%0 Journal Article %1 brown_citizen_2006 %A Brown, Marc %D 2006 %J Journal of Political Philosophy %K AleatoireBD AleatoireC Citizens Jury, Publié, Représentation, {DescriptifBD,} {DescriptifC,} {IMPRIME,} {LU,} {PosteBD,} {TirageBD,} {TirageC} %N 2 %P 203--225 %T Citizen Panels and the Concept of Representation %U http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/8/8/1/0/p88107_index.html %V 14 %X The many institutional mechanisms for facilitating citizen participation in governmental decisionmaking all face the challenge of reconciling the often conflicting demands of procedural fairness, popular acceptance and involvement, and substantive rationality and effectiveness. One way of addressing this challenge is to establish participatory mechanisms, such as citizen advisory panels, that involve citizens in cooperative deliberation informed by expert advice. This paper examines four types of citizen panels (consensus conferences, planning cells, citizen juries, and deliberative polls) with the aim of understanding how they might best fit into the conceptual and institutional framework of representative democracy. I examine several ways of conceptualizing the representative status of citizen panels, focusing on the implications of different methods of selecting participants. I argue that representation on citizen panels is best conceived not in terms of the representation of individual or group interests, but of social and cultural perspectives. I also suggest that representation on citizen panels ought to be evaluated not in comparison to that of other political institutions, as it often has been, but in terms of its contribution to what I will call a representative field, which includes a wide range of governmental and non-governmental institutions. Representatives can neither filter nor transmit an autonomous public will, because representative institutions help constitute citizens as publics in the first place. As a normative standard, representative democracy thus applies to the entire political system and the ways that its elements interact, not to any single element in isolation from the others. When understood as advisory rather than decisionmaking bodies, citizen panels can make a limited but beneficial contribution to the representative fields of contemporary democratic societies.

@article{brown_citizen_2006, abstract = {The many institutional mechanisms for facilitating citizen participation in governmental decisionmaking all face the challenge of reconciling the often conflicting demands of procedural fairness, popular acceptance and involvement, and substantive rationality and effectiveness. One way of addressing this challenge is to establish participatory mechanisms, such as citizen advisory panels, that involve citizens in cooperative deliberation informed by expert advice. This paper examines four types of citizen panels (consensus conferences, planning cells, citizen juries, and deliberative polls) with the aim of understanding how they might best fit into the conceptual and institutional framework of representative democracy. I examine several ways of conceptualizing the representative status of citizen panels, focusing on the implications of different methods of selecting participants. I argue that representation on citizen panels is best conceived not in terms of the representation of individual or group interests, but of social and cultural perspectives. I also suggest that representation on citizen panels ought to be evaluated not in comparison to that of other political institutions, as it often has been, but in terms of its contribution to what I will call a representative field, which includes a wide range of governmental and non-governmental institutions. Representatives can neither filter nor transmit an autonomous public will, because representative institutions help constitute citizens as publics in the first place. As a normative standard, representative democracy thus applies to the entire political system and the ways that its elements interact, not to any single element in isolation from the others. When understood as advisory rather than decisionmaking bodies, citizen panels can make a limited but beneficial contribution to the representative fields of contemporary democratic societies.}, added-at = {2010-02-22T16:27:58.000+0100}, author = {Brown, Marc}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2e05f4bcddf317d22aca3453373aec3cc/vatchoum}, interhash = {eb5c692ca960538c8f6f6b7c646bb5ec}, intrahash = {e05f4bcddf317d22aca3453373aec3cc}, journal = {Journal of Political Philosophy}, keywords = {AleatoireBD AleatoireC Citizens Jury, Publié, Représentation, {DescriptifBD,} {DescriptifC,} {IMPRIME,} {LU,} {PosteBD,} {TirageBD,} {TirageC}}, number = 2, pages = {203--225}, timestamp = {2010-02-22T16:44:07.000+0100}, title = {Citizen Panels and the Concept of Representation}, url = {http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/8/8/1/0/p88107_index.html}, volume = 14, year = 2006 }