Emanating Effects: The Impact of the Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Review on Voters’ Political Efficacy

Abstract

Deliberative processes can alter participants’ attitudes and behavior, but deliberative minipublics connected to macro-level discourse may also influence the attitudes of non-participants. We theorize that changes in political efficacy occur when non-participants become aware of a minipublic and utilize its deliberative outputs in their decision making during an election. Statewide survey data on the 2010 and 2012 Oregon Citizens’ Initiative Reviews tested the link between awareness and use of the Citizens’ Initiative Review Statements and statewide changes in internal and external political efficacy. Results from a longitudinal 2010 panel survey show that awareness of the Citizens’ Initiative Reviews increases respondents’ external efficacy, whereas use of the Citizens’ Initiative Review Statements on ballot measures increases respondents’ internal efficacy. A cross-sectional 2012 survey found the same associations. Moreover, the 2010 survey showed that greater exposure to—and confidence in—deliberative outputs was associated with higher levels of both internal and external efficacy.

Scaling up Deliberation: Testing the Potential of Mini‐Publics to Enhance the Deliberative Capacity of Citizens

“…To be of practical benefit for polities, minipublics must have impacts on the wider citizenry (Knobloch et al 2019: 2). In the absence of this impact, minipublics are faced with the challenges of scalability (Chambers 2009).…”

“…Prior research has studied how minipublics affect deliberating individuals’ values and attitudes by boosting the coherence of their policy attitudes, democratic legitimacy beliefs, political efficacy, complexity of thinking, the quality of political knowledge and judgements (Fishkin 2009; Grönlund et al 2010; Himmelroos and Christensen 2014; Jennstål 2019; Lindell et al 2017; Luskin et al 2002; Muradova 2020; Suiter et al 2016b). More recently, attention has turned to whether such effects scale to the wider citizenry (Boulianne 2018; Felicetti et al 2016; Ingham and Levin 2018; Knobloch et al 2019).…”

Deliberative Mini-publics Facilitating Voter Knowledge and Judgement: Experience from a Finnish Local Referendum

“…Reading the CIR statement seems to help voters make better informed and reflected decisions on ballot initiatives. A recent study by Knobloch et al (2019) finds that reading the CIR statement increases voters' political self-confidence, especially initiative-related efficacy. Moreover, the CIR seems actually facilitate critical judgement.…”

“…The aim of the jury is to provide reliable and relevant information in order to help voters make decisions on ballot initiatives. Previous studies (see, e.g., Már & Gastil, 2020;Knobloch, Barthel, & Gastil, 2019) have shown that a CIR offers some remedies to problems of popular votes by enhancing voters' knowledge and capacity of judgement.…”

It’s Not Just the Taking Part that Counts: ‘Like Me’ Perceptions Connect the Wider Public to Minipublics

“…This claim is not empirically supported by the limited number of studies that extend their scope to non-participants; that is, the broader public. Among this emerging body of research, a key finding is that minipublics can help to foster favourable attitudes towards the political system, even among those who do not themselves participate (Boulianne 2018;Knobloch et al 2020). However, while these studies make a helpful contribution to our understanding of the democracyenhancing function that minipublics serve, they do not provide a clear answer to a crucial question that is pertinent to Lafont's critique: why would non-participants trust minipublics and the outcomes recommended by their participants?…”