A political innovation called “deliberative mini-publics” can contribute to sustainability transformations

Transformative action in response to insights from sustainability science and genuine public concern has proven extremely difficult to achieve. After all, we are in an accelerating climate and nature crisis despite widespread awareness and decades of scientific warnings.

“Public concern about urgent environmental crises should be reflected in policy, ideally supported by science,” says Centre researcher Tim Daw, lead author of a new study that tries to find a way out of this dilemma.

Ongoing polarization, politicization and disinformation is apparently making it even more difficult for democratic states to take meaningful action, the authors conclude. The remedy? The authors behind the new study suggest something they call deliberative mini-publics (DMPs), and discuss why they could be part of the answer and should be of interest to sustainability scientists.

“We argue that DMPs are both an emerging political innovation that could impact how sustainable transformations are governed, as well as a potential tool for transdisciplinary
sustainability scientists,” they write.

A DMP is a forum in which citizens, selected by lottery to capture the diversity of a broader public, deliberate over policy issues with the support of facilitated small-group discussions and access to balanced evidence.

DMPs are different from other participatory methods by how “ordinary citizens” are selected to participate. The process creates a “microcosm of the broader public that is robust to participation biases,” the authors write. An emphasis is also placed on facilitated deliberation, access to information and learning.

One such DMP is the first national climate citizen assembly organised in Sweden by the research program FAIRTRANS, hosted at the Centre. It gained a lot of attention in politics, media and sustainability science circles. Similar assemblies have recently emerged and spread rapidly in many other countries and settings, including local citizens’ juries organised by the Centre as part of the Landpaths study.

Evidence shows that such DMPs can offer a considered public voice for decision-makers, fellow citizens and sustainability scientists. However, the authors of the new study also highlight some limitations. For example, the risk that organisers frame deliberations so that they constrain the outcome, that the DMPs risk reproducing existing power structures, and whether DMPs can really overcome the power of vested interests resisting change. Moreover, evidence is still mixed when it comes to their tangible impacts on sustainability.

Nevertheless, the authors of the new study see a lot of potential in the DMPs and suggest three broad ways in which they could strengthen the links between sustainability science, the general public and politics: (1) inform policy-makers, (2) inform the public, and (3) enhance transdisciplinary science.

The list of authors includes current and former Centre colleagues Simon West, Andrea Downing and Thomas Hahn, and together they conclude the article by calling for critical research on DMPs to test and better understand their potential.

“We encourage sustainability scientists to experiment with |…|and to evaluate if, and how, deliberative mini-publics can support scientifically informed, yet democratic sustainability transformations,” they write.

Research at the Centre is answering this call by piloting and researching DMPs, from the National Climate Assembly, to local citizens’ juries on municipal forest management and sustainable development in Stockholm Archipelago.

Learn more about the the Swedish National Climate Assembly in this video: