Which public for the mini-publics? Ideological differences in elite preferences regarding deliberative mini-public design features

In recent years, public authorities have boosted deliberative procedures to engage citizens in shaping public policies. While there is an important body of theoretical and empirical research on citizens' perspectives regarding these procedures, less is known about the complexities of the preferences of political representatives. As part of the ‘EUComMeet’ project, we conducted a conjoint experiment to understand how specific features of a deliberative mini-public influence the willingness of political representatives to adopt them at both local and EU levels. In this paper we will build upon the results of the initial design of the experiment (pre-registered in As Predicted, ref. #120365), included in the pilot web survey of the study conducted in Spain in the first quarter of 2022. The overall results of the experiment, which involved 340 representatives from various legislative bodies across all administrative levels, showed that Spanish politicians prefer mini-publics focusing on specific issues aligning with their political agenda and involving individual citizens, but also associations and other interest representation organizations. On the contrary, characteristics aimed at empowering citizenry within these procedures, such as excluding politicians from participation or making recommendations binding, significantly decrease the likelihood of adoption. We further explore the experiment's findings to investigate potential variations in preferences among political representatives with different political alignments. To do so, we coded the party ideology of political representatives using data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES). The analysis of the differences between subgroups (dichotomized between left and right) shows that the preferences of political representatives from left-wing and right-wing parties align across most experimental attributes. However, substantial differences emerge regarding the scale and composition of the public in these deliberative events. Representatives of right-leaning parties prefer smaller groups involving highly educated individuals compared to their left-wing counterparts. In contrast, left-wing representatives exhibit a stronger inclination towards larger groups and including minority groups traditionally underrepresented in such forums. These findings suggest that right-wing politicians tend to favour a more confined and technocratic approach to participation, whereas left-wing politicians demonstrate a broader and more inclusive perspective. This aligns with prior evidence indicating that local governments led by left-wing parties tend to foster more extensive participatory procedures engaging diverse audiences compared to right-wing administrations. An intriguing finding worth deeper consideration is the role of politicians' presence among event participants. Right-wing representatives seem unaffected by this factor. Conversely, for left-wing representatives, the inclusion of politicians significantly enhances the likelihood of adopting these mini-public events at both local and EU levels, while their absence significantly hampers it.