If no vote, at least voice? The potential and limits of deliberative procedures for the creation of a more inclusive democracy

Abstract

Our paper presents the results of the project If no vote, at least voice, conducted in the run-up to the municipal elections held in Vienna in 2020. It invited residents of the city who are not Austrian nationals and therefore ineligible to vote in municipal elections to raise issues with the political parties standing in the elections and garner responses from them. These issues were initially formulated by deliberative mini-publics. We discuss our findings against the backdrop of the – in no small measure socio-economically determined – increasing democratic deficit in contemporary migration societies. We also touch on the extent to which the Covid-19 crisis forced us to amend our procedures and exacerbated some of the challenges faced in this context.