When citizens met politicians – the process and outcomes of mixed deliberation according to participant status and gender

Abstract

With deliberative democracy becoming increasingly incorporated into political processes, the instances of citizens and politicians meeting in deliberation, so-called mixed deliberations, is increasing too. While these are important steps towards more deliberative systems, the mixed deliberation setting nonetheless introduces certain risks regarding equality. Citizens and politicians have different deliberative capacities, which could affect the process of deliberation. Moreover, political inequalities such as gender gaps may be more evident in deliberations where politicians are present. This study focuses on a series of mixed deliberations in 2018 about a proposed municipal merger in Finland. Using content analysis of speech acts (N = 3404) as well as pre- and post-deliberation surveys (N = 225), we analyze patterns according to participant status (politician/citizen) and gender regarding dominance, deliberative discussion quality, and impact on internal and external efficacy. The findings show that politicians dominated the discussions and achieved a higher deliberative quality than citizens. The findings also revealed that women achieved higher deliberative quality in their speech acts.

KEYWORDS:

• Mixed deliberation
• equality
• dominance
• discussion quality
• efficacy
• gender
• status

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Academy of Finland [294411] and Högskolestiftelsen i Österbotten [OstroInvolve 2.0].

Notes on contributors

Kim Strandberg

Kim Strandberg is a professor of political science and political communication at Åbo Akademi University. His research concerns democratic innovations and especially deliberative innovations. His and his co-authors’ article about deliberation and polarization won the International Political Science Association’s 2020 Meisel-Laponce Award for the best article in the last four years.

Janne Berg

Janne Berg (Ph.D.) is a university lecturer (acting) at Åbo Akademi University. He has published several articles about participatory and deliberative democratic innovations. Methodologically, his expertise is in content analysis and experimental studies.

Thomas Karv

Thomas Karv (Ph.D.) is a junior post-doc researcher at Åbo Akademi University. His thesis concerned public trust for supra-national entities. He has also taken part in conducting experiments in deliberative democracy at the local level.

Kim Backström

Kim Backström is a doctoral student in political science at Åbo Akademi University who focuses on legitimacy and how it can be generated in various unfavorable contexts. He is an expert in content analysis using the discourse quality index and also familiar with survey data.