Ideological and affective polarization and support for deliberative mini-publics

Many Western European democracies are facing increasing ideological and affective polarization. In discussing politics, citizens not only disagree on particular issues, but they also tend to hold favourable attitudes towards like-minded people and antagonistic attitudes towards people with opposing political identities (e.g. Reiljan, 2020). Meanwhile, deliberative democratic innovations, like deliberative mini-publics (DMPs), are proposed to increase citizen participation and enhance deliberation between citizens, and they are presented as a potential solution to polarization in society. As the core feature of DMPs is to enhance dialogue among citizens with opposing views and eventually find consensus on the issue, deliberative democracy may alleviate polarization by improving mutual understanding and empathy among participants (Grönlund et al., 2017; Fishkin et al., 2021; Levendusky & Stecula, 2021; Luskin et al., 2014). Only a few recent studies have focused on polarization in society as a whole and found that in Northern-Ireland, a deeply divided country, DMPs are supported less among people with stronger ideological views (Garry et al., 2022) and are perceived slightly less legitimate among people who are more ideologically and affectively polarized (Van Dijk et al., 2023). In this study, I further explore the relationship between polarization and attitudes towards DMPs among the wider public. The central research question of this study reads: To what extent does ideological and affective polarization on immigration, climate change, poverty and housing policies relate to support and willingness to participate in deliberative mini-publics on these issues, and to what extent do these relationships depend on the issue (having a majority opinion and perceived issue salience)? To answer this research question, I make use of original survey data collected among the Dutch adult population in 2023. All respondents were asked about their support for and willingness to participate in a DMP on each of the issues, their ideological positions on these issues, feelings toward people with opposing views on these issues, whether they perceive themselves to belong to the majority on these issues and which issue they consider most important. The dataset is constructed in a long format with each case representing an issue nested within an individual, and consist of 14,714 observations from 3,976 individuals. Estimating fixed- and between-effects enables me to test to what extent these effects are dependent on the issue at hand. First results show that ideologically polarized citizens are more supportive of DMPs, whereas affectively polarized citizens are less supportive. People with more extreme attitudes may support the instrument as an alternative to conventional decision-making processes that are perceived less responsive to their opinions, whereas affectively polarized citizens may not support the consensus-seeking design of DMPs. Willingness to participate is higher among both ideological and affectively polarized citizens, possibly because they wish to prevent political outgroups from having a bigger say and to potentially convince people with opposing views. These effects are weaker when one perceives themselves to belong to a majority (as getting the preferred policies does not depend on their individual presence), and are stronger when they attach salience to the issue.