2016/01/02 by Didier Caluwaerts, Min Reuchamps · 57 citations
Social Sciences · #Deliberation #Deliberative democracy #Democracy #Democratic legitimacy #E-Government and Public Services #Embeddedness #Irish #Law #Legitimacy #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Public administration #Social Capital and Networks #Social Media and Politics #Social science #Sociology
paper · open access · doi:10.1080/00344893.2016.1244111
published in Representation 52(1), 13-27 (Taylor & Francis)
openalex publication_date 2016/01/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Democratic deliberation is claimed to improve the legitimacy of democratic decision making. However, deliberation’s beneficial effects do not come about easily. If deliberative innovations want to contribute to the legitimacy of political decision making, they have to reflect the principles of legitimacy in their own functioning. In this paper, we set out to assess the input and output legitimacy of four deliberative events, and determine which are the favourable conditions for their legitimacy. Based on a comparison of the British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly, the Belgian G1000, the Dutch Burgerforum, and the Irish We The Citizens, we argue that the institutional embeddedness of deliberative innovations strongly affect their claims to legitimacy, but also that their disruptive potential is unrelated to legitimacy.