👉 You can find the whole framework concept here

Connecting Voices : How Digital Tools Bring Mini and Maxi Publics Together

Citizen panels are increasingly integrated into decision-making processes. They are more and more frequently used by public authorities as an additional democratic channel for participation. Citizens’ participation is often channeled through so-called mini-publics: randomly or representatively selected citizens brought together in a panel, assembly or alike to deliberate on a specific issue.

But mini-publics also face challenges: their deliberations involve only a relatively small group of citizens. They lack broader options for mass participation – the involvement of the maxi-public with a wider and more diverse population, often engaging with lower initial levels of information or context.

Addressing these challenges is not a matter of simply scaling up participation, but a series of design choices about how, when, and to what extent mini- and maxi-publics should be connected.

In response, actors in the digital democracy ecosystem have begun to develop a range of tools and approaches that link offline citizen panels with online spaces for broader participation.

These initiatives differ significantly in their goals, modes of interaction, and underlying assumptions, revealing a diverse landscape of options, trade-offs, and unresolved challenges when designing processes that connect mini- and maxi-publics.

Our framework aims to map out the various avenues of discussion and helps to guide the design of connections between mini- and maxi-publics with 8 guiding questions and 4 examples.

The bespoken workshop, and its valuable outcome in the format of a framework paper concept, reflect a collective effort to combine practical experience with conceptual clarity to make democratic participation more inclusive, scalable, and impactful.

We would like to thank the authors for their participation and precious insights in this paper: Miriam Levin (Director of Participatory Programmes at EMOS), Lucy Farrow (Managing Director at Thinks Dialogue), Wietse Van Ransbeeck (CEO & Co-Founder at Go Vocal), Julia Thomaschki (Head of Digital Democracy Department at Mehr Demokratie).

👉 You can find the whole framework concept here

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