What citizens want from deliberative forms of participation: mapping legitimacy perceptions with an online survey and a preference experiment

公民从公民陪审团或小型公众等审议性参与形式中想要什么？公民参与的协商形式在过去几年中已经成为民主研究的前沿。它们的承诺是加强民主决策进程和政策结果的合法性。与此同时，批评者认为，公民参与的审议形式已经使公民失去了特权，缺乏决定性，也不影响公共话语。克里斯蒂娜·拉丰（Cristina Lafont）对协商参与形式提出了最根本的攻击：她认为，协商微型公共机构缺乏民主合法性，因为只有少数公民参与并做出决策，而不对不参与的公民民主负责。该项目询问不参与的公民是否真正感知到这种合法性问题。在第一步中，该项目评估公民是否对协商形式的参与有基本偏好。在第二步中，它分析了审议参与的设计标准-招聘，群体组成和规模，讨论格式，决策和授权-以及它们对非参与公民的合法性认知的影响（连同他们的偏好和期望）。总体而言，该项目评估公民是否以及在何种条件下将审议参与视为合法的治理形式。它提供了三个研究问题的答案：1。公民对协商性参与形式（需求）有哪些普遍偏好和期望？2.什么样的设计标准增强了后者（供应）的合法性？3.关于参与的审议形式及其设计标准的信息如何影响公民（知识）的合法性感知？这些研究问题将在德国的一项在线调查的基础上进行探索，并进行偏好实验（配对联合设计）。将向参与者介绍假设的审慎参与情景的描述，随机改变上述设计标准（招募，授权等）以及问题类型（高与低显着性）和结果的有利性。此外，参与者将被随机分配到两组：一组得到一个词汇表，以及关于审议参与的利弊和设计标准的信息;另一组只得到一个词汇表。该项目首次绘制了公民对审议参与形式的偏好和期望，并结合设计标准分析了他们的合法性认知。

What do citizens want from deliberative forms of participation, such as citizen juries or mini-publics? Deliberative forms of citizen participation have moved to the forefront of democracy research in past years. Their promise is to enhance to the legitimacy of democratic decision-making processes and policy outcomes. At the same time, critics have argued that deliberative forms of citizen participation privilege already advantaged citizens, lack decisiveness and do not affect public discourse. Cristina Lafont has provided the most fundamental attack on deliberative forms of participation: she argues that deliberative mini-publics lack democratic legitimacy since only few citizens participate and make decisions while not being democratically accountable to non-participating citizens.The project asks whether non-participating citizens actually perceive such a legitimacy problem. In a first step, the project evaluates whether citizens have a basic preference for deliberative forms of participation. In a second step, it analyses the design criteria of deliberative participation – recruitment, group composition and size, discussion format, decision-making and authorization – and their effects on legitimacy perceptions of non-participating citizens (in conjunction with their preferences and expectations). Overall, the project evaluates whether and under what conditions citizens view deliberative participation as a legitimate form of governance. It provides answers to three research questions:1. Which general preferences and expectations do citizens have for deliberative forms of participation (demand)?2. What design criteria enhance the legitimacy of the latter (supply)?3. How does information on deliberative forms of participation and its design criteria affect the legitimacy perceptions of citizens (knowledge)?These research questions will be explored on the basis of an online survey with a preference experiment (paired conjoint design) in Germany. Participants will be presented with descriptions of hypothetical deliberative participation scenarios, randomly varying the above-mentioned design criteria (recruitment, authorization etc) as well as issue type (high vs. low salience) and outcome favourability. Furthermore, participants will be randomly allocated to two groups: one group gets a glossary plus information on the pros and cons of deliberative participation and its design criteria; the other group only gets a glossary.The project is the first to map preferences and expectations of citizens vis-à-vis deliberative forms of participation as well as analysing their legitimacy perceptions in conjunction with design criteria.