In order to improve, or even save, contemporary democracies under enormous pressure and attack, one remedy has attracted a great deal of attention: enhancing opportunities for ordinary citizens to deliberate on and participate directly in politics. In this regard, numerous citizens' assemblies (CAs) have been set up by public authorities, particularly since the 2010s.
Convened by random selection, these assemblies are diverse groups of citizens who deliberate on a public issue and formulate policy recommendations. Existing research provides detailed descriptions of the internal dynamics of CAs, and shows that most citizens are capable of deliberating on complex issues. Nevertheless, they fail to identify and explain their more external impacts.
In the context of growing interest in such mechanisms, CITIZEN_IMPACT asks the fundamental question: are CAs smoke and mirrors, or do they lead to transformations in the functioning of the political system? It radically alters the dominant perspective on CAs by taking stock of several decades of research on political studies, governance and institutional dynamics. It offers a systematic account of whether, how and why CAs matter in contemporary European countries by developing a new, multidimensional conceptualization of their impact: direct impact on policy, indirect impact on civil society and discursive impact on the public sphere.
To address these three dimensions, the research model combines different methods to compare macro-national trends (media analysis, survey of civil society organizations) and to unravel complex processes (process monitoring, interviews). In this way, CITIZEN_IMPACT offers a new horizon for addressing, both in the scientific community and in society at large, the role and contribution of these participatory and deliberative procedures in contemporary representative democracies.
ERC STG CITIZEN_IMPACT
This project was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation program (grant agreement no. 101077920).
Contact
Vincent Jacquet, Université de Namur, Institut de recherche Transitions - vincent.jacquet@unamur.be
More information
It's not often that two researchers from the same institution (and the same institute!) are awarded such prestigious funding.
The 2 ERC Starting Grants for Jérémy Dodeigne's POLSTYLE project and Vincent Jacquet's CITIZEN_IMPACT project will thus enable the emergence and development of a genuine pole of excellence in Political Science within UNamur's Transitions Institute.