Rethinking grassroots participation in nested deliberative systems

Abstract

When deliberative democratic theory considers grassroots civic participation, its main concern has been designed civic forums sometimes called “mini-publics.” However, this article contends that both social movements and the intimate sphere also matter when we consider grassroots participation in deliberative democracy. With reference to the recently elaborated idea of deliberative systems, this article first argues that social movements and the intimate sphere can be examined as parts of a deliberative system as a whole in terms of the macro-deliberative effect of micro-non-deliberative actions, and second, that each of them should be understood as a deliberative system in itself because both of them can create decision-making. Finally, this article proposes the idea of “nested deliberative systems” in order to indicate that a unit is at the same time both a part of a macro deliberative system and a deliberative system in itself.