2 Oct 2024
Other,
12:30 - 13:30,
Anna Nussbaum Auditorium and online,
Hallerstrasse 6, Bern, Switzerland
Narrowing the gap? Participation of women and immigrant-origin minorities in deliberative minipublics
Nenad Stojanović, Associate professor of political science, University of Geneva Deputy director of the Department of General Democracy Research at the Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau, University of Zurich
What explains a relatively high interest of women and immigrant-origin citizens in participating in deliberative minipublics in the Swiss context? The aim of this analysis is not only to contribute to the academic literature on democratic participation, but also to provide insights on how to improve women’s and ethnic minorities’ political participation in Switzerland and beyond.
The background of this presentation is the Demoscan project (www.demoscan.ch) in the context of which about a dozen of deliberative minipublics (also called citizens’ assemblies) were put in place in Switzerland, starting with “Demoscan Sion” in 2019. The minipublic participants are ordinary citizens who were randomly selected by using official registers of population in the respective polities (canton, municipality, neighbourhood). An unexpected finding from these experiments highlights a very strong (above average) interest of women and immigrant-origin citizens to take part in minipublics. The finding is relevant given that it is a well-known empirical fact that there is a strong statistical underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities in the institutions of representative democracies.
Nenad’s main area of research is democracy, particularly participatory democracy and democratic institutions in multicultural and multilingual societies. He is the author of the books Dialogue sur les quotas: Penser la représentation dans une démocratie multiculturelle (Presses de Sciences Po, 2013) and Multilingual Democracy: Switzerland and Beyond (ECPR Press, 2021). He is active in organising and/or providing scientific support for citizens' assemblies drawn by lot, particularly in the Swiss context (see www.demoscan.ch). In the context of a partnership between the universities of Geneva and Zurich he has founded the Swiss Research Centre on Democratic Innovations and is the Co-editor-in-chief of the Swiss Political Science Review.
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