Equality by lot

A 2021 paper in Acta Politica by Sacha Rangoni, Camille Bedock, David Talukder analyzes interviews made with French-speaking Belgian politicians on the subject of policy making citizen bodies (which they call Deliberative Minipublics, or DMPs). A large majority among the interviewees is in favor of consultative citizen bodies, either allotted or self-selected, a minority is in favor of bodies with binding decision making powers, and a small minority (all men, it turns out) is against both.

More competent thus more legitimate? MPs’ discourses on deliberative mini-publics

Abstract: MPs face a dilemma when it comes to deliberative mini-publics (DMPs): in a context of distrust they may see it as an opportunity to re-legitimize themselves and solve complex policy issues. But it could also challenge the quasi-monopoly they used to have on political decisions and undermine the role of the Parliament and the primacy of elections. The article is founded on 91 face-to-face interviews with French-speaking Belgian MPs sitting in federal or regional parliaments. First, we describe the profile of supporters of DMPs. We then identify three ideal-typical discourses: the power-sharing discourse, the consultative discourse, and the elitist discourse. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it analyzes the argumentative frames used by MPs to assess deliberative mini-publics using a large number of interviews. Second, it demonstrates that their discourses depend on their evaluation of ordinary citizens’ competence to participate and on their resulting vision of representation. Political actors mainly perceive DMPs as power-sharing instruments that would alter their elected position and the legitimacy of the election.

Table 2 in the paper summarizes the positions associated with the three types discourse regarding allotted bodies:
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