Public support for deliberative citizens' assemblies selected through sortition: Evidence from 15 countries

Abstract

As representative democracy is increasingly criticized, a new institution is becoming popular among academics and practitioners: deliberative citizens' assemblies. To evaluate whether these assemblies can deliver their promise of re-engaging the dissatisfied of representative politics, we explore who supports them and why. We build on a unique survey conducted with representative samples of 15 This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 2Western European countries and find, first, that the most supportive are those who are less educated, have a low sense of political competence and an anti-elite sentiment. Thus, support does come from the dissatisfied. Second, we find that this support is for a part 'outcome contingent', in the sense that it changes with respondents' expectations regarding the policy outcome from deliberative citizens' assemblies. This second finding nuances the first one and suggests that while deliberative citizens' assemblies convey some hope to re-engage disengaged citizens, this is conditioned to the expectation of a favourable outcome.

The perceived legitimacy of deliberative minipublics: taking the perspective of polarized citizens

“…In recent years, the academic debate on minipublics has increasingly looked at the population at large (e.g., Pilet et al, 2022;Werner and Marien, 2022). With minipublics being used more and more often (OECD, 2020), many citizens find themselves in a situation where a minipublic provides recommendations on their behalf.…”

“…Existing studies indicate that, on average, people tend to be fairly positive when evaluating minipublics and their outcomes (e.g., Gastil et al, 2016;Jacobs and Kaufmann, 2021;Pilet et al, 2022;van Dijk and Lefevere, 2022;Werner and Marien, 2022). Yet, at the same time, these studies also suggest that there are variations in the perceived legitimacy of minipublics among different subgroups in society.…”

“…This study builds on previous work investigating the perceived legitimacy of minipublics in a heterogeneous wider public (e.g., Goldberg and Bächtiger, 2022;Pilet et al, 2022) and innovates in two ways. First, we outline a novel theoretical argument as to whether and why polarized citizens would perceive minipublics as less legitimate than more moderate citizens would.…”

“…So far, little is known about the role of minipublics in bolstering the perceived legitimacy of political decision-making in divided, polarized contexts. Many empirical studies to date gauge citizens' reactions to hypothetical minipublics, and with only some of them considering a contentious issue such as migration (e.g., Pilet et al, 2022;Werner and Marien, 2022). These are, however, about polarizing issues, and not necessarily about polarized citizens.…”

Distributing Democratic Influence: External Efficacy and the Preferred Influence of Policy Winners and Losers

“…When faced with the prospect of transferring (rather than simply increasing) democratic influence, the assumed preference for "something else" among people with low external efficacy might not extend as far as one may assume. This is especially likely to be true if politically excluded low-efficacy individuals tend to support participatory measures for instrumental reasons (i.e., getting more favorable policy outcomes) rather than anti-establishment ones (e.g., moving away from representative democracy; see Pilet, Bol, Vittori, & Paulis, 2022;van der Does & Kantorowicz, 2022). If that is indeed the case, then those who already believe that average citizens have little influence over politics may be uninclined to transfer even more influence to other people.…”