Chapter 23: Democratizing Research: A Citizen Panel Experiment in France

Numerous participatory and deliberative processes are organized throughout the world, by a multitude of players and at all levels of power (municipal, regional, national, etc.); they take different forms and have varying degrees of standardization. It is the mandate set by the sponsor of the process – generally to produce public policy recommendations – that is considered to define the activity and purpose of the deliberative process, and which confers on the participants the “social power” to fulfill their mandate. In the vast majority of cases, these deliberative processes only have a specific activity in the general interest through the empowerment of a political authority that receives the recommendations made. Therefore, due to the limited nature of this audience, it is still rare for their participants to be considered as representatives. They are more likely to be referred to as “practitioners” than as political representatives. For this reason, Yves Sintomer (2022) has proposed to group together under the heading of “citizens’ juries,” programs that produce recommendations or general reflections on issues of public interest. Citizen panels, also known as citizens’ juries, have been a cornerstone of participatory governance since their introduction in the 1980s in Denmark. These panels engage diverse groups of citizens to deliberate on complex issues and provide recommendations to policymakers. Their relevance has grown with the increasing emphasis on deliberative democracy, which seeks to incorporate public reasoning into decision-making processes (Dryzek, 2000; Fishkin, 2018).