Abstract
We study the development of democratic attitudes and civic
virtues in a deliberative mini-public (DMP). By democratic attitudes, we refer to support for different forms of democratic participation, such as taking part in a DMP, giving feedback to public service providers, or voting in a local referendum. By civic virtues, we refer to important skills for political participation, such as political knowledge, political effcacy, political trust, and preparedness for collective action. We contribute to the existing literature
by introducing results from a controlled experiment in which citizens were
randomly assigned into Citizens only or Mixed discussion groups, enabling
to draw conclusions on the impacts of mixed-member deliberation. Our results show that among all participants, support for deliberative democracy,
user democracy, and external political effcacy increased. Internal political
effcacy increased when the item was formulated to concern local democracy. An important conclusion from including politicians in DMPs is that we
did not see a more positive development of civic virtues in the groups with
only citizen participants. Therefore, we can conclude that from a civic virtue
perspective, the involvement of politicians in a mini-public has no negative
impact
virtues in a deliberative mini-public (DMP). By democratic attitudes, we refer to support for different forms of democratic participation, such as taking part in a DMP, giving feedback to public service providers, or voting in a local referendum. By civic virtues, we refer to important skills for political participation, such as political knowledge, political effcacy, political trust, and preparedness for collective action. We contribute to the existing literature
by introducing results from a controlled experiment in which citizens were
randomly assigned into Citizens only or Mixed discussion groups, enabling
to draw conclusions on the impacts of mixed-member deliberation. Our results show that among all participants, support for deliberative democracy,
user democracy, and external political effcacy increased. Internal political
effcacy increased when the item was formulated to concern local democracy. An important conclusion from including politicians in DMPs is that we
did not see a more positive development of civic virtues in the groups with
only citizen participants. Therefore, we can conclude that from a civic virtue
perspective, the involvement of politicians in a mini-public has no negative
impact
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Citizen Participation in Sustainable Urban Development |
| Subtitle of host publication | A Framework for Engagement from the Nordics |
| Editors | Tuomas Ahola, Nina Tura, Ville Ojanen, Agnar Johansen |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Chapter | 10 |
| Pages | 144-158 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781003463443 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781032732787, 9781032730271 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2025 |
| MoE publication type | A3 Part of a book or another research book |
Keywords
- Deliberation
- Deliberative mini-public
- experimental design
- Survey
- Turku
- civic virtues
- Democracy
