Decision Acceptance in Times of Participatory Political Decision-Making

Participatory arrangements have become more common in political decision-making. In particular, deliberative mini-publics have seen a strong increase all over the world (OECD, 2020). In these mini-publics, small groups of ordinary citizens are invited to discuss their opinions on a certain political issue and, based on these discussions, formulate policy recommendations. As a result of the increased use of these participatory processes, a fair share of situations emerge in which it is not possible for politicians for various reasons to follow recommendations of these processes. How do citizens react to these situations? There is limited support among the public and academics to authorize mini-publics to make binding political decisions (Goldberg & Bächtiger, 2021). At the same time, recent studies showed that ignoring mini-publics’ recommendations can harm legitimacy perceptions among citizens (Germann et al., 2021; Van Dijk & Lefevere, in press). How does the public react when a clash occurs between citizens’ recommendations and politicians’ decisions? Can politicians gain public acceptance for decisions which go against a mini-public’s recommendations? Drawing on studies within procedural fairness theory and political communication, we argue that politicians’ communication that signals consideration of mini-publics’ recommendations can mitigate the potential negative effects on citizens’ legitimacy perceptions that can result from not following the recommendations. The provision of public justifications, i.e. public explanations why certain decisions are taken, is one way to communicate consideration. Recent studies showed that justifications can indeed increase decision acceptance, even among the losers of the decision (de Fine Licht et al., 2021). To test our argument, we designed and preregistered two survey experiments in Belgium on the salient topics of climate and safety policy and manipulate how politicians engage with the mini-public recommendations. The findings will provide important insights into the interplay between different forms and practices of decision-making and the potential of justifications to alleviate potential negative effects following a clash between input of citizens and decisions of politicians. Moreover, studies connecting participatory processes to (elite communication in) the mass media are still very scarce yet it is a key venue via which citizens receive their political information. This study also contributes to filling this gap.