Epistemic Injustice in Deliberative Mini Publics

Abstract

The foundational principles of deliberation rest on citizens meeting as political and moral equals. If wetake them seriously, we need to consider the exclusion that arises from power asymmetries. These canlead to some groups being absent from decision-making processes, but often they are excluded evenwhen they are present. This exclusion can be conceptualised as internal exclusion, which is the way inwhich some people—typically members of marginalised groups—speak and are heard and believed less inpolitical communication. In this article, I make two claims. First, I argue that we should distinguish twokinds of internal exclusion: symbolic and epistemic. While symbolic internal exclusion describes the wayin which some groups are greeted and acknowledged differently than others, epistemic internal exclusionhappens when some people are believed and heard less. I will argue that the latter conception can befleshed out most productively with theories of epistemic injustice, as this body of work considers thespecifically epistemic dimension of systems of oppression. To illustrate the benefits of this approach, I willapply it to deliberative mini-publics, which are becoming increasingly institutionalised and consequentlyhave a greater influence on public policy. The three design features I discuss are group composition andfacilitation, agenda setting and choice of experts, and the relationship between rhetoric and persuasion.I will show how the epistemic internal exclusion perspective helps to analyse and identify the aspects ofdeliberative practice that exclude marginalised groups from influencing the discussion and the outcomesfairly.