This paper advocates a move beyond the systemic approach in the field of Deliberative Democracy. It argues that the notion of deliberative ecology can deliver the necessary conceptual elements that deliberative democrats seek in deliberative systems without some of the problems they either overlook or embrace. To advocate the advantages of an ecological perspective to deliberation, the article focuses on six axes of comparison: (i) performances of actants (instead of functions of arenas and players); (ii) articulations and translations (instead of transmission); (iii) vulnerabilities (instead of pathologies and dysfunctions); (iv) practice (instead of institutionally-oriented design); (v) diverse temporalities (instead of linear temporality) and; (vi) hologram-based analysis (instead of systemic analysis). In a nutshell, the article claims that the ecological approach to deliberation has the advantage of conceptualizing an ever-changing web of relations of interdependency, which connects diverse entities that are either relevant to a public discussion or that hinder its enactment.

This study examines interest groups’ influence on the European Commission’s policy agenda. We argue that organizations can gain agenda-setting influence by strategically emphasizing different types of information. Analyzing a novel dataset on the engagement of 158 interest groups across 65 policy issues, we find that prioritizing information about audience support is more advantageous than emphasizing expert information. However, the effectiveness of highlighting the scope of audience support depends on the level of issue salience and degree of interest mobilization. Specifically, our findings indicate that when dealing with issues characterized by quiet politics, there are no systematic differences among groups employing distinct modes of informational lobbying.

Whereas individual-level studies find that encompassing welfare states might in general be incompatible with large-scale immigration, studies on welfare spending find inconclusive results. We address this puzzle by pointing to the moderating role of social program design. We separate programs according to their degree of natives’ interest based on coverage, generosity and stratification characteristics for the social areas of unemployment, sickness/disability, and pensions for 18 OECD countries. We then test the moderating effect of natives’ interest on the impact of immigration on individual support for social spending and actual social spending in the three areas. Our results indicate that programs do react to immigration by decreasing support and budgets when natives’ interest is low, whereas programs where the interest of natives is high tend to increase individual support and spending.