Legitimate participation? The effect of a deliberative mini-public on the legitimacy of public decision-making

Public participation has become an increasingly important aspect of public decision-making. A means for organizing such participation that has recently drawn considerable attention, is the deliberative mini-public; a... [ view full abstract ]

Public participation has become an increasingly important aspect of public decision-making. A means for organizing such participation that has recently drawn considerable attention, is the deliberative mini-public; a democratic innovation that relies on sortition and deliberation to involve citizens more directly in the public decision-making process. While it is thought that deliberative mini-publics could be used to increase the legitimacy of public decision-making, there are few studies that put this to the test. Moreover, the few that do tend to define legitimacy exclusively in objective, normative terms. In this paper, we investigate the effect of a deliberative mini-public on the perceived legitimacy of public decision-making. We do so by means of a survey experiment. Our findings suggest that deliberative mini-publics are likely to improve the legitimacy of a public decision-making process – but not more so than other ways to organize public participation.