M. Alomar, M. Al Saleh, D. Aubin et S. Moyson coauteurs d'un chapitre de "Participatory and Digital Democracy at the Local Level"

Mohamad-Amin Alomar, Mohammad Al Saleh, David Aubin, Stéphane Moyson

co auteurs de "The Conditions of Social Learning in Formal Deliberative Settings: A Study of Municipal Councils in Brussels "

un chapitre de Participatory and Digital Democracy at the Local Level paru chez Springer

Public deliberation can be conceptualized as a debate and discussion aimed at producing reasonable, well-informed opinions in which participants are willing to revise preferences in light of discussion, new information, and claims made by fellow participants. Social learning, defined as an individual and collective process involving the enduring acquisition or modification of cognitive constructs, is central in such a conceptualization. For the last years, participatory democracy has been studied and promoted in order to improve the efficacy and legitimacy of policy decisions made through representative democracy, especially at the local level. Despite these developments, representative councils or parliaments remain fundamental to transform the outputs of participatory democracy into concrete decisions. Yet, research on public deliberation in representative democracy is rarer.

In this chapter, we look at the conditions of social learning within municipal councils, with the results of a thematic analysis of 17 semi-structured interviews with council presidents and general directors of 13 municipalities in the Brussels-Capital Region in Belgium. To conclude, next to theoretical and practical implications, we present the features of a new software supposed to foster social learning in public deliberation based on these results.