Contestation, Expertise, and Time: An Ethnographic Case Study of the Swiss Citizens’ Assembly on Food Policy

Abstract

For food system transformation, there is growing interest in deliberative participatory processes at the governance level, following good examples for other controversial issues such as climate policy. However, it is contested whether such citizens’ assemblies in their currently most implemented form can contribute to a profound sustainability transformation. In 2022, 85 citizens gathered to deliberate the Swiss food system transformation. The Swiss Citizens' Assembly on Food Policy (BEP) was unique in that it was the first national assembly and applied Scharmer's Theory U approach, which generates new collective intentions in a non-agonistic way. I focus on the question of whether the process’ framing was capable of realizing its transformational and democratic potential. Combining ethnographic approaches (participant observation, autoethnography, and semi-structured interviews) and constructivist grounded theory, I gained insights into how facilitators and citizens experienced the deliberative process and what emerged from these different experiences. I placed these emergences in the context of contestation, expertise, and time, drawing on critiques related to sustainability transformation by both deliberative and agonistic scholars. My results indicate that the BEP could empower collective action and make a more citizen-led democracy imaginable. However, proactive measures are needed to address structural problems and societal ideas that impede a truly democratic and transformative deliberative process. This includes (1) enhancing contestatory forms of communication next to harmonic ones in consensus-seeking cultures, (2) challenging the dominance of rational argumentation in Western policy-making processes and empowering citizens’ ways of knowing, and, especially in polarized contexts, (3) recognizing plurality within a narrow consensus-oriented framework. These insights have been echoed in numerous studies of participatory and deliberative processes, but are rarely applied in citizens’ assemblies in Western democracies. By proactively experimenting with the above, food democracy can be envisioned.