Deliberation against Participation? Yellow Vests and Grand Débat: A Perspective from Deliberative Theory

Introduction

The yellow vests have formed the longest protest movement in France since 1945 (Donadio, 2019). The movement has provoked different reactions of the French government—on the one hand, violence and repression; on the other hand, concessions. One of them was to provide a possibility for citizens’ participation by organizing the so-called “Grand Débat.” ¹ Celebrated as a huge success by the government, the initiative was denounced by the yellow vests as a smoke screen and a deception (Buzzanca, 2019).

The aim of this article is to analyze the Grand Débat with regard to its deliberative qualities or shortcomings assessing, above all, its representative, respectively exclusionary character. As pointed out by Gherghina et al. (in press), the question of (under-)representation in deliberative processes forms a gap in academic literature, and the Grand Débat can be used as a case in point for such an analysis. This analysis is carried out against the background of deliberative theory and experiences with deliberation in other contexts.

The Grand Débat was initiated by the government in order to calm down the yellow vest movement. It was seen by the yellow vests as a smoke screen and, thus, not used as a platform for discussion by them. Demographic data on the Grand Débat show that its composition differed considerably from the composition of the movement and was generally also not representative or inclusive of minority groups. The supporters of the yellow vests mainly came from a similar socio-economic and ethnic background: lower-middle-class citizens mostly of French origin. Thus, as opposed to the banlieue movements in 2005, they represented a broad core group of French population. Participants in the Grand Débat differed significantly from the movement with regard to their age, income class, and educational level and were also not representative of the French population at large.

The Grand Débat opened up a wide range of forms of participation with different forms of engagement. Thus, in terms of procedures, it enabled all citizens to participate according to their interest and time resources. However, there was a lack of focused activities toward effective minority inclusion and representation, as well as possibilities for real deliberation.

A Short Summary of the Yellow Vest Movement

The movement started with an online petition to lower fuel taxes launched in May 2018. By mid-October, the petition had been signed by over 300,000 people; its momentum was increased by Macron’s announcement of fuel tax rises. This set off the movement, leading to massive and frequent protests as well as different reactions of the government during the next months.

In October, a Facebook event called for a national blockade of roads, and the use of yellow vests for the protests was proposed (Xu, 2019). The first major protest took place on 17 November and was supported by 300,000 people. The following demonstrations were also supported by large numbers of people and included serious material destructions by the yellow vests as well as considerable violence of the police against the protesters (Xu, 2019).

On 27 November, Macron announced financial help to decrease individual hardships of the ecological transition. By 1 December, an anti-Macron protest was organized, marking the beginning of the change from anti-fuel tax to more anti-governmental protests (Xu, 2019). On 4 December, the announced rise of fuel prices as well as some other cost increases was taken back (Samuel, 2018). On 10 December, Macron held a speech which with 23 million spectators formed the most-viewed political speech in French history (Dezeraud, 2018). He announced an increase in the minimum wage and other improvements for employees and pensioners (Le Monde, 2018).

On 12 January, the police announced a “zero tolerance policy,” the riot police CRS used tear gas and water cannons, and some of them were authorized to carry semi-automatic weapons (The Local, 2019). On 14 January, Macron announced the “Grand Débat” in a letter to the French citizens (Macron, 2019). By the end of January, the yellow vests announced the “Vrai débat” as an alternative and protest against the Grand Débat. On 5 February, a law seriously reducing freedom of demonstrations passed the French parliament (Henry, 2019).

For the European elections on 26 May, two yellow vest lists ran for office. One list, the Yellow Alliance, won 0.54% of the vote, the second only 0.01% (Houeix, 2019). Two other parties including candidates of the yellow vests did not enter the European Parliament (EP), either. Forty-four percent of the yellow vests voted for Rassemblement National (Berthelier, 2019). Partly violent demonstrations of the yellow vests continued with varying but generally shrinking participation until the end of 2019. Police reactions became more violent over time.

The Grand Débat

In his announcement of the Grand Débat, Macron reacted to the critique of the yellow vests:

I know, of course, that some of us today are dissatisfied or angry. Because taxes are too high for them, public services too remote, salaries are too low for some to be able to make a decent living from the fruits of their labour, because our country does not offer people from different backgrounds the same opportunities to succeed. All of them would like a more prosperous country and fairer society. I share this ambition

On the other hand, he also criticized the actions of the movement:

But there is one condition for this: tolerate no form of violence. I do not tolerate pressure or insults, those, for example, directed at elected representatives of the people, I do not tolerate general accusations, directed, for example, at the media, journalists, institutions and civil servants. If everyone attacks everyone else, society falls apart! ²

Furthermore, by emphasizing that the Grand Débat was open for every citizen, he also indirectly drew a distinction to the limited representativeness of the yellow vest movement.

Still, academic observers of the Grand Débat criticized its lack of inclusiveness. Fleury and Morel (2019) observe that open deliberative processes generally face a problem of representativeness and inclusiveness ³ : The middle-class people with higher education and pensioners are usually over-represented in such settings, while lower classes are under-represented. Similar to another study by Observatoire des Débats (2019), Fleury and Morel assume that this general bias was enhanced in the Grand Débat by a lack of trust into its setting. The government organizing the debate suffered a loss of legitimacy; this was actually probably the main reason to start the debate. But this loss of legitimacy spilled over on assessments of the debate. Consequently, the yellow vests defamed it as a smokescreen and uttered doubts with regard to its transparency, sincerity, and impartiality, as well as with regard to the intentions of the government to follow its proposals. These doubts were not resolved by the government. On the contrary, for example, the geographical distribution of local meetings showed a strong correlation between the number of meetings and the votes for Macron in a region, thereby, obviously, excluding inhabitants of other regions.

The survey of participation in the Grand Débat showed a composition quite different from the socio-economic composition of the population and diametrically opposed to the one of the yellow vests: Participants in the Grand Débat had an average age of 57 years with a higher number of men (55%) than women and a high share of pensioners (49%). Also, young people were over-represented, but the age group 30–40 years was clearly under-represented. With 62%, participants with a higher education were over-represented, as well as owners of their lodgings (72% vs 58% of the general population). About two-thirds of the participants declared to be satisfied with their income. Thus, lower classes were not included in the debate. Visible minorities were very rarely present in meetings. Biases in representation were not remedied but, in fact, repeated in the meetings of participants drawn by lot. This has been seen as the result of a very poignant methodological weakness by Observatoire des Débats (2019).

The yellow vests were on average 10 years younger than the participants in the Grand Débat and included more women and fewer owners of their lodgings, as well as fewer pensioners. In general, they were also poorer and in a more precarious situation, with a higher rate of unemployed people and less income (Observatoire des Débats, 2019).

Fleury and Morel (2019) also criticize the procedures of the Grand Débat. The online part of the Grand Débat did not foresee any kind of exchange but just the posting of individual opinions. Furthermore, no safeguards were hindering individuals to post their opinions several times. The organization of meetings did not ensure equal information for everybody nor did it provide conditions for free exchange of opinions and against partiality of facilitators or militants. Thus, the online debate included a favorable bias for people with more Internet skills, while the meetings disadvantaged less informed people and people not used to speak up in public fora. Furthermore, according to Fleury and Morel (2019), summaries of meetings were not carried out by professionals, thereby leaving space for misunderstandings or even intentional misinterpretations. Finally, the short time period foreseen for the debate as well as for drawing political consequences was not adequate to deliberative procedures and suggested that it only served to legitimate already prepared decisions.

Why Standards of Deliberation Matter

The Grand Débat falls far short not only of expectations but also of its possibilities. Although the lack of trust brought into play by Fleury and Morel (2019) certainly made it difficult to succeed, it need not have made it impossible—for many of the deliberative instruments introduced in recent years in different countries were preceded by a crisis of democracy in the sense of a crisis of trust. Above all, the Republic of Ireland had experienced an immense loss of trust among its citizens as a result of the 2008 financial crisis (O’Sullivan et al., 2014). In order to counteract this, the parliament and government decided to conduct an experiment in democracy: the Citizens’ Assembly. Born out of crises, this initially mere “escape to democracy” (Ehs, 2019) was so successful that it has since become part of the decision-making process of Irish politics. Moreover, it was the first time a deliberative setting took place as a nationwide process. There had been a lot of citizens’ assemblies on the local level before like, for example, in parts of Brazil, Canada, and Austria, but never before had anyone dared to organize a big-scale debate.

Therefore, standards of deliberation had to be developed, which have been continuously refined ever since. Meanwhile, there is a lot of experience and therefore also a lot of literature illustrating core design features of deliberation, most prominently of deliberative mini-publics. Not only do political scientists publish relevant scientific texts (see, instead of many, Farrell et al., 2019), but there are manuals (Gerwin, 2018) and practical guidelines by organizers of deliberative settings who share their experience. ⁴ Recently, the United Nations Democracy Fund issued a handbook on “Democracy Beyond Elections” designed to show how nations at various levels of development can apply the principles of representation and deliberation in ways that are appropriate for their economic and educational circumstances.

The starting point of every successful nationwide deliberative process has to be sortition: One has to create a so-called mini-public by means of qualified random selection—a balanced mix of age groups, educational background and socio-economic position, gender parity, and consideration of migration background and regional diversity. Studies (cf. Ehs, 2019) have shown that in the face of major political crises, citizens tend to trust each other rather than the political authorities. The qualified random selection helps to close the gaps that always occur with self-initiated political participation by bringing people into the political process who are not already active citizens themselves. The focus of deliberative democracy is not, as with many contemporary demands for more direct democracy, the moment of the vote but the exchanges of justification that precede a decision. Therefore, one has to invest in trained facilitators who help people from various educational backgrounds to leave their echo chambers and enter into moderated discussions with one another across social, economic, and age boundaries. As a welcome by-product of facilitated deliberation, populist proposals clearly lose ground in the course of the discussion.

The task of deliberative instruments like citizens’ assemblies is to assign the political office of the advisor to ordinary citizens for a limited period of time; in fact, the task is to democratize lobbying by extending it to people who otherwise often do not exert political influence even through elections. Recently, nationwide citizens’ assemblies have been increasingly used to resolve political blockades, for example, when it comes to the question of how to tackle climate change: While we are writing this text, there are deliberations going on in Scotland (The Big Climate Conversation), the UK (Climate Assembly UK)—and even France. The French Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat ⁵ is bringing together 150 people from all over France, selected by sortition, for seven sessions from October 2019 to April 2020 to debate the question, “How can we reduce CO₂ emissions by at least 40% by the year 2030 in a socially just manner?” Surprisingly, whatever had gone wrong concerning the procedures of the Grand Débat is done well here because standards of deliberation were met.

Conclusion

The Grand Débat can only be understood and analyzed within the context of the yellow vest movement. The democratic legitimacy of this movement can be assessed in different ways. In terms of representativity, as every other protest movement, it only included a minority of the population. With regard to procedures, the movement included from the beginning public debates and representations. On the other hand, however, it used—partly vehement—violence, even though one should keep in mind that fatalities and injuries were caused either by the police or by road accidents not intended by the yellow vests. Furthermore, activists from the far left and the far right could be found including fascists, among the dissatisfied citizens. Also, racism and sexism of the movement have been frequently testified (Boggio Éwanjé-Épée, 2018), although they were rejected by representatives of the movement. ⁶

At first glance, it seems doubtful whether deliberative settings can be successful within such a context. The Grand Débat implicitly excluded all citizens understanding this form of participation as a smoke screen. While deliberative procedures should enhance democratic quality and, thereby, also trust in democratic institutions, they need, on the other hand, also the trust of the citizens in order to be successful. The Grand Débat was organized in a situation of deep societal and political conflict. Nevertheless, even the slim chance of good deliberation was missed by not following the basic standards of deliberation design. The conditions for success and concrete forms of the procedures of deliberative democracy have not only been tested in practice many times around the world, but have also been the subject of critical scientific debate. James Fishkin (2018), who has designed and scientifically accompanied deliberative processes for over 30 years, is convinced that deliberation can even be done under difficult circumstances with the right design. The following procedural success of the Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat showed that deliberation is possible even in a country with huge social divides.