Attitudes of Icelandic Political Parties towards Direct and Deliberative Democracy

One empirical puzzle that animates the contemporary debates in democratic reform is whether political parties hold conservative views towards representative democracy or believe citizens should be engaged more in decision-making. Political parties remain the key actors when it comes to democratic reform because they can be either facilitators or gate-keepers. Existing research shows that opposition, left-wing and sometimes populist parties are open to use models of direct or deliberative democracy. All this research assumes that political parties are monolithic organisations that want the same thing. However, this has not been explored empirically. This paper addresses this and has a twofold goal: to understand if political parties have consistent attitudes towards direct and deliberative democracy and to explain the sources of that variation. It focuses on the parliamentary parties in Iceland, a country selected for its use of direct democracy and deliberation in the last decade. It uses party manifestos, parliamentary speeches and 25 semi-structured interviews conducted with MPs in 2021. The interviews also cover all the party leaders of the eight parliamentary parties.