IAP2A Armchair Experts with Nivek Thompson

Enhancing Democracy through the Design and Evaluation of Deliberative Mini-Publics

Part 1

Democratic innovations like deliberative mini-publics are said to address the democratic deficit. Is this true? And how can we assess their impact on the quality of democracy?

Nivek’s PhD research focused on several Australian case studies to determine whether deliberative mini-publics improved the quality of democracy. She used democratic functions: empowered inclusion, collective agenda setting, collective will formation, collective decision-making, accountability and legitimacy to evaluate their contribution. She found that deliberative mini-publics can and do contribute to the quality of democracy, although they could achieve much more than they currently do. 

Nivek concludes that using democratic functions operationalised for deliberative mini-publics provides a valuable way to evaluate engagement effectiveness generally and for deliberative mini-publics to maximise their contribution to the quality of democracy overall.

Nivek Thompson

Nivek Thompson is the founder and Executive Director of a boutique consultancy Deliberately Engaging. Deliberately Engaging provides services to government and non-government organisations, primarily in designing and recruiting participants for engagement processes. We focus particularly on recruiting mini-publics and similar bodies for short and long-term consultations.

Nivek recently completed her PhD looking at how democratic innovations could improve democracy. The title of her thesis is Deliberative mini-publics: institutional design and the quality of democracy. Whilst her research focused on a particular type of democratic innovation (citizens’ juries) the framework she developed to consider the design of these processes is applicable to other participatory initiatives.

Nivek was the lead developer for the Leading Deliberative Democracy and Doing Deliberative Democracy courses at the University of Technology Sydney and provided support to the development of the Masters level unit Co-design and Deliberative Engagement for the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at Canberra University.

Nivek is an Associate at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra and the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney. She is a published author on democratic innovation, has worked on the OECD working party on institutionalising deliberative processes, and initiated and produced the podcast series Facilitating Public Deliberations. Nivek is also the producer and host of Real Democracy Now! A Podcast, where she interviews thought leaders in democratic innovation from around the world.

Event Details

When: Thursday 22 May 2025

Time: 12.30pm - 13.30 (Sydney time)

Where: Via Zoom | You will receive an email 1-2 days prior with the meeting ID. To ensure you receive this invitation please add no-reply@zoom.us to your trusted list of contacts.