Comparing the impact of the citizens’ assembly on climate in Luxembourg on participants and non-participants.

Can deliberative democratic innovations like mini-publics reach their normative promises? This is a crucial and perennial concern for political scientists and policy makers, especially in a context of democratic malaise. A recent meta-analysis of the literature has suggested that the answer might be positive, though emphasizing that the empirical evidence remains small given the little number of studies on the topic (van der Does and Jacquet, 2021). Moreover, empirical studies are strongly divided between those focusing on the impact on the participants and those who focus on impact for the larger public, with no existing attempt to consider both sides of the coin at the same time and connect both strands of research. This paper bridges this gap by using an original panel study of the participants and the non-participants to a deliberative mini-public on climate protection in Luxembourg. In 2022, the Government of Luxembourg has decided to set up the “Klima BiergerRot (KBR)”, which is a Citizens’ Assembly on Climate. It gathers 60 citizens to deliberate about recommendations formulated to the Government and the Parliament for meeting the objectives of Luxembourg for fighting climate change. For the paper, we are using two panel surveys (before/after the DMP, with the same questionnaire simultaneously administrated for both groups), one with all participants to the citizens’ assembly (N=100 maximum: 60 active participants, 40 substitute) and one with a representative sample of the population of Luxembourg (N=1500 minimum, TNS as provider). The analysis will then compare how being exposed to a deliberative mini-public has affected participants and non-participants’ attitudes towards deliberative democracy, about representative democracy, and about democracy more widely. In doing so, we aim to provide an original contribution on the larger debate whether democratic innovations can reach their normative hopes.