Recipes for Transnational Public Spheres: Design Choices and Their Consequences

• In Event: New Theoretical Perspectives for Democratic Innovations

Abstract

Two decades after the publication of ‘Recipes for Public Spheres’ (Fung 2003), we believe the field has moved far enough into the transnational realm to require an internationalization of its original framing question: How can the quality of transnational civic engagement and public deliberation be improved? Of the participatory and deliberative democratic innovations documented by the OECD between 1979 and 2021, the first recorded transnational public deliberations took place in 2007 (OECD 2021) and practice is expanding. In 2021, for example, the European Commission convened the Conference on the Future of Europe and the first sortition-selected global citizens’ assembly was held online (Global Assembly, 2022). Just as Fung’s 2003 article was a crucial intervention in the early days of minipublics, this paper will offer a conceptualization of the varied practices of transnational minipublics in these early days of their development.

The emergence of transnational deliberation was anticipated by scholars (Dryzek et al. 2011), given the increasing recognition that national political decisions have implications beyond political borders and the awareness of the global interconnectedness of many critical social challenges–such as inequality, biodiversity loss and global heating. This paper reviews important recent cases of transnational public spheres and key variations in their design, governance and operation to contribute to our growing understanding of democratic innovations at the local, regional, and national levels.

Beyond their political relevance, transnational minipublics deserve particular analytic attention because they have several unique features. Global minipublics, for example, do not interface with a singular sovereign. Transnational public spheres must also grapple with extreme parameters beyond the experience and scope of minipublics at the national and sub-national levels. The Global Assembly on the climate and ecological crisis, for example, sought to include unprecedented levels of linguistic heterogeneity in minipublic deliberation (39 languages were spoken by Assembly Members; Global Assembly 2022).

Unique characteristics of transnational minipublics have generated corresponding innovations in practice, as well as consequences for global democratic governance. Communicative challenges between members of the Global Assembly inspired the development and use of hand signals, for example; a shared non-verbal language to enable simultaneous and un-mediated communication between members. Transnational assemblies have also extended dominant practices within deliberative democracy such as the integration of multiple linked forums. In this paper we distinguish between federated, vertical, horizontal and longitudinal linkages within transnational public spheres and develop hypotheses on the consequences of such design choices.

Federated linkages relate to the phenomenon of distributed forums that together constitute a single minipublic, such as the “We, the Internet” citizen dialogue on the future of the internet which featured decentralized and independent national dialogues aggregated into a global position (We, the Internet 2021). Vertical linkages relate to minipublics being convened at different levels of government, such as the Conference on the Future of Europe which invited inputs in national and sub-national minipublics that fed into dialogues in the European transnational minipublic. Horizontal linkages describe a multiplicity of minipublic designs responding to a single question. For example, the Global Assembly featured a global minipublic of 100 sortition-selected members deliberating together for 60 hours as well as independently organized “Community Assemblies” often with open-for-all invitation and with a significantly shorter average duration of several hours. Longitudinal linkages relate to a series of connected minipublics convened at different stages of a policy cycle.

We will show that conceptual clarification and systematic comparison of design choices for transnational minipublics and their consequences can speak to the political theory of global governance. This analysis will also inform practitioners, and so contributes to the future variety and quality of transnational minipublics and public deliberation generally.

References:

Dryzek, John S., André Bächtiger, and Karolina Milewicz. 2011. “Toward a Deliberative Global Citizens' Assembly.” Global Policy 2 (1): 33–42.


Fung, A. 2003. “Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences.” The Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 338-367.

Global Assembly. 2022. “Report of the 2021 Global Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Crisis”.

OECD. 2021. Database of Representative Deliberative Processes and Institutions.

We, the Internet. 2021. “Results Report: What citizens of the world say on the future of the Internet”.

Authors

• Roxana Joyce Chen, Harvard University

• Jon Stever, Innovation for Policy Foundation

• John S. Dryzek, University of Canberra

• Archon Fung, Harvard University

• Sean W.D. Gray, Memorial University of Newfoundland

• Azucena Moran Tobar, Research Institute for Sustainability