Situating Deliberative Mini-Publics in the Political Economy: A neo-Gramscian Analysis of the Positive Low Energy Futures Citizens' Panel

本研究将探讨协商民主在实践中是如何被其政治经济背景所塑造的。气候变化给政策制定者带来了一个“超级邪恶”（Levin et al., 2012）的问题，因为经济路径依赖对雄心勃勃和适当的政策的实施构成了挑战。前者的经济路径依赖根植于国际竞争力，后者则与企业对政策制定者的压力有关，而这种压力必须与选举周期同步缓解。正是关于气候变化的科学共识和政策之间的这种差距，导致协商民主学者得出这样的结论：反映问题严重性的政策最好通过“更多的民主，而不是更少”来实现（Willis, 2020，第82页）。虽然代议制民主和政治经济学之间的相互作用是这种诊断的关键，但很少有人注意到审议民主发生的方式，以及在相同的政治经济背景下形成的方式。利用新葛兰西的视角，本研究将从理论和实证的角度考察政治经济因素如何在物质和文化上限制协商民主。这将通过兰开斯特大学气候公民研究小组计划的公民小组的分析来实现，该小组旨在协助开发积极的低能源未来（PLEF）能源模型。作为能源系统的需求侧模型，PLEF强调，如果不大幅减少能源消耗，英国不可能实现比1990年水平低78%的净零排放目标。通过鼓励公民考虑能源约束，而不是通常从供给侧能源模型中推荐的技术解决方案，PLEF直接参与了限制英国减排的政治经济因素。

This research will investigate how deliberative democracy in practice is shaped by its political economic context. Climate change poses a 'super wicked' (Levin et al., 2012) problem to policymakers due to the economic path dependencies that challenge the implementation of ambitious and appropriate policy. Where the former economic path dependency is rooted in international competitiveness, the latter is linked to corporate pressure on policymakers that must be alleviated in lockstep with election cycles. It is this gap between the scientific consensus on climate change and policy that has led deliberative democracy scholars to the conclusion that policy reflective of the issue's gravity is best achieved through 'more democracy, not less' (Willis, 2020, p. 82). While the interaction between representative democracy and the political economy is at the crux of such a diagnosis, there has been very little attention paid to the ways in which deliberative democracy takes place and is shaped by the same political economic context.Utilising a neo-Gramscian lens, this research will examine from a theoretical and empirical perspective how political economic factors limit deliberative democracy, both materially and culturally. This will be achieved through the analysis of a citizens' panel planned by Lancaster University's Climate Citizens research group to assist the developers of the Positive Low Energy Futures (PLEF) energy model. As a demand-side model of the energy system, PLEF emphasises the impossibility of the UK meeting its net-zero target of 78% below 1990 levels without reducing energy consumption significantly. By encouraging citizens to think about energy restraint rather than the type of technological solutions usually recommended from supply-side energy models, PLEF directly engages with the political economic factors that limit emission reduction in the UK.