Through the Looking Glass: The Effect of Participation in a Participatory Budget on Citizens’ Populist Attitudes

Many citizens feel excluded from political decision-making, which in their eyes is dominated by an unresponsive political elite. Citizens with high populist attitudes yearn for more popular control and for ‘the people’ to be included in the political process. Democratic scholars have posed that innovative processes that include and empower citizens can curb such populist sentiments. Participatory budgeting events (PBs) should be particularly suited to address populist demands due to the fact that they are focused on giving citizens actual influence on policy-making. Several studies have looked at the effect of participation in a democratic innovation on political attitudes such as democratic satisfaction, trust in parliament, and external political efficacy. However, so far no study has examined the effect of participation in a democratic innovation on populist attitudes. This study will fill that gap. It empirically assesses if and to what extent participation in a PB has an effect on populist attitudes, and whether citizens with high populist attitudes are affected differently than citizens with low populist attitudes. In doing so, we test the claims of democratic scholars regarding the potential of democratic innovations to decrease populist sentiments, as well as contribute to the existing empirical knowledge regarding the effects of participation in democratic innovations on citizens‘ political attitudes. For our analysis we use survey data on participants to four local PB events in the Netherlands before and after participation. We conduct a statistical analysis to estimate the extent and direction of the effect of participation in a PB event on citizens’ populist attitudes.