In the first of this trio of entries (28 Feb 2024), triggered by the literature being produced on Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality, I spoke encouragingly about the possibility of identifying developments in this initiative for new experiments in deliberative democracy. In this entry I stand back and look more critically at the whole phenomenon of deliberative forums. 

As with many topics broached in the Research Hub there is a large literature on deliberative forums. We need to keep in mind the debates around the whole notion of deliberation in public institutions. Habermas (2006; Ritter et al. 2018) developed the classic position on an “ideal speech situation”, while numerous political theorists, notably Iris Marion Young, pointed out the “less than ideal” conditions facing many groups who aspired to be heard. Young (2000: 133, 8) insisted that women’s voices and the voices of other outgroups need to be included in deliberative proceedings. She and others (Bacchi and Beasley 2002) pointed out that the Habermasian notion of “complete rational consciousness” ignored the embodiedness and embeddedness of “citizens”. As a way forward Squires (2005: 381-184) endorses a “non-Habermasian dialogic ethics” based on “dialogue with diverse social groups” and facilitated by such institutional reforms as mediation, citizens’ forums, and citizen initiative and referendum.

The researchers we have been following in the previous two entries have written precisely on the democratic possibilities of deliberative forums:

Loughnane, C., Kelleher, C. and Edwards, C. 2023. Care full deliberation? Care work and Ireland’s citizens’ assembly on gender equality, Critical Social Policy, April. 

In this work they draw on Marion Barnes 2008. Passionate participation: Emotional experiences and expressions in deliberative forums. Critical Social Policy, 28(4): 461-481. 

I want to suggest that applying WPR to the phenomenon of citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative forums provides a useful critical perspective to supplement these other studies. The perspective provided by thinking through WPR is captured in a quote from Nikolas Rose (2000: 58): 

“if policies, arguments, analyses and prescriptions purport to provide answers, they do so only in relation to a set of questions. Their very status as answers is dependent upon the existence of such questions. If, for example, imprisonment, marketization, community care are seen as answers, to what are they answers? And, in reconstructing the problematizations which accord them intelligibility as answers, these grounds become visible, their limits and presuppositions are opened for investigation in new ways.”

It is not an easy quote but, in my view, is well worth the effort required to understand it. I am hoping that the parallel with WPR thinking becomes apparent with a little elaboration.

Basically, in this quote, Rose argues that theoretically it is useful to think of “imprisonment, marketization, community care” as answers and that we probe what they are seen as answers to. I suggest that we add “citizens’ assemblies to this list. Rose asks (in my adaptation): “if citizens’ assemblies are put forward as the answer, to what are they answers?” 

To describe citizens’ assemblies as an “answer” means that someone has promoted them as a useful intervention. In my work I refer to these starting points as proposals (or proposed solutions). We then need to ask: if citizens’ assemblies are put forward as a useful intervention (“proposed solution” or “proposal”), what is represented to be the “problem” they are designed to “address”? 

To answer this question, Rose (continuing my adaptation) suggests the need to trace the problematizations that make the answer “citizens’ assemblies” intelligible. In other words, how is it possible to put forward citizens’ assemblies as an answer? What meanings need to be in place for this to occur? And importantly, can we identify limits in the identified underlying presuppositions (the meanings that need to be in place) that ought to be named and considered critically? Here we are engaging Question 2 of WPR: “‘What deep-seated presuppositions or assumptions (conceptual logic) underlie this representation of the “problem” (problem representation)?”

This WPR way of thinking provides a specific kind of critique. It takes the taken-for-granted and asks how such conditions/practices/institutions came to be acceptable. It then asks us to think deeply about what these conditions/practices/institutions rely upon. 

To apply this thinking to citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative forums would take us through some familiar territory. We would want to consider the development of representative institutions and their rationales (Pitkin 1967; Phillips 1995). We would want to probe how political subjects are constituted in such institutions and rationales. Young’s concern, with others, about the presumption of rational autonomous subjects and what this conceptualisation leaves out, e.g. bodies (Bacchi and Beasley 2002) and emotions (Barnes 2008), would become important topics to pursue. The increasing reliance on expert knowledges and the very notion of “expertise” would also be subject to critical reflection. 

The article by Loughnane et al. 2023 provides an assessment of how Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality performed as a deliberative body. While noting that “CAGE’s [Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality) processes exhibited some potential in terms of care full deliberation”, there were “also significant constraints”. Specifically:

“CAGE’s ability to deliberate with care, particularly in terms of attentiveness and responsiveness, was diminished by limitations in membership criteria, the emphasis on expertise and official modes of engagement, time pressures and the one-off nature of deliberation” (Loughnane et al., 2023: 710; see the rest of this page for additional useful detail). 

Applying WPR thinking involves taking these insights and putting a different angle on them. Instead of seeing what occurred in the Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality as a matter of poor performance, we consider how what occurred relied upon deep-seated premises about modes of governing (e.g. presumptions about representation, cognition, consensus, information, etc.) that may need rethinking. 

Returning to Rose (see above), it can be argued that citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative forums are put forward as an “answer” to a “question” about good governing. They are meant to “solve the ‘problems’” of disengagement, underrepresentation of specific groups, and overreliance on expertise. In this sense, although put forward as a counter to conventional technocratic government practices, citizen assemblies continue to follow a problem-solving logic (Bacchi 2020). 

It follows that, while deliberative forums appear to offer a way to broaden community discussion and to involve more “citizens” in governing practices, they are invariably limited by the ways in which the “issues”/ “problems”/ “questions” are framed. Any proffered “recommendations”/ “solutions” will reflect these constraints. As with evidence-based policy initiatives, to query the logic of problem-solving approaches entails confronting who sets the questions (“problems”) that are asked:

“Within an evidence-based paradigm, where social and other scientists are positioned as (simply) delivering ‘evidence’ on questions and priorities set by governments, it becomes extremely difficult to put those questions and priorities under scrutiny. In effect, these questions and priorities presume the nature of the ‘problem’. As a result, by producing ‘knowledge’ for pre-set questions, researchers become implicated in particular modes of governance.” (Bacchi 2008; 2009)

Loughnane and Edwards (2022) highlight exactly this issue in their comments on how the agenda for the Citizens’ Assembly was determined. First, they point out that “The government-appointed chair, civil service secretariat and expert advisory group designed the process and agendas”. Next, they highlight the limitations of this process: 

“Further detail on how CAGE’s agenda was ultimately decided is not publicly available and there have been calls for such processes to be ‘more systematic, transparent, and open to public input’ (Courant, 2021: 11). The evaluation of CAGE (Suiter et al., 2021) recommended that the agenda-setting process for future assemblies be reconsidered”. (Loughnane et al. 2023: 701).

Thinking with a WPR framework, the critical question becomes: “who gets to set the ‘questions’/‘problems’ designated as relevant to the discussions/deliberation?”. And, going further, “would it be possible to conceive of deliberative forums as forums for generating ‘questions’ rather than ‘resolving’/‘solving’ them?” Considering this last intervention, focusing on how participants might be involved in setting the agendas for deliberative assemblies could produce new experiments in deliberative democracy.

References

Bacchi, C. 2008. The Politics of Research Management: reflections on the gap between what we “know” [about SDH] and what we do. Health Sociology Review, 17(2): 165-176.

Bacchi, C. 2009. Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to be?Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education.

Bacchi, C. 2020. Problem-Solving as a Governing Knowledge: “Skills”-Testing in PISA and PIAAC. Open Journal of Political Science, 10, 82-105.

Bacchi, C. and Beasley, C. 2002. Citizen bodies: Is embodied citizenship a contradiction in terms? Critical Social Policy, 22(2): 324-352.

Barnes, M. 2008. Passionate participation: Emotional experiences and expressions in deliberative forums. Critical Social Policy, 28(4): 461-481.

Courant D 2021. Citizens’ assemblies for referendums and constitutional reforms: Is there an “Irish model” for deliberative democracy? Frontiers in Political Science 2: 591983. 

Loughnane, C., Kelleher, C. and Edwards, C. 2023. Care full deliberation? Care work and Ireland’s citizens’ assembly on gender equality, Critical Social Policy, 43(4): 697-717.

Phillips, A. 1995. The Politics of Presence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Pitkin, H. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Ritter, A., Lancaster, K. and Diprose, R. 2018. Improving drug policy: The potential of broader democratic participation. International Journal of Drug Policy,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2018.01.016 

Rose, N. 2000. Powers of Freedom: Reframing political thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Squires, J. 2005. Is mainstreaming transformative? Theorizing mainstreaming in the context of diversity and deliberation. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 12(3): 366-388.

Suiter J, Park K, Galligan Y, et al. 2021. Evaluation Report of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality. Dublin: Technological University Dublin.Young, I. M. 2000. Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.