Introduction
The following is a reflection based on a recent meeting of the Youth Resilience Council (YRC) within the frame of our current regional Interdemocracy pilot. The input for every YRC meeting is reports created by GAIs. These reports cluster the answers given by students in 14 classes as a response to either a question or to a set of recommendations drafted at a prior YRC meeting. The clusters usually are presented in two forms: clusters of answers sharing a common denominator and an overview of binary, mutually exclusive clusters of answer types in two layers; the first layer typically consists of having given a meaningful answer or not, while the second layer distinguishes types of answers. Based on a selection of clusters, the YRC formulates recommendations - either preliminary recommendations that are sent back to the classroom for verification or final recommendations that are based on the preliminary recommendations as well as student feedback on them.
The dilemma
In the recent meeting in case a cluster was presented that was different from all other clusters and was given by 7.7% of the respondents. As a reaction to the question what conditions should be present in their upcoming school - they are in the last class of Polish primary school that also encompasses middle school - to be able to talk about “hard topics” in the classroom. What a “hard topic” is, was not defined. The gist of the different cluster was that students want to avoid talking in front of the whole class because it is stressful. The question put to the YRC was not whether this minority was numerically significant, but whether its existence warranted being carried forward as a distinct recommendation.
There was no rule to answer this question. No threshold had been defined. No statistical argument could settle it without flattening what was at stake. After extended deliberation, the decision to base a recommendation on the minority cluster was made - by a margin of one vote.
Reflections
The narrow outcome was not a weakness of the process. It was evidence that the decision had not been predetermined by procedure. The group did not apply an answer; it assumed responsibility for one. What made this moment especially revealing was a structural asymmetry within the process. The participants whose views were being interpreted were younger adolescents, while the members of the decision-making body were older adolescents. This difference did not confer authority or justify paternalism. Instead, it introduced a heightened ethical attentiveness. Dismissing the minority position would not have been formally incorrect, but it would have carried a different moral weight. That attentiveness did not dictate the outcome. It deepened the deliberation. It slowed closure. It made the question harder rather than easier.
The YRC facilitator
This is where facilitation becomes decisive. The facilitator did not steer the decision or privilege one position. Rather, they held open the space in which hesitation could remain legitimate. They resisted the pressure to normalize uncertainty as quickly as possible. This form of facilitation is not a technique. It is an ethical stance: a willingness to remain exposed to the claims of others without converting that exposure into control. Attempts to proceduralize this stance inevitably fail. Mathematical probability, predefined thresholds, or formal weighting schemes would have resolved the case efficiently, but at the cost of erasing what gave it meaning. Care, in this sense, cannot be encoded. It can only be embodied.
Procedures
This does not mean that procedures are unnecessary. On the contrary, procedures are essential to protect deliberative spaces from coercion, domination, and external pressure. But their role is limited. Procedures can create the conditions for care; they cannot produce it. They must be designed to withdraw at precisely those moments when ethical responsibility cannot be delegated.
People over systems
This insight leads to an uncomfortable conclusion: the legitimacy of such processes ultimately rests on trust in people rather than systems. It depends on facilitators and participants who are willing to carry responsibility without guarantees. That reliance is not scalable in the way technical systems are. It cannot be secured once and for all. Yet this is not a failure of democracy. It is its defining feature. Democracy does not derive its value from delivering optimal outcomes or consistent decisions. Its value lies in the fact that collective judgments are made under acknowledged uncertainty, in the presence of others whose claims cannot be fully absorbed into rules. The fragility of this arrangement is not something to be engineered away. It is the condition under which democratic legitimacy remains alive. When democratic systems lose this fragility — when procedure replaces judgment and closure replaces responsibility — they may become efficient, but they also become shallow. What remains works, but it no longer answers to those it governs.
Seen this way, the persistent discomfort of democratic deliberation is not a sign of dysfunction. It is a signal that something ethically significant is happening.