Reimagining democratic institutions: Why and how to embed public deliberation

The evidence suggests that the majority of representative deliberative processes that have taken place have been one-off initiatives, dependent on political will. Their topics have been decided top-down by public decision makers. However, there has been a move towards experimenting with the design of new democratic institutions, which embed deliberative processes in such a way as to make them a permanent part of the policy cycle, or a requirement under certain circumstances. Some of these new institutions also give citizens an agenda-setting role, allowing them to decide which issues should be up for public deliberation and how the remit should be framed. This chapter explores the reasons for and routes to institutionalising public deliberation, as well as its limits.