Deliberative minipublics—participatory processes combining civic lottery with structured deliberation—are increasingly presented as a solution to address a series of problems. Whereas political theory has been prolific in conceiving their contributions, it remains unclear how the people organizing minipublics in practice view their purposes, and how these conceptions align with the theory. This paper conducts a thematic analysis of the reports of all the minipublics convened in Belgium between 2001 and 2021 (n = 51) to map whether and how justifications coincide with the theory. The analysis reveals an important gap: minipublics are in practice predominantly presented as contributions to policymaking, while more deliberative functions remain peripheral. Some common practical purposes also remain under-theorized, in particular their capacity to bridge the gap between citizens and politics. This desynchronization, combined with a plethora of desired outcomes associated with minipublics, indicates the creation of a minipublic bubble which inflates their capacity to solve problems.

U.S., UK, and European municipalities are increasingly experimenting with data as an instrument for social policy. This movement pertains often to the design of municipal data warehouses, dashboards, and predictive analytics, the latter mostly to identify risk of fraud. This transition to data-driven social policy, captured by the term “digital welfare state,” almost completely takes place out of political and social view, and escapes democratic decision making. In this article, I zoom in on The Netherlands and show in detail how sound data governance is lacking at three levels: data experiments and practices take place in a so-called “institutional void” without any clear democratic mandate; moreover, they are often based on disputable quality of data and analytic models; and they tend to transgress the recent EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) about privacy and data protection. I also assess that key stakeholders in this data transition, that is the citizens whose data are used, are not actively informed let alone invited to participate. As a result, a practice of top-down monitoring, containment and control is evolving despite the desire of civil servants in this domain to do “good” with data. I explore several data and policy alternatives in the conclusion to contribute to a higher quality and more democratic usage of data in the digital welfare state.

This article explores recent UK government aspirations towards ‘open policy making’ (OPM). Against a backdrop of scholarly literatures on power inequalities in policy making, I consider to whom processes of policy formulation under a banner of OPM are expected to be ‘opening up’. The article draws on an analysis of government documents from 2012–2018 plus some supplementary data from expert interviews. It notes aspirations towards ‘opening up’ policy formulation to new experts and a particular preoccupation with encouraging private sector involvement. Ideas which may boost ordinary citizens’ input are also part of what ‘makes up’ UK Government OPM, though citizen involvement appears restricted, sitting uneasily alongside commitments to austerity influencing how ‘openness’ is understood.

To better understand the impact of deliberations during participatory policymaking events, we introduce and explore the concept of group proximity. An example of such events is citizens’ summits, during which many parallel groups deliberate on solutions for a policy issue. At the summit that was studied, each group followed a value deliberation process with the aim to increase mutual understanding among participants. They were asked to rank the solutions in their order of preference before and after the deliberation. From these rankings, group proximity can be calculated with a rank correlation, enabling a precise comparison of participants’ preferences in each deliberative group. High group proximity indicates very similar rankings in a deliberative group, while low group proximity demonstrates the opposite. Comparing group proximity of the before and after rankings shows if a group ranked convergent, unchanged or divergent. This measure allows for a quantitative analysis of early-stage public policymaking processes.

Community participation has become an essential element of government policy around the globe in recent decades. This move towards ‘government through community’ has been presented as an opportunity for citizens to gain power and as a necessary part of the shift from government to governance, enabling states and communities to tackle complex problems in tandem. However, it has also been critiqued as an attempt to shift responsibility from the state onto communities. Using evidence from detailed case studies, this article examines the implementation of Localism in England and Community Empowerment in Scotland. The findings suggest a need for a more nuanced analysis of community participation policy, incorporating risk alongside responsibility and power, as well as considering the agency of communities and the local state. Furthermore, understanding the constraints on community participation is key, particularly in terms of the enveloping impacts of austerity and state retrenchment.

This article investigates the deliberative abilities of ordinary citizens in the context of ‘EuroPolis’, a transnational deliberative poll. Drawing upon a philosophically grounded instrument, an updated version of the Discourse Quality Index (DQI), it explores how capable European citizens are of meeting deliberative ideals; whether socio-economic, cultural and psychological biases affect the ability to deliberate; and whether opinion change results from the exchange of arguments. On the positive side, EuroPolis shows that the ideal deliberator scoring high on all deliberative standards does actually exist, and that participants change their opinions more often when rational justification is used in the discussions. On the negative side, deliberative abilities are unequally distributed: in particular, working-class members are less likely to contribute to a high standard of deliberation.

This paper describes the background to the last fifty years of violence in Columbia and identifies its causes in inequality, poverty and displacement. It then explores the ways in which the Catholic Church has been prominent in developing processes of peace-building that include “accompaniment” of the victims to include them in structures of citizen participation. It ends with theological and pastoral reflections on how this can be enabled practically in the Columbian context.

An interpretive qualitative study was conducted to examine public health nurses' (PHNs') practice in fostering citizen participation and collaborative practice and the impact of a decade (1992–2002) of health care restructuring. This article presents the perspectives of public health management and a public policy analysis as they relate to PHNs' primary health care practice in Nova Scotia, a province in Eastern Canada. Seven face-to-face interviews were conducted with public health management from across Nova Scotia and 26 relevant public policy documents were analyzed. Three major themes emerged from the coded transcripts and the document analysis: (1) opportunistic shifts in values: constraining structures, operations, and governance; (2) insufficient funding and infrastructure support; (3) opportunities and challenges to PHN capacity and competency. The emergent themes illustrate the unique population health perspective and day-to-day contested realities of public health and PHN practice. The study provides preliminary understanding of PHNs' primary health care practice in Nova Scotia that may resonate with other national and international settings. This knowledge can form a basis for more research to explore the PHNs' practice in the organizational context in which it is embedded. This study was undertaken at a pivotal time in Nova Scotia as the provincial government embarked on primary health care renewal to improve the health of Nova Scotians. The success of this study is in large part attributable to the collaborative effort of university researchers and public health decision makers.

The acceptance and utility of alternative agricultural research can be enhanced by better incorporating social sciences and issues and by broadening its scope to the entire food system rather than focusing only on food production. Researchers have made strong contributions in developing and evaluating alternative agricultural technologies, but research attention also is needed to articulate strategies for synthesizing those technologies into coherent strategies, to examine the social effects of different scenarios, and to create better decisionmaking processes for ensuring broad-based knowledgeable participation in the choices among alternative strategies. Research that addresses human needs beyond food and fiber will help build truly alternative and desirable agricultural systems.