Functions and Values of Voting in Support of Mini-Public Deliberations

Deliberative mini-publics emphasise the value of talk among participants, debating arguments, working towards consensus and incorporating nuances. These qualities diverge from the qualities of voting, which are more strongly focused on choosing between pre-determined options, aggregating individual preferences and establishing majorities. In recent times, growing attention is being paid to constructive combinations of deliberation and voting, in which one supplements and elevates the other. Little empirical research has structurally assessed how voting can supplement deliberative mini-publics, not to substitute, but to support the deliberations. This paper explores various functions or purposes that voting can fulfil before and during mini-public trajectories, and distinguishes between exploratory, deliberative, try-out, indicative and decisive voting. For each of these voting functions, the analysis reflects on who participate in the vote and how, illustrating the conceptual reflections with practical examples. The paper then assesses these aggregative additions from the perspective of democratic values and poses various questions for future research on the functions of complementary voting in DMPs.