Do Mini-Publics Answer Environmental Demands by Youth? Promises and Perceptions of ‘Voice’ in Four European Cities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

First of all, it is necessary to consider whether it is appropriate to compare cities with different population levels. In fact, Geneva has about 200,000 inhabitants, Bologna 395,000, Barcelona about 1.6 million, and Paris around 2.1 million inhabitants. Furthermore, if we consider the metropolitan areas, Geneva has around 600,000 inhabitants, Bologna about 1 million, Barcelona about 5.5 million, and Paris about 11 million inhabitants. It is quite likely that democracy organized in the CCA model is more efficient in smaller cities compared to cities with a much larger population.

It is also necessary to check the percentage of the youth population compared to the total resident population. For instance, the European Union has estimated that the percentage of young people compared to the overall population is approximately 16.3%. However, this percentage is around 12.2% in the case of Italy. Therefore, it is essential to verify whether the fact that the number of young people is higher or lower than the European average is a variable capable of impacting participation and the effectiveness of the CCA. It is likely that in cities characterized by a higher percentage of young people, there is also a greater ability to value and recognize the role of the CCA.

Moreover, it would be relevant to consider whether the organization of such groups also involves collaborations with institutions and associations that may be interested in the activities of these groups, as is the case with connections to the university system or volunteer associations.

From a methodological standpoint, one might ask whether the effectiveness of these models could be somehow enhanced or improved through the use of digital tools and methodologies. For instance, whether coordination also takes place through the use of social networks, and in what way, and what the role of new technologies is in the organization of CCA groups. Since young people are generally very sensitive to technology-related issues, it is very likely that the use of digital strategies could impact the success or failure of the initiative.

Lastly, it is important to consider the average age and composition of city councils to determine whether councils characterized by the presence of younger politicians might show greater sensitivity to the proposed initiatives. Finally, it would also be worth considering proposals to improve the functioning of the CCA and create a true institutional-building activity.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

 

We thank you for your comments and suggestions that we have considered to the extent to which it was possible/relevant for our focus and goals. We have revisited the paper in depth to add more information about the methodology and the case selection and we have restructured the paper to include a conclusion section separate from the discussion. Here we offer a detailed account of what was done summarizing first your requests.  

 

Reviewer 1 asked to justify the comparison between cities of different sizes and youth population size and suggested observing the connections between associations and young people and including suggestions to improve the functioning of the CCAs. We described with more detail our exploratory method and case selection and tried to provide more information on the requested but some data was not available (for instance, the age average of the members of councils).

 

Overall, we tried to address in the best way possible the comments, taking into account the time and space limition for the article, which didn’t allow us to expand the text as much as would have required a detailed response to each of the reviewers’ suggestions.

 

We appreciate the opportunity to revise and resubmit our work and we hope it has now responded to the concerns and helpful suggestions of the reviewers. 

Best wishes, 

 

The authors

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript examines the institutional response to the youth climate movement’s demands in four cities (Barcelona, Bologna, Geneva, and Paris) with a focus on the Climate Citizen’s Assemblies. The manuscript poses many interesting research questions both concerning the institutional response to the new climate movement demands but also the young climate activists’ perceptions of the institutional response and whether it met their expectations, related to CCAs. The manuscript is based on research with original data from 50 interviews with climate activists and city administration representatives, but also secondary sources such as official documents.  

It is a promising manuscript with an important research aim, especially concerning both youth democratic engagement and the commonly shared worry over lack of impact that many minipublics deal with. However, extensive revisions are needed to both the structure and the contents of the paper before the manuscript can be accepted for publication.

GENERAL COMMENTS

My main general issue with this manuscript is that it tries to do too much without managing to keep its focus, which ultimately leads to failing at answering all the research questions it poses. There is a lack of systematically answering the research questions in all cases on a satisfactory level and issues with how the analysis is structured (partly in the analysis section and partly in the discussion and conclusions section, which leads to a lack of a true discussions and conclusions section). The manuscript would benefit from engaging more in theoretical discussions concerning young people’s political participation and relationship with political institutions as well as discussions around the youth climate movements youth-led participation, especially regarding its popularity among children, which affects the participants relationship with institutionalized politics. In addition, the used research materials are partly unclear – as a reader I am not sure where all the findings are derived from and how the material was analyzed, and the lack of a discussion and conclusions section leads to a failure of discussing the findings in relation to the research questions and a failure of putting the findings in the broader context. 

Since the revisions required to make this manuscript publishable at this stage are extensive, I suggest a rejection of the manuscript. However, I want to encourage the author(s) to continue the work, the question of the institutional response is truly important, and I believe that with a narrower focus and revisions this work will be fully publishable in the future.

MORE SPECIFIC COMMENTS

The overall research question of the manuscript is how and to what extent CCAs, particularly those established at the local level, have provided an answer to the claims of youth-led movements. The manuscript also names more specific research questions of whether assemblies have succeeded in 1) addressing the concerns and demands raised by young people regarding climate change 2) creating a space for young people to participate meaningfully in the decision-making process around climate action and/or 3) proposing concrete policies that align with the demands by young activist. The manuscript also asks to what extent CCA fulfilled youth-led climate movements’ expectations, and whether it increased their perception and effective influence on politics and policymaking. As an objective, it is also stated that the manuscript seeks to make a twofold intervention in the current debates on CAAs: 1) on the context in which CAAs take place and 2) on their effect on representations of democratic engagement among young people. Additionally, Hirschman’s Exit, voice and loyalty framework is rethought in the manuscript. The study examines both the overall institutional response within a longer time period in all four cities, but also focuses on examining one specific response, the CCAs. 

All the questions are very interesting and important. However, the analysis section does not manage to systematically answer all the questions and objectives in a satisfactory manner. In the analysis section, the four cases answer slightly different questions/focus on different aspects of the institutional response vs young people’s own perceptions. Now parts of the analysis section, divided into four sections each discussing one city case, only focus on the institutional response (Paris and Bologna), while others briefly touch upon young people’s perceptions (Barcelona) while other discuss them a bit more in detail (Geneve). Some of the four case sections are also clearer and easier to follow concerning the activists demand to authorities’ response pipeline. For example, in the Bologna section the story holds together better than in the Barcelona case, as the description of how the action taken by activists is met with a response from the local authorities is presented in a systematic and clear way. However, in the Bologna section there is lack of any reflection on “Did CCAs meet the expectations of youth climate movements? Did CCAs empower these movements by making them feel heard and influential in politics and policy-making?”, i.e., these research questions are not answered. Same goes for the Paris case, where the activists’ voice and perceptions are not discussed. The activists’ perceptions are shortly mentioned in the Barcelona section, but not discussed in enough detail and length to truly capture the interesting part of the research question. For example, on lines 257-258 “despite these actions, activists interviewed recognize a negative perception of the responses and a growing disengagement”, what does this entail, what kind of negative perception? What kind of activists thought this, was this a consensus? To whom was this targeted and from what were the activists growingly disengaged? Or on lines 272-273 “According to our interviews, activists prefer spontaneous contentious actions, which, however, erode their capacity to sustain claims and have an influence.”, what kind of spontaneous action and why, why does it erode their capacity? The article would benefit from more elaboration and discussion around these types of statements to truly engage in the discussion of how the institutional response was met by the activists.

The manuscript should be revised to ensure that all research questions are answered, the activists’ perceptions are described in enough detail to be meaningful answers to the question posed by the author(s) in all cases and it should be clarified wherefrom these perceptions are gathered from. Alternatively, the author(s) could revise the manuscript to focus only on the institutional response and make changes accordingly throughout the paper.  

I have issues with how the analysis is structured. Currently, the analysis section consists of descriptions of the four country cases and the author(s) write that the section consists of recording of what occurs from interactions between climate activists and local authorities. To bring it back to my point above, in relation to the research questions, it is not always clear for the reader which questions are examined here and to what extent, and the four case descriptions being quite different and answering different questions does not help. If the author(s) wish to keep the structure where all the cases are discussed as separate from each other, all cases should be discussed similarly so that they answer to the same research questions – whether that involves including the youth perspective or only focusing on the institutional response. My suggestion would be to focus only on the institutional response to the climate movement’s demands, and make the current analysis section into a simple case description section where the overall institutional responses during the time period is presented. Then, I would focus on the one example of an institutional response, the CCAs, and build a strong analysis of the CCAs in the four cases.

Now part of the analysis, (CCAs), is in the discussion section. The discussion and conclusions section should be reserved for concluding discussion on the results that have already been presented in the manuscript. The current discussion and conclusions section should be revised into an analysis section and a new discussion and conclusions section should be written, where the findings of the study should be discussed in relation to the research questions and the broader societal and research context, with the help of previous research findings. With the lack of this type of concluding discussion, the author(s) do not guide the reader on how the findings relate to the research questions, what the findings tell us in the light of both the research questions and previous research in the field and how the results matter for our societies and research in the future.

I suggest the author(s) reconsider if Hirschman’s framework is a necessary lens for discussing the findings. Personally, I find that examining the two interrelated dimensions (context and procedures, outcomes and perceptions) in CCAs to compare the four cases is interesting enough on its own and would therefore build the manuscript more strongly on these dimensions. If the author(s) keep Hirschman’s framework, it should be utilized more in the discussion around the findings with all the cases – not only in the Geneva case, or in the Paris case in the current analysis section.

As mentioned in the general comments and above when discussing the Barcelona case, it is sometimes unclear on which data the findings are derived from. Additionally, it is not clear how the material was analyzed. The author(s) should write a more focused research methods section where they describe the specific methods and materials (in detail) used in this specific study to examine the question(s). In addition, they should use references to interviews/interviewees in the analysis section, if they use findings from the interviews as a basis for the findings they bring up in the analysis. The author(s) should also provide more information about the interviews. In which age groups were the activists interviewed, how many of the interviewees were activists vs city administrators? I was also left wondering how the time period mismatch was handled in the analysis. Since the interviews were conducted in 2022-2023, while the cases with institutional response have different timeline (starting from 2019/2020 etc.), where the activists interviewed in retrospect about their attitudes towards the institutional response taken before the interviews?

I suggest the author(s) engage in shortly in some additional theoretical discussions:  

Youth political participation patterns and relationship with institutionalized politics

Since the research focus on YOUTH climate movement, young people’s general political participation trends and relationship with institutionalized politics would provide a fruitful background regarding their demand for deliberative democracy and for how they view the institutional response. Young people are widely argued to be new kinds of critical and post-materialistic citizens who support basic democratic values but are critical of the institutional system with its mediation and who, instead of engaging in political institutions, prefer participation in more horizontal and autonomous ways in loosely structured and decentralized networks that allow participation that is more informal, sporadic and direct. Therefore, democratic innovations such as deliberative minipublics have sometimes been suggested as a political institution that could bridge the gap between young citizens and more traditional political institutions, due to minipublics more horizontal, talk-centric, and more direct forms of engagement that are sporadic. Since young people are expected to be critical citizens, their participation preferences and critical attitudes could affect their perceptions on authorities’ response.

For literary suggestions, the author(s) could start with classics (Inglehart 1977, Dalton 2008, Norris 2004) or see more contemporary literature such as Pickard 2019 or Chou, 2017. Note: I am not asking the authors(s) to reference any of these authors, merely wanted to provide some suggestions to help with the work in the future.

The youth climate movement’s youth-led nature and children as participants

 

A remarkable feature of the youth climate movement is that many of the young people who have engaged in the activities are not only young but children, especially in the Fridays for Future movement. Since by default, children are kept outside of political institutions that are reserved for adults and they lack the right to vote, protesting can for many be the only way to use their political voices. The lack of access to political institutions matters for the institution’s response – if activists do not have other means to affect the political institutions, the lack of response can be even more devastating to children’s views on the political institutions. I find that this discussion would be fruitful for the article. Especially, if the author(s) keep the Hirshman’s framework as part of their research, as children do not have a voice in matters related to institutions as they are not yet seen as full members of the demos.

I would also suggest the author(s) engage with literature on the lack of impact that many minipublics suffer from. This would put the findings regarding the CCAs “Policies designed as an answer to claims” and “results” to a broader research context and I believe this would be fruitful for the manuscript. For example, Goodin & Dryzek, 2006, Michels & Binnema, 2018, Caluwaerts & Reuchamps, 2016 and Hendriks, 2016 have studied the question.

 

DETAILED COMMENTS

Finally, a few more detailed comments.

The manuscript should apply better referencing to some statements it makes. While reading, I had a reaction of the following statements made without references:

-          44-45 “General well-being would be a result of this equality of conditions for the exercise of political rights.”

-          124-126 “However, while many see CCAs as powerful institutions that may even replace representative institutions, others observe it as an institution to bypass unruly civil society and access more compliant “ordinary” citizens. “

Especially this last one piqued my interest as I am curios to know who sees CCAs as replacing representative institutions. For example, the XR is very clear in their stance that CCAs would be used as an addition, not a replacement, in the representative democratic system.

In the introduction, it could be made clearer which climate movements are discussed and examined. Additionally, the section where CCAs are presented as a demand from the youth climate movements should be revised to clarify how the CCAs became the focus and if the CCAs truly were a demand from the climate movement’s examined or more the general response from local institutions.

I think the author(s) should clarify what they mean by this: 149 “articulation between movements and mini-publics is a virtuous one

 

 

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

In general, the quality of English is mostly fine. However, moderate language editing is required.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

 

We thank you for your comments and suggestions that we have considered to the extent to which it was possible/relevant for our focus and goals. We have revisited the paper in depth to add more information about the methodology and the case selection and we have restructured the paper to include a conclusion section separate from the discussion. Here we offer a detailed account of what was done summarizing first your requests.  

 

Reviewer 2 wrote an extended and detailed list of comments and suggestions offering different (opposite in some cases) ways to resolve what they identified as the main weaknesses of our paper.  

1) Lack of specific focus (“it tries to do too much without managing to keep its focus, which ultimately leads to failing at answering all the research questions it poses. There is a lack of systematically answering the research questions in all cases on a satisfactory level and issues with how the analysis is structured (partly in the analysis section and partly in the discussion and conclusions section, which leads to a lack of a true discussions and conclusions section”). We rewrite some sections to make clear our focus because we do think there is a clear focus and clear questions (Did CCAs meet the expectations of youth climate movements? Did CCAs empower these movements by making them feel heard and influential in politics and policy-making? )

2) structure (“In the analysis section, the four cases answer slightly different questions/focus on different aspects of the institutional response vs young people’s own perceptions”). We rewrote the discussion and divided it from the conclusions to organize clearly the findings, discussion and conclusions.  Paragraphs were added to improve the narrative flow of the article.

3) Theoretical discussion: we expanded the literature review and discussion to include the literature suggested, among others

4) Methods:  we improved the methods section offering more details. We also considered all the detailed comments and corrected typos, completed references, and clarified unclear sentences. 

5) We also considered suggestions as to take more into account the children (as a subcategory of the youth) as having the first direct political experience through the environmental mobilisations. However, we want to note that "childhood" is a distinct category, not under analysis in our research.

 

Overall, we tried to address in the best way possible the comments, taking into account the time and space limition for the article, which didn’t allow us to expand the text as much as would have required a detailed response to each of the reviewers’ suggestions.

 

We appreciate the opportunity to revise and resubmit our work and we hope it has now responded to the concerns and helpful suggestions of the reviewers. 

Best wishes, 

 

The authors

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear author, 

The paper is well-elaborated, has clear objectives, and is well-supported by the current social/political context and academic literature.

I have a few minor changes to suggest:

i) In row 189, delete "France", as it is - at this part - the only country mentioned;

ii) In 274 to 276: review the sentence, as it seems to be more generic instead focused on the context of Barcelona;

iii)  row 373, correct the year;

iv) page 10: it is unclear why Bologna and Geneve have no comments (even if negative) for "Policies designed as an answer to claims";

Finally, I would suggest the author(s) to consider organising the conclusions around the three questions elaborated in the introduction (rows 58 to 61) as it could strengthen the analysis and make the results more straightforward. It is not mandatory. 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

 

We thank you for your comments and suggestions that we have considered to the extent to which it was possible/relevant for our focus and goals. We have revisited the paper in depth to add more information about the methodology and the case selection and we have restructured the paper to include a conclusion section separate from the discussion. Here we offer a detailed account of what was done summarizing first your requests.  

 

Reviewer 3 encouraged the publication of our piece and only noted minor mistakes that we have corrected. The reviewer also suggested that we consider organising the conclusions around the questions elaborated in the introduction, something we did now. 

 

Overall, we tried to address in the best way possible the comments, taking into account the time and space limition for the article, which didn’t allow us to expand the text as much as would have required a detailed response to each of the reviewers’ suggestions.

 

We appreciate the opportunity to revise and resubmit our work and we hope it has now responded to the concerns and helpful suggestions of the reviewers. 

Best wishes, 

 

The authors