g. racial, ethnic, minority, or

socio-economically disadvantaged groups) and so ought to be included in more legitimate

democratic discussions going forward. Those involved in the nascent efforts to create

mechanisms of transnational democratic representation, deliberation, and governance are

very much developing—and debating about—what sorts of representation are conducive to

high-quality, unbiased participation. For example, in an effort to convene citizens from

several countries (or the whole world) to discuss a topic like climate change, biotechnology,

or responses to COVID, should the constitution of the body have equal numbers of citizens

from each of the involved countries, over-representation of affected countries, or should

membership in the body be proportional to the population of the countries participating?

Should we attend to the representation of different discourses, as well as different categories

of people? Various methods have been implemented in various transnational mini-publics,

but there is as yet no gold standard in this regard.

On the practical challenge: like national and sub-national mini-publics, transnational

mini-publics serve a number of different democratic purposes, which include informing

citizens, helping them form preferences and come to “public judgement,” informing

policy-makers, amplifying under-represented voices, and shifting a policy agenda or

priorities. But as far as we know, there have not been any transnational mini-publics that are

“empowered” in that the decisions of that mini-public become policy or law—as with

participatory budgeting, community consultations, or other empowered deliberative forums.

This is due in part to the absence, in most transnational governance situations, of an

authoritative government that can delegate power to a mini-public. Rather, at this stage of

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development, these bodies have often aimed to inform and solicit the views of those who are

under- or un- represented in transnational policy discussions compared to policy experts,

nation-state governments, and organized civil society groups. Yet the results remain mixed,

and recruitment of participants continues to have a strong socio-economic skew. In the

recent Global Dialogue on the Future of the Internet, for example, organizers noted the

“overrepresentation of people with an academic background and younger people” while also

admitting to challenges of creating “online meeting spaces” across “many national

dialogues” (We, the Internet 2020). Meanwhile, the multi-national UN World Wide Views

Participation Project on Global Warming faced additional recruitment challenges when

selecting participants from countries and cultures who for political reasons were “very

reluctant to share their opinions in public.” (Jørgensen et al. 2016).

Together, these design challenges make clear that participant recruitment at the

transnational and global levels is likely to magnify the well-known hurdles that we see with

mini-publics and civic forms at the domestic levels. Designers of transnational mini-publics

should be especially attentive to recruiting participants from specific communities, rather

than just relying on a statistically representative sample of the affected population or most

influential stakeholders. And they should also ensure that participants are given equitable,

culturally appropriate support to ensure more socially even recruitment, including translation

services, local facilitation, technological supports, monetary stipends, and childcare services,

among others.4

ii. Facilitation, Translation, and Deliberation

The facilitation of mini-publics enables deliberation among participants by establishing the

design of the process and specific modes of interaction that ensure accessibility and

4
Whenever transnational mini-publics convene in the context of a settler colonialist state, they should note the
deliberative and territorial autonomy to which Indigenous communities are entitled. Indigenous claims to
sovereignty should be understood as independent from the nation state, as dialogic decision-making among
them is still often shaped by colonial relations and a ‘dialogical impossibility’ unless accompanied by systemic
changes (Xón Riquiac 2021 [Forthcoming]).

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inclusivity (Dryzek 2002; Moore 2012; Escobar 2014, 2019). Different approaches to what

is commonly known as ‘frontstage facilitation’ (i.e., the implementation of the process

design and the modes of interactions during the DMP with participants) include those

self-organized by participants, multi-methods designed by organizers, or established

mechanisms such as dynamic facilitation (von Schneidemesser et al. 2023). These methods

heavily rely on shared linguistic, cultural, and social norms governing interactions, which

prove to be particularly complex to define at the global level (Moran et al. 2024).

Facilitation during the Global Assembly was characterized by the constant

re-scripting of the process design, improvisation, and the creation of new spaces to interact

with and among participants (for instance, through message applications). This said,

enabling deliberation still proved to be a complex task, and the GA constituted, to a great

extent, a learning process rather than a series of collective deliberations (Curato et al. 2023).

The reasons and learnings are multiple, but when it comes to facilitation, experts have

argued that better results can be expected when facilitators are co-designers of the process

and have increased agency as they adapt deliberative spaces to diverse local contexts on a

permanent and dynamic basis (Moran et al. 2024; Curato et al. 2023). Relevant aspects of

design include the pace of the sessions or the accessibility of the content presented to

participants.

The presence of linguistic translators to facilitate dialogue across linguistic divides

can also generate counter-intuitive dynamics. Nicole Doerr (2018), for instance, finds that

language translators may find themselves assuming informal advocacy roles, particularly in

cases where a facilitation team fails to give certain voices adequate floor time, or politicians,

experts, and other elites are dismissive of the questions posed to them. In many deliberative

processes, the formal neutrality of facilitators and their tight control over agenda items,

speaker lists, discussion time, and the like, can generate hidden forms of power. Yet, because

18
linguistic translators work for all sides, as interpreters, they’re also uniquely positioned to

ensure that certain arguments or perspectives aren’t sidelined. In one striking example from

the 2003 World Social Forum in Paris, a group of volunteer linguistic translators went so far

as to halt deliberations by refusing to translate, until half the forum’s rules were changed to

ensure more adequate gender representation (Doerr 2018, 15). The fact that the volunteer

translators were separate from the organizers and moderators of the event, yet still essential

to its success, meant that they could intervene on behalf of marginalized participants without

being perceived as biased or overly partisan. “[T]ruly democratic deliberation including

diverse groups depends on the institutionalization of [this] third position for political

translation.” (Doerr 2018, 120).

iii. Federated Mini-Public Linkages

Domestic mini-publics are archetypically conceived as a single committee in which all

participants meet as a single body over one or more sessions. At the transnational and global

levels, however, mini-publics are what we call federated: composed of a number of distinct

deliberative forums that are linked (i.e., connected) together, both spatially (occurring in

different sites and/or with different compositions of participants) and functionally (distinct

according to their purpose and scope).5

Federated mini-publics are consistent with the idea of a deliberative system

(Parkinson and Mansbridge 2012) that is now prominent in the literature, and with the

emerging concept of deliberative ecologies (Mendonça 2024). The deliberative system

concept was developed in recognition of the need for deliberative ideals to be sought at large

scale. At such a scale, it is unrealistic to impose all the burdens of inclusion and deliberative

quality onto a single forum – be it a mini-public or a parliament. Instead, different parts of

5
That said, though federated mini-publics are more prominent in the context of transnational and global
governance there are some domestic examples. Consider the simultaneous deliberations organized by
AmericaSpeaks across several US American communities, or the open-for-all public meetings that took place
alongside the 2004 British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly (Warren and Pearse 2008).

19
the system (such as social movements, political parties, and “everyday talk”, alongside

legislatures and mini-publics) can be seen as potential contributors to realizing deliberative

and democratic values for the system as a whole. In this light, federated mini-publics can be

seen as deliberative sub-systems. That is (just like systems) they use task differentiation

across different, linked forums in order to advance deliberative and democratic values. In the

context of transnational governance, federated mini-publics can then be integrated with other

parts of the system (such as transnational civil society, multilateral organizations, and states)

in order to further advance these values.

Compared to single-body deliberations, such as a Citizens’ Assembly or a

Deliberative Poll, federated public deliberations face a special design challenge because they

occur in multiple places across several phases. For example, a federated design might begin

with a decentralized phase of deliberation across several forums across the globe, then select

delegates from each of these initial forums to participate in more centralized deliberation in

the second forum.

From a design perspective, the choice of when and how to link mini-public forums

together can importantly shape each forum’s purpose, making it more likely that the process

will achieve certain goods. For example, a transnational mini-public that allows participants

who share the same linguistic, cultural, or geographic background to deliberate separately in

their own caucasus (or “enclave”) may increase the representation of diversity in the

process overall. Discussions often proceed more quickly among people who share a

sufficiently common culture, language, and experience. Substantively, people from different

communities will often be differently affected by, and arrive at different perspectives on,

issues like climate change or biotechnology. Within-community deliberation, for example,

can enable participants to articulate shared understandings on these topics. But transnational

deliberation requires the views developed within these communities—often national

20
communities—to come into contact with one another in the give and take of

inter-community deliberation that may yield points of major agreement or articulate the most

important dimensions of disagreement.

Phasing deliberation across multiple forums multiples the number of participants

involved to tens of thousands. A transnational mini-public can also have a federated design

that receives other goods, such as goal plurality or epistemic divisions of labour. For

example, the forums that comprise a single mini-public may be given different

responsibilities: with one focused on learning, another on solution development, and still

others focused on local implementation, or transnational and global advocacy. The virtue of

such federated linkages is that they enable a mini-public to harness the wisdom of crowds

across different stages of a collective decision-making process, and to do so in a way that

addresses the scale and complexity of global issues involving diverse constituencies.

While complicated to organize—often requiring multiple locations, mastery of novel

digital tools, several organizational partners, and many languages—federated designs appear

to be a critical feature of transnational mini-publics, and in our view the most novel one. To

render dimensions of mini-public design more concrete, as well as illustrate the different

options for linking phases and forums together, we highlight four different linkages, which

we present here as ideal types. These linkages are not intended as exhaustive, but are instead

meant to illustrate the internal variations that can exist in how transnational mini-publics are

federated to advance some desirable qualities, while sometimes sacrificing others.6 Figure 1

provides a summary of each linkage and its possible combinations, using the Conference for

the Future of Europe as a running example.

6
Indeed, in our view, there is no theoretical limitation to the number of linkages between mini-publics, and
linkages are not mutually exclusive. So, for example, the connection of a supplemental forum at the
transnational level to develop proposals based on challenges identified during a previous phase of
national-level deliberation (a type of tiered forum) would not preclude the integration of additional linked
forums either spatially or functionally, such as a sequential forum at the transnational level to evaluate the
developed proposals and a further set of tiered forums at the national level to contextualize proposals for
implementation.

21
 Figure 1: Federated Mini-Public Linkages
Examples from the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE)

Spatial Axis

Heterarchical Linkages Hierarchical Linkages

Forums are organized at equivalent Linked forums are organized at
levels of governance, different levels of governance
and/or equivalent levels of power, and/or power.
influence, or perceived legitimacy.

Phased Linkages Sequential Forums Tiered Forums

Forums contribute (Heterarchically Phased) (Hierarchically Phased)
to different stages
of a policy CoFoE featured an open-for-all The recommendations developed by
process (ie. digital platform engaging citizens the national and regional citizens'
defining agendas, across Europe in an agenda setting panels were evaluated by the
identifying exercise that was higher-level Conference Plenary,
potential non-hierarchically linked with which was composed of EU
solutions, voting sortition-selected European panels law-makers, politicians,
on proposals). that were responsible for stakeholders, and citizen
developing proposals according to representatives from previous
the set agendas. panels.
Functional
Axis Unitary Decentralized Forums Parallel Forums
Linkages (Heterarchically Unitary) (Hierarchically Unitary)
Forums contribute
to the same stage CoFoE featured six decentralized The six national panels and four
of a policy panels—in Belgium, Germany, European panels of CoFoE were
process (ie the France, Italy, Lithuania and the held in parallel, with different
same report, Netherlands—using a similar groups of citizens developing
decision, etc). methodology. The decentralized recommendations for the different
national forums contributed to the topics and geographical
same phase of the Conference. jurisdictions to which they were
assigned. The results were compiled
and shared with the Conference
Plenary.

On the spatial axis of federation are hierarchical and heterarchical linkages.

Transnational mini-publics often feature a form of heterarchical federation where some (or

22
all) of the public deliberation occurs in different (national or community-based) forums in a

kind of parallel play, while others are hierarchically federated in that representatives or

delegates from geographically dispersed forums may deliberate in a transnational forum. It’s

important to note that in the absence of a global sovereign, hierarchy in the transnational

public sphere is not unidirectionally correlated with geographic scope. The process of

establishing international principles and norms, for example, frequently moves

hierarchically from local and national forums to regional and global forums; conversely, the

implementation of international norms often moves hierarchically from the international

level, to the national, to the sub-national.

On the functional axis of federation are phased and unitary linkages. Unitary

linkages task forums with contributing to the same stage of a deliberative process—by, for

example, identifying an agenda, developing solutions, or voting on resolutions. In a phased

process, by contrast, different groups of participants engage at different stages of

deliberation. For instance, a broader assembly might participate in setting the mini-public’s

agenda and priorities, while a smaller (and distinct) set of participants might deliberate to

form relevant solutions and public recommendations. In turn, still another group could

choose, perhaps by referendum or another voting method, to ratify or reject the deliberated

proposal.

The Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) was composed of four types of

linked forums. These included a Europe-wide open-for-all digital platform, six national

citizens’ panels, a series of four regional citizens’ panels, and the “Conference Plenary”—a

composite panel that convened 369 European functionaries, politicians, and stakeholders

together with 80 representatives of the preceding regional citizens’ panels. The choices that

were made about the design of its linkages thus had significant consequences for the

composition and function of each of the forums that comprised the larger process. Following

23
this logic, we can specify how different combinations of linkages might result in different

kinds of forums within a single transnational event.

Decentralized forums occur when two or more sites are given the same broader

powers and asked to contribute to the same stage of the deliberative process. By hypothesis,

they enable organizers to efficiently expand mini-public outreach and inclusion, increase

openness and transparency, and to customize the pedagogical and deliberative conditions

according to diverging regional, national and/or community-level norms and needs. The

2021 Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis, for example, developed

adaptable and open materials for community-based organizers and civil society to host local

community assemblies alongside the global sortition-selected “Core Assembly”.

Decentralized forums in transnational mini-publics often heterarchically link national,

sub-national and transnational forums, and of the 37 Community Assemblies reporting back

to the 2021 Global Assembly, six events featured direct transnational deliberation and the

remainder took place at the national and sub-national level.

Sequential forums arise when sites are designed with similar inputs or powers, but

tasked with contributing to successive stages of the deliberative process. A forum may be

designed, for example, to maximize problem-solving potential at the proposal development

phase by maximizing epistemic, experiential and demographic diversity of members. A

subsequent linked forum may then mitigate a variety of biases by composing its membership

through random selection. Sequential forums may also support greater inclusiveness by

modularizing a larger process into several less-resource-intensive forums, thereby increasing

the number of positions and reducing the overall time required for each member of the

federated mini-public.

In contrast, what we call tired forums vary in terms of their tasks and powers, as well

as the stages that the participants at each site become involved. For example, a forum

24
involving lay citizens may have the authority to engage in fact-finding, the results of which

are passed to a panel of experts for review, before finally reaching a committee of

stakeholders with decision-making powers. Depending on the context, the “tiering” of

forums in this way may confer greater legitimacy and popular control to transnational

mini-publics by—for instance—bringing elected regional representatives and stakeholders

into a (higher-order) forum alongside citizens in a way that helps realize co-governance, as

with CoFoE’s composite Conference Plenary.

Finally, what we call parallel forums are the result of bodies with different

composition and authority being assigned to the same phase of a process. As a design

strategy, the advantage of parallel forums has to do with the creation of failsafes and

redundancies: if multiple forums are working separately on the same task or issue, then the

problems or oversights in one forum can be compensated for, without jeopardizing the entire

process as a whole. In this way, the linkages that support parallel forums within a

transnational mini-public may provide greater resilience and reliability, and support the

contextualization of an issue at overlapping levels of governance. The results of the parallel

national and regional citizens’ panels of CoFoE, for example, were compiled and shared as

recommendations for consideration by the Conference Plenary.

3. How Should Mini-Publics Contribute to Global Democratization?

Ideally, once all of the design considerations have been worked through, a mini-public will

improve the quality of transnational and global governance and contribute to

democratization. So, in addition to the planning that goes into staging a mini-public, we

should also be attentive to the impact that a mini-public is aiming to have, or the causal

effects that it is supposed to bring about (Goodin and Dryzek 2006; Setälä 2021). Different

effects are relevant depending on the choices made in the initial planning and design phase.

25
One cluster of (intended) effects is about the sort of influence that the event is supposed to

exert: its mandate, support from sponsoring organizations and state-actors, linkages to

stakeholders in multiple countries or jurisdictions, and relationship to formal law-making

and regulatory processes. How is a transnational deliberative innovation set up to exercise

influence and what sort of influence is it intended to wield? Does an innovation have an

expressed mandate to present binding recommendations? Or is the influence that a forum

has more indirect, geared towards raising public awareness about some issue or problem and

identifying latent constituencies who might be affected?

A. Informational Impacts

To get a sense of the range of different impacts that transnational and global mini-publics

can be designed for, consider the proposed Global Citizens’ Assembly on Genome Editing

(Participedia 2022a; Dryzek et al 2020). An initiative of an international network of

concerned scholars, film-makers, and think tanks, the process was designed in conjunction

with previous or planned national deliberations on genome editing policies in countries like

Australia, China, Brazil, France and the United States, to help shape future deliberations at

the United Nations, World Health Organization and Food and Agricultural Organization. In

terms of impact, the goals of this process might seem quite modest. It is primarily intended

to exert informational influence over elite policymakers, by addressing gaps in their

knowledge of public opinion, and cross-cultural perspectives on the various ethical and

practical trade-offs that genome editing raises (see also Fung 2006; Talpin 2011). The

designers also wish to create a “deliberative documentary” that could be screened

throughout the world, enabling further opportunities for national and transnational publics to

deliberate and develop personal and group preferences on an important global topic, across

the linguistic, cultural, and geographic divides that usually separate them.

26
 Yet the choices that would need to be contemplated to achieve even this (modest)

informational impact are enormous. Given its global scale, the process requires enlisting

about 100 participants from multiple countries and ensuring, using targeted recruitment

mechanisms, that they are representative in discursive as well as demographic terms. It also

requires the support of scientists and experts to provide the necessary materials for

participants to deliberative over. Finally, the planners needed to design the process in such a

way to establish clear linkages to the relevant international organizations who will receive

this Assembly’s final report, though this should be facilitated inasmuch as people in the key

international organizations (UN, WHO, FAO) as well as relevant national and transnational

scientific bodies have called for meaningful citizen participation in the development of

global principles for the regulation of genome editing.

B. Deliberative Impacts

Insofar as transnational mini-publics expose participants to new information and

perspectives, they can also be intentionally designed to have deliberative influence, both on

those participating in them, and the broader stakeholders and publics that they are embedded

in. Much like the proposed Global Assembly on Genome Editing, the Global Assembly on

Climate Change and Ecological Crisis was designed to produce a global citizen deliberation

in parallel to the 2021 COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

Assuming that participants from richer and poorer countries could have very different

perspectives on contentious issues such as greenhouse gas reductions targets, technology

transfers, and fairness in allotting carbon budgets,7 this process placed a premium on

deliberation: creating synchronous and asynchronous spaces in order to identify the

dimensions of collective agreement and disagreement.

7
For reference, in the final survey of the Global Assembly, responses to the question "Do you think that other
participants had different views than yours?" revealed that 76% of participants actually believed that their
co-participants held similar views to their own (Global Assembly 2022).

27
 How was the process designed to achieve this intended impact? First, the organizers

employed a (stratified) random selection mechanism to recruit 100 individuals, reflective of

global distributions of age, gender, ethnicity, geographic location, income, as well as views

on the seriousness of climate change. The deliberations were also complicated by the fact

that participants spoke over 40 languages, with 35 percent of participants possessing low

literacy skills. Thus, the quality of deliberation did not just hinge on providing the right

briefing materials or ensuring the smoothly moderated discussion, but also in addressing the

unique challenges of facilitating conversations in hyper-diverse settings.

One particularly noteworthy design choice the organizers made was to decentralize

the phases and sites of deliberation, to reach more participants where they were. By staging

local, decentralized (heterarchical) “community assemblies” and having them feed into a

centralized “core assembly”, the organizers designed the process to scale deliberations while

balancing considerations of inclusion and representativeness.8

C. Discursive Impacts

Transnational and global mini-publics can also be designed to specifically wield what are

called discursive forms of impact and influence. They do so by interacting with stakeholders

and publics in global civil society to change the discourse on some major problem or topic,

providing new frames to an issue or new arguments and ideas (see, e.g., Habermas 1996;

Dryzek 2010). When designing a process to have a discursive impact, the questions

primarily revolve around uptake: How does the innovation plan to “seed” discussions among

activists, scholars, journalists, policymakers, and lay citizens in different parts of the world?

Are there specific strategies for embedding new terms or considerations into public

8
Still, despite designing with the aim of generating deliberative impact, findings on the ‘Core Assembly’ show
the prevalence of collective learning over collective deliberation during the Global Assembly (Curato et al.
2023), thereby presenting a challenge that has yet to be resolved in the theory and practice on transnational
mini-publics.

28
consciousness? Is the report of the mini-public the subject of local and international media

coverage or a spur to greater public discussion and mobilization? While most mini-publics

will be planned with a view to outreach, consider some of the design choices that were made

in the 2017 Global Citizens’ Dialogue on the Future of the Internet. The process used locally

contextualized recruitment strategies to bring together over 5,000 people across 70

countries, for a one-day online and in-person deliberation on topics including data privacy,

artificial intelligence, and the inclusivity of the digital public sphere (Participedia 2022b).

The goal was not just to educate people about new technological challenges, but to

encourage them to see each other as members of a transnational constituency facing similar

regulatory problems. In this way, global public discourse about Internet policy could be

gradually transformed, as a spur to greater international regulatory harmonization.

D. Reputational and Symbolic Impacts

Several design factors common across transnational deliberative innovations—such as their

arms-length relationship to governments, frequency of meetings, use of random selection,

and emphasis on the inclusion of ordinary citizens and non-experts—may also translate into

reputational and symbolic effects. Some recent mini-publics, such as the yearlong

Conference on the Future of Europe initiated in 2021, are designed specifically to bolster the

credentials of the transnational governance arrangements they embody. After all, the advice

or recommendations of a transnational forum are not going anywhere if the forum itself is

perceived by key stakeholders or affected constituencies as illegitimate. A forum that is

sponsored exclusively by an international organization or government with a vested interest

in a particular outcome would (rightly) face considerable skepticism in trying to disseminate

its results. Likewise, if a forum fails to secure the participation of certain demographic

groups or isn’t sufficiently representative of the diversity of relevant interests or opinions,

29
then its reputation will take a hit. Conversely, processes that can cultivate reputations for

trustworthiness and credibility are more likely to see their outputs given due consideration.

The perception that a process is reputable is especially important in cases where a forum is

charged with providing advice or consultation and has no other means for getting public

authorities to listen. But it is also important in cases where organizers intend for their forum

to be “proof of concept” that could be repeated elsewhere.

E. Decision-Making Impacts

Finally, a transnational deliberative forum can be designed—either solely or partially—with

a view to exerting decision-making influence. Though to our knowledge no transnational or

global mini-public has been empowered to set regulations or policies directly, we can

nevertheless point to designs based on co-governance partnerships where participants are

invited to work with officials in developing new policy. From 2009–2012, for example, the

European Union convened a transnational forum with participants from Baltic countries

including Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark, to create a climate

adaptation plan that addressed rising sea levels for affected municipalities. In the Danish city

of Kalundborg, 350 randomly selected citizens worked side-by-side with EU officials to

determine the land areas that should be prioritization for protection, fair compensation for

lost homes and damaged property, and so on, before putting the proposals to a final vote, so

that they could be implemented by the city council. Even if a transnational deliberative

forum doesn’t have a direct causal influence over decision-making, there may nevertheless

be requirements built into its mandate that oblige governments to consider its

recommendations, study and debate them, and come up with an implementation plan.

30
 4. What (Unforeseen) Impacts of Mini-Publics Should We Guard Against?

The discussion above has focused on the intentional design and operation of a variety of

transnational mini-publics. One goal of this discussion has been to demonstrate the variety

of design choices that conveners of these processes face in putting their plans in motion, and

the range of impacts and influence they can aim to achieve. While the number of real-world

cases remains comparatively small, we now have sufficient experience with these designs

that it is possible to reflect more critically on their potentially negative consequences. In

particular, while transnational mini-publics could have democratizing effects in the

international sphere, if taken seriously, they also risk universalizing processes that have

mostly proven to succeed within the borders of developed countries such as those of the EU,

or certain large emerging economies (Ross and Moran 2023). So, we need to also be

attentive to a second cluster of unintended effects that should also be noted, representing

oversights, unanticipated externalities, and design trade-offs that can impact the overall

success of a transnational mini-public in ways that undermine its democratic credentials. We

present these as hypotheses to illustrate the connections between design choices and their

consequences in order to serve as a guide for the critical examination of the transnational

mini-publics that have so far been held, and the lessons they hold for practitioners.

A. Misrepresentation

Sometimes, a transnational mini-public can be taken as “speaking for” or “standing in” for

organizations, communities, and broader constituencies that were either not consulted, or

insufficiently empowered in the process (Font et al. 2017; Setälä 2021). Designers should

therefore be attentive to the unintentional ways that a process can misrepresent affected

constituencies and stakeholders in multiple ways. Internally, for example, we can easily

imagine a process misrepresenting the views of its participants (say) by reporting that there

31
is broad consensus on an issue that remains contentious. In this case, the design problem

likely stems from not allocating enough time for group deliberation or, perhaps, the lack of

acceptable outlets for registering minority dissent. Similarly, misrepresentation might also

occur if the findings of a transnational mini-public are taken as reflecting the views of

communities and constituencies who were not consulted in the design of the process, who

disagree with its conclusions, or who were not invited to be participants at all. These

oversights can damage perceptions of the legitimacy of a process and the credibility of any

recommendations it produces. A particular challenge for transnational mini-publics is

engaging in thoughtful design that solicits feelings of representation across multiple

countries, communities, and cultures, each of which may have different values and

traditions, as well as local government priorities. Because decision-makers and citizens in

the global public sphere are considerably farther apart than those at the national or grassroots

level, communication is both more necessary and more difficult (see Parry and Curato

2022). But providing opportunities for affected constituencies to engage with the process on

their own terms is essential. A working hypothesis is that recommendations that are

anchored in local narratives and cultural meanings, autonomous forms of governance, and

different modes and styles of participation can also help to create positive feedback loops

that avoid unintentional misrepresentation and increase accountability, depending on how

they’re embedded in the mini-public itself.

B. Mobilization of Privilege

Even when mini-public organizers make their best technical efforts to ensure a body’s

demographic representativeness, a numerical majority of least-affected or highest-resourced

actors can still unintentionally undermine the demands of minorities. All forms of

participation have what political scientists call a “mobilization of bias”: because

32
participating is costly in terms of time, money, and information, those who accept invitations

to mini-publics and other civic forums tend to be richer and more privileged (see e.g.,

Karpowitz and Mendelberg 2014; Strolovitch 2008). While selection devices such as

targeted random selection can be used to offset some of these imbalances, there is still the

risk of a socioeconomic skew that intersects with other dimensions of disadvantage, such as

race and gender (Schlozman, Verba, Brady 2020). But, especially in a transnational context,

poorly designed mini-publics can result in a “mobilization of privilege” in other

(unintentionally) damaging ways, especially when it comes to agenda-setting. Consider, for

instance, that because there are no constitutional rights, enforcement doctrines, and

consultation requirements at the global level, privileged groups can ignore the autonomy or

territorial rights of certain communities—and, indeed, may also ignore historic demands

such as the deliberative and territorial autonomy of Indigenous peoples. The result is that the

views of less privileged groups aren’t heard—an injustice that is often compounded by a

lack of resources to raise objections. Although no satisfying response can be given to this

challenge in the current international governance arena, efforts should be made to make the

recruitment, governance, and agenda-setting processes of future transnational mini-publics

more inclusive of traditionally marginalized interests and demands. Because transnational

mini-publics can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, there is a special duty for designers to

plan carefully.

C. Ideological Domination

Closely related, designs for transnational mini-publics can also have the unintentional effect

of amplifying the biases, narratives, and discourses that reflect the dominant idioms of the

current global order. Language is never free of power. And the framing of a transnational

mini-public’s agenda—the questions that it asks, the assumptions that are built into its

33
internal decision-making—can reflect the particular interests of the organizers. Even

something as benign as “deliberation” can be differently interpreted: does deliberation aim

for consensus? Does it consist solely of carefully reasoned arguments, or is there room for

other contributions and modes of expression? When does deliberation require listening, and

how do we determine when a deliberation should move to a point of decision? These generic

design questions may take on a different valence in transnational settings, where the

meaning, purpose, and priorities of each stage of the process can reflect some

unexamined—and contested—premise.

Transnational mini-publics carry an inherent risk of setting specific agendas,

narrowing the parameters of public debate, or pushing certain policy options over

others—especially when organizers, funding entities, or sponsoring parties of a mini-public

have a vested interest in the topic (Setälä 2017). Both the agenda-setting process and the

design choices of a transnational mini-public are instrumental in this regard (Elstub et al.

2021). For example, as exhibited by the World Wide Views on Global Warming, allowing

experts alone to set a mini-public’s agenda can limit the political and epistemic agency of

participants (Blue and Medlock 2014)—and, by extension, define the scope of broader

public discourse. Similarly, the Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis

demonstrated that unequal power dynamics between facilitators, experts, and participants

can foster perceptions amongst participants that they are knowledge-recipients, while

experts and facilitators are knowledge-holders (Curato et al. 2023); such views can, in turn,

reinforce epistemic hierarchies that enable the promotion of certain, preferred viewpoints

above others. This said, the involvement of multiple actors—for instance, sponsors, civil

society, and participants alike—in the agenda-setting, design, and facilitation stages of a

mini-public can reduce this threat of ideological domination.

34
D. Institutional Isomorphism and Path Dependency

Last but not least, prospective designers of transnational mini-publics should be wary of the

twin dangers of “isomorphism” and “path dependence” in their design choices. Institutions

that were created by previous initiatives and choices don’t just disappear, but instead form

the backdrop against which future designs take place (Goodin 1996). Isomorphism captures

the worry that a single institutional design will become the default template for all others

(see, e.g. DiMaggio and Powell 1983).

In the nascent field of democratic innovations, we should be worried if prominent

designs like randomly selected mini-publics get replicated on the transnational and global

stage, not because they’re best suited to addressing a specific governance challenge, but

because they’re familiar, and have gained acceptance among activist, policymakers, and

members of the public who have prior experience with them. This may foreclose

consideration of designs more appropriate to a specific culture or context, and limit the

radical potentials of transnational democratization by limiting our institutional imaginaries.

As critics from the Global South point out, most existing democratic innovations at the

transnational and global levels are sponsored by countries and organizations from the Global

North, and reflect its particular priorities, values, epistemologies, and institutional

trajectories (Ross and Moran 2023). We might add that insofar as certain designs perform

“well enough”, this can stifle innovation, insofar there is no perceived need to try out new

proposals or ways of thinking.

Path dependency, or the tendency of past events to determine future ones, can also be

a concern within a given transnational forum or event—not because organizers are

replicating a previous design, but because their designs at one stage of the process (e.g.,

recruitment) may have downstream consequences for the kinds of deliberations and policy

outcomes that are possible at a later date. When this occurs, participants may find

35
themselves “locked in” to specific agendas, policy options, or courses of action, which

cannot be readily changed. Indeed, one of the virtues of mapping out the design choices that

conveners of transnational mini-publics may face is to demonstrate how decisions taken

along one dimension of a process, can impact others. In this sense, the design of a

transnational mini-public should be evaluated systematically and holistically.

5. Conclusion

Transnational deliberation now stands at a crossroads. In this paper, we sought to map the

unfolding landscape of transnational citizen deliberation, as well as the governance

challenges that have propelled its emergence. Next, we examined five key variations in the

design of a transnational mini-public (topic, scale, governance, participants & recruitment,

and linkages), highlighting how these choices differ in nature and importance from those

made for mini-publics at the domestic level. Each of these variations, we argued, shape the

informational, deliberative, discursive, reputational and symbolic, and decision-making

impacts of transnational mini-publics.

Our analysis has highlighted specific transnational mini-public design choices, as

well as their implications for a mini-public’s quality, function and impact. The table (next

page) summarizes these design choices and their potential effects, with columns listing

design choices and rows listing functional consequences. Important design features are

marked with an X, while crucial choices are marked with an X*. As the transnational public

sphere increasingly turns to mini-publics to make global governance more inclusive,

representative, and effective, the conceptual discussion above may help guide future

instances of supranational citizen participation. This analysis may specifically prove useful

to theorists, international organizations, and civil society groups working to make

democracy at the transnational level more feasible; to activists campaigning for more

36
 balanced processes of global decision-making; or to practitioners designing transnational

mini-publics for a variety of purposes and contexts. For each of these groups, understanding

the design choices illustrated in this paper may help improve the quality and efficacy of

transnational deliberation—rendering cross-border governance more just as a whole.

Figure 2: Consequences of Transnational Mini-Public Design Choices*

What? Where? Who? How?

Topic Scale Organization & Participants Facilitation, Linkages

Governance & Translation, and
Recruitment Deliberation

Character of Participation and Deliberation

Quantity X* X X X* X*

Bias X* X X* X* X* X*

Deliberative X* X* X* X* X*
Quality

Intended Effects

Informational X X* X* X X* X*
Impacts

Deliberative X X* X* X*
Impacts

Discursive Impacts X X X* X* X* X*

Reputational and X X* X X* X*
Symbolic Impacts

Decision-Making X* X X* X*
Impacts

Justice of Policy X X* X* X* X*

*Criteria adapted from Archon Fung’s Recipes for Public Spheres (2003).

37
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Acknowledgements
Jon Stever allocated funding from European Commission Horizon 2020 Grant ICT58,
African European Digital Innovation Bridge, to develop the section on federated linkages.

42