The effects of climate change are multiple and fundamental. Decisions made today may result in irreversible damage to the planet's biodiversity and ecosystems, the detrimental impacts of which will ...be borne by today's children, young people and those yet unborn (future generations). The use of citizens' assemblies (CAs) to tackle the issue of climate change is growing. Their remit is future focused. Yet is the future in the room? Focusing on a single case study, the recent Irish CA and Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action (JOCCA) deliberations on climate action, this paper explores the extent to which children, young people and future generations were included. Its systemic analysis of the membership of both institutions, the public submissions to them and the invited expertise presented, finds that the Irish CA was 'too tightly coupled' on this issue. This may have been beneficial in terms of impact, but it came at the expense of input legitimacy and potentially intergenerational justice. Referring to international developments, it suggests how these groups may be included through enclave deliberation, institutional innovations, design experiments and future-oriented practice. .
Over the last two decades, the literature on political participation has flourished, reflecting the increasing use of diverse modes of citizen involvement. These include established modes of ...participation, such as voting, protests, mass demonstrations, and petition signing, but also newer modes specific to the online environment (ICT-related), participation in referendums, public consultations, or engagement in political deliberation. The importance and intensity of these modes is reflected both in the number of people getting involved and in the increasing number of policies that are subject to various modes of participation on a regular basis. There is extensive literature about how these modes of participation function, why people get involved, and the consequences of their participation. However, limited attention is paid to the relationship between political participation and the pursuit of sustainability at a local, regional, or central level. Existing studies indicate that citizen engagement can be a cost-effective method to characterize changes of local environments; however, not much is known beyond this process. This Special Issue aims to address this void in the literature and brings together contributions that analyze how participation can be associated with sustainability and local development in various settings. It explores the relationship between political participation and the management of their local environment. This Special Issue enhances the existing knowledge and understanding about how modes of participation can be reflected in stronger sustainability. The Special Issue provides the space for an academic debate that addresses issues such as climate change, resource allocation, or the pursuit of sustainability programs and policies. The contributions include a mix of single-case studies and comparative analyses across European countries.
The current debate on political participation is bound to a discussion about whether citizens are active or passive. This dichotomous notion is nurtured by an extensive normative debate concerning ...whether passivity is an asset or a threat to democracy; and it is especially manifest in studies of young people's political orientations. Drawing on this discussion, the present study goes beyond the dichotomy by keeping political interest conceptually separate from participation in order to improve our understanding of political passivity. Multivariate cluster analysis of empirical data on Swedish youth suggests that we need to consider three distinctive forms of ‘political passivity’. In the paper we present empirical evidence not only of the existence of a particular ‘standby citizen’, but also of two kinds of genuinely passive young people: unengaged and disillusioned citizens. Alongside active citizens, these people are in distinctly different categories with regard to their political behavior. This entails a new analytical framework that may be used to analyze an empirical phenomenon that has received surprisingly little attention in the literature on political participation and civic engagement.
This article presents a systematic review of 122 articles and books (1987-2013) of co-creation/co-production with citizens in public innovation. It analyses (a) the objectives of co-creation and ...co-production, (b) its influential factors and (c) the outcomes of co-creation and co-production processes. It shows that most studies focus on the identification of influential factors, while hardly any attention is paid to the outcomes. Future studies could focus on outcomes of co-creation/co-production processes. Furthermore, more quantitative studies are welcome, given the qualitative, case study, dominance in the field. We conclude with a research agenda to tackle methodological, theoretical and empirical lacunas.
Highlighting public-service actors’ deliberately tokenistic or self-serving efforts, existing literature has shown that public participation often involves the co-optation of sympathetic citizens. In ...contrast, our study demonstrates that participatory advocates may discredit and marginalize critical voices despite their own inclusive, democratic ideals. We analyze the entangled legitimacy claims of participating citizens and “inviting” public-service actors, capturing (a) the often-unintended dynamics through which the inclusion of particular participants legitimizes the exclusion of others, while illuminating (b) the tenacious propensity of participatory initiatives to establish “constructive cooperation” as the norm for participation and, subsequently, to normalize exclusionary practices.
Growing numbers of scholars, practitioners, politicians, and citizens recognize the value of deliberative civic engagement processes that enable citizens and governments to come together in public ...spaces and engage in constructive dialogue, informed discussion, and decisive deliberation. This book seeks to fill a gap in empirical studies in deliberative democracy by studying the assembly of the Australian Citizens’ parliament (ACP), which took place in Canberra on February 6–8, 2009. The ACP addressed the question, “How can the Australian political system be strengthened to serve us better?” The ACP’s Canberra assembly is the first large-scale, face-to-face deliberative project to be completely audio-recorded and transcribed, enabling an unprecedented level of qualitative and quantitative assessment of participants’ actual spoken discourse. Each chapter reports on different research questions for different purposes to benefit different audiences. Combined, they exhibit how diverse modes of research focused on a single event can enhance both theoretical and practical knowledge about deliberative democracy,
Focusing on the capital cities of Beijing and Taipei, this book provides a detailed discussion of state-sponsored neighborhood organizations in China and Taiwan. It is grounded in the comparative ...scholarship on neighborhood organizations, civil society, and state-society relations, particularly in East Asia.
Conceived as an alternative form of democratic representation, the random selection of citizens for a political task comes in tension with the logic of electoral representation. The idea, carried by ...random selection, that anyone can be a good enough representative challenges the assumption that we need to choose the most competent among ourselves. And the fact that citizens' assemblies are sometimes tasked to draft legislation may undermine the authority of elected representatives. This article tests this hypothesis of tension between competing forms of representation on a recent case: the French Citizen Convention for Climate (CCC) in 2020. Drawing on parliamentary hearings and questions as well as public political reactions to the CCC, we find indications that elected representatives may feel threatened in their legitimacy even when most randomly selected citizens do not see themselves as representatives. This may be due to the fact that the CCC was seen by some as stepping on the prerogatives of the Parliament. This suggests that future experiments of the sort could benefit from a clearer functional division between the two forms of representation.
Citizens are being increasingly called upon to participate in climate change policymaking. Citizen assemblies have been proposed as a viable and effective way of boosting public support for ambitious ...climate policies. This study examines the varying effects of climate change communication on citizen support for the speaker's policy proposals, in the framework of the most consequential citizen-centred experimentation in environmental policymaking to date - the Irish Citizens' Assembly. Drawing on the six-principle framework for authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we test whether effective communication contributes to explaining outcomes of deliberation on climate change. Methodologically, we take a set-theoretic approach, using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to operationalise conditions and analyse the data. Our findings show that effective communication does explain why certain policy proposals were adopted by the Irish Citizens' Assembly over others, in conjunction with other conditions, such as having a high proportion of proposals being repeated by other speakers.
Key policy insights
Citizen assemblies and other deliberative fora can boost public support and provide legitimacy for ambitious climate policy. The information presented to participants in such fora has an effect upon engagement with, and support for, policy proposals.
It is not climate change information per se, but how it is communicated that matters for participants' uptake of ambitious climate measures. Speakers who communicate effectively see greater uptake of their policy proposals.
Differences exist in the paths to success for expert and non-expert speakers. While the former were successful when they presented a high number of proposals, the latter were successful when they presented a simple, unique message.
Organisers of citizens' assemblies should encourage the participation of such non-expert speakers who can connect with audiences on 'real-life' climate action.
PDF
