Support for Deliberative mini-Publics among the Losers of Representative Democracy

Abstract

The literature on deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) establishes a link between political dissatisfaction and support for DMPs. However, little is known about the sources of political dissatisfaction that trigger this support. Our research tackles this specific question and claims that citizen dissatisfaction is rooted in a position of ‘losers of representative democracy’, which leads citizens to be more open to reforms that move away from the representative model. Building on the literature on loser's consent, we focus on the effect of voting for a party not associated with the government and of descriptive and substantive (under)-representation in support of DMPs. We rely on a comparative survey conducted across fifteen Western European countries. Supporters of opposition parties and those who are badly represented, both descriptively and substantively, are more supportive of DMPs. These findings have important implications for understanding the public appeal for deliberative democracy instruments.

Affluence and Preferences for Democratic Representation: The Case of German Citizens and Legislators.

“…For measuring wealth, selfplacements proved suitable to overcome measurement obstacles concerning affluent citizens and legislators, who tend to consider concrete figures about their wealth as sensitive information and, thus, feature disproportionate survey-and items-nonresponse rate in this regard (Johansson-Tormod and Klevmarken 2022). This makes wealth-self-placement a viable tool for facilitating further research studying political elites and comparing them to citizens.Third, with these results, we contribute to the literature on process preferences and corroborate recent findings that process preferences are not only normatively grounded but have an instrumental dimension as well (e.g Pilet et al 2023;Bedock and Panel 2017;Ceka and Magalhães 2020;Werner and Marien 2020;Talukder and Pilet 2021;Bryan 2023)…”

“…If affluent people intend to protect their wealth, they may reject such democratic reforms, since they increase the likelihood for demands for redistribution (Ceka and Magalhães 2020). In line with this, recent studies point to differences in process preferences between disadvantaged and advantaged groups (Bedock and Panel 2017;Bedock and Pilet 2020;Bengtsson and Mattila 2009;Pilet et al 2023;Traber et al 2021). However, the effects of affluence have been rarely considered within this research.…”