The governance of most deliberative mini-publics is not independent of their commissioning authorities, whether the commissioners exercise governance directly or entrust it to a specific structure. However, the decision-making autonomy of such a structure is considered essential to guaranteeing the integrity of the citizens’ work (OECD, 2020; KNOCA, 2024). Nevertheless, the relationship between the independence of ‘representative deliberative processes’, the mandate entrusted to them by their commissioning authorities, and the governance structures they establish, remains unclear. This article first clarifies the role of governance functions and explores how they affect citizens’ assemblies. It highlights how the institutional embeddedness of mini-publics and the political role assigned to them by the commissioning authority result in three distinct approaches to governance, particularly with regard to the independence of the established governance bodies. The article links the disparities observed in governance structures to the differences in mandates, and specifies the consequences for the integrity of citizens’ work. Crucially, this paper identifies a twofold necessary condition for the genuine independence of a ‘representative deliberative process’: governance bodies must have autonomous decision-making and, in turn, must guarantee citizens’ autonomy as they respond to the mandate entrusted to them by the commissioning authority.
Jean-Michel Fourniau (Tue,) studied this question.