{"title":"Deliberative forums in fragile contexts: Challenges from the field","authors":"Nicole Curato, Septrin Calamba","doi":"10.1177/02633957241259090","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"What does it actually take to run a deliberative mini-public (DMP)? This article unmasks the taken-for-granted assumptions of one of the most popular democratic innovations in the past decade by applying their design features in fragile political contexts. Drawing on 3 years of fieldwork in communities recovering from armed conflict and police brutality in the Philippines, we identify foundational challenges to DMPs in relation to their core design features: sortition and long-form deliberation. Our goal in documenting these challenges is not to devalue DMPs but to spotlight limitations that cannot be overcome despite the best intentions. In so doing, this article hopes to advance an honest conversation about what these DMPs can reasonably achieve, as well as the harms they can potentially cause, especially in societies where precarity is the norm rather than the exception.","PeriodicalId":47206,"journal":{"name":"Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Politics","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957241259090","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
What does it actually take to run a deliberative mini-public (DMP)? This article unmasks the taken-for-granted assumptions of one of the most popular democratic innovations in the past decade by applying their design features in fragile political contexts. Drawing on 3 years of fieldwork in communities recovering from armed conflict and police brutality in the Philippines, we identify foundational challenges to DMPs in relation to their core design features: sortition and long-form deliberation. Our goal in documenting these challenges is not to devalue DMPs but to spotlight limitations that cannot be overcome despite the best intentions. In so doing, this article hopes to advance an honest conversation about what these DMPs can reasonably achieve, as well as the harms they can potentially cause, especially in societies where precarity is the norm rather than the exception.
期刊介绍:
Politics publishes cutting-edge peer-reviewed analysis in politics and international studies. The ethos of Politics is the dissemination of timely, research-led reflections on the state of the art, the state of the world and the state of disciplinary pedagogy that make significant and original contributions to the disciplines of political and international studies. Politics is pluralist with regards to approaches, theories, methods, and empirical foci. Politics publishes articles from 4000 to 8000 words in length. We welcome 3 types of articles from scholars at all stages of their careers: Accessible presentations of state of the art research; Research-led analyses of contemporary events in politics or international relations; Theoretically informed and evidence-based research on learning and teaching in politics and international studies. We are open to articles providing accounts of where teaching innovation may have produced mixed results, so long as reasons why these results may have been mixed are analysed.