https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0308-7933
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ABSTRACT
Citizens are being increasingly called upon to participate in climate change policymaking. Citizen assemblies have been proposed as a viable and effective way of boosting public support for ambitious climate policies. This study examines the varying effects of climate change communication on citizen support for the speaker’s policy proposals, in the framework of the most consequential citizen-centred experimentation in environmental policymaking to date – the Irish Citizens’ Assembly. Drawing on the six-principle framework for authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we test whether effective communication contributes to explaining outcomes of deliberation on climate change. Methodologically, we take a set-theoretic approach, using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to operationalise conditions and analyse the data. Our findings show that effective communication does explain why certain policy proposals were adopted by the Irish Citizens’ Assembly over others, in conjunction with other conditions, such as having a high proportion of proposals being repeated by other speakers.
Key policy insights
Citizen assemblies and other deliberative fora can boost public support and provide legitimacy for ambitious climate policy. The information presented to participants in such fora has an effect upon engagement with, and support for, policy proposals.
It is not climate change information per se, but how it is communicated that matters for participants’ uptake of ambitious climate measures. Speakers who communicate effectively see greater uptake of their policy proposals.
Differences exist in the paths to success for expert and non-expert speakers. While the former were successful when they presented a high number of proposals, the latter were successful when they presented a simple, unique message.
Organisers of citizens’ assemblies should encourage the participation of such non-expert speakers who can connect with audiences on ‘real-life’ climate action.
Acknowledgements
Previous versions of this paper were presented at Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) General Conference 2019 and at the conference ‘Democratic Renewal in Times of Polarization’ in Leuven (Belgium) (September, 2019). The authors would like to thank the participants of these conferences for their valuable comments; and David Farrell and Jane Suiter for the opportunity to observe the Irish Citizens’ Assembly meetings during the climate change weekends. We are also grateful for the many helpful suggestions we received when presenting an earlier draft at the LINES session. Many thanks to Bart, Gill, and Malek for their assistance with coding. Finally, we thank Ine Goovaerts for her help on questions related to intercoder reliability. Lala Muradova acknowledges funding from the Research Foundation – Flanders (Belgium) (FWO, grant n° G075615 N). Hayley Walker acknowledges funding from F.N.S. – FNRS (Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 In practice, there was a large turnover in membership and several rounds of recruitment were implemented with an objective of filling the gaps of those who dropped out. There were in total 152 citizens recruited over the life of the Irish Citizens’ Assembly (15 months). 83 and 80 ICA members attended respectively the first and second weekend of climate change deliberations (see Farrell et al., Citation2019).
2 There are, of course, limits to expert information. It cannot per se resolve basic moral issues (Gutmann & Thompson, Citation2004; Brown, Citation2014); or unearth different perspectives and points of view that citizens from different walks of life may bring to the table. Expertise also needs to be subject to public scrutiny (Brown, Citation2014; Roberts et al., Citation2020).
3 More specifically, the percentage agreement for each item was the following: 100%, 75%, 75%, 50%, 92%, and 100%. More detailed information on the operationalisation of the handbook principles and the development of the coding system, as well as on alternative intercoder reliability measure (e.g. Cohen’s Kappa) can be found in Appendix A.
4 The direct method of calibration plots all scores onto a logistic function, around thresholds set by the researcher.
5 Refers to the cases that are covered by only this solution expression.
6 The expression EFF*∼REP*∼MALE may also fit this path: there were significantly fewer women speakers than men (only 6 of the 21 speakers were female), so effective female speakers may have been more easily able to stand out to the audience.
7 The objective of this reflective exercise conducted at the end of the deliberation weekends was “to allow the Members to make comments and suggestions” about the discussed topics and the assembly (see Citizens’ Assembly, Citation2018, p. 7).
8 Consistency measures how much the cases depart from a perfect subset relationship, basically taking into account cases where the solution term is present, but the outcome is absent. A higher score is better, with a minimum of 0.75 accepted. Proportional reduction in inconsistency (PRI) shows how much the solution belongs to the outcome and not the absence of the outcome. The closer this is to 0.5, the more it explains both (and thus the less useful it is as an explanation for a phenomenon). Coverage measures how much of the outcome the solution expression explains; again, higher scores are better. Deviant cases in consistency are cases that score >0.5 for the solution, but <0.5 for the outcome, and are best avoided (See also Schneider & Wagemann, Citation2012).