From structure to substance: public participation as a scaffolding technology in citizen assemblies

In this article, we assert that public participation events are best understood as scaffoldings that provide temporal infrastructures to citizens and that encourage "preferred ways" of acting within the participatory space. To exemplify this approach, we explore the citizens' climate assembly (2022-2023) in Aarhus, Denmark as a case study of highly professionalised participation. Through a multi-method qualitative approach incorporating participant observation, focus groups, interviews, and surveys, we examine how both organisers and citizen members of the assembly perceive its design and implementation. In our results, we highlight two dimensions of the assembly's scaffolding. Firstly, we analyse the guidelines that assembly organisers provided to signal what good interaction is within the assembly, namely, the Observation, Assessment, and Recommendation (OVA) method. This method shaped the affordances of members but also defined the epistemic hierarchies of contributions. Secondly, we analyse how the purpose of involving citizens in decision-making was constructed by assembly organisers and how it was communicated during the assembly, leading to uncertainties in process design and facilitation. Finally, we draw methodological and theoretical lessons from this case study and conclude that by treating participatory events as both structured and structuring, we can move beyond evaluations of participation as an ideal to be realised and instead investigate its situated practices and contestations.