Comprendre la non-participation. Les citoyens face aux dispositifs délibératifs tirés au sort

More and more political actors see citizen participation and deliberation as a solution to the malaise of contemporary representative democracies. This trend is marked by the introduction of schemes that bring together citizens drawn by lot from the general population. The participants meet with experts, exchange ideas and formulate recommendations that are passed on to decision-makers. Examples include the Irish Citizens' Assembly on abortion or the Citizens' Climate Convention that followed the Yellow Vests movement in France. The use of lottery in the selection of participants is justified by the desire to embody an ideal of egalitarian participation and the desire to increase the diversity of views exchanged in the deliberation. However, the majority of those recruited today decline the invitation to participate in these arrangements. This book attempts to understand why few citizens are attracted to these democratic innovations that are supposed to revitalise contemporary political systems. It is based on field research, the main originality of which consists in interviewing randomly selected people who have refused to take part in deliberative mechanisms. The book therefore questions the ideals, but also the limits, of the development of an inclusive democracy.