Fit to Govern? Voters’ and Elites' Perceptions on Citizens’ Ability to Produce Reasonable Outcomes via Deliberative Review: Evidence from Finland

The malaise of Western democracy has called into question elites’ ability to represent citizens. Democratic innovations, like deliberative citizen initiative reviews, have been proposed as a cure. Before deliberative institutions can emerge and institutionalize, demand and supply for them must develop and meet. To build demand, voters must first trust their capacity to make decisions that are good for them. In order to provide supply, i.e. to make decisions to erect deliberative bodies, elites must trust voters’ ability to govern themselves. To probe the conditions for more participatory democracy in Finland, this research note utilizes two new survey data sets to examine voters’ (n=1500) and elite’s (n=675) perceptions on trust they would place on a deliberative citizen body’s capacity to produce meaningful results. The study finds that while voters’ self-assessment clearly provides grounds for demanding more inclusion in decision-making, the elite is highly skeptical of voters’ capacity for self-government. The result indicates that a dangerous gulf is forming between self-assured elites that try to manage growing complexity and politically estranged masses that demand more inclusive societal participation.