Suchergebnisse

Research has shown that deliberative mini-publics have the potential to mitigate some of the deficiencies of contemporary representative democracy. To this end, mini-publics are becoming increasingly connected to other institutions of the democratic system so that their outputs can be transmitted to policy-makers. This article argues that the literature has underappreciated that mini-publics' outputs are not simply transmitted from one institution to another. Instead, the transmission of outputs from mini-publics to other sites in the democratic system is always mediated by representation, which necessarily transforms outputs to some extent. The article identifies the following three main reasons for this: mini-publics' representatives must interpret, perform, and negotiate outputs. Drawing on a least-likely case-study of Agora's representation of the Brussels Citizens' Assembly, it illustrates how these issues are pervasive even when representatives are primarily interested in the literal and faithful transmission of mini-publics' outputs. The findings highlight how representatives struggle with representing mini-publics' outputs.

AbstractCitizenship education aims to compensate for the lack of a stimulating political home environment. However, not all scholars are convinced that schools are great equalizers, as citizenship education might reinforce rather than reduce socioeconomic inequalities. This paper investigates whether citizenship education compensates, reproduces, or accelerates inequality in students' internal political efficacy (IPE) and how this relationship differs across educational tracks. IPE is considered a key political attitude that predicts political participation and taps into self-confidence in a political setting. This political attitude is especially interesting considering the stigmatizing effects of educational tracks. We study the effect of citizenship education among senior high school students in Flanders. We examine three kinds of citizenship education: civic learning experiences, an open classroom climate, and active student participation at school. We conduct three-way interactions in multilevel models to study the moderating effect of these types of citizenship education at school on the relationship between a political home environment and IPE across educational tracks. We show compensating effects for the three citizenship education types. However, looking across educational tracks, there is a clearer compensation in the academic track compared to the technical and vocational tracks. Our findings indicate that citizenship education contributes to a democratic society where all citizens feel confident participating in the political arena. Still, technical and vocational tracked students not only receive less citizenship education, but the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities in feelings of IPE when receiving higher amounts is also less articulated than in the academic track.

In recent years, pessimism about plebiscitary intra-party democracy has been challenged by assembly-based models of intra-party democracy. However, research has yet to explore the emergence of new power dynamics in parties originating from the implementation of deliberative practices in their intra-party democracy. We investigate how deliberative democratization reshuffles power relations within political parties through a case study of Agora, an internally deliberative movement party in Belgium. Employing a process-tracing approach using original interview and participant observation data, we argue that while plebiscitary intra-party democracy shifts power towards passive members prone to elite domination, our case suggests that deliberative intra-party democracy shifts power towards active members that are more likely to be critical of elites.