Aliénor Ballangé: What Can Citizen Deliberation Mechanisms Do in Times of Democratic Backsliding?

Abstract: This presentation introduces a research project on the role of deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) in contexts of democratic backsliding, with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe. Across the region, citizen assemblies and juries have been introduced despite executive aggrandizement, weakened checks and balances, and increasing control of the public sphere. Whether these initiatives can function as instruments of democratic self-defence, however, remains unclear. The project starts from a central puzzle: why do deliberative mini-publics emerge under conditions of democratic erosion, yet appear institutionally fragile and politically constrained? Rather than focusing on institutional design alone, the project adopts a normative and systemic perspective within deliberative democratic theory, examining how DMPs are embedded in wider deliberative and accountability ecosystems that are themselves under strain. Conceptually, the project develops a typology of five possible functions of DMPs - technical, educational, informational, militant, and oversight - and explores their capacity to contest domination under adverse conditions. The central hypothesis is that while most functions face severe limitations in backsliding contexts, DMPs oriented toward oversight, particularly in relation to corruption and political capture, offer a more promising avenue for democratic resilience and citizen-led democratic self-defence.

Bio: Aliénor Ballangé received her Ph.D. in Political Theory from Sciences Po Paris in 2018, writing her thesis on the democratic theory of European integration. The thesis won the Prix de la Chancellerie de la Ville de Paris in Political Science in 2019 and the Jean-Louis Quermonne EU Studies Prize in 2020. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Normative Orders Center at the University of Frankfurt from 2020 to 2025 and a Deakin Fellow at the University of Oxford from 2023 to 2024. Her research combines European studies, democratic theory, and critical theory to analyze the crisis of representative democracy in the EU. Her work has been published in Democratization, Representation, the Journal of Deliberative Democracy, Res Publica, and other publications. In September 2025, she joined the Paris IAS as the "Major Changes" Chair on Europe and Democracy.