For better or for worse? A citizens’ perspective on the problem-solving potential of deliberative minipublics

In efforts to address widespread public dissatisfaction with representative practices, academics and practitioners alike increasingly direct their attention to participatory processes like deliberative minipublics. All too often, however, minipublics are presented as a magic, catch-all solution to every and all deficiencies of representative politics. Recent debates among political theorists have shifted away from understanding minipublics as a catch-all solution to the ills of democracy but rather as a tool that can address specific problems in the democratic system. We argue also that citizens approach participatory process in such a problem-oriented manner. In this study, we add to the literature adopting a bottom-up approach and aim to unravel whether and how citizens think deliberative minipublics can improve or impair the status quo of representative politics. This, we argue, is essential: deliberative minipublics can only solve problems if citizens consider them to perform better than representative practices on areas they are dissatisfied about. We develop a pragmatic, problem-based approach to understanding citizens’ outlook on deliberative minipublics by looking into three perceived problem areas in representative politics (policies, process, people). We collect novel survey data from Belgium (n = 2,000) in the Spring of 2021. This allows us to investigate if and in what ways minipublics can or cannot – in citizens’ eyes – address pressing problems with contemporary politics.