How to Run a Deliberative Mini-Public in a Hybrid Regime

Abstract

Efforts to institutionalize deliberative institutions are almost absent in Serbia and other Western Balkan countries. On the other hand, the growing lack of interest of European societies’ citizens in participating in political life through traditional instruments of representative democracy has caused a renewed concern in the EU and its member states for the promotion and encouragement of deliberative institutions (Reuchamps, Suiter 2016). This has resulted in democratic engineering inspired by the principles of participatory and deliberative conceptions of democracy. Democratic experimentation along these lines, observed in many EU countries, gave rise to the promotion and institutionalization of deliberative institutions (town meetings, citizen assemblies, neighborhood councils, citizen juries, participatory budgets, etc.). However, democratizing effects of deliberation have been a matter of intense political and academic debate for over 20 years. Still, with a few exceptions, most deliberative institutions were implemented in stable democracies. While deliberative institutions and other participatory democratic innovations are generally less known in Serbia and the region, there has been a trend of citizen mobilization in the form of social movements and local civic initiatives, which are both a symptom of unresponsive and more openly authoritarian institutions and the potential pathway to democratization (Fiket, Pudar Draško 2021). The pace and scope of these developments in the undemocratic societies of the Western Balkan region, in terms of both bottom-up and top-down democratic experimentation, call for a deeper understanding of their internal dynamics and their social and political impact as both individual cases and parts of a greater cycle of social movement mobilizations and institutional experimentation.

Responding to this need, the research team gathered within the framework of the Jean Monnet network “Active citizenship: promoting and advancing innovative democratic practices in the Western Balkans,” led by the Institute for Philosophy and social theory, University of Belgrade, organized two deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) within an hybrid institutional setting, including in the design of DMPs perspective of social movements and civic initiatives. The aim was to strengthen dialogue between different perspectives, approaches, and fields around deliberative and participatory forms of democracy in an undemocratic environment. This project was carried out in cooperation with the European Jean Monnet Network ACT WB - Active Citizenship in the Western Balkans, coordinated by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade (IFDT), together with four more European universities and the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence. The planning and implementation of DMPs took place through the cooperation of the Scientific Committee, comprising the following members: Irena Fiket (IFDT), Ana Đorđević (IFDT), Biljana Đorđević (Faculty of Political Science), Ivana Janković (Faculty of Philosophy), Gazela Pudar Draško (IFDT), Jelena Vasiljević (IFDT), and the Executive Organization Committee (Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence and MASMI). This handbook aims to present the findings of the research done within this JM network.