For democracies to function, it is vital that the losers in democratic decisions play along and follow the rules to which they are opposed. Deliberative mini-publics have been argued to increase perceptions of democratic legitimacy and the acceptance of negative political decisions. However, whether and under what conditions mini-publics actually have these effects when they are added to existing democratic decision-making processes remains unclear. We ran a survey experiment in Ireland, one of the few countries with extensive experience with government-mandated mini-publics, to examine the polity-wide effects of mini-publics. We find that mini-publics significantly increase perceptions of fair decision-making and the acceptance of negative political decisions, even if mini-publics are followed by a referendum. However, these effects are limited to a scenario whereby the non-binding recommendations of mini-publics subsequently become law. If parliament or citizens in a referendum subsequently decide to ignore the mini-public’s recommendation, the addition of a mini-public to democratic decision-making has a smaller effect on fairness perceptions and no effect at all on the acceptance of negative political decisions. Overall, our results suggest that the potential of mini-publics to increase decision acceptance may be more limited than previously thought.
