“Co-construction” in Deliberative Democracy: Lessons from the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate - École des Ponts ParisTech Access content directly
Journal Articles Humanities and Social Sciences Communications Year : 2022

“Co-construction” in Deliberative Democracy: Lessons from the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate

Bénédicte Apouey
Eric Buge
  • Function : Author
Jean-Michel Fourniau
Maxime Gaborit
  • Function : Author
  • PersonId : 1113720
Jean-François Laslier
Antonin Macé
Claire Mellier
  • Function : Author
Christiane Rafidinarivo
Bernard Reber
Selma Tilikete

Abstract

Launched in 2019, the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate (CCC) tasked 150 randomly-chosen citizens with proposing fair and effective measures to fight climate change. This was to be fulfilled through an “innovative co-construction procedure,” involving some unspecified external input alongside that from the citizens. Did inputs from the steering bodies undermine the citizens’ accountability for the output? Did co-construction help the output resonate with the general public, as is expected from a citizens’ assembly? To answer these questions, we build on our unique experience in observing the CCC proceedings and documenting them with qualitative and quantitative data. We find that the steering bodies’ input, albeit significant, did not impair the citizens’ agency, creativity and freedom of choice. While succeeding in creating consensus among the citizens who were involved, this co-constructive approach however failed to generate significant support among the broader public. These results call for a strengthening of the commitment structure that determines how follow-up on the proposals from a citizens’ assembly should be conducted.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
CCC_paper_20220520_HAL.pdf (1.3 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)
Loading...

Dates and versions

hal-03119539 , version 1 (26-01-2021)
hal-03119539 , version 2 (20-05-2022)

Identifiers

Cite

Louis-Gaëtan Giraudet, Bénédicte Apouey, Hazem Arab, Simon Baeckelandt, Philippe Begout, et al.. “Co-construction” in Deliberative Democracy: Lessons from the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2022, pp.207. ⟨10.1057/s41599-022-01212-6⟩. ⟨hal-03119539v2⟩
1721 View
2245 Download

Altmetric

Share

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn More