Should you choose to accept it. Examining the effects of normative, relational and instrumental considerations on outcome acceptance among populist individuals

Many citizens no longer believe in the legitimacy of representative democratic institutions. Especially so-called populist citizens are highly skeptical of representative politics. Some scholars propose that participation in deliberation will reconcile populist citizens with representative democracy. Yet so far we do not know how populist citizens react when they are involved in deliberative events. Several studies have found that populist citizens support deliberation as a (more) legitimate means of decision-making. However, these studies shed no light on how populist individuals experience the process and what their attitude is towards the outcome. This paper seeks to fill this gap by studying the legitimacy perceptions of (non-)populist participants to three participatory budgeting events in the Netherlands, each of which included a sizable deliberative component. We focus on a crucial component of legitimacy perceptions: outcome acceptance. This has been found to depend on either instrumental, relational or normative considerations. In addition to studying the individual effects of these considerations on outcome acceptance, this paper analyses the interaction between the three. This is particularly relevant when studying populist individuals since their normative framework is very likely to influence the belief that one’s opinion is heard and respected, and to influence how one assesses the likelihood of getting what one wants. This paper thus seeks to establish (1) the level of outcome acceptance among populist participants to participatory budgeting events compared to non-populists, (2) whether decision acceptance among populist participants is driven by instrumental, relational or normative considerations, and (3) whether there is an interaction between the three considerations. In doing so this paper sheds light on the mechanisms that determine perceptions of legitimacy in those individuals that are most sceptical of representative democratic institutions. In this paper we take a mixed-methods approach: we use survey data on participants in three participatory budgeting events in the Netherlands: Duiven, Maastricht and Amsterdam. We further probe the causal mechanism by including an analysis of semi-structured interviews with (non-)populist participants to the three participatory budgeting events.