Citizen Representatives: How Public Perceptions of Mini-Public Participants in Northern Ireland Explain Attitudes Towards Citizen Involvement in Politics

Deliberative mini-publics bring together a diverse sample of the population to take evidence on a particular political issue, discuss it with one another, and make a collective recommendation. There is much empirical evidence to document what happens within this type of democratic innovation: the effects of information and deliberation prompt many participants to revise their initial opinions, and participants tend to evaluate their experience of the process very positively. Much less is known about the attitudes of non-participants, i.e. the wider public. Why would people perceive a mini-public to be a legitimate part of political decision-making if they themselves were not involved in the process? We hypothesise that part of the answer lies in how they perceive the participants: the more non-participants perceive participants to be ‘like them’, the more legitimate they perceive the process. We test this argument using cross-sectional survey evidence from Northern Ireland, where a deliberative mini-public considered the contentious issue of the region’s constitutional future. In our analysis we control for relevant contextual factors, such as outcome favourability and ethno-national identity. With a rise in the number of mini-publics, the results of this study will shed light on their capacity to represent diverse societies. The findings will have implications for the future design of mini-publics, particularly those considering polarising issues in deeply divided places.