Unveiling the impact of a Citizens' Initiative Review statement: enhancing voter knowledge and truth-seeking behaviours

This study investigates the transformative effects of a Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR) statement on voter engagement in the canton of Aargau, Switzerland. It contributes to the understanding of deliberative mini-publics as trusted information proxies towards the broader citizenry to overcome shortcomings of democratic citizenship. The CIR involved 21 randomly selected citizens to assess and scrutinize first hand information about a cantonal popular initiative on climate protection. The CIR statement, consisting of 8 general information about the initiative as well as three pro and three con arguments, has been distributed to more than 13'000 households in two municipalities before the cantonal vote. The effects of the CIR statement were analysed against two control municipalities for their influence on voter information processing, issue understanding and argument-based voting. Results firstly indicate that reading the citizen statement increases factual knowledge of the initiative and even outperforms the official information booklet by the public authorities. Secondly, reading the CIR statement promotes an accuracy-seeking function, demonstrated by the fact that reading the CIR statement decreases the influence of partisan cues on issue knowledge. These findings support the normative concept of deliberative mini-publics as shortcuts to knowledge and promoters of systemic truth-seeking behaviours.