Minipublics as a remedy for political dissatisfaction? Examining whether and how minipublics affect the perceived legitimacy of political actors, processes and outcomes

In response to widespread dissatisfaction with contemporary politics, recent years have seen an upsurge in the use of deliberative minipublics. It is, however, far from clear whether and how minipublics can address political dissatisfaction. To assess if minipublics can shoulder this task, it is crucial to look at what minipublics add to the existing representative system and how this change is perceived by the general public. In this paper, I put forward that minipublics introduce a fundamental shift in who is involved in decision-making by adding a small subset of ordinary citizens. This, I argue, could signify greater trust in the make-up of involved actors when minipublics are used – especially in these times wherein many people hold elected politicians in low regard. And if it does, I expect that such greater trust may, in turn, spill over into higher levels of perceived legitimacy of the decision-making process and its outcomes. To test these arguments, I will use pre-registered, original data from a cross-sectional survey (n = 1,789), a conjoint experiment and two survey experiments (fielded in Spring 2022) in Belgium. In doing so, this paper aims to provide novel insights into the role that minipublics can play in addressing political dissatisfaction among the public at large.