Have a little faith in deliberation? Examining the effect of participation in a citizens' assembly on populist attitudes

Scholars of democratic innovations have noted that deliberation has the potential to counteract challenges to contemporary democracy such as populism. However, so far we do not know what the theoretical foundation would be to expect such an effect, nor do we know to what extent the effect actually materializes empirically. This study adds to the literature by offering a theoretical framework to analyze the impact of deliberation on populism and by testing this framework empirically. Specifically, we examine to what extent citizens with a high degree of populist attitudes became less populist after participating in a deliberative event. We study an actual citizens’ assembly on a stronger climate mitigation policy in the Netherlands via pre- and post-surveys and carry out a SEM analysis (N=105). We find that citizens with a higher degree of populist attitudes do become less populist, but that this is probably not due to the (perceived quality of the) deliberation. We also find that citizens’ assemblies can actually increase populist attitudes: climate skeptics became more populist. We argue this is due to outcome favorability as they were immersed in a process that was designed to tackle climate change, a goal they disagreed with.