The Political Impact of CItizen Forums in Europe: An Analysis of its Determinants

Abstract: We know very little, whether and how deliberative minipublics lead to changes in public policy. In this paper we address their political impact using a new dataset based on the Participedia platform, enhanced by an expert survey that fills in missing information. Focusing on 62 well-documented cases conducted at the national and regional level in Great Britain, Germany, France, Ireland, Denmark and Finland as well as the European level (2000-2021), we ask whether a “top-down” or “bottom-up” organization of minipublics, political support, issue type or process design makes a difference for minipublic success: full, partial or no implementation of recommendations. We find that minipublic uptake is strongly dependent on political support and – to a lesser degree - to top-down organized processes, whereas issue type and process design factors do not or only barely matter. These nuanced findings have important implications for re-thinking minipublics´ roles in a democratic system.