The Estonian Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) was initiated as a direct consequence of a legitimacy crisis of Estonian political parties. The spark igniting this crisis was the unravelling of a scheme of illegal party financing. The government’s response took the form of a democratic innovation drawing on public crowd sourcing and deliberative mini-publics. This study is conducted on the basis of a broad survey among the participants in the ECA (n=847). The focus is on the relationship between citizen participation and political trust and is guided by two research questions: (1) How has participants vertical and horizontal trust developed in relation to their participation in the ECA?; (2) What factors explain variations among participants? While existing research questions whether citizens engagement in democratic innovations increases trust, participatory processes alike the ECA are continually being initiated with the explicit aim of impeding developments of growing public distrust in governmental institutions.
