Real Democracy Now! a podcast

Deliberative mini-publics are a popular form of democratic innovation around the world. In today's episode I talk to a range of people to get their perspectives on what is behind this popularity.

Professor Graham Smith is a Professor of Politics in the Centre for the Study of Democracy, in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Westminster in London.

Professor Janette Hartz-Karp, from the Sustainability Policy Unit at Curtin University in Western Australia. Janette is renowned nationally and internationally for her innovative work in community engagement and deliberative democracy.

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, the founder of the newDemocracy Foundation in Australia. The newDemocracy Foundation is an independent, non-partisan research organisation aiming to identify improvements to our democratic process with a focus on promoting deliberative mini-publics as a key democratic reform.

Peter McLeod, the Principal and Founder of MASS LBP a consultancy focused on democratic innovation and public strategy. Since 2007, MASS has led some of the country's most original and ambitious efforts to engage citizens in tackling tough policy choices while pioneering the use of Civic Lotteries and Reference Panels on behalf of forward-thinking governments.

Emily Jenke is the co-founder of Democracy Co a consultancy that works with governments, business, not-for profits and local communities to help them make better decisions together that improve the quality of people's lives.

Real Democracy Now! a podcast is for people who think we can and should do democracy better.

In this podcast I talk with experts, practitioners, change agents and everyday people about how democracy works and how we might do it better.

Real Democracy Now! a podcast looks at democracy from different angles to help you think more deeply about democracy and identify the ways you think it could be improved.

The first season of Real Democracy Now! a podcast, will look at deliberative mini-publics, often called citizens’ juries, which are a very popular democratic innovation around the world.

If you want to know what deliberative mini-publics are listen to Episode 1 where I talk to Professor Carson, a world renowned expert on these type of innovations.

In this bonus episode, I talk with Anouch Toranian, the Deputy Mayor of Paris, Yves Dejaeghere, the Executive Director of the Federation for Innovation in Democracy, Europe and Claudia Chwalisz, leader of innovation in citizen engagement with the OECD about the design and establishment of the Paris Citizens' Assembly.

The Paris Citizens' Assembly was established in 2021 with 100 Parisians representing the diversity of the city of Paris. The Assembly is charged with evaluating past programs or policies, setting up citizens' juries and determining the topic for Paris' annual participatory budgeting process.

The Assembly is unique in that the Council are sharing with the Assembly members responsibility for designing how it works.

• deliberation is a universal capacity - anyone anywhere can do it
• however, deliberation is manifested differently in different cultures and contexts
• context and culture should not be conflated
• culture involves processes of meaning-making to which deliberation can contribute
• there are ethical issues associated with critiquing other cultures.

Despite the range of cultures and contexts in which deliberation occurs John believes that 'we can't simply wait' until we understand these different approaches before we develop global deliberative processes or we could be waiting forever.

1. consider research questions from a non-western perspective
2. undertake empirical research looking at how deliberative processes can feed into global governance.

1. Institutional reforms are not exceptional or rare
2. Political elites make reforms in reaction to events rather than in a proactive way
3. To understand change and stability we need to look at the processes of reform which are either consensual or conflictual.