Where the grass is always greener : non-participants’ contingent legitimacy perceptions of deliberative citizens’ forums

Abstract

The study has two objectives. First, it contributes to the normative debate on the appropriateness of deliberative citizens' forums (DCFs) in political decision-making, arguing that they can be helpful tools (e.g., informational shortcuts) for (some) citizens. Second, it contributes to the empirical debate, aiming to understand citizens’ contingent preferences for DCFs. It is argued that legitimacy perceptions hinge on both object-related conditions (design- and issue characteristics) and subject-related conditions (familiarity of DCFs and heterogeneity within the citizenry). The study analyzes two conjoint experiments conducted with 231 university students (pilot study) and 2,039 respondents that are representative for the German population (main study). The results show that citizens in general are moderately supportive of DCFs. However, they want to give DCFs rather restricted (i.e. advisory) roles in political decision-making, but want them to be maximally representative and inclusive. In concrete, legitimacy perceptions appear to be higher when DCFs are vested with circumscribed authority and are closely tied to legacy institutions of the representative system. Furthermore, citizens want DCFs to provide inclusionary and internal “extra provisions”. Second, however, DCFs cannot be a general panacea to the “crisis of democracy”. Societies are increasingly heterogeneous and various types of citizens (e.g., disaffected, populist, enlightened, participatory, delegative, and confided citizens) have different expectations on the roles of DCFs in political decision-making. Ultimately, raising awareness of DCFs seems to be a serious challenge. The results show that legitimacy assessments of citizens change when they know “more” about DCFs.