Strengthening Local Democracy or window dressing? Insights from Poznan and Budapest Citizens' Assemblies

Deliberative democrats claim that supplementing the existing system of political institutions by deliberative minipublics (DMPs) can address some of the democratic deficits faced by democratic societies (Lang & Warren, 2013). Arguably, they can enhance the aspects of representativeness and responsiveness democracy, which, together with active citizenship, are necessary for a healthy democracy, especially at the local level (Beetham, 1996). However, researchers find that the various policy-making actors' expectations and views on deliberative minipublics are relevant for how these processes interface with the existing decision-making system (Hendriks, 2005; Niessen, 2019). Moreover, comparative studies show that the dominant conception of democracy in a given context is an important factor for the acceptability of such processes (Dryzek & Tucker, 2008; Nielsen et al., 2007). At the same time, scrutinizing decision-makers' understandings of public deliberation allows for assessing to what extent these events are employed for instrumental reasons (Wells et al., 2021; Oross et al., 2021) and whether they are intended to represent a substantial change to power relations or just a "cautious experimentation" (Sandover et al., 2021). Research on these and other aspects of deliberative minipublics in Central Eastern Europe has been scarce despite their growing popularity of DMPs in this region (Gherghina et al., 2020). The article aims to fill this gap in the literature by comparing (1) various engaged actors' motivations to support the organization of local DMPs in Poland and Hungary, as well as exploring (2) how the various actors engaged in organizing local minipublics envision the DMP's role in strengthening the local democracy in these CEE countries, and (3) to what extent these events represented a substantive change in the local decision-making processes. What makes Poland and Hungary particularly relevant cases for investigating the promises and the practice of deliberative democracy is the eroding or backsliding tendency of their democratic systems. In our study, we not only give a voice to the local decision-makers to find out about the rationales for sharing their decision-making power with citizens but also to civil society actors who demand the organization of DMPs, as well as the randomly selected citizen participants. To this end, actors involved in two local citizens' assemblies organized in major cities in Poland and Hungary were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. A cross-case analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994) allowed an examination of similarities and differences between these two events and types of actors as well as to propose theoretical predictions for similar settings. We expect the results to reveal discrepancies between understanding of democracy and of the DMP's functions between different types of actors and that the DMPs represent complementary, one-off events rather than a substantial change to the power logic of the local decision-making systems.