Minipublics: Deliberative Designs and Their Consequences

Abstract

Activists, foundations, and even some scholars interested in improving the quality of the public sphere have pursued an array of modest projects that attempt to create more perfect public spheres. They convene citizens, in the dozens or hundreds or thousands, but certainly not in the millions or tens of millions, in self-consciously organized public deliberations. Following Robert Dahl, I will call these efforts minipublics.² Sometimes they resemble town meetings, and sometimes they function as purposeful associations. They look like, because they are, exercises in “reformist tinkering” rather than “revolutionary reform.”³

I thank Joshua Cohen, Stephen Elkin, James Fishkin, Joseph Goldman, Robert Goodin, Jennifer Hochschild, Sanjeev Khagram, Jane Mansbridge, Nancy Rosenblum, Charles Sabel, Lars Torres, and the participants of the Democracy Collaborative’s “State of Democratic Practice” workshop for illuminating suggestions on previous drafts of this chapter. An earlier version of this chapter appeared in the Journal of Political Philosophy.