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Thanks to crowdfunding, deliberative mini-publics can be funded bottom-up to reach a wider support in the population and secure financial autonomy for their design. But who are the people willing to pay for deliberative democracy and why? This article answers this twofold question using an original survey with crowdfunders of the G1000 in Belgium. First, the financial support for deliberative democracy mainly comes from the more socially advantaged groups. But second, the crowdfunders largely diverge in their democratic preferences. Some are critical and favour any forms of alternative decision-making process, including technocratic forms. Others demonstrate a stronger attachment to electoral institutions and their political actors. Hence, the study of the crowdfunders of the G1000 shows that deliberative democracy attracts the support of citizens with different political orientations. This sheds light on the complex and intertwined links between a mini-public and its larger maxi-public.

While a great deal of attention is devoted to the Pacific region as the new chessboard of international politics, Pakistan remains a key actor in terms of both threat and potential. Two observations back this argument: first, Pakistan's fundamental roles as a state are challenged by its ongoing conflict with India and internal insurgencies. Second, due to a power-status gap, Pakistan experiences difficulties in holding specific self-conceived roles. In addition to hampering its socio-economic potential, these developments prevent Pakistan's quest for normalization in the system. As a consequence, we argue that engaging with Islamabad should be a priority for Washington so as to prevent the country from further aligning with Beijing, thus reinforcing China's regional leadership and status as peer-competitor to the United States. Indeed, as the potential for deviance in the international system arises from its normative dimension, the US, as the global leader, counts among its roles that of norm-setter and primary socializer for most states. Our research proposes to look at an old puzzle with new theoretical insights. By addressing the question of Washington's engagement towards non-conforming states, we aim to document a set of socialization processes as intervening variables linking American global role as leader and primary socializer to Pakistan's process of social integration (normalization/deviance). Drawing from sociology and social psychology, the paper seeks to explore the ability of the leader to act as a primary source of role location and status recognition towards non-conforming states so as to integrate them (back) into the US-led system.

The participation of non-state actors to international politics has been investigated since the creation of international institutions. Yet, the rules, principles and norms of global governance are no more discussed in single, isolated institutions. Rather, with the proliferation of international regimes and organisations, international issues are now negotiated in a context of institutional interactions known as "regime complexes". This poses new questions, in particular on the negotiation burden that these new processes place on international actors. To answer this question, this contribution compares non-state participation in both contexts (single regimes and regime complexes), using the international forest negotiations as a case study. It uses quantitative methods to measure the negotiation burden of single regimes and compare it to the negotiation burden of regime complexes. The negotiation burden of single regimes is found insignificant with political interest being the major motivation for participation, while the negotiation burden of regime complexes is found relevant, requiring a certain type of material and organisational resources for non-state actors to participate. Yet a certain diversity of non-state representation is maintained within regime complexes, with non-governmental organisations being dominant with respect to business groups.

Some states are widely recognized by policy makers and scholars as middle powers. The characteristics that were highlighted for these countries have become the basic guidelines for understanding middle powermanship and developing the corresponding theory. While those analyses offer rich in-depth insights into the foreign policy of specific countries, they have so far lacked a further step of generalization. When establishing such power-based rankings, we assume the possibility to determine states' capacities so as to identify their position in said ranking. As appealing as this theoretical model may be, the reality of international politics increasingly challenge it. Thus, we argue that this theoretical inadequacy is due to the fact that middle power theory as it has been developed so far should be understood as an inductive, not a deductive, approach . Consequently, the contemporary reality calls for yet another stage of development in this theory. The choice of Pakistan as our case study arises from the observation that while Pakistan can hardly fit into the current classification(s) of middle powermanship due to its poor economic and development performances, it is a nuclear state and is –at least– in the top twenty armies of the world. Moreover, we find several cases in which Pakistan has used the diplomatic tools characterizing middle powers, such as mediation or niche diplomacy. Our paper aims at answering two questions: (1) can middle power theory bring some light on Pakistan's positioning in world politics? (2) Alternatively, what does the case of Pakistan tell us about the (ir)relevance of middle power theory? We build upon role theory to develop the case of middle powermanship as a status-role bundle, by analyzing three specific cases of Pakistan's foreign policy: Pakistani nuclear posturing, its Afghan policy and its posturing vis-à-vis the Saudi-Iranian regional competition.

In recent years, public authorities and civil-society organisations, driven by increasing public disengagement and a growing sense of distrust between the public and their representatives, have been instituting exercises in public deliberation, often using 'mini-publics', that is relatively small groups of citizens, selected according to various criteria and representing different viewpoints, brought together to deliberate on a particular issue. From small-scale experiments, mini- publics have recently taken a constitutional turn, at least in Europe. Iceland and Ireland have turned to deliberative democracy to reform their constitutions. Estonia, Luxembourg and Romania have also experienced constitutional processes in a deliberative mode. In Belgium, the G1000, a citizen-led initiative of deliberative democracy, has fostered a wider public debate about the place and role of citizens in the country's democracy. At the same time, the European Union institutions have introduced different forms of deliberative democracy as a way to reconnect with citizens. These empirical cases are indicative of a possible 'constitutional turn' in deliberative democracy in Europe. These examples of constitution-making happened in a particular time and place but they may also serve as models for other events.

The results of the UK referendum in favour of leaving the European Union (EU) clearly put into question the European economic and political project as well as its institutional structure. This article argues that the Brexit may be a momentum to reform the institutional structure and procedural rules through which tax policy is made at the EU level. The UK referendum is indeed unlikely to further slow down the EU harmonization process in tax matters, which has always followed a tortuous path. Instead, the Brexit may give momentum to reform major weaknesses of the EU institutional and decision-making process in tax matters, in particular the unanimity rule and the role of the European Parliament. Finally, with regard to taxation specifically, the establishment of an EU tax, providing the EU with sufficient genuine own resource, could also reinforce EU's legitimacy by countering the criticisms related to Member States' contribution to the European budget.

What are the outputs and effects of deliberative mini-publics? This is probably one of the most critical questions for any deliberative endeavor. In the realm of large-scale deliberative experiments, the G1000 in Belgium holds a special place: it happened in the wake of the longest government formation ever, it sought to gather 1000 randomly selected citizens in Brussels to discuss key social and political issues, and, above all, it was a fully citizen-led initiative. Its organizers explicitly sought to avoid any political and institutional ties and their focus was much more on guaranteeing a high representativeness and a qualitative process, rather than generating strong political outcomes. While the G1000 did well in terms of representativeness and open agenda setting, the political uptake was very limited in the short term. In the longer term, however, it seems that the effects of the G1000 were larger than initially expected. A rich set of empirical data is used to analyze the interaction between the G1000 with the entire political system by looking at the relation with the media, public opinion, political parties and MPs, and other experiments in deliberative democracy. Such endeavor sheds light on the "so what" question which is key to the development of real-world deliberative democracy.

Political parties are often conceptualized as unitary actors that have consistent preferences. This 'hidden assumption' often turns out to overlook heterogeneity within parties and, therefore, intra-party dynamics in explaining attitudes. Concerning devolution and federalisation, parties or MP's belonging to the same region are also often implicitly considered as having homogeneous viewpoints and attitudes. Relying on an original MPs survey carried out during the Belgian political gridlock of 2010-2011, this article uncovers some of the key dimensions of the intra-party dynamics through the analysis of MPs' preferences towards institutional reform in Belgium. Far from being explained by party or community lines, our results demonstrate how MPs' political and sociological background, national/regional identity, political career and inter-community relations strongly shape their preferences.

This article investigates what happens when governmental actors foster the participation of non-state actors (NSAs) in treaty ratification and implementation decisions. NSAs, being non-governmental organisations, business groups, citizens, or research institutions among others represent interests that will be ultimately impacted by policy choices. While governments have long consulted them on an ad hoc basis, a "deliberative turn" happened in the 2000s to encourage their involvement, for greater legitimacy and transparency, through among others, the use of public consultations. This proactive turn raises questions about public consultations: are such instruments effective? Do they encourage new thinking? Do they matter for final decisions? This article answers these questions by investigating, using among others lexicometry tools, the public consultation organised by the European Commission in 2011 prior to the ratification of the Nagoya Protocol on access and benefit sharing (ABS) by the European Union in 2014. The results are mixed. While the studied public consultation favoured the expression of small national NSAs the process is still poorly inclusive. NSAs did not propose any fresh ideas on the ABS issue and their final influence on European decision-makers is blurred by the diversity of interests expressed.

What are the outputs and effects of deliberative mini-publics? This is probably one of the most critical questions for any deliberative endeavor. In the realm of large-scale deliberative experiments, the G1000 in Belgium holds a special place: it happened in the wake of the longest government formation ever, it sought to gather 1000 randomly selected citizens in Brussels to discuss key social and political issues, and, above all, it was a fully citizen-led initiative. Its organizers explicitly sought to avoid any political and institutional ties and their focus was much more on guaranteeing a high representativeness and a qualitative process, rather than generating strong political outcomes. While the G1000 did well in terms of representativeness and open agenda setting, the political uptake was very limited in the short term. In the longer term, however, it seems that the effects of the G1000 were larger than initially expected. A rich set of empirical data is used to analyze the interaction between the G1000 with the entire political system by looking at the relation with the media, public opinion, political parties and MPs, and other experiments in deliberative democracy. Such endeavor sheds light on the "so what" question which is key to the development of real-world deliberative democracy.

The EUROSUR system is supposed to further the surveillance of external borders of European Union Member States. From this point of view, it can be considered an important step in the construction of a controlled space. Drawing inspiration from the Foucauldian attention to programs and technologies, and mobilizing the Actor- Network-Theory concepts of setting and actant, the paper investigates EUROSUR main methodological operations. It highlights how the making of a controlled space is, first and foremost, a mise-en-discours going well beyond surveillance and pro- hibition: a continuous effort to make sense of a disparate multiplicity, encompassing both human and nonhuman elements, both controlled and controlling ones. From a theoretical perspective, the chapter contributes to on-going endeavors to reinvigor- ate the post-structuralist studies of International Relations with approaches inspired by Actor-Network-Theory.

Recent scholarship claims that citizen deliberation can contribute to the quality of democracy and to the legitimacy of political decision making. By including everyone who is affected by a decision in the process leading to that decision, deliberation is capable of generating political decisions that receive broad public support, even when there is strong disagreement on the values a polity should promote. However, if deliberative democracy wants to contribute to the legitimacy of the political system, it has to be legitimate in itself. In other words, deliberative processes have to reflect the principles of legitimacy in their own functioning. It is therefore crucial to assess the internal legitimacy of deliberative mini-publics before making claims about their contribution to the legitimacy of the political system as a whole. In this article, we set out to refine the theory on deliberative legitimacy and to determine the legitimacy of one particularly interesting deliberative event, namely the Belgian G1000. We will argue that it is very difficult for deliberative processes to be high on all dimensions of legitimacy and that there is a trade-off between input and output legitimacy. Moreover, we find that design characteristics to a large extent determine the legitimacy of deliberative processes.

In May 2014 and for the second time in her political history, regional, federal and European elections were organized simultaneously in Belgium. In the direct follow-up of the sixth state reform that increased the powers and the autonomy of the Belgian Regions and Communities, these elections were crucial for the future of the country and for the multi-level coalition formation at the regional and federal levels. The political campaign was dominated by socio-economic issues and demands for further autonomy, particularly in the Flemish region. Regional electoral results confirmed the success of the regionalist parties in Flanders, but also in Brussels and in the German-speaking community. These successes allowed regionalist parties to enter all regional and federal governments – often as the dominant party – with the exception of the Walloon and the French-speaking Community cabinets.

Today few people deny the existence of regional substate diplomacy (Criekemans 2010). But there is still no common agreement on a region's right to do so and, above all, on their scope of action. This question goes against what used to be the dominant approach in international relations, the state-centric approach that leads to the logic of speaking with one voice. Increasingly, a multilevel-governance approach has contested this state-centric view and proposes an alternative logic of multiple actors speaking with their voice, nuancing strongly the seminal distinction between "sovereignty-bound" and "sovereignty-free" actors (Rosenau 1990). From the 1970s, the world has seen the growing presence of sovereignty-free actors in international relations. Among these actors, non-central or, better, substate, governments of federal states have developed intensive foreign relations. These governments are using a range of techniques: from shaping the federal government's foreign policy to establishing themselves directly in the international arena (Blatter et al. 2008). For minority nation governments this is particularly a challenge, as they have to act internally – where they have developed full-fledged legislative powers within a multinational federation – and externally – where international and national laws are often still reluctant to recognise their right of action (Lejeune 2003). Yet some minority nations have thrived in developing their own international relations. Bavaria, Catalonia, Flanders, Quebec, Scotland and Wallonia are often seen as successful international players even if they are not fully sovereignty bound (Michelmann 2009; Criekemans 2010). The international actions of these minority nations have been characterised under the umbrella of "identity paradiplomacy" (Paquin 2003); that is, a willingness to use international relations to foster a nation-building process within a multinational state. This observation was particularly prevalent for minority nations strongly in competition with a federal government about their nationbuilding process, albeit for different reasons, namely Flanders, Quebec and Scotland (Paquin 2004). The case of Wallonia seems to fits less well into the identity paradiplomacy framework, which therefore raises the question of alternative roads to international relations. This is the core question of this chapter: is identity paradiplomacy the only way to go for minority nations? Quebec and Wallonia are both well known for their active foreign relations.