Scaling up Deliberation: Testing the Potential of Mini‐Publics to Enhance the Deliberative Capacity of Citizens

Abstract

This paper tests the possibility of embedding the benefits of minipublic deliberation within a wider voting public. We test whether a statement such as those derived from a Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) can influence voters who did not participate in the pre-referendum minipublic deliberation. This experiment was implemented in advance of the 2018 Irish referendum on blasphemy, one of a series of social-moral referendums following the recommendations of a deliberative assembly. This is the first application of a CIR-style voting aid in a real world minipublic and referendum outside of the US and also the first application to what is principally a moral question. We found that survey respondents exposed to information about the minipublic and its findings significantly increased their policy knowledge. Further, exposing respondents to minipublic statements in favour and against the policy measure increased their empathy for the other side of the policy debate.

“Co-construction” in deliberative democracy: lessons from the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate

“…The citizens’ assembly in turn serves as a “recommending force” or “body of trustees” to the broader public (Mansbridge et al, 2012 ; Warren and Gastil, 2015 ). There is growing evidence from the United States (Gastil et al, 2016 ; Ingham and Levin, 2018 ), Canada (Boulianne, 2018 ), and Ireland (Suiter et al, 2020 ) that mini-publics are indeed effective at generating support among the broader public. Such endorsement is thought to rely on different processes, including trust—the broader public perceiving the mini-public as representative, hence trustworthy—and heuristics—assuming some division of cognitive labor is inevitable in democratic decision-making, the broader public can thus rely on “information cues” produced by the mini-public (MacKenzie and Warren, 2012 ).…”

When Digital Mass Participation Meets Citizen Deliberation: Combining Mini- and Maxi-Publics in Climate Policy-Making

“…There is empirical evidence that participants from the wider public process objective information provided from a mini-public quite differently than the members of this mini-public. In some cases, it dampens their factual knowledge, but it has also been shown to positively increase people's empathy towards the other side [40]. Moreover, using climate assemblies instrumentally to garner support may lead to cherry-picking of results [29].…”

Psychological Phenomena in Democratic Deliberation

“…Johnson, Morrell and Black (2019) analyzed participant surveys and observer notes from three further CIRs and concluded that during the four-day deliberation enthusiasm was common throughout, happiness steadily increased, anxiety peaked early, sympathy was moderately present, anger was moderately present and peaked on day three, and sadness was uncommon; they theorize that deliberative procedures were likely key in explaining these results. Suiter et al (2020) utilized a survey experiment and discovered that even non-participants who read balanced information generated by a CIR had greater affective empathy for the other side of the policy debate.…”