Article | Open Access
| Ahead of Print | Last Modified: 12 November 2025
Deliberative Policy (Sub)System: Institutionalising Deliberative Mini‐Publics Within the Policy Process
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Abstract: Over the last few decades, growing public dissatisfaction with institutions of representative democracy has become unignorable. Similar problems affecting representative democracy occur within the policy process, as traditional top-down policymaking within the institutions of representative democracy has proven inadequate to include citizens. As a potential solution, some have turned to deliberative mini-publics (DMPs), which are slowly overcoming their experimental phase, and more attention is being placed on their institutionalisation within the political system and policy process. In this article, we are looking to articulate the necessary conditions for the institutionalisation of DMPs within a policy process. In doing so, we articulate six necessary conditions that aim at making DMPs an inclusive and effective member of the policy subsystem.
Keywords: coupling; deliberative democracy; deliberative mini‐publics; embeddedness; institutionalisation; policy process
Published:
Ahead of Print
Issue:
Vol 14 (2026): Towards an Innovative Democracy: Institutionalizing Participation in Challenging Times (In Progress)
© Nemanja Anđelković, Tara Tepavac. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.