Who supports deliberative mini-publics in a context of direct democracy? The role of trust and dissatisfaction
基于瑞士3700名受访者的联合实验，研究发现公民普遍支持审议式微型公众，但不愿其取代现有直接民主制度；对同胞的信任和对直接民主的不满会增强替代意愿。
Existing research on public perceptions of deliberative mini-publics focuses on contexts of representative democracy. We present the first study that explores citizen support for deliberative mini-publics in a polity characterised by extensive direct democracy, where citizen participation is already substantive and frequent. Empirically, we draw on a population survey featuring a conjoint experiment with 3700 respondents conducted in early 2023 in Switzerland, after the holding of three deliberative mini-publics on climate policy. We find that citizens generally have positive views of deliberative mini-publics, but that they do not want them to replace existing direct democratic institutions. Factors associated with citizen support for replacing existing institutions by deliberative mini-publics are trust in fellow citizens and dissatisfaction with direct democracy in both normative and instrumental terms. Regarding design features, we found that citizens prefer deliberative mini-publics that delve into salient topics and have unconstrained modes of participation as well as time-efficient formats, but that do not make binding decisions. Financial compensations to deliberative mini-public participants had no effect on citizens’ preferences. Citizens were sceptical, moreover, about sortition as a recruitment procedure for the deliberating group. Points for practitioners Deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) are participatory designs in which a group of randomly chosen citizens deliberates on policy issues and formulates recommendations. Our study shows that citizens generally find DMPs an attractive participatory format, even though random selection of participants is not (yet) well understood. And although citizens are sceptical about handing power directly to DMPs, they want them to have real influence in the policy process.