The right kind of participation? The effect of a deliberative mini-public on the perceived legitimacy of public decision-making

2019/10/07 by Daan Jacobs, Wesley Kaufmann · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Social Media and Politics #Public Policy and Administration Research #Law in Society and Culture #Legitimacy #Democratic legitimacy #Publics #Deliberative democracy #Political science #Process (computing) #Democracy #Public participation #Public relations #Deliberation #Selection (genetic algorithm) #Public administration #Public opinion #Law #Politics #Computer science

paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/14719037.2019.1668468

openalex publication_date 2019/10/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

Deliberative mini-publics have been put forward as a form of citizen participation that is particularly well suited to improve the legitimacy of public decision-making. Using a survey experiment, we find that the perceived legitimacy of a process that includes a deliberative mini-public is higher than a process in which citizens are not able to participate at all, but no higher than a process that includes a participation method that relies on self-selection. Our findings imply that deliberative mini-publics may not be the right instrument to repair the loss of legitimacy that many democratic institutions are thought to suffer.

Citations

• Putting the Public Back into Governance: The Challenges of Citizen Participation and Its Future
• Why Deliberate? The Encounter Between Deliberation and New Public Managers
• Conceptualizing Legitimacy, Measuring Legitimating Beliefs
• Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance
• Deepening Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance
• When Does Transparency Generate Legitimacy? Experimenting on a Context‐Bound Relationship
• Are innovative, participatory and deliberative procedures in policy making democratic and effective?
• On Legitimacy and Political Deliberation
• Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy and Legitimation
• Procedural Justice, Legitimacy, and the Effective Rule of Law
• What is Procedural Justice?: Criteria Used by Citizens to Assess the Fairness of Legal Procedures
• Mini-publics and Public Opinion: Two Survey-Based Experiments

Cited by

• Participatory democracy [wikipedia]

Related

• Connecting deliberative mini‐publics to representative decision making
• The optimal group size of deliberative mini‐publics: A divide in perceptions
• Deliberation by the People Themselves: Entry Points for the Public Voice
• Governance of deliberative mini-publics: emerging consensus and divergent views
• Mini-publics and Public Opinion: Two Survey-Based Experiments