The difficult integration of mini-publics in collaborative governance: the case of the Education Reform in the Belgian French Speaking Community

Devillers, Sophie;Vrydagh, Julien;Reuchamps, Min
(2019) Deliberation in law making procedures: Enhancing Trust in modern democracies — Location: Dublin (9.May.2019)

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Authors
  • Devillers, SophieUCLouvain
    Author
  • Vrydagh, Julienorcid-logoUCLouvain
    Author
  • Reuchamps, Minorcid-logoUCLouvain
    Author
Abstract
Mini-publics are increasingly used as a way to remedy the deficiencies of representative democracy. In order to maximize their potential, scholars have explored the ways to incorporate these deliberative forums into the policy-making process. However, they have neglected the shift from government to governance. This new paradigm puts forward a more horizontal and cooperative form of the policy-making process in which various stakeholders are involved through a variety of cooperative schemes. Therein, mini-public becomes one additional site of deliberation among others, implying that it interacts with and reports to a variety of new institutional actors. Very few studies have tried to understand how stakeholders and mini-publics' participants perceive the mini-public newcomer in the cooperative scheme and how they deem its contribution to the policy-making process. This research asks how participants and stakeholders perceive the empowerment of deliberative forums in a policy-making process. Do stakeholders regard mini-publics as detrimental to their influence? Do participants are willing to take over some power of the stakeholders? In order to answer these questions, we focus on the Education Reform in the Belgian French community, “Le Pacte pour un Enseignement d’Excellence” (2015–2018). This case features both mini-publics and characteristics of complex network governance with many stakeholders from civil society, private actors… We use new and original data gathered through surveys of stakeholders and mini-publics’ participants. This research aims to shed new light on how these two groups perceive each other in order to understand how they can achieve loose coupling.
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Devillers, S., Vrydagh, J., & Reuchamps, M. (2019). The difficult integration of mini-publics in collaborative governance: the case of the Education Reform in the Belgian French Speaking Community. Deliberation in law making procedures: Enhancing Trust in modern democracies, Dublin. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/243499