Are Citizen Conferences Compatible with Democracy?

This paper shows how such conferences can henceforth have a role in the current framework. The current constitutional framework is questioned and citizen conferences are shownto offer a novel response to the dead ends of the current regime (the idea is that when false, or merely partial points of view are confronted, this generates a "true" position). Also brought up are questions related to the competence of such a jury (is a popular jury able to examine questions in the realm of science or energy policies, for example? Is it capable of understanding complex problems?), to the dictatorship of emergency situations (do consensus conferences take too long to deal with the emergency of a political decision?), and to jargon (a very efficient means to eliminate democratic discussion by making it impossible).

To end with, the author imagines what could in theory the field of application of consensus conferences, their forms of organization, their articulation with traditional democratic forms, the cost of such a procedure, and the threat that they may represent to the three traditional powers of democracy.