Democratically Sustainable Local Development? The Outcomes of Mixed Deliberation on a Municipal Merger on Participants’ Social Trust, Political Trust, and Political Efficacy

Abstract

Municipal mergers are typically contentious and polarizing issues among both citizens and politicians. In deciding on these, municipal-level referendums are often commissioned by municipal councils. Referendums, though, are also per se polarizing processes that only exacerbate an already polarizing issue. Adding deliberation to referendum processes has been shown in previous studies to be a more democratically sustainable process than mere referendums. In this study, we explore the use of mixed deliberation between citizens and politicians within a municipal merger process in the municipality of Korsholm in Finland, one year before a referendum on the issue occurred. The deliberations were two-hour sessions in February 2018, with local politicians present in each discussion group. Using pre- and post-deliberation surveys, we trace how citizens (n = 117) engaging in deliberation developed their social trust, political trust, and political efficacy during deliberation. Generally, we expected that all of these would be strengthened in deliberation. The results, however, reveal only a few statistically significant effects, some of which ran contrary to expectations.

Can politicians and citizens deliberate together? Evidence from a local deliberative mini‐public

“…Some previous studies have reported mixed or negative findings of politicians' involvement in deliberation on an equal footing with ordinary citizens. Strandberg et al (2021) observed no changes in citizens' trust and efficacy when local politicians and citizens deliberated together on a highly polarised topic of a municipal merger. In the United States, online town hall meetings were accompanied by a process in which citizens could pose questions and comments to members of the congress, who then responded (Minozzi et al, 2015; Neblo et al, 2018).…”

Beyond polarization and selective trust: A Citizens’ Jury as a trusted source of information

“…The public views concerning the merger were highly segregated, with the Swedish-speaking majority in Korsholm generally being more critical of the merger plan, and the Finnish-speaking minority having more positive attitudes towards it (Strandberg et al, 2018; Strandberg and Lindell, 2020). The above-mentioned survey shows that the mean opinion was only 3.71 among Swedish speakers, whereas it was 7.38 among Finnish speakers.…”

“…The support for the merger was highest in the municipal centre of Smedsby ( M = 6.38), which lies just next to the municipal border with Vaasa. Attitudes became pronouncedly more reserved when moving to the more sparsely populated rural areas and to the archipelago (Strandberg et al, 2018; Strandberg and Lindell, 2020).…”

The Importance of Context and the Effect of Information and Deliberation on Opinion Change Regarding Environmental Issues in Citizens’ Juries

“…Mini-publics are now widely used in policymaking practice as a means of bringing citizens into processes of framing, advising on, or deciding about, complex public policy issues such as climate action and environmental health from local to global governance [3], exemplified by the rise of climate assemblies [1]. A key aim of the mini-publics is to realise norms of deliberative democracy [4] and to foster its long-term sustainability, as argued in this special issue of the journal by Strandberg et al [5], in relation to mixed deliberations between citizens and politicians, and by Kulha et al [6], in relation to environmental intergenerational fairness.…”