Being everything for everybody all at once: Facework for trustworthiness of a citizens’ assembly for the climate

Abstract

In the context of distrust and scepticism about the climate issue, researchers are exploring the potential of deliberative mini-publics, such as citizens’ assemblies about climate change, to find new fora for just climate governance. However, while the literature suggests such arenas have potential to temper climate scepticism, it is less clear how specific design components of these innovations may relate to specific reasons for distrust. This paper operationalises the processes of facework, a concept denoting the translation between institutional and interpersonal trust, to capture how anticipation of distrust featured in the planning process of the Sweden's first national citizen's assembly on the climate, and how choices were made by the organisers to abate such distrust. To this end, we analyse interviews with researchers and science communicators prior to the event. Researchers employ strategies of legitimation, signification, and domination in order to build a trustworthy citizens assembly and mitigate reasons for distrust. Our findings indicate how multiple purposes of the citizens’ assembly, the anticipated heterogeneity of the assembly’s audiences, and subsequent design choices led to trade-offs that potentially undermine each other or embed incoherence into the project. Our paper concludes with a reflection on the increasing likelihood of researchers finding themselves in such contexts and how they may navigate precariousness and avoid adverse effects.