Deliberation Beyond the Room: How Citizens’ Assemblies Influence Public Reasoning and Policy Support

In light of growing attention to the external effects of deliberative minipublics, scholars increasingly examine their potential to shape public opinion and foster broader public deliberation. This study contributes to this literature by investigating whether and how deliberative minipublics can influence political reasoning and policy support among the wider public. Drawing on the case of the Swiss Bevölkerungsrat 2025, we test whether exposure to real-world minipublic recommendations, accompanied by pro and con arguments, affects citizens’ support for specific policy proposals and their capacity for reasoned opinion formation. Using a pre-registered vignette-based survey experiment, we vary key contextual features, including the source of the recommendation (minipublic vs. parliament), the discursive setting (civil vs. uncivil), and the level of consensus behind the recommendations (strong vs. weak majority). This design enables us to assess whether and under which conditions citizen deliberation enhances receptiveness of contested policy recommendations and promotes more political reasoning in the public. In doing so, this study contributes to our understanding whether deliberative minipublics can enhance the deliberative quality of public opinion in an era of uncivil public discourse and political polarization.