Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany?

Blome, Agnes; Hartlapp, Miriam Article — Published Version Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? Politische Vierteljahresschrift Provided in Cooperation with: Springer Nature Suggested Citation: Blome, Agnes; Hartlapp, Miriam (2023) : Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany?, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, ISSN 1862-2860, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, Wiesbaden, Vol. 64, Iss. 3, pp. 473-498, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-022-00452-0 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/307285 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ CRITICAL PAPER https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-022-00452-0 Politische Vierteljahresschrift (2023) 64:473–498 Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? Agnes Blome · Miriam Hartlapp Received: 12 April 2022 / Revised: 15 December 2022 / Accepted: 19 December 2022 / Published online: 30 January 2023 © The Author(s) 2023 Abstract The French and the German national parliaments are dominated by highly educated, older, and mostly male politicians. There are growing calls for a more balanced political representation of different social groups. This paper seeks to inform this debate by conceptualizing and measuring representation gaps for women, people of immigrant origin, the working class, and younger age groups in France and Germany and by assessing the potential of deliberative participatory fora to ameliorate underrepresentation. Based on theories of deliberative and participatory democracy, it suggests three criteria these fora must fulfill to potentially balance underrepresentation (descriptive representation in composition, deliberative quality, and coupling to politics) and explores them empirically in four recent cases of deliberative participatory fora: the Grand Débat National and the Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat in France and the Bürgerrat Deutschlands Rolle in der Welt and the Bürgerrat Klima in Germany. We show that significant representation gaps exist for all groups studied. They have been narrowing for women and people of immigrant origin and remain most pronounced for class. Regarding institutional features, our cases fare relatively well in terms of balanced composition and deliberative quality, but the potential to balance representation gaps is seriously limited by a lack of coupling to the political system. Keywords Descriptive representation · Social groups · Political inequality · Democracy · Citizen assemblies Agnes Blome · Miriam Hartlapp Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin, Ihnestr. 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany E-Mail: [email protected] K 474 A. Blome, M. Hartlapp Können deliberative und partizipative Bürgerräte Repräsentationsdefizite in Frankreich und Deutschland beheben? Zusammenfassung In der französischen Assemblée Nationale wie im deutschen Bundestag sind mehrheitlich höher gebildete, ältere und männliche Politiker*innen vertreten. Seit einiger Zeit wird eine ausgewogenere politische Repräsentation verschiedener sozialer Gruppen gefordert. Der Beitrag dieses Artikels zielt auf die Konzeptualisierung und Messung von Repräsentationslücken für Frauen, Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund, Arbeiter:innen und jüngere Menschen in Deutschland und Frankreich und versucht, das Potenzial deliberativ-partizipativer Verfahren zur Verringerung der Repräsentationslücken zu erfassen. Basierend auf Theorien deliberativer und partizipativer Demokratie werden drei institutionelle Kriterien vorgestellt, die diese Verfahren erfüllen müssen, um existierende Repräsentationslücken auszugleichen (deskriptive Repräsentation in der Zusammensetzung, deliberative Qualität und Verbindung zur Politik). Vier aktuelle deliberativ-partizipative Verfahren werden anschließend anhand der Kriterien untersucht: die Grand Débat National und die Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat in Frankreich sowie der Bürgerrat Deutschlands Rolle in der Welt und der Bürgerrat Klima in Deutschland. Wir zeigen, dass für alle analysierten Gruppen relevante Repräsentationslücken bestehen, die für Frauen und Menschen mit Migrationshintergrund im Untersuchungszeitraum kleiner werden, während sie für Arbeiter:innen am größten sind. Die institutionelle Gestaltung der untersuchten deliberativ-partizipativen Verfahren kann die repräsentative Zusammensetzung und Qualität der Deliberation fördern, das Potenzial zum Ausgleich von Repräsentationslücken wird aber durch die schlechte Verbindung zum politischen Entscheidungsprozess stark begrenzt. Schlüsselwörter Deskriptive Repräsentation · Soziale Gruppen · Politische Ungleichheit · Demokratie · Bürgerräte 1 Introduction Inequality of representation has been identified as a major challenge to liberal democracies. The development both of political parties and of national parliaments toward a “diploma democracy” (Bovens and Wille 2017) characterized by highly educated, older white men has raised fears that the interests of other groups in society—e.g., women; people of immigrant origin; and people who are disabled, young, or have a low level of education—do not play a role in politics. Existing research has contributed to understanding the drivers and consequences of unequal representation. Arguably, from both perspectives the gender representation gap has been studied most widely (e.g., Murray 2016; Elsässer and Schäfer 2018), but other social groups have come into view, e.g., ethnic minorities (Bloemraad 2013; Geese 2022) and younger age groups (Stockemer and Sundström 2018; Freire et al. 2022). Analyses tend to focus on single groups, and methodologically, a national perspective prevails. This limits insights on broader trends of narrowing or widening representation gaps as well as potential trade-offs between groups. What K Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? 475 is more, so far scholarly attention has focused mostly on capturing and explaining the unequal political representation and its implications for democracy. The logical next step is to turn to the institutional responses to these challenges, as they will be crucial in determining the impact that current developments will have on the working of Western democracies in the future. Where institutional responses to face representation gaps are studied, this mainly concerns parity legislation and quotas (Krook 2010) and, thus, changes addressing the electoral process. We build on these insights and ask for institutional innovations that aim at balancing representation gaps, but we look at extraparliamentary fora. Much hope is placed on deliberative participatory fora, i.e., fora “in which citizens participate in making collective decisions through deliberation” (Elstub 2018, p. 187). What features are necessary to ensure that these new types of citizen involvement have the potential to balance existing inequalities in representation? How are they implemented in practice? We argue that to address these questions, it is necessary to first identify the representation gaps for multiple groups. We focus on legislators as central institutions of democracies and decisive actors for policy-making. Second, we assess institutional features of deliberative participatory fora to understand their potential to balance existing deficits. We compare representation gaps and institutional responses between France and Germany. Our choice of these two countries was motivated by the similarities in group representation deficiencies and respective efforts to address these via deliberative participatory fora. At the same time, the two countries are characterized by differences in their electoral systems and cultural framings of representation that matter for the political representation of social groups. This enables us to generalize conclusions to countries with varying politico-institutional features. In the following section we develop our theoretical approach to political representation and deliberative democracy. We describe how the measurement of the representation gaps, the selection of groups and countries should be assessed, as well as three institutional criteria that have to be fulfilled for deliberative participatory fora to tackle underrepresentation by opening new channels of participation. Next, we illustrate these gaps for women, ethnic minorities, the working class, and younger age groups in France and Germany, based on primary and secondary sources. Finally, we empirically explore the deliberative participatory fora’s potential in four recent cases: the Grand Débat National and the Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat in France and the Bürgerrat Deutschlands Rolle in der Welt and the Bürgerrat Klima in Germany. We conclude with a critical assessment of the relationship between parliamentary and extraparliamentary forms of representation. 2 Political Representation and Deliberative Democracy—Theoretical Framework and Empirical Approach 2.1 Group-Specific Political (Under)Representation The study of political representation has received great attention in theoretical and empirical research on democracy. The main question is whether and how citizens’ preferences are represented in policy-making by actors who speak and act on be- K 476 A. Blome, M. Hartlapp half of citizens. For a long time, the view of political parties channeling alternative policy visions based on their constituents’ interests prevailed (Rohrschneider and Thomassen 2020). Scholars have also explored more direct links between citizens’ preferences and elected political representatives. These studies typically focus on sociodemographic characteristics and actions on part of the representatives. One of the most cited conceptualizations identifies formalistic, descriptive, substantive, and symbolic forms of representation (Pitkin 1967). While formalistic representation refers to the institutional arrangements of how representatives obtain office and how constituents may hold them accountable (e.g., by voting them out of office), symbolic representation concerns the meaning a representative has for the constituents. Descriptive representation is the extent to which representatives are similar to those represented in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, interests, and experiences. Lastly, substantive representation refers to the actions of representatives on behalf of the represented, i.e., the extent to which representatives advance the constituents’ preferences in policy-making. Pitkin’s work has been highly influential, especially for debates on whether marginalized groups in society need representatives from their groups (Dovi 2018). The concept of political representation has been further developed to account for broader and multiple forms of the relationship between the representatives and the represented, pointing in particular to the context dependency of interests and the way representatives create and frame claims put forward by the represented (importantly, Mansbridge 2003;Saward2010). Recently, these more constructivist conceptions of representation have found their way into quantitative social research on the quality of representation (Wolkenstein and Wratil 2021), yet they fall short of providing a picture of the diversity of parliaments. The burgeoning literature on inequalities in representation, however, still makes the case for analyzing to what extent legislators mirror groups in society—even without showing that their inclusion in fact makes a difference to policy outcomes. In spite of criticism of the term “descriptive representation” as being too passive, the concept uniquely enables exploration of which groups in society are marginalized in political decision-making. This is because of the premise that legislators are not robots who act on what their constituents expect from them. Rather, their social background likely makes a difference. As Phillips put it, “the knowledges they draw on from their social experiences become relevant to their political decisions” (Phillips 2020, p. 179). For example, legislators from upper classes vote differently than their working-class colleagues do even when they belong to the same left-wing party (O’Grady 2019) or demonstrate that they understand working-class interests (Carnes 2013). In other words, the presence of marginalized groups in parliaments more likely leads to a transformation of policies in favor of these groups (e.g., Wängnerud 2009; Elsässer and Schäfer 2018). Research shows that when marginalized groups feel that established collective actors such as political parties no longer pursue their interests, they worry much more about descriptive representation of their group (Urbinati 2012). Also, groups that feel that their external efficacy is low might even refrain from political participation. Lower political participation of social groups is, however, associated with a lower likelihood that their interests matter in decision-making processes because legislators K Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? 477 arguably pursue those policy outcomes that will reward them with votes (Elsässer and Schäfer 2022). In addition, descriptive representation matters as representatives act as role models in politics and society (Bühlmann and Schädel 2012). So far, research on the causes and consequences of underrepresentation has largely focused on women and increasingly on people of immigrant origin. Researching a plurality of groups is conceptually demanding due to difficulties of defining in and out interests (e.g., Kroeber 2018) and empirically demanding due to lack of comparable data when it comes to, e.g., sexual orientation or religious beliefs in society and among representatives. Theoretically, the choice of which underrepresented groups are researched is justified with a focus on a) historically excluded and oppressed groups (prominently, Phillips 1995, pp. 174–175; Mansbridge 1999) and b) a proven lack of responsiveness to group interests, e.g., of the working class (Elsässer and Schäfer 2022) and younger age groups (Stockemer and Sundström 2018; see also Phillips 2020).1 In summary, it is broadly accepted that gaps in descriptive representation may pose a threat to democracy and that reaching more socially and demographically balanced parliaments is desirable (Mansbridge 1999). As explained by Bloemraad and Schönwälder for the case of people of immigrant origin (2013, p. 565), “Even if immigrants’ interests may be represented by politicians who are not of immigrant origin, the lack of diversity in Europe’s legislatures sends a message of exclusion and signals a democratic deficit within domestic politics.” 2.2 How Deliberative Democracy May Compensate for Descriptive Underrepresentation Given these intricacies of representative democracy, proponents of deliberative democracy suggest that innovative fora for policy deliberation may supplement the institutions of representative democracy. The concept of deliberative democracy connotes debates on political issues among equal and mutually respectful people who then decide on policies based on the discussions (Habermas 1997; Bächtiger et al. 2018). It thus involves talking and making choices based on these discussions. Deliberative democracy speaks to both citizens and political representatives. Deliberation helps “the citizens to understand better the issues, their own interests, and the interests and perceptions of others; forge agreement where possible; and, in the instances in which agreement is not possible, both structure and clarify the questions behind the conflict” (Bächtiger et al. 2018, p. 2). Deliberative democracy’s goal as well as its requirement is to give reasons and justify policy decisions. It is, however, unclear to what extent those who deliberate (and make choices) represent—stand for, speak for, act for—those who do not deliberate (Brown 2018). Scholarship that connects deliberative democracy and representation theories has thus warned against socially exclusive deliberative fora (Williams 1998). Rather, more diverse social 1Elsässer and Schäfer (2022) ground their argument in the theoretical distinction of symbolic and substantive representation. The working class might not suffer from a historical image to be “ill-fit to participate” or “unable to rule” that could be remedied by better symbolic representation, but rather from an empirically more recent lack of responsiveness to their substantial interests. K 478 A. Blome, M. Hartlapp perspectives should be represented in any deliberation, ideally by group members themselves. By doing so, some argue that deliberative participatory fora can function as “a cure for the current disenchantment with representative democracy” (Trüdinger and Bächtiger 2022, p. 1), and they stress the potential of innovation outside the political arena to “counteract failures of representative democratic institutions” (Kuyper and Wolkenstein 2019, p. 656). Scholarship highlights the link between the installment of such fora and the governments’ interest in healing electoral democracy and in demonstrating responsiveness to the demands of people (Macq and Jacquet 2023), while there are also more skeptical arguments (e.g., Lafont 2017; Font et al. 2018; different contributions in Bächtiger et al. 2018)—empirically, the jury is still out. Using the words of Vermeule (2012, p. 338), “the next task is to bring these ideas down to the level of institutional design.” 2.3 Criteria to Assess the Potential of Deliberative Participatory Fora to Balance Representation Gaps How should deliberative participatory fora be designed in order to balance representation gaps? Criteria lists have been established on the basis of best practice and expert input (Chwalisz 2020;Curatoetal.2021). We draw on these lists, focusing on criteria that directly inform our research questions on the potential to balance existing inequalities in representation and their implementation.2Further, the selection of our three criteria follows the theoretical case for political representation and deliberative democracy (see above). Consequently, the first criterion is grounded in reasoning on descriptive representation and calls for composition of these fora to mirror society in terms of gender, class, ethnic minorities, and age. The second criterion builds on the idea that deliberative democracy of good quality must render underrepresented perspectives visible, integrate expertise, allow for learning, and come to widely accepted conclusions. The third criterion takes issue with a central premise of this article: We are interested in institutional innovations complementing existing democratic systems—thus, we have to assess their place in these systems. Fora must be coupled to the existing political institutions by a clear mandate and have follow-up procedures that can foster responsiveness of decision-taking in the political system. How should the deliberative participatory forum be composed? With acceptance of the theoretical case for descriptive representation, the representative composition of deliberative participatory fora becomes a necessary condition to balance representation gaps in parliaments. Historically, sortition (civic lottery) ensured that every member of a community had an equal chance of being selected, e.g., officials in ancient Athens or the Doge of Venice. To overcome a purely random sample and to ensure that the demographic composition of the sample matches that of the 2We leave out criteria regarding purpose and features of the wider setting, such as website transparency or conversation with the wider public. These things are normatively important but have little potential to directly address unbalanced participation. Also, depending on how detailed the lists are, several criteria inform one theoretical argument. K Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? 479 population, today sortition uses stratified sampling. Typically, strata of gender, age, migration, educational attainment, or territorial distribution are considered. Such selection processes are still biased by drawing in the more interested and available individuals in society, but since they refer to existing group-specific inequalities in political representation (see 2.1), they come closer to a mirror image of society. Balanced participation can be further enhanced through coverage of expenses, compensation for income loss as well as for child and elder care (Mansbridge 1999, p. 653), or through oversampling of certain demographic characteristics (e.g., Chwalisz 2020, p. 118). Size of the forum is also a concern, as larger settings are typically better when representing different group interests and bringing in multiple experiences (Curato et al. 2021). What are favorable conditions for a high-quality deliberative process in the forum? Habermas’s (1997) seminal theory on “epistemic democracy” claims that more inclusive deliberative processes are conjectured to lead to better decisions. The quality of deliberation is considered to be greater the more “informed, impartial, mutually respectful, and open to counter-arguments participants are” (Lafont 2017, p. 86). From this perspective, diversity of participants is not sufficient, but institutions must ensure that the diverse views are present in deliberations and are heard equally. Institutional features can support deliberation to reach these qualities: Participants should be provided with broad and diverse information and expertise (ideally, on demand to avoid agendas being simply taken over). It is important for the information to be accessible and to empower those representatives who might have entered the deliberative participatory forum with less information (Curato et al. 2021). Skilled facilitation in the form of professional and content-neutral moderation is also important to ensure that all interests are heard rather than reproducing existing imbalances in a group (Landwehr 2014). Here, a mix of formats (broad plenary discussion and small groups with greater privacy) is also beneficial as they are more likely to give every participant an opportunity to engage and exchange (Chwalisz 2020, p. 118). Furthermore, plenty of time is needed to ensure participation and iterative exchange over weeks or even months (Gherghina et al. 2021). Theoretically, the nature of deliberation as the result of an open exchange at eye level makes it difficult to deduce expectations about a generally valid “ideal” duration. Yet it is argued that when the process is stretched out too long, problems related to attrition or group socialization negatively affecting the equality of contributions might emerge (Curato et al. 2021). Therefore, we propose that the individual sessions should follow within weeks rather than within months. As for all complex processes, evaluation is important to ensure good practices throughout the process. What ensures coupling of the deliberative participatory forum and politics? Deliberative participatory institutions differ in the tasks they have. Some hold a clear mandate to formulate policy recommendations, whereas others are more loosely connected to the political system, e.g., when their function is to bring citizens’ latent opinions to the fore. We argue that the idea of balancing the unequal representation in parliaments requires deliberative participatory fora recommendations to hold a certain degree of bindingness to the political system. Recently, van Dijk and Lefe- K 480 A. Blome, M. Hartlapp vere (2022, p. 1) have shown that disregarding citizens’ recommendations emerging from these fora can “lead to more dissatisfaction than not asking for [their] advice” (see also Goldberg and Bächtiger 2022). Institutional features can help render this coupling more likely (Setälä 2017, pp. 853–857). On the demand side, a clear and delimited task as well as a mandate by political officials, e.g., a parliamentary committee, a ministry, or a president, is beneficial. In addition, the more different issues that participants must grapple with, the more likely an early saturation point that might make participants leave and might eventually lead to lower deliberative quality (Smith and Setälä 2018). Ultimately, a two-directional or even multidirectional coupling is warranted where a forum is linked to various relevant actors and institutions to interact and to exchange. Citizens would be “given the opportunity to question members and hold them to account” (Hendriks 2016, p. 56). On the output side, the citizens’ report or recommendations should have a clear purpose and address (e.g., parliament or government), and it should be explicit in specifying what steps will follow (e.g., a hearing in parliament, referral to other bodies) (Goodin and Dryzek 2006; Font et al. 2018). Otherwise, the fora’s recommendations might run the risk of going astray. Analytically these three criteria are distinct. Yet we can consider balanced composition as a basic institutional feature that deliberative participatory fora must fulfill to have the potential to balance existing representation gaps. But even when this criterion is fulfilled, it is no cure for representation gaps where the quality of deliberation is low or where output can be easily ignored by established political institutions. 3 Approaching Political Representation and Deliberative Participatory Democracy Empirically Empirically we focused on France and Germany as two large European countries experiencing substantial political inequalities. Representation gaps as phenomena of interest have been identified in both countries and will be specified empirically in this paper. In both countries, we observe new dynamics of collective mobilization (e.g., Yellow Vests, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident [PEGIDA]) that evoke calls for a more balanced political representation of different social groups as well as substantively interesting institutional responses to these calls (Grossman 2019; Trüdinger and Bächtiger 2022). In recent years, nationwide deliberative participatory fora have been established in both countries to debate issues of public administration, economy and fiscal policy, and democratic quality in general, and the issue of climate change in particular. Besides the similarities, France and Germany were also chosen because their electoral systems and cultural framings of representation work in ways that render persistent inequalities in political representation possible, yet they differ in important aspects. This case selection increases the possibilities to generalize findings to countries with similar politicoinstitutional features. How the design of electoral institutions may shape the chances of candidates from different social groups has been shown in numerous studies (for an overview, see Paxton et al. 2010). In France, the 577 members of the Assemblée Nationale are K Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? 487 for people to participate in politics, and it announced the GDN on December 10, 2018. The GDN realized 19 regional and four thematic conferences on tax and fiscal policies, public administration and services, energy transition, and democracy and citizenship, which took place on different weekends in March 2019. For these deliberative participatory fora, a total of 1404 citizens were selected in a two-stage process. First, 300,000 people were randomly selected based on mobile phone numbers, and participants were then randomly selected from those who had expressed interest in participating. The resulting fora were far from representative. Based on participant characteristics from 18 regional conferences, we calculated RIs close to 1 for women (0.9), young citizens (0.6), and those in the working class (0.2).9 Including the 19th regional conference in the calculation of the RI, which exclusively focused on young citizens, would further reduce the representation gap for this group. The representation gap remains greatest for people from the working class, with participants having higher incomes and higher education being strongly overrepresented. Overall, the deliberative participatory forum moved toward closing the existing representation gaps but stayed far from balancing them. The GDN was equipped with important institutional features impacting the deliberative quality. To animate and structure the debates, central organizers provided the participants and the local facilitators with background information and discussion points along the lines of the four themes. The participants and the facilitators had to respect norms of deliberation, such as respectful interaction and attention to neutrality toward opinions. A feature critically affecting the quality of deliberation was the rush in which the GDN took place. Each deliberative participatory forum took place during one weekend, leaving little room for deliberation to unfold. The link to politics is characterized by a mandate given by the French president to discuss the four central themes listed previously. Given its strong visibility in the French media and its appearance as a response to the protests of the Yellow Vest Movement, it is not surprising that the 146 recommendations adopted by the CCPC were taken to the Assemblée Nationale and the Sénat. President Macron announced reforms flowing from the GDN in a speech on April 25, 2019. Yet, to date, few concrete reactions are observable. They mostly concern projects complementing existing government priorities, such as a law strengthening local government (Engagement et Proximité), territorial decentralization (Loi “3DS”) and rearrangements of services of general interests (Maisons de services aux publics), reform of elite education (ENA), and strengthening of participatory democracy, which resulted in the CCPC (see below). Thus, while some “cherry picking” (Font et al. 2018) took place, most of the recommendations have so far had no practical impact (Keller 2019,p.13). 9Calculated from data for 18 regional conferences, including data for young citizens aged 18–34 years. For people of immigrant origin, no numbers were available. K 488 A. Blome, M. Hartlapp 5.2 Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat10 A second innovative forum is the Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat. The CCPC’s mandate is to define “structural measures to achieve, in a spirit of social justice, a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.” The CCPC shows some similarities to the GDN: It was composed of 160 citizens drawn by lot. In a first stage, approximately 225,000 randomly selected citizens were contacted by phone, and from those who showed interest in participating, a representative panel was formed, taking into account gender, age, education, and socioprofessional and geographic situation. The number of participants varied slightly across the seven sessions, but without affecting our RIs (women, RI 1; young citizens aged 18–34, RI 0.9; and working class, RI 0.5) (Fourniau et al. 2020, pp. 7–8).11 Compared to the earlier experience with the GDN, the CCPC substantially improved mirroring of French society and closed representation gaps for women and young citizens. Regarding support of the quality of deliberation, a central difference to the GDN is that the CCPC deliberations were accompanied by 52 scholars who presented insights from research and were available for questions. The CCPC met in seven sessions from October 2019 to June 2020 (including two virtual meetings due to the lockdown in France in spring 2020), thereby allowing the process to unfold over time. Deliberation took place in five thematic working groups (housing, work, production, transport, consumption) and in plenary sessions on cross-cutting issues such as constitutional consequences and financing aspects. The work concluded with a final vote by majority. Turning to coupling to politics, we note that unlike the broad thematic outreach of the GDN, the CCPC held a mandate to define measures aiming at greenhouse gas reduction (40% by 2030) while paying attention to social justice. In a press conference on April 25, 2019, President Macron announced that the proposals emerging should be put to a referendum “without filter” or to a vote in parliament or be applied directly. A total of 149 recommendations were adopted, and a nongovernmental organization called Les 150—L’association des Citoyens de la Convention Climat was created to monitor follow-up. A broad reform bill has been announced to take up some of the 149 recommendations. This, however, got stuck in political struggles aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the incipient election campaign, further weakening the (selective) legislative answer to the CCPC. 5.3 Deutschlands Rolle in der Welt12 In 2019, the civil society association Mehr Demokratie and the Schöpflin Foundation organized the first so-called Citizens’ Council Democracy headed by Bavaria’s 10 Unless noted otherwise, information was drawn from the official site, https://www. conventioncitoyennepourleclimat.fr/ (last accessed January 18, 2023). 11 No data were available for citizens of immigrant origin. 12 Unless noted otherwise, information was drawn from the official site, https://deutschlands-rolle. buergerrat.de (last accessed March 9, 2022). K Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? 489 former prime minister, Günther Beckstein. This first Bürgerrat (citizens’ council) prompted another Bürgerrat in 2020 that dealt with DRW. The range of topics included sustainable development, economy and trade, peace and security, democracy and the constitutional state, and the EU. The 160 participants were drawn by lot, but the three-stage selection process had to fulfill criteria of territorial and sociodemographic diversity: First, the organizers asked 84 municipalities from all German regions and of different sizes to provide address data drawn at random. From those municipalities that responded positively (68), 4365 individuals were invited to participate. The organizers then selected participants who were representative of the population in terms of age, education, size of place of residence, country of origin, and gender. While group representation worked well in the gender and age categories (i.e., RIs of 1 or higher), the group of low-educated persons was severely underrepresented: Instead of having about 30% of the participants with no degree or a lower secondary school degree, only 10% of the Bürgerrat had a lower secondary degree, and only 0.6% (instead of 4%) had no school degree (RI: 0.6). In addition, 13.6% of the participants had a migration background compared with 26% in the general population (RI: 0.5). The institutional set-up supported the quality of deliberation in the following respects. The participants met virtually in 10 meetings in January and February 2021 to work on recommendations. They were supported by professional moderators and experts from diverse backgrounds, e.g., science, media, and society. The experts’ role was to inform the participants on discussion topics. Coupling to politics was comparably strong because the DRW was initiated by the Bundestag. Together with social actors and research institutes, MPs from all parties drafted guiding questions. These questions were checked both in focus groups with randomly selected citizens and via a representative survey of the population. Finally, a workshop with political and societal representatives developed the final program for the Bürgerrat. Besides the Bundestag’s interest regarding the substance, the Bürgerrat was also seen as an experiment to test whether such an instrument would be suited for complementing classic legislative work.13 In March 2021, the president of the Bundestag received the final report. Until the federal election in September 2021, participants explained their recommendations in several workshops and talks at federal ministries or meetings in parliament. While parties expressed high interest and willingness to incorporate proposals into their manifestos, until now no concrete reactions to the results of the DRW have been observable. 5.4 Bürgerrat Klima14 The Bürgerrat Klima took place after the DWR had finished. In contrast to its predecessor, it was not initiated by political actors in office but by civil society 13 Deutscher Bundestag (2020). Bundestag beschließt neue Form der Bürgerbeteiligung: Bürgerrat soll Parlament Bürgergutachten zur Rolle Deutschlands in der Welt vorlegen. Press release of June 18, 2020. https://www.bundestag.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/701614-701614 (last accessed 18.01.2023). 14 Unless noted otherwise, information was drawn from the official site, https://buergerrat-klima.de (last accessed September 5, 2022). K 490 A. Blome, M. Hartlapp organizations. They used the DWR as a blueprint: A scientific advisory board worked out thematic parameters, parliamentarians and civil society associations were asked to prioritize and identify topics and questions, and a survey was conducted to assess people’s opinions on the importance of themes. Regarding composition, the 160 participants were drawn by lot in a two-stage process: Individuals older than 16 were randomly selected based on phone numbers. Those who showed interest were invited by mail to apply for participation. The final round of participants was then chosen based on characteristics such as age, gender, migration background, educational attainment, and size of hometown. The BK featured RIs of 1 in three of the four categories. Only the working class was underrepresented: 18% of participants were reported to have the lowest educational qualification (Hauptschulabschluss) compared with 29.6% in the general population (RI: 0.6) (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung 2021). Turning to features supporting quality deliberations, the participants met in 12 virtual sessions taking place between April and June 2021 to debate four fields of action related to the challenges of climate change and how Germany could reach the agreed temperature goal: mobility, food, buildings and heating, and energy. Each session was opened with inputs by researchers. Scholars were also available to check facts and to answer questions from the participants. In addition, much importance was placed on a close relationship to politics before and after the meetings. The final report was delivered before the elections in September 2021. A survey showed that 80% of the population thought that political actors should take the recommendations into account. As with the DWR, however, concrete action is to date not observable, even though all parties showed great interest in the recommendations. Coalitional dynamics in government are likely to have a greater impact on the choice of policy proposals. 5.5 Comparative Assessment Table 1summarizes core features of the citizen assemblies relevant to assess the potential to balance the identified representation gaps regarding composition, highquality deliberation, and a link to politics. Regarding the participant selection, all four citizen assemblies used sortition and stratified sampling selection. The French GDN, however, reproduced some of the existing representation gaps, notably for younger citizens, ethnic minorities, and working-class individuals. This is particularly disappointing because its much bigger size would have allowed mirroring of different social groups more easily. In contrast, the CCPC and both German Bürgerräte worked with stratified selection that shows a greater potential to balance existing representation gaps. Unlike the Assemblée Nationale, working-class citizens were represented in the CCPC, and age groups mirrored French society. Both the German Bürgerrat DRW and the BK failed to represent the society’s share of workers, whereas the other groups we studied were well represented in the DRW. The proportion of people of immigrant origin was also lower in the BK than in the general German population. The conditions for quality of deliberations differed regarding information, expert input, moderation, and time accorded. All fora provided information for participants, K Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? 491 Table 1 Deliberative participatory fora in Germany and France Key aspects Grand Débat National Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat Bürgerrat Deutschlands Rolle in der Welt Bürgerrat Klima Descriptively representative composition Number and selection 1404 in 21 assemblies of 19–125 participants (random selection of phone numbers and stratified sampling according to five criteria) 160 (sortition and stratified sampling selection according to six criteria) 169 (sortition and stratified sampling selection according to six criteria) 160 (sortition and stratified sampling selection according to six criteria) Representation index Women 0.9, young citizens 0.6, working class 0.2, immigrant origin not available Women 1, young citizens 0.9, working class 0.5, immigrant origin not available Women 1, young citizens 1, working class 0.6, immigrant origin 0.5 Women 1, young citizens 1, working class 0.6, immigrant origin 1 Quality of deliberation Duration One meeting, 1.5 days in groups of five to seven in March 2021 Seven weekend meetings and one online meeting, stretching over 9 months (October 3, 2019, to June 21, 2020) 10 online meetings in groups of six to eight, stretching over 10 days (January 13 to February 20, 2021) Nine meetings in small groups, three plenary meetings, stretching over 12 days (April 26 to June 23, 2021) Role of experts Input Input Could be consulted Input Coupling to politics Number and impact of final recommendations Mandated by President 146 measures debated in parliament andbygovernment, selective uptake in reforms Mandated by President 149 measures, promise to turn them into law Monitoring of follow-up by nongovernmental organization Mandated by parliament Five policy guidelines and 32 recommendations, promise to deal with them in plenary sessions and committees Mandated by civil society organization 10 guiding principles, 83 recommendations and exchange was organized by facilitators. Expert input on demand by researchers who accompanied the debates was ensured continuously for the CCPC, but research input was also provided in the DRW and BK. Turning to duration, the GDN stands out with the shortest time span regarding the duration of meetings reserved for deliberation (1.5 days) as well as the time from the first to the last meeting, as there was only one meeting per group. The CCPC marks the other end of the continuum, with seven meetings each lasting a weekend and stretching over a period of 7 months. Yet the number of meetings was about the same. Overall, all fora had institutions in place that aimed at high quality of deliberation, but we need more detailed information on the implementation of these K 492 A. Blome, M. Hartlapp institutions to assess whether voices of all groups represented did find their way into aggregated outputs (Gherghina et al. 2021). The features that couple the deliberative participatory fora to politics are more difficult to assess comparatively. First, on the input side, mandates differed substantially. Two fora, the BK and the CCPC, focused on climate. The GDN and the DRW were more encompassing, taking up a range of topics of societal and political relevance. While the French mandates were both given by the president, in Germany only the DRW held a clear mandate by the Bundestag. Second, in the German political system, the output in the form of recommendations was directed at the parliament—which in the case of the DRW was also important in setting up the forum in the first place. In the French political system, recommendations have been officially received by the president but were also debated in parliament. Yet takeup of recommendations is subject to picking and choosing (Font et al. 2018), which is already evident despite the fact that some of the citizen assemblies finished their work only recently, with input still being debated on ensuing legislative reforms. In summary, in particular the composition of the four studied deliberative participatory fora clearly mirrors society better than the parliaments studied. The institutional features guaranteeing quality of deliberation partially show potential to balance the representation gap. But this potential is critically limited by the lack of an institutional mechanism for a link to politics. 6 Discussion Our article provides a conceptualization and detailed description of representation gaps for women, people of immigrant origin, the working class, and younger age groups in France and Germany. Comparing two countries and four groups allows us to see that important representation gaps exist for all groups, but the gap is most pronounced for class. In addition, the representation gap for gender and people of immigrant origin seems to be narrowing over time. Regarding age in France, deputies are, on average, substantially older than the population as well as their counterparts in Germany. The comparison of the French and German cases further indicates that despite the fact that group-specific gaps are influenced by the interplay of electoral system features (e.g., women quotas) and cultural aspects (e.g., notions of citizenship), the countries show largely similar patterns across the different groups analyzed. This leads us to expect that at least among other Western European countries, the representation gap for women is likely to be smaller compared to the other groups studied, particularly social class. What is more, these differences in gaps and trends highlight that we should engage systematically with potential trade-offs in the representation of groups. Future research should concentrate on identifying the drivers of representation of individuals with intersecting categories of underrepresented groups. This requires research to engage in systematic data collection that will help fill these knowledge gaps. Deliberative participatory fora hold some potential to tackle underrepresentation by opening new channels of participation. This potential is critically influenced by K Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? 493 the institutional design of these fora. We explored this potential empirically in four recent cases of deliberative participatory fora: the Grand Débat National,formedas a deliberative answer to the Yellow Vest movement, and the Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat in France and the Bürgerräte in Germany to support policymakers in decision-making processes. Strikingly, country differences seem negligible. Rather, the comparison allows a clear assessment of what already works well and where more efforts are needed to benefit from the potential of balancing underrepresentation: Random stratified sampling assured largely descriptive representation in three of our four cases. Yet, despite efforts, working-class people are still underrepresented. This holds the potential danger of further discouraging them from politics, as their interests not only are absent in parliamentary debates but are not even heard in fora explicitly designed to give underrepresented groups a voice. All fora are designed such that institutions support the quality of the deliberative process by offering information and expertise to participants as well as providing moderation by professional facilitators. However, other institutional features (e.g., time for deliberation) could be improved to utilize more fully the potential for quality deliberations. Finally, while political support was important to the set-up of all four cases, our findings clearly show that this does not mean that governments want to share power with ordinary people. While in all cases a political mandate of more or less precision was given, in none of the cases did we find that institutions secured an uptake of the recommendations. We conclude that the biggest challenge for balancing representation gaps with deliberative participatory fora in the future is related to the institutional design of coupling—even if a somewhat improved take-up of recommendations might still occur in the future. Recent research shows that this can easily aggravate political dissatisfaction rather than curing current challenges to liberal democracy (van Dijk and Lefervre 2022). Differences between our cases further suggest that institutional approaches to address this challenge depend on the political system. Our cases in Germany show that in a parliamentary system, coupling could benefit from institutionalized links to parliament, e.g., via specific committees that include representatives from parliament and from citizen fora—something other parliamentary systems have experienced positively (Landemore 2020). The French case, in turn, highlights the important role of the president. Here, institutional features to address the challenge should incentivize (e.g., by creating co-ownership) or force (e.g., veto power of the citizen forum in cases of far-reaching changes to proposals) the president to follow the input of citizens. While we would not go so far as to argue that efforts are superfluous, we believe that a stronger government affirmation of an uptake of the recommendations would signal much more willingness to include underrepresented groups’ voices and not leave some groups disaffected. The dominant challenge of coupling is likely to matter for a much greater number of cases as it links to the inherent tension between features of representative political institutions and raises more fundamental questions on the balancing of underrepresentation within parliament through extraparliamentary channels. Direct participation (of some) sits uneasily with the logic of representative democracy more generally. While deputies are accountable to their voters and can be sanctioned in the next elections, no such “control” mechanisms exist for citizen fora. Processes within deliberative participatory fora are frequently less transparent to ordinary cit- K 494 A. Blome, M. Hartlapp izens than are parliamentary debates and votes. Arguably, this lack of transparency and accountability in the decision-making chain negatively affects the legitimacy of a political system more generally. We might also generalize that more balanced representation within political institutions should be given priority to achieve political equality. This does not disregard the potential of participatory–deliberative fora to contribute to the quality of democracy and the functioning of politics in other respects. Lafont (2017) argues that rather than giving citizen assemblies decision power, they should be a tool to challenge the majority opinion of the public, to enhance the agenda-setting power of ordinary citizens or anticipate what the public would want if it were more informed and deliberative. Thus, future research should discuss the benefits and costs of improving descriptive representation externally—ideally by comparing different external channels such as direct democracy (Trüdinger and Bächtiger 2022) and deliberative participatory fora. 7 Appendix Table 2 Calculation of representation indices (RI) for parliament, France % population 2017 (a) % population 2022 (b) % deputies 2017 (c) % deputies 2022 (d) RI 2017 (=c/a) RI 2022 (=b/d) Women 51.6 51.6 39 37 0.76 0.72 People of immigrant origin 20.1 21.2 2.8 Not available 0.14 Not available Working class (occupation) 19.2 20.7 0 1 0 0.05 Young citizens (18–29) 14 14 4.7 4.3 0.34 0.31 Sources: See sources provided in the text Table 3 Calculation of representation indices (RI) for parliament, Germany % population 2017 (a) % population 2022 (b) % deputies 2017 (c) % deputies 2022 (d) RI 2017 (=c/a) RI 2022 (=b/d) Women 51 51 31 35 0.61 0.68 People of immigrant origin 26 26.7 8 11.3 0.31 0.42 Working class (occupation) 21.4 13.1 0 0.3 0 0.022 Young citizens (18–29) 16 16 1.6 6.5 0.1 0.41 Sources: See sources provided in the text K Can Deliberative Participatory Fora Cure Representation Gaps in France and Germany? 495 Acknowledgement We thank Antonia Fidler and Luis Krings for excellent research assistance, PVS Reviewers and Editors and the audience at the DVPW Convention 2021, in particular Armin Schäfer for helpful comments. Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. Conflict of interest A. Blome and M. Hartlapp declare that they have no competing interests. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. 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