The Populist Maxi-Public Does Not Accept It. The Effect of Populist Attitudes on Outcome Acceptance in Three Cases of Participatory Budgeting

While recent studies have found that populist citizens who participate tend to be very positive about the experience and see their populist attitudes reduced. However, we do not know how populist attitudes affect reactions to the outcomes of (actual cases of) democratic innovations among the maxi-public. To address this gap, we collect novel data on a probability sample of the population in three Dutch cases where actual participatory budgeting took place. Theoretically there are reasons to be more skeptical of the positive effect of populism. Indeed, populist attitudes may reduce the perceived procedural fairness of the democratic innovation. On the other hand, populist attitudes may have a positive effect on the perception that the participants are representative, which in turn may have a positive effect on outcome acceptance. Empirically, using a mediation analysis (SEM) we find that the direct effect of populist attitudes is negative, but that populist attitudes have an indirect positive effect via perceived procedural fairness and being more likely to perceive the participants as representative. The total effect of populist attitudes is still negative, but the negative effect of populist attitudes is thus partially reduced in indirect ways. Comparing the three cases, the analysis also shows that the effect is particularly pronounced in bigger cities. The paper’s results both contribute to the field of populism and the field of democratic innovations. Regarding the latter, it adds to the limited number of studies on (1) effects of democratic innovations on the maxi-public, (2) the limited number of studies examining outcome acceptance in real-life cases and (3) the limited number of studies studying reactions among the maxi-public to the results of participatory budgeting.