Vorlesungsverzeichnis

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Start > Masterprogramm Sustainability: Global Sustainability Science (M.Sc. Double Degree) -> Vertiefung Humanwissenschaften -> Theories and Perspectives of Sustainability Communication

Lehrveranstaltungen

Partizipative Governance und Nachhaltigkeit - Forschungsperspektiven (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Jens Newig

Termin:
 wöchentlich | Freitag | 10:15 - 11:45 | 06.04.2021 - 31.05.2021 | Online-Veranstaltung
wöchentlich | Freitag | 10:15 - 11:45 | 01.06.2021 - 25.06.2021 | C 12.015 Seminarraum
wöchentlich | Freitag | 10:15 - 11:45 | 28.06.2021 - 09.07.2021 | C 40.501 Seminarraum

Inhalt: This year’s topic: Mini-publics – Involving citizens in political decision-making through random selection and deliberative processes In this project-oriented seminar we will research in what way so-called “mini-publics” as democratic innovations have been successful in furthering fair, legitimate and sustainable policy-making as an alternative to both conventional policy-making and standard forms of citizen participation. Citizen participation is deemed essential in democratic systems for legitimate and effective political decision-making. However, direct democracy such as public referenda, and public votes in general, while conceived as a counterpart to (potentially corrupt) elite decision-making, have also been subject to populist capture (many name Brexit as an example). Given complex and often technical political issues, many citizens remain “rationally ignorant”, that is, they do not deem it worthwhile to familiarize themselves with complex political matters. On the other hand, conventional citizen participation such as public hearings or workshops typically attracts an unbalanced set of participants, tending to favour extreme opinions and those who can actually afford to participate. For some time, democratic theorists have been propagating so-called “mini-publics” as a way to combine balanced and just citizen participation with truly knowledgeable and deliberative decision-making. Mini-publics include formats such as citizen juries, planning cells, deliberative opinion polls or citizen assemblies, covering governance levels from urban quarters to whole nation states. What these formats have in common is that in each case a number of randomly selected citizens (broadly representative in age, gender, education level etc.) are invited to participate in a shorter or longer decision-making process. In a moderated process, citizens are encouraged to bring to the fore all arguments, hear experts, and discuss the facts and opinions relevant to decision-making, in order to present a decision proposal at the end. While many individual cases – mostly pilots – of mini-publics have been documented in the academic literature, there is no conclusive evidence on whether they actually succeed to produce fair, legitimate and competent decisions, furthering environmental protection and sustainability. The goal of this project-oriented seminar is, therefore, to map and synthesize the available literature and to draw general conclusions on how, and under what circumstances mini-publics “succeed”. In which countries have mini-publics been mostly implemented? Did they meet standards of fair and competent processes? What kind of decisions do they produce? In what way do they differ from conventional political-administrative decision-making? Were decisions broadly accepted? Potentially, this research could lead to a paper manuscript to be submitted to an academic journal.