FINALriedyandherrimanPORTALDec72011


 
PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011. 
Special issue details: Global Climate Change Policy: Post-Copenhagen Discord Special Issue, guest 
edited by Chris Riedy and Ian McGregor. 
ISSN: 1449-2490; http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/portal 
PORTAL is published under the auspices of UTSePress, Sydney, Australia. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deliberative Mini-publics and the Global Deliberative 

System: Insights from an Evaluation of World Wide Views on 

Global Warming in Australia 
 

Chris Riedy and Jade Herriman, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of 

Technology, Sydney 

 

 

Introduction 

In December 2009, more than 25,000 people converged on Copenhagen’s Bella Center 

for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP-15. They came together to 

discuss the international response to climate change, to try and influence the discussions, 

or to observe or report on them. Among the participants were 120 Heads of State 

empowered to act on behalf of their citizens, supported by delegations of Ministers and 

bureaucrats. Dimitrov (2010: 18) contends that COP-15 brought together ‘the highest 

concentration of robust decision-making power the world had seen.’ 

 
Yet this unprecedented gathering of global decision-makers was unable to deliver an 

effective global response to climate change. The Copenhagen Accord that emerged from 

COP-15 was not legally binding and was not formally adopted under the United Nations 

Framework Convention on Climate Change. While climate scientists warn that the rise 

in global average temperatures must be kept to less than 2° C to avoid dangerous 

climate change (Allison et al. 2009; Rockström et al. 2009), and this is the stated goal 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  2 

of the Copenhagen Accord, the pledges contained in the Accord are not sufficient to 

prevent global average temperatures from rising by more than 2° C (Dimitrov 2010; 

Rogelj et al. 2010) and perhaps as high as 3.5° C (Kartha 2010). The subsequent United 

Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, COP-16, gave formal status to the 

Copenhagen Accord but did not make it legally binding or increase its emission 

reduction ambition. 

 
The outcome of COP-15 fuelled existing debates about the ability of current systems of 

international governance to satisfactorily respond to global challenges like climate 

change. There is a large and diverse body of literature proposing normative global 

governance systems. Some, like James Lovelock (Hickman 2010), propose more 

authoritarian responses to environmental challenges. Frustrated with the performance of 

the United Nations, some propose the replacement of multilateral negotiations with an 

exclusive ‘minilateralism’ (Naim 2009), reducing the number of negotiating nations to a 

smaller set, such as the Group of Twenty (G20) or major emitters. Others see the 

extension of market mechanisms delivering more effective global governance of climate 

change (Pearce 2008; Stripple 2010). Still others are committed to democratisation of 

global governance, through the institutionalisation of cosmopolitan philosophy (Held 

2009), establishment of frameworks for earth system governance (Biermann 2007; 

Biermann et al. 2010), reform of the United Nations (Figueres 2007), development of 

new global representative bodies (Raskin & Xercavins 2010) or the promotion of global 

deliberative politics (Dryzek 2006, 2011; Bohman 2010; Dryzek & Stevenson 2011). 

 
In this paper, our focus is on the potential contribution of deliberative democracy to 

more effective—and more democratic—global environmental governance. The 

‘deliberative turn’ in democratic theory has ‘put communication and reflection at the 

center of democracy’ so that democracy ‘is not just about the making of decisions 

through the aggregation of preferences’ but ‘also about processes of judgment and 

preference formation and transformation within informed, respectful, and competent 

dialogue’ (Dryzek 2011: 3). Thus deliberative democracy puts talking, rather than 

voting, at the heart of democracy (Chambers 2003). In addition to an expanding body of 

normative theory on deliberative democracy, there is also growing empirical and 

practical experience with its application to environmental governance (e.g. Backstrand 

et al. 2010) and with the design and implementation of temporary deliberative 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  3 

institutions (Fung 2003; Chambers 2009; Smith, G 2009; Dryzek 2011). The latter are 

often discrete, facilitated events that bring together relatively small numbers of ordinary 

citizens to deliberate, typically on issues that are controversial or defy more 

conventional decision-making processes. Fung (2003) calls these deliberative events 

mini-publics; they include diverse techniques such as deliberative polls, citizens’ juries 

and consensus conferences, often involving randomly selected citizens (Smith, G. 2009). 

 
Mini-publics offer a practical means to investigate the conditions for facilitating 

deliberation but the contribution of discrete mini-publics to the normative goal of 

creating a more deliberative democracy remains uncertain (Chambers 2009; Dryzek 

2011). Chambers (2009) argues that an exclusive focus on such discrete deliberative 

initiatives risks abandonment of larger questions about how civil society relates to the 

state. Dryzek (2011) is generally supportive of mini-publics but locates them within 

large-scale political systems where they may or may not contribute to the emergence of 

more deliberative systems. Our intent in this paper is to examine the role that 

deliberative mini-publics can play in facilitating the emergence of a global deliberative 

system for climate change response. We pursue this intent through a reflective 

evaluation of the Australian component of the World Wide Views on Global Warming 

project (WWViews). 

 
WWViews was an ambitious attempt to democratise COP-15 by giving people from 

around the world an opportunity to deliberate on international climate policy and to 

make recommendations to the delegations meeting in Copenhagen. The Danish Board 

of Technology (DBT) and the Danish Cultural Institute (DCI) initiated the project as a 

way of feeding public deliberative opinion into national and international climate 

change decision-making processes (Danish Board of Technology 2009b). Held on 26 

September 2009, with roughly 4,000 participants across 38 countries, WWViews was 

the first attempt to create a deliberative mini-public at a global scale. The Australian 

WWViews event brought 100 randomly selected citizens from across Australia to 

Sydney to deliberate for a day and a half. 

 
As an example of a deliberative mini-public, WWViews provides an opportunity to 

reflect on theoretical concerns about the role of mini-publics in furthering the cause of 

deliberative democracy. Further, as a global mini-public, WWViews potentially reveals 

new challenges for deliberative democratisation of global governance systems. 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  4 

Therefore, the objective of our evaluation is to draw out lessons for the design of future 

mini-publics, particularly at a global scale. 

 
We reflect on WWViews from the perspective of one of the National Partners in 

WWViews, responsible for organising the Australian WWViews event. As such, it is 

not our intention to evaluate the entire WWViews project across all of the participating 

countries. Instead, we evaluate the Australian event and our partial experiences of the 

international project. We do not provide detailed descriptions of the project and its 

outcomes, except where these are needed to support our evaluation. Full reports on the 

Australian WWViews event (Atherton & Herriman 2009) and the global WWViews 

project (Danish Board of Technology 2009b) are available to interested readers.1 

 

Normative characteristics of deliberative systems 

To reflect on the contribution of WWViews we first need to establish an evaluative 

framework. To do this we reflect on existing evaluative frameworks for public 

participation processes in general and deliberative events in particular, and existing 

approaches to assessing the deliberativeness of socio-political systems. From this we 

draw a set of evaluative criteria to apply to this case. 

 
Evaluative frameworks for public participation processes (e.g. Burton 2009; Rowe & 

Frewer 2004; Rowe & Frewer 2000) and sets of principles for community engagement 

(International Conference on Engaging Communities 2005; NCDD 2009) are readily 

available. However, few of these frameworks and principles specifically draw attention 

to the quality of deliberation. One exception is the Brisbane Declaration of the 

International Conference on Engaging Communities, which identifies integrity, 

inclusion, deliberation and influence as the core principles of community engagement 

(International Conference on Engaging Communities 2005). Drawing on Carson and 

Hartz-Karp (2005: 122) and the text of the Brisbane Declaration, these principles can be 

expressed as follows: 
 

• Integrity: There should be ‘openness and honesty about the scope and purpose of engagement’ 
(International Conference on Engaging Communities 2005). 

• Inclusion: The process should be representative of the population and inclusive of diverse 
viewpoints and values, providing equal opportunity for all to participate. 

• Deliberation: The process should provide open dialogue, access to information, respect, space to 

                                                
1 Additional information can be found at the Australian (http://wwviews.org.au) and international 
(http://wwviews.org) websites. 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  5 

understand and reframe issues, and movement toward consensus. 
• Influence: The process should have the ability to influence policy and decision-making. 

 
These principles provide a useful starting point for evaluating WWViews as a 

community engagement process. However, more specific literature on the normative 

characteristics of deliberative processes helps to flesh out these principles, particularly 

the latter three. 

 
Edwards et al. (2008) offer a more detailed evaluation framework, developed 

specifically for deliberative events. They propose and apply 37 evaluation criteria 

covering inputs (for example, diversity of participants, training for facilitators), process 

(covering quality of dialogue, participant knowledge and logistics) and outputs (i.e. new 

discourses and networks developed, and influence over policy). The criteria align well 

with the four principles above but provide more detailed questions to ask when 

evaluating a deliberative process, like WWViews.  

 
We believe that these evaluative frameworks are more useful for our current purposes 

when considered within the context of a normative deliberative system. Mansbridge 

(1999) introduced the idea of a deliberative system that stretches beyond any single 

deliberative event and Dryzek (2009, 2011) developed a generally applicable scheme 

for analysing deliberative systems comprising: 
 

• Public space, ideally allowing free communication with few barriers or legal restrictions on what 
can be said. Designed citizen forums like WWViews occur in public space, as does media 
commentary, political activism, public consultation and informal conversation. For discussions 
on global climate change response, global civil society provides an important deliberative arena 
within public space (Brassett & Smith, W 2010). 

• Empowered space, ‘home to deliberation among actors in institutions clearly producing 
collective decisions’ (Dryzek 2011: 11). These institutions can be formal or informal and include 
legislatures, cabinets, courts, or international negotiations like those at COP-15. 

• Transmission refers to ‘some means through which deliberation in public space can influence 
that in empowered space’ (Dryzek 2011: 11). Transmission can occur through advocacy, 
criticism, questioning, support or other means.  

• Accountability, ‘whereby empowered space answers to public space’ (Dryzek 2011: 11). 
Elections are one form of accountability and others can occur through public consultation 
processes or simply giving a public account that justifies decisions. 

• Meta-deliberation, ‘or deliberation about how the deliberative system itself should be organized’ 
(Dryzek 2011: 12). Dryzek argues that a healthy deliberative system should have the capacity for 
self-examination and potentially self-transformation. 

• Decisiveness captures the idea that a functioning deliberative system should be able to make 
collective decisions that are responsive to the other five elements. 

 
Bohman (2010a) draws further attention to the elements of a deliberative system when 

he argues that both communicative freedom and communicative power are essential to 

democratisation. Communicative freedom ‘is the exercise of a communicative status, 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  6 

the status of being recognised as a member of the public. Communicative freedom is 

transformed into communicative power when it is incorporated into institutionalised 

processes of decision making’ (Bohman 2010a: 432). Communicative freedom is an 

aspect of Dryzek’s public space and the existence of mini-publics is a testament to 

communicative freedom. However, the transformation of communicative freedom into 

communicative power is very challenging. Dryzek identifies mechanisms of 

transmission and accountability through which communicative power could be 

developed but says little about how citizens in public space can accumulate the power to 

effectively use these mechanisms. Thus issues of power need to be taken into account in 

our evaluative framework.  

 
Dryzek (2011) argues that a system has deliberative capacity to the extent that it can 

accommodate deliberation that is authentic, inclusive and consequential. Deliberation is 

authentic if it is ‘able to induce reflection upon preferences in noncoercive fashion and 

involve communicating in terms that those who do not share one’s point of view can 

find meaningful and accept’ (Dryzek 2011: 10). This notion of authenticity adds a new 

dimension to the principle of deliberation from the Brisbane Declaration above. 

Dryzek’s (2011) other two criteria, inclusivity and consequentiality, align closely with 

the principles of inclusion and influence respectively from the Brisbane Declaration. 

However, Dryzek and Niemeyer (2010: 43) point out that deliberative democracy ‘can 

entail the representation of discourses as well as persons, interests, or groups’ and 

inclusion of diverse discourses may be as or more important than demographic 

representation (although demographic representation remains important for both 

procedural fairness (Brackertz & Meredyth, 2008: 11) and as a way to deliver diversity 

of discourse). This leads to a richer understanding of the principle of inclusion. 

 
Following on from the above discussion, our evaluation of WWViews will proceed in 

two stages. First, we will situate WWViews as a component within a normative global 

deliberative system for decision-making on climate change. Second, we will evaluate 

WWViews against four principles that integrate the above sources: 
 

• Integrity: the origins and purpose of the deliberative process should be transparent and the 
process should be adequately resourced and respectfully facilitated without any attempt to 
influence the outcomes. 

• Inclusion: The process should be representative of the affected population and their diverse 
discourses and provide equal opportunity for all to participate. 

• Authentic deliberation: The process should support communicative freedom by providing access 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  7 

to information, space for open and respectful dialogue between participants and sufficient time 
for reflection. It should encourage but not coerce reflection on preferences. 

• Influence and consequence: The process should develop the communicative power to make a 
difference, whether by influencing policy and decision-making or facilitating broader 
sociocultural change (e.g. new discourses or networks). 

 
These four principles capture a normative ideal for a deliberative mini-public. As others 

have pointed out (Backstrand et al. 2010a), real practice inevitably falls short of the 

deliberative ideal, yet these principles do provide a useful evaluative vantage point for 

suggesting future progress towards such an ideal. 

 
WWViews in a global deliberative system 

Dryzek’s (2009) conception of a deliberative system was first published in April 2009, 

when the WWViews process had already been designed. Consequently, the organisers 

around the world did not have the benefit of this thinking and terminology to 

conceptualise how WWViews could contribute to a deliberative global system. What 

follows, then, is not intended as criticism of the project for failing to apply this concept 

but an attempt to use this emerging concept to open up a broader conversation about the 

future of global mini-publics. We analyse WWViews as an element within a global 

deliberative system, which helps to both explain what WWViews sought to achieve and 

to highlight the challenges it and future mini-publics face. 

 
Public space 

The global WWViews project brought together 44 separate mini-publics in 

simultaneous events run by local organisations in 38 participating countries.2 Each event 

involved around 100 participants and together the events brought together a global mini-

public of more than 4,000 people. Although the DBT and DCI provided global 

coordination of the project, the national implementation was the responsibility of 

partner organisations in each country, which were typically universities or non-

government organisations with interest in citizen engagement and democracy. 

 
WWViews took place in public space as an exercise in communicative freedom—a 

response to the perception of a democratic gap between citizens and policymakers and a 

need to involve citizens more directly in deliberation on global climate change policy 

                                                
2 Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium (Flanders), Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, China, 
Chinese Taipei, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, 
Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Saint Lucia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, 
Switzerland, The Maldives, Uganda, United Kingdom, Uruguay, USA, and Vietnam. 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  8 

(Danish Board of Technology 2009b). It did not have any formal decision-making status 

itself but sought to exert influence on decision-makers. As an exercise within global 

public space, WWViews entered into a clamorous climate policy debate, populated by 

multiple competing discourses (Dryzek 2011). Some of the challenges for mini-publics 

in such a crowded public space include being heard at all, and being seen as a legitimate 

voice of global civil society. This latter challenge is particularly difficult given the 

diverse discourses that play out within global civil society (Brassett & Smith 2010). 

 
Empowered space 

According to the Danish Board of Technology (2009: 10), the ‘target groups for 

receiving the WWViews results are politicians, negotiators and interest groups engaged 

in the UN climate negotiations leading up to COP15 and beyond.’ The empowered 

space addressed here is a complex one, comprising decision-making bodies such as 

parliaments and cabinets within nation-states and formal and informal negotiations 

under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

 
WWViews sought to influence this empowered space in multiple ways, outlined in 

more detail below. We believe, however, that the project did not develop sufficient 

understanding of the mechanisms of this empowered space. For example, despite long 

lead-time in planning the global project, all of the WWViews deliberative events were 

scheduled to take place only two months before COP-15, when negotiating positions for 

many countries had already firmed. Earlier engagement with empowered space at 

national scales could have increased the potential to influence negotiating positions. 

Instead, there was a strong emphasis on influencing the negotiations themselves, which 

was perhaps an unrealistic goal given that negotiators would have limited flexibility to 

alter their position at COP-15 based on their mandate from national empowered space. 

 
Transmission 
The organisers of WWViews were very aware that a mini-public can only influence 

empowered space if it works to develop a means of transmission to empowered space. 

Consequently, much effort was put into development of dissemination strategies in each 

participating country. In Australia, we sought to influence government decision makers 

by engaging them directly with the results and process, and also sought to influence 

policy indirectly by introducing new discourses into public space. The dissemination 

strategy had three components: 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  9 

• Political engagement strategy: engaging directly with politicians and policy makers through 
meetings and provision of reports, and supporting participant outreach to politicians. The goal 
was to influence politicians and policy makers to at least reflect on their own positions and 
perhaps adopt positions more consistent with those expressed by the mini-public. 

• Media and communications strategy: use of a website, media releases, social media and direct 
contacts with journalists to increase media coverage of WWViews and introduce the positions 
expressed by the participants into public debate. This was accompanied by a strategy of 
communications that engaged directly (via project newsletters and invitations to become 
involved) with key stakeholders such as environment NGOs, senior bureaucrats and businesses. 
The goal was to disseminate a new discourse that could shift the public debate and increase 
pressure on decision-makers within empowered space to deliberate on their positions. 

• Research strategy: this included critical reflection on WWViews and provision of information 
about the WWViews process to business leaders, teaching and learning institutions, 
professionals from varied fields, researchers, and citizens. The aim here was not to influence 
empowered space on climate change policy but to build awareness of deliberative mini-publics 
so that others might consider this kind of approach in the future. 

 

The success of this transmission strategy will be considered in a later section. Here, it is 

sufficient to point out that the conversion of communicative freedom into 

communicative power is difficult for a mini-public operating with limited resources in a 

crowded public space. 

 
Accountability 

Following on from this last point, a mini-public convened in public space has few 

avenues to hold empowered space to account. Elections are the main accountability 

mechanism in liberal democracies and politicians are unlikely to feel that the views of a 

mini-public convened on a single issue are going to make much difference to the 

choices of the voting public. Mini-publics often turn to other forms of accountability, 

such as asking decision-makers to ‘give an account’ of how they will respond to the 

views of the mini-public. 

 
We were not able to persuade any Australian politicians to accept the results from 

WWViews and make a statement on how they would respond. We did, however, obtain 

a letter and video message endorsing the event, prior to it being held, from the Federal 

Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong. In addition, Australia’s Climate 

Change Ambassador, Louise Hand, spoke in person at the event. This association of 

politicians with a mini-public opens up the potential to hold them accountable through 

the public sphere, by pointing out their support for the event and drawing their attention 

publicly to the results. Nevertheless, this is a weak and tenuous form of accountability 

and establishment of reliable accountability mechanisms is perhaps the single biggest 

challenge for mini-publics contributing to the development a deliberative system. 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  10 

Meta-deliberation 

There was no significant reflection in advance about the role of WWViews in 

facilitating the establishment of a broader deliberative system, except for the optimistic 

intent that holding a global, linked series of events would raise the profile of citizen 

deliberation and highlight its potential benefit to policy makers and citizens. This intent 

was mirrored in the Australian event in which organisers identified two linked but 

distinct communication messages—the policy preferences of citizens, and the value of 

such processes for future policy making. One of the purposes of this paper is to 

contribute to meta-deliberation about the role of events like WWViews in a normative 

global deliberative system. 

 
Decisiveness 

As Dryzek (2011) points out, the global deliberative system has not been particularly 

decisive in its policy response to climate change, with global emissions continuing to 

rise and a lack of binding commitments to halt this rise. Given the problems of 

transmission and accountability identified above, WWViews offered little to improve 

the decisiveness of the global deliberative system. The position that emerges from 

analysing WWViews as a component in a broader deliberative system is that mini-

publics are excellent examples of Bohman’s communicative freedom but due to 

problems of transmission and accountability they fail to convert that freedom into 

communicative power. In the case of WWViews, it is very difficult to point to any real 

influence of the project on the empowered space that decides on climate change policy. 

We will take up this point again later in the paper. 

 
Evaluating WWViews against norms of deliberative democracy 

Above, we identified integrity, inclusion, authentic deliberation and influence and 

consequence as normative characteristics of deliberative democracy against which to 

evaluate WWViews. This section evaluates WWViews against these norms and 

discusses lessons that emerge. 

 
Integrity 

The origins and purpose of the deliberative process should be transparent and the 
process should be adequately resourced and respectfully facilitated without any attempt 
to influence the outcomes. 
 
The organisers of WWViews in Australia sought to be open, honest and transparent 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  11 

about the objectives of the project, the reasons for involving participants and what the 

project could realistically hope to achieve. Participants were given information prior to 

the event about the kind of process being used, why using this kind of process is 

important, who was responsible for initiating and organising the event and how the 

information about climate change and climate policy provided to participants was 

developed. Participants received information about the purpose of the event through 

newsletters, a website,3 a dedicated participant support person and information packages. 

For example, the second newsletter for the Australian event stated that ‘a full report on 

proceedings will be prepared by ISF and disseminated widely to decision-makers and 

other interested groups in the lead up to COP-15 in December.’ It was also stressed to 

participants that there was no guarantee that the results of the project would influence 

decision-makers at COP-15. 

 
Beyond misrepresentation of the purpose of an event, the main threats to the integrity of 

a mini-public are systematic bias in the information provided to participants or 

facilitation that influences the deliberations in particular directions. To address the first 

threat, the DBT established a rigorous process for developing the information provided 

to participants before and at the event. Participants in all countries received the same 

information—a booklet of background reading material in advance of the event and a 

set of videos shown during the event—translated into local languages. The material was 

based primarily on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth 

Assessment Report (IPCC 2007). The DBT established an international Scientific 

Advisory Board to review the information and the material was tested at an early stage 

of its development in citizen focus groups in different parts of the world. Partner 

organisations in each country were not allowed to add to the provided material or 

develop country-specific information for participants. These processes sought to 

eliminate any systematic bias in the information provided to participants. 

 
To minimise the risk of facilitation that would influence the deliberations in a particular 

direction, the DBT sought to recruit partner organisations that were ‘unbiased with 

regards to climate change’ (Danish Board of Technology 2009b). Although the Institute 

for Sustainable Futures is an independent research institute, many of its researchers 

have commented in the public domain on what constitutes an effective response to 

                                                
3 See: http://wwviews.org.au [Accessed 1 Sep. 2011].  



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  12 

climate change and taken critical positions against government policy on climate change. 

Therefore, to avoid influencing the views of the participants, the Institute for 

Sustainable Futures and WWF (one of the sponsors) did not take on facilitation roles 

during the event. Instead, a neutral lead facilitator was engaged and volunteer table 

facilitators were drawn from sponsors and other organisations perceived as having a 

more neutral position on the issue of climate change response. Whether the association 

of the Institute for Sustainable Futures and WWF with the event was itself enough to 

influence the deliberation in a particular direction is an open question, and one that we 

did not set out to test in our evaluation.  

 
Evaluating the integrity of an event that you have designed is difficult. However, we can 

point to some evidence that the event did have integrity. First, the Australian results on 

issues such as the urgency of climate change response and the strength of the proposed 

policy responses did not differ substantially or systematically from those in other 

developed countries (Atherton & Herriman 2009; Danish Board of Technology 2009b), 

indicating that the facilitation in Australia did not influence the participants to take a 

stronger position than their international counterparts. Second, the quantitative 

evaluation surveys completed by participants and qualitative feedback comments 

revealed no significant criticism of the way the process was conducted or its objectives. 

To give one quantitative measure from the survey, 98 percent of survey respondents 

agreed that ‘The event used my time productively. 4 Qualitative feedback indicated that 

participants felt the event was a good investment of their time, was well run, followed 

good process and made a meaningful contribution (Atherton & Herriman 2009). 

 
Inclusion 

The process should be representative of the affected population and their diverse 
discourses and provide equal opportunity for all to participate. 
 
WWViews sought to include a representative group of countries in the global project, 

and to include citizens within each country that reflected the demographic distribution 

in that country ‘with regards to age, gender, occupation, education, and geographical 

zone of residency (that is, city and countryside)’ (Danish Board of Technology 2009: 8). 

The DBT (2009: 8) also specified that participants ‘should not be experts on climate 

change, neither as scientists nor stakeholders.’ Beyond these criteria, the DBT left the 

                                                
4 This combines results for the three answer categories: Absolutely agreed; agreed; or somewhat agreed. 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  13 

specific details of participant recruitment to the national partner organisations. 

WWViews did not specifically seek to include a representative set of discourses in the 

deliberations, as advocated by Dryzek (2011), although there was a tacit assumption that 

demographic diversity would deliver discourse diversity. We will start by evaluating 

inclusion within Australia, before broadening to evaluate inclusion at the global scale 

and then considering Dryzek’s challenge to achieve discourse rather than demographic 

representation. 

 
For the Australian WWViews event, Australian citizens were randomly recruited by a 

market research company to match national demographic quotas based on Australian 

Bureau of Statistics data for location, age, gender, ethnicity, income, household 

composition, employment status and education. The market research company 

randomly generated 5,000 telephone numbers and recruited a shortlist of 250 people via 

telephone interviews within this sample. The shortlist of 250 people was sent a complete 

information pack about the event and a Participant Agreement Form that they were 

asked to return if they wanted to participate. From the pool of returns, 110 participants 

were selected to match demographic quotas as closely as possible. On the day of the 

event, 105 participants took part.  

 
Despite operating from a principle of inclusion, the participant recruitment process 

specifically excluded some groups and unintentionally excluded others. Dryzek (2011: 

156) notes a general tendency for mini-publics to ‘disproportionately attract politically 

active, highly educated, high income, and older participants.’ Similarly, Halvorsen 

(2006: 153) finds that public meetings and other community engagement activities 

‘frequently generate viewpoints from a group of people older, whiter, more affluent, 

more educated, and more likely to be male than the citizens within their community.’ 

WWViews Australia was somewhat typical in this respect. 

 
Table 1 summarises the ways in which representation fell short of the demographic 

ideal. First, children under the age of 18 were excluded to simplify permission and 

supervision processes. While this is standard practice in many mini-publics it is not 

ideal, particularly on an issue like climate change that will strongly impact today’s 

young people. As the worst impacts of climate change are projected to occur in the 

future if action is not taken, the children of today have a greater stake in decisions on 

climate change and their voice deserves to be included.  



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  14 

For WWViews Australia, the exclusion of children was exacerbated by under-

representation of people aged 18–34. Sarkissian et al. (2009: 134) note that young 

people often don’t become involved in community engagement approaches because 

they find them ‘irrelevant, a waste of time and boring’ and because they do not 

experience results relevant to their concerns. However, it is possible and important to 

find ways to engage youth in mini-publics and various guidelines are available for doing 

so (for example, Ministry of Youth Affairs 2003).  
 
Characteristic Issues 
Geographic 
location 

While all Australian states and territories were represented, including both metropolitan 
and non-metropolitan areas, participants from metropolitan New South Wales (NSW) 
were under-represented (15% of the total compared to the quota of 21%). The event 
was held in Metropolitan NSW (Sydney) and we assumed that participants would want 
to stay with their families rather than in a hotel close to the event, and designed our 
level of reimbursement for these participants accordingly. This lower level of support 
for out-of-pocket expenses may have contributed to under-representation of these 
participants. 

Age Participants under 18 were excluded to simplify permission and supervision processes. 
Participants aged 18-34 were substantially under-represented (19% of the total, 
compared to the quota of 36%) and participants aged 50-64 were over-represented (31% 
of the total compared to the quota of 21%).  

Gender No issues – approximately equal representation of males and females. 
Ethnicity Participants born outside Australia were under-represented (18% of the total compared 

to the quota of 24%). Indigenous Australians were represented in line with the quota. 
Household 
income 

No issues – income bands (from under $20,000 to over $120,000) were appropriately 
represented. 

Household 
composition 

Participants in the “other” household category (which includes, for example, share 
houses) were under-represented (8% of the total compared to a quota of 16%), but 
families with dependent children and couple/single with no dependent children were 
over-represented.  

Work status No issues – different types of work status (working, unemployed, student and retired) 
were appropriately represented. 

Education Participants with highest level of education “some secondary” were under-represented 
(11% compared to the quota of 16%) and participants with highest level of education 
“completed tertiary” were heavily over-represented (41% compared to a quota of 24%). 

 
Table 1: Summary of representation problems for WWViews Australia. 

 

Second, following the instructions provided by the DBT, participants that were 

professionally involved with climate change were excluded. The intention here was to 

ensure participation by ordinary citizens in a non-partisan forum and avoid a repeat of 

the partisan debates already prevalent on climate change. Partisan deliberation has 

different characteristics to non-partisan deliberation and is generally less able to achieve 

quality deliberation (Hendriks, Dryzek & Hunold 2007). In a random selection process 

like that used in Australia, exclusion of climate change experts is unnecessary, as few 

would be recruited and they would have little opportunity to unduly influence the 

deliberations. However, some of the other participating countries used processes other 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  15 

than random selection to recruit participants and these processes could have been more 

open to dominance by partisan stakeholders if such stakeholders were not excluded. 

 
Third, the recruitment process itself inevitably leads to exclusion of some groups of 

citizens. People not listed in telephone directories or with poor English communication 

skills would not have been recruited. This is reflected in under-representation of people 

born outside Australia and people with less formal education in the final group. We 

would expect people with higher levels of education and stronger English language 

skills to be more likely to understand what is being asked of them and to feel confident 

in their ability to participate, making them more likely to take up the offer.  

 
Fourth, while ethnic diversity was sought through the recruitment category ‘born 

outside Australia,’ the participants did not fully reflect Australia’s ethnic diversity. 

Participants on the day observed that the group was predominantly ‘white’ and, 

although we did not collect specific data on language groups, it appeared that most of 

the people born overseas were of European origin. This raises questions about the most 

appropriate recruitment variable to use to capture ethnic diversity, and whether there are 

significant cultural barriers to participation in an event of this type even within a single 

country. A more diverse and representative result could potentially be achieved by 

setting quotas for specific language groups, or countries of origin. As Brackertz & 

Meredyth (2008: 16) suggest, increasing participation in relation to characteristics that 

pose a barrier to participation requires thinking about how and where members of these 

groups already come together, which existing information networks already exist, who 

they trust, who influences the group, and how other organisations facilitate access.  

 
However, this increases the time and cost for recruitment and potentially adds the need 

for interpreters, time to build relationships,  and time for learning about and 

communicating through existing networks—making it difficult for mini-publics that are 

often already stretched for resources and may not have been designed with adequate 

timelines for engagement of this nature. A further area of research for Australian events 

could be the framing during recruitment or designing of such events to increase 

participation of culturally and linguistically diverse participants. 

Fifth, as mentioned above, education levels represented at the event did not mirror the 

distribution within the population; there were proportionally more people with tertiary 

education and less with only some secondary education. Education levels can be a proxy 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  16 

for ensuring socio-economic diversity and representation of a range of life experiences, 

including that of work. Interestingly, income and ‘types of work’ categories were still 

representative, and we achieved representation of a variety of household types, despite 

the under representation of participants with less formal education. 

 
The group that participated in WWViews did constitute a diverse cross-section of 

Australian society that was demographically representative in most categories. In those 

categories in which representation fell short of the quotas, it is reasonable to assume that 

representation was better than it would have been without the efforts to meet the quotas, 

although it is not possible to prove this. The participants themselves felt that the mini-

public was diverse; comments relating to diversity were one of the most frequent given 

to an open-ended ‘what did you like best about today?’ question posed at the end of the 

first half-day session. For example participants said: ‘Surprisingly brilliant job of 

mixing up the cross-section of participants, definitely added to the interest and diversity 

of discussion,’ ‘Meeting people from a range of areas and different points of views has 

been very insightful and interesting’ and ‘Lovely to meet such a diverse bunch of 

Australians.’ Nevertheless, the important exclusions identified above, most of which are 

typical of mini-publics, mean that WWViews fell short of an ideal of including the 

views of all stakeholders in climate change policy. 

 
Additional problems of inclusion and representativeness emerge as we turn our attention 

to the global scale. If achieving demographic representation is difficult at a national 

level, as outlined above, then it becomes even more challenging to bring together a 

group of participants that is reasonably representative of the world demographic profile. 

In WWViews, the approach taken to this challenge was to recruit a representative group 

of nations into the project and to ask each nation to identify a representative group of 

participants within that nation. Recruitment of nations was opportunistic, drawing on 

networks of deliberative democracy practitioners around the world and requiring 

organisations to source their own funding to run a national event. There was targeted 

recruitment of developing nations and specific efforts to secure funding to allow poorer 

countries to participate. In the end, 38 countries participated, including 18 developed 

and 20 developing nations. All continents were represented, but there were important 

regional gaps; most notably, despite attempts to identify suitable partner organisations, 

there was no participation from the Middle East or Central Asian countries. 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  17 

Apart from these gaps, the group of participating nations was reasonably representative 

of the diversity of world nations. It also included many of the major players in 

international climate change negotiations, such as the United States, China, India, Brazil, 

South Africa and several European Union members. However, it is questionable 

whether this model of national representation, closely paralleling the United Nations 

model, is the best way to achieve representativeness and inclusion at a global scale. To 

illustrate, China’s population of more than 1.3 billion and St Lucia’s population of 

170,000 were both represented by a single event, giving the views of St Lucians 

disproportionate weight when the global results were aggregated. 

 
A more representative model would be to seek to match the global pool of participants 

to a world demographic profile, using similar techniques to those described above for 

Australia. This may be an ideal to work towards but would pose substantial logistical 

difficulties to implement, with many countries lacking the detailed and comprehensive 

databases required to support such an approach. Although falling short of this ideal, an 

improvement over the WWViews approach would be to ensure that the number of 

participants from any country is proportional to the population they are representing 

and/or that the views expressed in particular events are weighted to take into account the 

population represented. These proposed changes to recruitment processes might 

improve global demographic representation but they would likely suffer from the same 

exclusions that we identified above for Australia. Thus we would expect low 

participation from the global poor, oppressed or linguistic minorities, young people and 

those with less formal education.  

 
A possible response is to reconceptualise what inclusion means in a deliberative 

democratic system. Dryzek and Niemeyer (2010) argue that representation can be 

usefully conceived as representation of discourses. Diverse discourses exist on issues 

like climate change and ensuring that all of these discourses are represented in a mini-

public may be a more practically inclusive approach than seeking demographic 

representation.  

 
For example, if there are concerns about directly including children in a mini-public, 

adult participants could be recruited that can represent the discourses in which children 

participate. Further, participants could be recruited to represent the discourses of unborn 

future generations who cannot possibly participate in a current mini-public but have the 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  18 

greatest stake in climate change response. The marginalised discourses of the global 

poor and disadvantaged can be brought into a mini-public through specific discourse 

representation rather than simple demographic weight of numbers. 

 
While the concept of discourse representation is an attractive one, more work is needed 

to investigate the practical implications for design of mini-publics and the balance 

between demographic representation and discourse representation. There are important 

questions about how discourses requiring representation would be identified, how 

representatives of these discourses would be selected and who should make these 

decisions. These questions would themselves be suitable topics for deliberation. 

 
WWViews did not make any attempt to identify the discourses that would need to be 

represented in a mini-public on global climate change response. Nor did it attempt to 

identify the discourses that participants adhered to. Consequently, it is not possible to 

evaluate whether WWViews achieved a reasonable level of discourse representation. 

We can state, however, that participants in WWViews in Australia and internationally 

exhibited greater levels of concern about climate change and called for stronger action 

than is typical in public debate as revealed through the media or opinion polling (Danish 

Board of Technology 2009b). This may indicate that the WWViews mini-publics did 

not have sufficient representation from diverse discourses as a starting point, or that 

substantial shifts occurred through the process of deliberation. It is to the quality of 

deliberation that we now turn. 

 
Authentic deliberation 

The process should support communicative freedom by providing access to information, 
space for open and respectful dialogue between participants and sufficient time for 
reflection. It should encourage but not coerce reflection on preferences. 
 
Gundersen (1995) describes deliberation as an active process of challenging 

unconsidered beliefs and values, encouraging individuals to arrive at a defensible 

position on an issue. For Dryzek (2002: 1), it is a non-coercive, reflective and pluralistic 

process, allowing ‘argument, rhetoric, humour, emotion, testimony or storytelling, and 

gossip,’ through which people arrive at a particular judgement, preference or view. For 

Carson and Hartz-Karp (2005: 122), as noted previously, deliberation requires ‘open 

dialogue, access to information, respect, space to understand and reframe issues, and 

movement toward consensus.’ 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  19 

Numerous engagement methods are now available for facilitating deliberation by mini-

publics (Fung 2003; Smith, G. 2009). WWViews used a hybrid method that drew on the 

DBT’s several decades of experience in engaging citizens in deliberation within 

political decision-making processes. The method combined elements of deliberative 

opinion polling (Fishkin 1997), the 21st Century Town Meeting process developed by 

America Speaks5 and the Voting Conference process used by the Danish Board of 

Technology.6 Partner organisations were given opportunities to contribute to the 

development of the WWViews method, which was then documented in a Process 

Manual (Danish Board of Technology 2009a) that all national partners were expected to 

follow. 

 
Participants in each country were provided with information to support informed 

deliberation in the form of written material prior to the event and video presentations 

during the event. They were divided into small groups around a table, each with a 

facilitator. The groups discussed a series of pre-established questions directly relevant to 

the COP15 negotiations in four themed deliberation sessions. Facilitators provided 

participants with space to express and defend their views and gently encouraged them to 

question their existing beliefs and those of other participants at their table. At the end of 

each themed session, participants chose their preferred response to each question from a 

set of pre-established choices. In a final session, the groups at each table collectively 

wrote a recommendation to their climate negotiators through a process of consensus 

building. All participants then voted on their favourite recommendations from those 

developed by each group. 

 
No attempt was made to systematically measure the quality of the deliberation in the 

WWViews Australia event, although methods such as the Discourse Quality Index 

(Steenbergen et al. 2003) are available for this purpose. However, it is clear that the 

process supported more deliberation than the participants would normally engage in on 

climate change by providing them with information and a facilitated space to engage 

with other views, consider questions they would not normally consider, and reflect on 

their own preferences. In a survey of participants, 99 percent felt that the 

recommendation developed by their group reflected an open and thoughtful discussion 

                                                
5 See: www.americaspeaks.org [Accessed 1 Sep. 2011]. 
6 See: http://www.tekno.dk/subpage.php3?article=469&toppic=kategori12&language=dk [Accessed 1 
Sep. 2011].  



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  20 

based on diverse views from a diverse group of people (Atherton & Herriman 2009).  
 
Nevertheless, the process could have been more deliberative in some important ways. 

To make efficient use of limited time and to allow easy quantitative comparison of 

results across different countries, the four themed sessions required participants to 

express their views by voting on a set of predefined questions with multiple-choice 

answers. The use of predefined questions and answers closed down opportunities for 

participants to reframe issues or express responses in their own words. The limited set 

of available responses may not have adequately reflected the real diversity of opinion 

within the participating group. In addition, the voting process resorted to aggregation of 

views rather than seeking to move discussions towards consensus. This meant that 

participants could opt out of reflecting on their views or having them challenged by 

other participants, as they did not have to participate in reaching a consensus. These 

process limitations were consciously addressed through the inclusion of the final session 

in which participants worked together in small groups to develop a recommendation to 

the COP-15 delegates. This process did encourage consensus and allowed participants 

to express themselves in their own words. 
 
A second point to note is the impact of the pace of the deliberations. The process 

established by the DBT in consultation with partner organisations encouraged national 

organisers to fit the entire process into a single day. Again, this was meant to maximise 

the issues that could be covered while keeping costs down to make the process more 

accessible around the world. For the Australian event, we added an extra half-day to the 

process to provide more time for deliberation. However, each deliberation and voting 

session only allowed 45 minutes for participants to discuss the information provided, 

the questions and the possible responses. This is not sufficient time to fully reflect on 

and think through the consequences of decisions. This is perhaps echoed in some of the 

voting results. For example, 31 percent of Australian participants supported greenhouse 

gas reduction targets of more than 40 percent by 2020. Such targets would have a 

substantial impact on energy prices and bills in Australia. Although table facilitators 

relayed many participants’ stories of weighing up the personal impacts of increased 

prices versus their responsibilities to future generations, it is unlikely that all 

participants had time to make these personal connections to an issue; those that did 

would have had little specific information on the magnitude of personal impacts. 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  21 

Making such connections was further hindered by the decision to focus all of the 

information provided to participants on the international negotiations. Provision of 

country-specific information was not allowed. This decision was made both to reduce 

time requirements and to ensure that participants from around the world received the 

same information to inform their deliberation. However, there is strong evidence that 

people are more able to connect with the issue of climate change and more likely to 

change their behaviour if they see it as a tangible, local issue, rather than an abstract, 

global issue (CRED 2009). In addition, the implications of international decisions only 

become apparent by shifting focus to the national level. Participants in WWViews had 

no opportunity to reflect and deliberate on how their decisions would play out in their 

own countries and the results are consistent with low awareness of national and local 

impacts. Future global-scale deliberative democracy processes on climate change will 

need to find ways to connect issues across scales, from global to local and vice versa. 

 
The difficult question that needs to be asked here is whether bigger is necessarily better 

for global mini-publics. The choice to use standardised questions and responses, to limit 

the length of the event and to avoid country-specific discussions certainly reduced costs 

and allowed countries to participate that would not have been able to do so otherwise, 

but deliberative quality was sacrificed to achieve this. While in Australia we have 

anecdotal evidence that the scale of the project gave it a point of difference when trying 

to get the attention of decision makers (and potential funders), it is unknown whether 

the sheer number of people and countries involved made the project any more 

influential. A longer, smaller process, perhaps prioritising good discourse representation 

rather than number of participants, could have delivered greater deliberative quality 

without sacrificing the potential to influence. 

 
The organisers also justified standardisation of the questions, answers and process as a 

way of supporting comparability of the results across participating countries. We 

question whether comparability is sufficiently important to justify the resulting loss of 

deliberative quality. Indeed, we question whether comparability is even possible across 

different cultural and linguistic contexts. In the case of WWViews, all the decisions 

made to achieve comparability and standardisation were undermined by allowing 

(appropriately) local translation of the information materials and local design of 

participant recruitment processes. We contend that authentic deliberation requires 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  22 

process flexibility to account for differences in culture, resources, democratic tradition 

and political system (Dryzek 2011). For example, different cultures have different 

expectations about regularity of breaks, allowing time for religious practices and how 

men and women should interact. A more flexible and culturally responsive process 

would have delivered greater deliberative quality without having to sacrifice potential 

for comparability or influence. Our final evaluative discussion addresses this question of 

influence. 

 
Influence and consequence 

The process should develop the communicative power to make a difference, whether by 
influencing policy and decision-making or facilitating broader sociocultural change 
(e.g. new discourses or networks). 
 
A starting point for evaluating the influence of a mini-public is to understand what 

influence the project sought to achieve. Ostensibly, WWViews sought to influence the 

outcomes of COP-15 and measured against this ambitious aim it was a failure. The 

outcomes of COP-15 fell far short of what the participating citizens demanded and there 

is no evidence that WWViews had any influence on negotiating positions at COP-15. In 

reality, most of the organisers had more modest aims for the project. In Australia, we 

certainly sought to influence the positions held by politicians and other decision-makers 

in relation to climate change, but we also sought to build discursive awareness of 

deliberative democracy and the potential of mini-publics. There is no definitive 

evidence that the former objective was achieved, but there is some evidence that the 

latter was achieved.  

 
As noted above, WWViews Australia developed a dissemination strategy that sought to 

influence politicians, bureaucrats and the media to adopt the positions advocated by the 

mini-public. We sought face-to-face meetings with Australian Government climate 

policy-makers and negotiators, other influential bureaucrats, and politicians from the 

three major political parties (the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal-National Coalition, 

and the Greens). Gaining access to key politicians and climate change negotiators 

during the period of the dissemination efforts (Oct.–Nov. 2009) was difficult. Key 

individuals had limited availability due to the demands on their time of preparation for 

COP-15 (including attending preparatory talks elsewhere) and the (thwarted) passage 

through Federal Parliament of domestic climate change policy. Meetings were 

ultimately held with public servants in the Department of Climate Change (one of 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  23 

whom was on the COP-15 negotiating team), some advisers to Ministers and Shadow 

Ministers, the Australian Greens Deputy Leader and the Lord Mayor of Sydney 

(Herriman, White & Atherton 2011). Reports were also mailed to all Federal politicians 

(both Houses), all State Government Ministers and selected State Government MPs, and 

senior Federal and State civil servants, including Federal climate negotiators. 

 
While we hope that at least some of the politicians that received reports read them and 

are now a little bit more familiar with deliberative mini-publics, there is no evidence in 

the public domain that WWViews Australia had any influence at all on their views on 

how to respond to climate change. If anything, the views expressed by politicians now 

are less consistent with the outcomes of WWViews than they were at the time it was 

held, as the politics of climate change in Australia has become more partisan and 

oppositional in the intervening period. Further evaluation of the influence of WWViews 

would require investigative research with key politicians and decision-makers, which 

has not been undertaken. 

 
The lack of apparent influence on climate change policy is perhaps not surprising, and it 

could be argued, in hindsight, that the strategies that the global project established and 

that we employed in the Australian context were politically naïve. First, we assumed 

that it would be possible to influence negotiating positions two months out from COP-

15, when these positions had already firmed through the preceding ten months of 

negotiations. Second, we assumed that a one-off event like WWViews could create 

enough noise in the public space to hold those occupying empowered space accountable. 

In reality, sustained pressure over a longer period is more likely to deliver 

communicative power. WWViews did not even deliver enough communicative power 

to secure meetings with some of the key participants in empowered space, let alone to 

influence their positions. 

 
The conversion of communicative freedom to communicative power is a critical 

challenge if mini-publics are to achieve any influence within deliberative systems. 

Deliberative theorists tend to underplay the difficulty of challenging existing power 

structures (Brassett & Smith 2010) and there has been little thinking to date about how 

mini-publics can be designed to increase their likelihood of achieving influence. As 

noted above, one of the key strategies for making WWViews an influential and 

consequential project was to maximise the credibility and perceived legitimacy of the 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  24 

event with policy makers through rigorous standardisation and broad participation. The 

intent was to make the WWViews method above reproach and the weight of numbers 

compelling. Unfortunately, as also noted above, deliberative quality was sacrificed in 

favour of this model of influence, yet it is doubtful that either standardisation or the 

numbers involved delivered any more influence. 

 
One of the reasons that standardisation is unlikely to help to deliver greater influence is 

that different countries have substantially different political systems and, as a result, the 

appropriate role for mini-publics differs across countries (Dryzek 2011). Dryzek (2011) 

distinguishes between four different types of state based on their orientation to social 

interests; that is, whether they include or exclude interests, and whether they do so 

actively or passively. The path to achieve influence is very different in each type of state. 

Actively inclusive states, like Denmark, work to create formal channels for public 

participation in decision-making, including mini-publics. There is a tradition of public 

deliberation and decision-makers are expected to heed the results of mini-publics. In 

contrast, in a pluralist (passive-inclusive) state like the USA (or Australia), there are few 

formal opportunities for participation but all are free to advocate their interests and 

achieve influence. Being heard above the resulting clamour is difficult. Any voice, 

including that of a mini-public, becomes just another voice at the bargaining table; there 

is limited potential for influence unless this voice is loud and persists over time, which 

is rare for mini-publics. The pathways to influence are different again in exclusive states.  

 
WWViews did not take into account these political differences in its process design. 

Rather, the design was modelled on processes that work well in actively inclusive 

Denmark but may be less suited to other types of state. Future attempts to convene 

global mini-publics would do well to avoid standardisation in favour of developing 

country-specific deliberative designs that are tailored to achieving the type of influence 

that is appropriate in each country. 

 
While there is no evidence that WWViews Australia influenced the positions taken by 

decision-makers, there is some tentative evidence that it did contribute to a stronger 

discourse on deliberative democracy in Australia. Television, radio and print media 

covered the event, nationally and locally, exposing new audiences to the idea of 

deliberative democracy. The Lord Mayor of Sydney, after a meeting about WWViews, 

went on to chair a session on citizen participation at the Copenhagen Mayors’ Summit 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  25 

during COP-15. Finally, in her 2010 election campaign, the Australian Prime Minister 

Julia Gillard announced plans for a Citizens’ Assembly on climate change (Morton & 

Arup 2010), which would have been the first time the Australian Government had 

convened a mini-public to directly inform policy. Given the work done to inform 

politicians about WWViews, it is possible (although not proven) that communication 

about WWViews helped to make the idea of convening a mini-public sufficiently 

plausible for a political announcement. Unfortunately, the plan was later abandoned 

following media and public criticism (Franklin 2010), so it seems there is a long way to 

go before mini-publics become an accepted part of the Australian political landscape. 

 
Conclusion: The future of global mini-publics 

The outcome of our evaluation of WWViews is decidedly mixed. The event was 

delivered with integrity, was reasonably successful at bringing together a representative 

group of citizens from around the world to deliberate, and received substantial media 

and practitioner attention. WWViews demonstrated that it is feasible to convene a 

global mini-public and that citizens are capable of deliberating on complex global issues. 

For the Australian organisers and participants, feedback on the event was almost 

universally positive. 

 
On the other hand, as a transient event, its contribution towards the emergence of a 

global deliberative system for climate change response was limited and it achieved little 

influence on global climate change policy. In part, this was due to the lack of attention 

to appropriate pathways and strategies for achieving influence in different countries. 

The quality of deliberation was compromised by attempts at standardisation that seem 

misguided in light of cultural and political differences between the participating 

countries. Despite these negatives, we continue to believe that global mini-publics can 

make a contribution towards a more deliberative global governance system on climate 

change and other issues. Future global mini-publics have the opportunity to learn from 

WWViews, so it is worth summarising the key lessons here. 

 
First, if a mini-public is to contribute towards a global deliberative system then the 

quality of deliberation is paramount. This means that events must allow sufficient time 

for reflection on preferences and that methods relying on voting on pre-determined 

responses should be avoided. Participants should be given as much opportunity as 

possible to frame issues in their own terms, formulate their own responses and express 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  26 

these in their own words. 

 
Second, representing discourse diversity instead of, or in addition to, a demographic 

profile may be a more appropriate goal for mini-publics, particularly at a global scale. 

Identifying the discourses that need to be included and finding suitable discourse 

representatives will be challenging but potentially offers a more feasible pathway to 

legitimacy for global mini-publics. Further, through discourse representation it may be 

possible to find innovative ways to use special representatives to incorporate the 

presumed discourses of future generations, or even other species. 

 
Third, where global mini-publics are made up of smaller national mini-publics, 

flexibility to respond to cultural and political differences is critical. Mini-publics are 

more likely to deliver authentic deliberation and to achieve influence if they have 

freedom to respond to the local cultural and systemic context, even if this means the 

results from different countries are not directly comparable. Strategic thinking about 

how best to achieve political influence needs to be at the heart of mini-public design. 

 
Fourth, mini-publics may be more likely to achieve influence if they are long and loud, 

forcing empowered space to be accountable. One-off events can potentially be loud, in 

that they may get a lot of media attention, but the effect quickly dissipates without 

sustained action. Processes that bring mini-publics back together for multiple events 

over a longer period of time have greater potential to build discursive momentum and 

influence empowered space. In other words, designers of mini-publics need to consider 

their role in building a movement for change that can accrue sufficient communicative 

power to force a response.    

 
Finally, there are many other ways in which a global mini-public could be convened and 

these need to be explored. WWViews essentially mimicked the United Nations system 

by convening discrete mini-publics at a national scale and simply aggregating national 

results. An alternative way to convene a global mini-public would be to involve 

participants from across the globe in a single process, where the views of the rich can be 

challenged by those of the poor and the full global implications of decisions become 

clear. WWViews insulated participants in each country from each other, missing an 

opportunity for cross-cultural deliberation. 

 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  27 

Global mini-publics are certainly not the only way to democratise systems of global 

governance, or even the only way to bring more deliberation into global governance. 

There is space for more deliberation in all elements of the global deliberative system, 

whether through new permanent or temporary institutions, reform of existing 

institutions, or the messy debates of global civil society. What is critical, if we are to 

develop governance systems that can effectively respond to climate change, is that we 

continue to experiment with diverse approaches to democratisation and learn from the 

successes and failures.  

 
 
Acknowledgements 
The authors thank all the organisations and individuals who helped to make World Wide Views possible. 
In particular we are grateful to: the partners in the international World Wide Views Alliance, especially 
the Danish Board of Technology and the Danish Cultural Institute; the World Wide Views Australia 
sponsors (University of Technology Sydney, PricewaterhouseCoopers, National Australia Bank, WWF 
Australia and the Department of Sustainability and Environment Victoria) and other supporting 
individuals and organisations; the facilitators and event logistics team; and the World Wide Views 
participants themselves. 
 
The World Wide Views Australia core project team included staff of the Institute for Sustainable Futures 
at the University of Technology, Sydney: Alison Atherton, Amber Colhoun, Jennifer Croes, Jade 
Herriman, Dr Chris Riedy, Nicole Thornton and Professor Stuart White; and independent contractors: Dr 
Kath Fisher (Lead Facilitator) and Rebecca Short (Media Officer). 
 
We also thank two anonymous reviewers for detailed and constructive comments on an earlier draft of 
this paper. 
 
 
Reference List 
Allison, I., et al. 2009, The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science. 

Sydney, Australia. 
Atherton, A. & Herriman, J. 2009, The World Wide Views on Global Warming Australia Story. The 

Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney. 
Backstrand, K., Khan, J., Kronsell, A. & Lovbrand, E. 2010a, ‘Environmental Politics after the 

Deliberative Turn,’ in Environmental Politics and Deliberative Democracy: Examining the 
Promise of New Modes of Governance, (eds) K. Backstrand, J. Khan, A. Kronsell & E. Lovbrand. 
Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA, 217–234. 

Backstrand, K., Khan, J., Kronsell, A. & Lovbrand, E.  (eds) 2010b, Environmental Politics and 
Deliberative Democracy: Examining the Promise of New Modes of Governance. Edward Elgar 
Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, and Northampton, MA. 

Biermann, F. 2007, ‘“Earth System Governance” as a Crosscutting Theme of Global Change Research,’ 
Global Environmental Change, vol. 17, no. 3–4: 326–337. 

Biermann, F., et al. 2010, ‘Earth System Governance: A Research Framework,’ International 
Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, vol. 10, no. 4: 277–298. 

Bohman, J. 2010, ‘Democratising the Global Order: From Communicative Freedom to Communicative 
Power,’ Review of International Studies, vol. 36, no. 2: 431–447. 

Brackertz, N. & Meredyth, D. 2008, Social Inclusion of the Hard to Reach. Swinburne Institute for Social 
Research, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria. Online, available: 
http://www.sisr.net/cag/docs/htr_final.pdf [Accessed 18 June 2011]. 

Brassett, J. & Smith, W. 2010, ‘Deliberation and Global Civil Society: Agency, Arena, Affect,’ Review of 
International Studies, vol. 36, no. 2: 413–430. 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  28 

Burton, P. 2009, ‘Conceptual, Theoretical and Practical Issues in Measuring the Benefits of Public 
Participation,’ Evaluation, vol. 15, no. 3: 263–284. 

CRED 2009, The Psychology of Climate Change Communication: A Guide for Scientists, Journalists, 
Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public. CRED, New York. 

Carson, L. & Hartz-Karp, J. 2005, ‘Adapting and Combining Deliberative Designs: Juries, Polls, and 
Forums,’ in The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in 
the Twenty-First Century, (eds) J. Gastil & P. Levine. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 120–138. 

Chambers, S. 2003, ‘Deliberative Democratic Theory,’ Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 6, no. 1: 
307–326. 

______ 2009, ‘Rhetoric and the Public Sphere: Has Deliberative Democracy Abandoned Mass 
Democracy?,’ Political Theory, vol. 37, no. 3: 323–350. 

Danish Board of Technology 2009a, World Wide Views on Global Warming - A Global Citizen 
Consultation on Climate Policy (Process Manual). The Danish Board of Technology, 
Copenhagen. 

______ 2009b, World Wide Views on Global Warming: From the World’s Citizens to the Climate Policy-
Makers, Policy Report. The Danish Board of Technology, Copenhagen. 

Dimitrov, R. S. 2010, ‘Inside Copenhagen: The State of Climate Governance,’ Global Environmental 
Politics, vol. 10, no. 2: 18–24. 

Dryzek, J. S. 2002, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations. Oxford 
University Press, Oxford. 

______ 2006, Deliberative Global Politics. Polity Press, Cambridge. 
______ 2009, ‘Democratization as Deliberative Capacity Building,’ Comparative Political Studies, vol. 

42, no. 11: 1379–1402. 
______ 2011, Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative Governance, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 
Dryzek, J. S. & Niemeyer, S. 2010, ‘Representation,’ in Foundations and Frontiers of Deliberative 

Governance, (ed.) J. S. Dryzek. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 42–65. 
Dryzek, J. S. & Stevenson, H. 2011, ‘Global Democracy and Earth System Governance,’ Ecological 

Economics, DOI:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.01.021. [Accessed 8 August 2011]. 
Edwards, P. B., Hindmarsh, R., Mercer, H., Bond, M. & Rowland, A. 2008, ‘A Three-Stage Evaluation of 

a Deliberative Event on Climate Change and Transforming Energy,’ Journal of Public 
Deliberation, vol. 4, no. 1, Article 6. 

Figueres, C. 2007, ‘From Tons to Trends: Transformation of the Climate Regime,’ in Global 
Environmental Governance: Perspectives on the Current Debate, (eds) L. Swart & E. Perry. 
Center for UN Reform Education: 87–102. Online, available: 
http://www.centerforunreform.org/system/files/GEG_Figueres.pdf [Accessed 13 May 2011]. 

Fishkin, J. S. 1997, The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy. Yale University Press, New 
Haven, CT. 

Franklin, M. 2010, ‘Gillard’s Forum Takes a Dark Shade of Green,’ The Australian, 8 October. Online, 
available: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/gillards-forum-takes-a-dark-shade-of-
green/story-fn59niix-1225935657943 [Accessed 1 Sep. 2011]. 

Fung, A. 2003, ‘Recipes for Public Spheres: Eight Institutional Design Choices and Their Consequences,’ 
The Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 11, no. 3: 338–367. 

Gundersen, A. G. 1995, The environmental promise of democratic deliberation, Univ of Wisconsin Press. 
Halvorsen, K. E. 2006, ‘Critical Next Steps in Research on Public Meetings and Environmental Decision 

Making,’ Human Ecology Review, vol. 13, no. 2: 150–160. 
Held, D. 2009, ‘Restructuring Global Governance: Cosmopolitanism, Democracy and the Global Order,’ 

Millennium - Journal of International Studies, vol. 37, no. 3: 535–547. 
Hendriks, C. M., Dryzek, J. S. & Hunold, C. 2007, ‘Turning Up the Heat: Partisanship in Deliberative 

Innovation,’ Political Studies, vol. 55, no. 2: 362–383. 
Herriman, J., White, S. & Atherton, A. 2011, ‘World Wide Views Australia: Political influence in the 

Australian context,’ in Citizen Participation in Global Environmental Governance, (eds) M. Rask, 
R .Worthington & M. Lammi. Earthscan, London. 

Hickman, L. 2010, ‘James Lovelock on the Value of Sceptics and Why Copenhagen was Doomed,’ The 
Guardian, 29 March. Online, available: 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock [Accessed 1 Sep. 
2011]. 

IPCC 2007, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the 
Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (eds) Core Writing 
Team, R. K. Pachauri & A. Reisinger. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland: 12–17. 

International Conference on Engaging Communities 2005, Brisbane Declaration, International 



Riedy and Herriman                    Deliberative Mini-publics 

 
PORTAL, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2011.  29 

Conference on Engaging Communities, Brisbane, Australia, 15–17 August. 
Kartha, S. 2010, Assessing the Current Level of Pledges and Scale of Emission Reductions by Annex 1 

Parties in Aggregate, Stockholm Environment Institute, Presentaton to AWG-KP In-session 
Workshop, Bonn, 2 August. 

Mansbridge, J. 1999, ‘Everyday Talk in the Deliberative System,’ in Deliberative Politics: Essays on 
Democracy and Disagreement, (ed.) S. Macedo. Oxford University Press, New York: 211–238. 

Ministry of Youth Affairs 2003, Youth Development Participation Guide: “Keepin’ it Real” - A Resource 
for Involving Young People, Children. Wellington, New Zealand. 

Morton, A. & Arup, T. 2010, ‘PM Pledges “People”s Assembly” on Climate,’ Brisbane Times, 23 July. 
NCDD 2009, Core Principles for Public Engagement, 1 May, vol. 20, National Coalition for Dialogue 

and Deliberation, Boiling Springs, PA.  
Naim, M. 2009, ‘Minilateralism: The Magic Number to Get Real International Action,’ Foreign Policy, 

no. 173: 135–136. 
Pearce, F. 2008, ‘Dirty, Sexy Money,’ New Scientist, vol. 198, no. 2652: 38–41. 
Raskin, P. & Xercavins, J. 2010, We the People of Earth: Toward Global Democracy. The Great 

Transition Initiative, The Tellus Institute, Boston, MA. 
Rockström, J., et al. 2009, ‘A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,’ Nature, vol. 461, no. 7263: 472–475. 
Rogelj, J., et al. 2010, ‘Copenhagen Accord Pledges are Paltry,’ Nature, vol. 464, no. 7292: 1126–1128. 
Rowe, G. & Frewer, L. J. 2000, ‘Public Participation Methods: A Framework for Evaluation,’ Science, 

Technology, & Human Values, vol. 25, no. 1: 3–29. 
______ 2004, ‘Evaluating Public-Participation Exercises: A Research Agenda,’ Science, Technology & 

Human Values, vol. 29, no. 4: 512–556. 
Sarkissian, W., Hofer, N., Shore, Y., Vajda, S. & Wilkinson, C. 2009, Kitchen Table Sustainability: 

Practical Recipes for Community Engagement with Sustainability. Earthscan, London. 
Smith, G. 2009, Democratic Innovations: Designing Institutions for Citizen Participation. Cambridge 

University Press. 
Steenbergen, M. R., Bächtiger, A, Spörndli, M & Steiner, J 2003, ‘Measuring Political Deliberation: A 

Discourse Quality Index,’ Comparative European Politics, vol. 1, no. 1: 21–48. 
Stripple, J. 2010, ‘Weberian climate policy: administrative rationality organized as a market,’ in 

Environmental Politics and Deliberative Democracy: Examining the Promise of New Modes of 
Governance, (eds) K. Backstrand, J. Khan, A. Kronsell & E. Lovbrand. Edward Elgar, 
Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, 67–84.