The development of civic virtues and perceptions of democratic governance in a citizens’ panel: Does the presence of politicians make a difference?

A deliberative mini-public engages a group of citizens, recruited from a random sample, to deliberate in facilitated small groups on given policy topic(s). Mini-public participants receive information and hear experts on the topic(s) before deliberations. Rather robust evidence shows that taking part in a mini-public influences participants’ opinions, issue knowledge and civic virtues. Much less is known about connecting mini-publics to the representative system. Theorists have put forward mechanisms to enhance this linkage, one of which is involving politicians in mini-publics. However, the presence of politicians can also bring about negative impacts because politicians can dominate discussions with their expertise on the topic and experience on political argumentation. We designed an experiment to test how the presence of politicians influences mini-public deliberations. We organized an online mini-public together with the city of Turku, Finland, in which participants deliberated on transport planning. Citizen participants (n=171) were recruited from a random sample and were mailed an information leaflet before deliberations. In the deliberation event, participants discussed in facilitated small groups (n=21) and filled out pre and post deliberation surveys. Involving politicians in mini-publics was studied with an experimental intervention: in half of the groups, local council members (two per group) took part, whereas in the other half citizens deliberated among themselves. We have elsewhere analyzed opinion transformations and learning and thereby know that both took place. Here we ask whether the involvement of politicians changed citizen participants’ perceptions of democratic governance and their ‘civic virtues’, such as political efficacy and trust in political institutions. This is important because it seems possible that the presence of politicians would undermine some of the positive consequences otherwise typical to deliberative mini-publics. According to our results, the presence of politicians did not influence the development of citizen participants’ civic virtues due to participation, but interestingly, we did observe that those citizens who deliberated together with politicians had more positive opinions on certain institutions of representative democracy compared to citizens who deliberated with other citizens. This result suggests that contacts to politicians in the supportive conditions of a mini-public can promote positive opinions on representative democracy, but in so doing also decrease the potential of mini-public deliberation to train critical citizens.