How do deliberative mini-publics shape perceived legitimacy of climate policies? A survey experiment

A growing body of empirical research shows that deliberative mini-publics can increase legitimacy beliefs and civic skills among the citizenry. Depending on their function in democratic decision-making, mini-publics can be used to facilitate considered opinion-formation among the public at large, or they can be coupled with representative decision-making. When particularly targeted to lay citizens, mini-publics may have major impacts on knowledge and perspective-taking among voters (Knobloch et al., 2019; Suiter et al., 2020; Setälä et al 2020). However, there are relatively few studies on the potential maxi-public impacts of advisory mini-publics coupled with representative decision-making. In this paper, we study whether mini-publics giving policy recommendations for governmental decision-making may affect perceptions of legitimacy and procedural fairness among the wider public. We study these effects with a population-based survey experiment. In particular, we are interested in how communication about different aspects of mini-publics affects perceived legitimacy. In our experimental treatments, we emphasize either the inclusion of different viewpoints or the quality of information and deliberation. In addition, we manipulate the ways in which the policy impact of the mini-public is communicated. Unlike in many experimental vignette studies, our manipulation is not artificial. It is based on a description of an actual mini-public, organized in Spring 2021, where randomly selected citizens deliberate on climate policy. Commissioned by the Ministry of the Environment, this mini-public is expected to influence the preparation of national Medium-Term Climate Change Policy Plan.