Deliberative participation and personality: the effect of traits, situations, and motivation

Abstract

liberative democracy publicly available in advance of publication in journals and books. The series aims to present new research that makes original, high-quality contributions to the theory and practice of deliberative democracy informed by recent literature in the field.For further information see: ABSTRACTInclusiveness is essential to deliberative democracy, but willingness to participate in deliberation is not well understood. In the case of deliberative minipublics, which seek to achieve deliberation among a representative selection of citizens, representation is viewed in terms of demographic or positional features. Thus far, research has focused on political, social and attitudinal variation among willing deliberative participants. The role of personality in willingness to participate is likely to be important for deliberation, as it has been demonstrated in other areas of political participation to explain a good deal of variation, as well as being a pre-cursor to many of the attitudinal variables the deliberative scholars have used in other studies. The role of personality has been explored by a number of deliberative scholars, but only partially, and based on an incomplete model. I contribute to this research by examining how personality traits in interaction with situational features influence patterns of deliberative participation. Situations mediate the impact of personality traits, which is visible in the stated motivations that citizens provide for accepting/declining an invitation to deliberate. Drawing on data from a field experiment -involving a three-day deliberative minipublic in Sweden on the topic of begging by internal EU migrants -I examine the simultaneous impact of vital features of the situation and personality traits in interaction.The main finding confirms the relevance of personality as a predictor of who is willing to participate in deliberation and also how the impact of personality is both situation dependent and related to explicit motivations to participate.

Deliberative Civic Culture: Assessing the Prevalence of Deliberative Conversational Norms

“…The personality trait Agreeableness (being kind, sympathetic and happy to help) is positively associated to the item aimed to capture embracing the value of also listening to persons who show strong emotions and at the same time are negatively associated with the value that one should try to convince others of one’s opinions and that politics is about winning. These obtained relationships are all to be expected given the general characteristic of an agreeable person (Jennstål, 2018). All in all, these expected associations confirm that our items aimed at capturing deliberative civic values are interpreted by respondents in expected ways.…”

“…However, a recent study in a Swedish context demonstrates that the personality traits of extraversion, openness and emotional stability are positively related to citizens’ willingness to participate in deliberation (Jennstål, 2018). As values, attitudes and habits belong to the same mid-level unit of personality it seems reasonable to expect that those citizens who express willingness to participate in deliberation – and thus have a positive attitude to deliberative practices and/or developed a habit of participating – are also more likely to embrace deliberative values.…”

The Role and the Future of Deliberative Mini-publics: A Citizen Perspective

“…The two cases were located in Belgium, where deliberative and participatory processes have recently been implemented. But as suggested by Julia Jennstål (2018), the perception of mini-publics and their place in the broader political system may vary across different situations. This should invite other researchers to develop similar research design to observe whether the citizens’ expectations towards deliberative processes do differ in other contexts, including in countries with a longer tradition of citizen involvement in decision-making.…”

Deliberation and Complexity of Thinking. Using the Integrative Complexity Scale to Assess the Deliberative Quality of Minipublics

“…Sanders ), and ideology and personality factors have been shown to influence individuals’ deliberative engagement (Gastil et al. ; Jennstål ). These individual‐level variables have implications in terms of both the transformative potential of deliberation and the likelihood of achieving a deliberative context, thereby contributing to theorising about features of the deliberative citizen and the conditions under which they are realised, which is critical for progress in the field of deliberative research (Gerber et al.…”

“…To be sure, in addition to context there are a number of individual‐level characteristics that have been shown to affect the development of complexity of thinking (Suedfeld ) as well as deliberative norm compliance (Gerber et al. ; Jennstål ). Given that IC proves fruitful as a tool to assess deliberative quality, it could potentially also provide insights on citizens’ deliberative skills and capacities.…”