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

[en] 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 with representative politics, we explore who supports them and why. We build on a unique survey conducted with representative samples of 15 Western European countries and find, first, that the most supportive are those who are less educated and 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 on the expectation of a favourable outcome.

Disciplines :

Sociology & social sciences

Author, co-author :

Pilet, Jean-Benoit; Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Bol, Damien ; King's College London, United Kingdom

Vittori, Davide; Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

PAULIS, Emilien ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences (FHSE) > Department of Humanities (DHUM) > Philosophy ; Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

External co-authors :

yes

Language :

English

Title :

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

Publication date :

August 2023

Journal title :

European Journal of Political Research

ISSN :

0304-4130

eISSN :

1475-6765

Publisher :

John Wiley and Sons Inc

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

873 - 902

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1475-6765.12541

Funding text :

This project was led by Jean‐Benoit Pilet and Damien Bol. An earlier version of this paper has been presented at seminars of the Centre for the Study of Deliberative Democracy of the University of Canberra, the Åbo Akademi University, Centre for the Study of Democratic Innovations of the Goethe Universität Frankfurt, the Centre for Political Science and Comparative Politics of UC Louvain. The authors would like to thank all the participants of these seminars for their helpful comments and suggestions. The study has received financial support from the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 772695) for the project CURE OR CURSE?/POLITICIZE.This project was led by Jean-Benoit Pilet and Damien Bol. An earlier version of this paper has been presented at seminars of the Centre for the Study of Deliberative Democracy of the University of Canberra, the Åbo Akademi University, Centre for the Study of Democratic Innovations of the Goethe Universität Frankfurt, the Centre for Political Science and Comparative Politics of UC Louvain. The authors would like to thank all the participants of these seminars for their helpful comments and suggestions. The study has received financial support from the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 772695) for the project CURE OR CURSE?/POLITICIZE.

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