How Should Political Decisions be Made? A cross-national investigation of citizens’ perceptions of alternative decision-making processes

The ongoing debate about the ‘democratic malaise’ that plagues western democracies has sparked scholarly interest in decision-making processes. Advocates of direct democracy claim that popular disaffection with government stems from a lack of involvement in these processes. Others, such as Hibbing and Theiss-Morse (2002), are more skeptical of claims that citizens desire greater involvement, arguing instead that citizens would rather leave the decisions to independent experts. The literature on citizens’ preferences for direct, representative and stealth democracy is expanding (Bengtsson and Mattila 2009; Coffé and Michels 2015; Font et al. 2015; Webb 2013; Wojcieszak 2014) however our knowledge of how ordinary citizens perceive political decision-making is limited. Are citizens able to form opinions on the kind of processes they want and what are the arguments they present? In a series of eighty-one focus groups conducted across nine countries (U.K., Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Argentina and Brazil) participants were asked whether they would support the idea of moving towards a system where citizens instead of elected politicians make important political decisions. All in all, the wealth of data obtained from these focus groups suggests that more careful consideration should be given to the measurement of decision-making preferences. Many citizens do not have well-informed or coherent views on how political decisions should be made.