Can Mini-Publics Make Wise Decisions?

Deliberative democracy has graced us with a new democratic innovation: the mini-public. These are small representative groups of the population that deliberate together about political issues. The normative appeal of this innovation, is that it can avoid populism by deliberating towards carefully considered preferences, without admitting to the yoke of technocracy. Yet the visionaries of expertise want to strike back. Can mini-publics really make wise decisions? They think not. Cognitive bias and a lack of domain-specific expertise stand in the way. But do they? This thesis argues that the answer is “no, cognitive bias and ignorance are not impregnable obstacles”, and “yes, mini-publics can make wise-decisions”. The reason for this, is design, which, if done carefully, should transform mini-public’s follies into wisdom.