Listening Across Differences

Deliberative mini-publics, created through sortition and stratified sampling, reflect the broader diversity of the larger whole. While these mini-publics are usually facilitated, the lived experience of facilitators in this role has seldom been explored. Facilitators’ accounts of the joys and challenges of facilitating mini-publics in the state of Vorarlberg, Austria illuminate the nuances of embodying active listening and interpersonal empathy in this context, with implications for both deliberative theory and practice.