Participatory democracy in question: The case of “the sea in debate”

While participatory democracy invites all citizens to take part directly in the decision-making process, the selection of participants in public debates is a critical issue for the legitimacy of the resulting public choices. This paper examines this question in the context of the national public debate on offshore wind energy held in France in the first quarter of 2024. We study an original survey measuring spatial preferences for offshore wind energy in which both participants in the public debate and respondents from the general population were simultaneously surveyed. We find large differences between the two groups of respondents in terms of gender, age, and education, as well as in their spatial preferences for wind farm locations. Using an entropy balancing approach, we reject the hypothesis that these differences in spatial preferences are due to composition effects. These findings underscore the need for policymakers to exercise caution when interpreting the outcomes of public debates.