How do Citizens React to Democratic Innovations they were not Involved in?

Over the last decades, we have observed a multiplication of participatory reforms associating randomly selected citizens to policy making (citizens assemblies, mini-publics) aiming at revitalizing representative democracy (Grönlund, Bächtiger & Setälä 2014, Reuchamps & Suiter 2016). However, there is a paradox in attempting to cure the crisis of representative democracy through these mechanisms, as they are at odds with the principles of delegation and election which are the cornerstones of representative democracy. What if these reforms weaken representative democracy rather than revitalizing it? The goal of the paper we propose is to examine the link between the introduction of such participatory institutions and how citizens evaluate representative democracy. Contrary to most existing studies that have focused on the positive effects on the participants on political interest, political competence or support for democracy (Grönlund et al., 2010; Farrell et al., 2013: Fournier et al., 2011), we focus on how the general population, the vast majority of non-participants, receive such reforms. The paper will first build on existing data from two types of sources. First, we will combine several mass surveys available across Europe (France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands) and that have questioned large samples of citizens on their attitudes towards representative democracy and on their evaluation of participatory reforms. Quantitative date will then be combined with qualitative interviews recently conducted in France to capture how citizens articulate views on participatory mechanisms with attitudes towards representative democracy. The final goal of the paper is to discuss the best research design to study the impact of participatory democracy on how non-participating citizens do evaluate representative democracy. This proposal is part of a broader ERC project starting in September 2018 (PI: Jean-Benoit Pilet) entitled ‘Non-elected politics. Cure or curse for the crisis of representative democracy?’