Flexibility, Argumentation and Confrontation. How Deliberative Minipublics Can Affect Policies on Controversial Issues

Stefania Ravazzi,Gianfranco Pomatto

doi:10.16997/jdd.212

Abstract

Over the last few decades, deliberative minipublics have been used as inclusive and innovative practices to integrate traditional policy-making. Because of their policy-oriented aim, but also owing to the usually not legally-binding nature, some scholars have recently pointed out the importance of understanding how and to what extent they actually manage to influence the decisions of public authorities, especially when they deal with highly controversial issues, such as locally unwanted land use or ethic matters.This article has the aim of offering a contribution in this direction, by presenting the findings of a comparative analysis of two deliberative processes promoted by public authorities to integrate decision-making in order to deal with highly controversial issues. The two processes had significantly different impacts on the final policies. The analysis, conducted by means of ethnographic and qualitative methods, has shown that how the minipublics were designed and how deliberation was put in practice were crucial aspects in determining the effective influence of the minipublics on policy decisions. In particular, the use of a strictly deliberative design on such contentious issues has proved to be counterproductive, because it has generated distortions and produced institutional conflicts, while the use of a hybrid path, although not free from problems, has proved to be a more effective solution.

Highlights

The present study has analyzed two deliberative mini-publics organized to integrate decision-making on highly contentious issues
The aim of the comparative analysis has been to understand why one of the processes had a significant effect on policy decisions while the other did not, both were similar in terms of the contextual and institutional aspects identified in the literature as important factors of political efficacy of participatory practices
Since such kinds of mini-publics do not usually have the formal power to make the final decisions of the political authorities binding, understanding how they could improve their capacity to influence policy decisions becomes a crucial matter

Summary

Introduction

The literature on deliberation already counts more than twenty years of contributions and reflections, ranging from theoretical issues to empirical inquiries and normative propositions. The presented cases are two structured deliberation processes that were financed and promoted by local institutions in order to deal with locally unwanted land uses (LULUs).5 The former concerned a project on a new stretch of highway in the city of Genoa, and it took place in 2009, while the latter was organized almost two years later and was about a project on a new pyro-gasifier for industrial waste disposal in a small Tuscan town. The institutional authorities responsible for the final decisions had publicly expressed serious commitment toward the output of the deliberative processes, and there was a concrete possibility of influencing and even rejecting the preliminary projects Both processes were introduced in contexts with an already aware and active local civil society, since several episodes of the mobilization of environmental groups and citizen committees had already taken place in the past to protest against other similar projects. Other suggestions made at the meetings were included in the new project: the adoption of a new excavation technique to further reduce the risks associated with the extraction of asbestos rocks, the remuneration of the demolishing houses at market prices (above the minimum compensation required by the Law), and the institution of a local observatory to control the implementation phase

Participants

Conclusion