Generating democratic legitimacy through disruptive deliberative innovation

Democratic deliberation is claimed to improve the legitimacy of democratic decision making. However, deliberation's beneficial effects do not come about easily. If deliberative mini-publics want to contribute to the legitimacy of political decision making, they have to reflect the principles of legitimacy in their own functioning. In this paper, we set out to assess the input and output legitimacy of four deliberative events, and determine which are the favorable conditions for deliberative legitimacy. Based on a comparison of the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly, the Belgian G1000, the Dutch Burgerforum, and the Irish We The Citizens, we argue that their institutional embeddedness and their disruptive potential strongly affect their claims to legitimacy.