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Abstract
This article studies citizens’ support for deliberative democracy in Belgium. It examines it, first, from the perspective of Belgian citizens in general. In a second step, it looks specifically at the attitudes of citizens from four disadvantaged groups (women, lower educated citizens, citizens with precarious job conditions and younger citizens). Regarding these groups we want to see whether they show different levels of support for deliberative democracy than the rest of the population and if their attitudes are driven by the same factors as for citizens from more advantaged groups. Regarding the general population, the main finding is that support for deliberative democracy is driven by negative attitudes towards elected politicians but mainly by positive attitudes regarding the political competence of fellow citizens. Regarding disadvantaged groups, we see first that women and younger citizens show higher levels of support than the rest of the population. Second, when it comes to the factors driving support for deliberative democracy within these disadvantaged groups, it appears that they are similar to the rest of the population except when it comes to political interest. Being more interested in politics is a determinant to be in favour of deliberative democracy for citizens from disadvantaged groups.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 There is also quite some literature on ethnic minorities. Yet, unfortunately, the sample of the 2019 Belgian Election Study does not include a question that allows to identify respondents from ethnic minorities to run analyses on them in this article.
2 Nevertheless, the deliberative processes (with randomly selected participants) are less current in the Dutch speaking community (Vrydagh et al. Citation2020; Rangoni, Bedock, and Talukder Citation2021).
3 Stefaan Walgrave (PI – University of Antwerp), Pierre Baudewyns (UC Louvain), Karen Celis (VUB), Kris Deschouwer (VUB), Sofie Marien (KU Leuven), Jean-Benoit Pilet (ULB), Benoît Rihoux (UC Louvain), Emilie van Haute (ULB), Virgine van Ingelgom (UC Louvain).
4 We use political interest as an indicator for citizens’ political engagement. A supplementary indicator related to internal political efficacy would have been better but we are unable to make the use of it due to data constraint.
5 The two categories are considered as member of one group as they tend to be disadvantaged. On one hand unskilled workers tend to have difficult working conditions and lower wages in average. On the other hand unemployed citizens are excluded from the labour market and it might be a de-socializing experience (Paugam Citation2006). Further, Bègue (Citation2007) find similarities between unemployed citizens and unskilled workers regarding political attitudes.
6 The detailed regression table is available in Appendix 2.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
David Talukder
David Talukder is a PhD candidate at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He works within the research project “Reforming Representative Democracy” and write a dissertation about the political representation of disadvantaged groups and their support for reforms. His main research interests are democratic innovation, political representation, and democratic reforms.
Jean-Benoit Pilet
Jean-Benoit Pilet is a professor of political science at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He works on elections, political parties, and democratic reforms. He has recently co-authored Faces on the Ballot. The Personalization of Electoral Systems in Europe (OUP, 2016, with Alan Renwick) and The Politics of Party Leadership (OUP, 2016, with William Cross). He is currently the Principal Investigator of the project POLITICIZE (ERC Consolidator Grant) that examines citizens attitudes towards democratic innovations as well as technocratic governments.