Equality by lot

A new paper in the American Political Science Review covers some very well explored ground.

Empowered Minipublics for Democratic Renewal? Evidence from Three Conjoint Experiments in the United States, Ireland, and Finland

Saskia Goldberg, Marina Lindell and André Bachtiger

Abstract

This article investigates the potential of deliberative minipublics to provide a new set of institutions for democratic renewal. Using three preregistered and identical conjoint experiments in the United States, Ireland, and Finland, it first shows that minipublics are moderately attractive institutional innovations, but that in all three country contexts, citizens in general are very reluctant to grant them empowerment and autonomy as well as ask for additional provisions (such as large size or large majorities for recommendations). Subgroup analyses, however, reveal that especially participation in minipublics as well as trust in other citizens as decision-makers in combination with low political trust produces more support for empowered and autonomous minipublics. But what stands out in the empirical analysis is that most citizens want minipublics as additions to the representative system, not as a replacement of the existing democratic infrastructure, as some minipublic advocates have suggested.

As is common in this genre, the conclusions are that citizens are conservative and suspicious about giving citizen bodies decision-making power. Thus, the authors say, it is up to political experts to design institutions that would “win” the support of those citizens. Such conclusions are convenient on two counts. First, they provide cover for the conservatism of the authors themselves, and second they entrust the authors, their colleagues in academia, and their benefactors in the halls of power, with the crucial role of designing any possible reforms to the system.

And indeed, looking at the empirical findings in the paper a bit closely, it seems that the authors’ conclusions, as expressed, e.g., in the abstract, are much more a reflection of the authors prejudices than the opinions of those surveyed.

[W]e checked for average support of minipublics in general. On average, respondents in our sample view minipublics as fairly desirable tools in political decision-making (M = 4.85; SD = 1.36 on a 7-point scale)[.] Finnish respondents are a bit more reluctant on average (M = 4.47; SD = 1.29) compared to respondents in Ireland (M = 5.05; SD = 1.31) and in the US (M = 5.04; SD = 1.39). As mentioned before, the overall satisfaction with democracy in Finland as well as trust in political institutions is comparably high, slightly reducing the need to turn to alternative institutions such as minipublics.

[M]inipublic with binding decision-making capacity is about 4.1 percentage points less likely to be chosen than one that advises elected officials.

Thus support for minipublics is strong, rather than “moderately attractive”, indeed, surprisingly strong considering how radical this idea is. Furthermore, the difference between advisory bodies and bodies with decision making powers is far from dramatic. These findings, including the finding that Scandinavians are less supportive of citizen assemblies, are very much in line with the findings of previous surveys on the same topic, both in the abstract and in the specific high profile case of the French citizen convention for the climate.

The paper ends with an unavoidable self-congratulatory and condescending comment about how

future research on public views on minipublics also needs to look beyond wealthy, established and liberal democracies and include minipublics in the Global South, [where,] given the manifold failures of existing representative institutions including clear as well as symbolic separations between political authorities and citizens, the demand for a (partial) replacement of legacy institutions by “citizens like me” might be stronger.

Filed under: Academia, Deliberation, Sortition |