Participatory and deliberative democracy (PDD) practices sit between direct democracy (where citizens make decisions directly) and traditional representative democracy (where elected representatives make decisions on the public’s behalf) and can be used as part of or in conjunction with a feedback loop process to codesign solutions to address complex community challenges.1 These approaches focus especially on achieving informed consensus, or general agreement among the participants.
PDD practices enable community members to make informed recommendations or decisions with the government about the policy issues that affect their lives. Deliberative democracy is the theory that political decisions should result from fair and reasonable discussion among citizens.2 A central tenet of participatory democracy is that it must increase the capacities of citizens to participate, which often necessitates reform of democratic institutions to make participation more meaningful.3 This means changing the rules of how decisions are made to ensure local residents have a direct say. Common models of PDD include mini-publics, deliberative polling, participatory budgeting, participatory policymaking, citizens’ juries and assemblies, and legislative theater.
To support resident dialogue, deliberation and co-creation of solutions to complex problems in a feedback loop process, mini-publics and citizen juries may be particularly useful. For example, if the results of a public survey or initial outreach from Step 4 point to a particularly complex challenge, such as food insecurity, poverty, crime, social issues or issues related to climate change or the environment, then the local administration may decide the best path forward is to organize a separate, dedicated process in which members of the public play the role of decision-makers.
A mini-public is a randomly selected sample of citizens that reflects the diversity of the local population. Deliberative mini-publics are used as the basis of several PDD mechanisms, including citizen juries and assemblies. These methods can provide an effective, legitimate and representative means for residents to help the local authority resolve particularly thorny issues.
Citizen juries and assemblies are examples of deliberative processes; juries are simply smaller than assemblies. A representative group of 20 to 150 residents is randomly selected. This random selection process – called sortition – ensures they form a representative sample of citizens that reflects the diversity of the local population. For example, in some cities, letters are issued to thousands of residents, and each respondent can agree to volunteer their time to the process; from that group of volunteers, a small selection is made to ensure the group matches the age, gender, income level and other demographics of the community. This final group forms the jury or assembly. Often, assemblies and juries take the form of a series of meetings or convenings organized in a concentrated timeline that allows for maximum participation, such as consecutive weekends (allowing participants to avoid missing work, for example). Led by independent facilitators, the citizens are given evidence by a range of speakers (experts, advocates and those with lived experience). This learning phase is essential to the process; members of an assembly hear from all sides before deliberating and generating recommendations. After a period of discussion and deliberation, the group produces a set of recommendations. Depending on the process, experts can assist assembly members in drafting recommendations. Finally, the assembly votes on recommendations one by one, formally endorsing those that earn support from a simple majority of the assembly.4