Description
Abstract of presentation: Political support is widely understood as essential to democratic resilience and ongoing legitimacy. Yet across advanced democracies, including Australia, trust in institutions and satisfaction with democracy are eroding. Deliberative citizen engagement is often championed as a response to this legitimacy crisis, but we know little about whether citizens actually support such innovations, especially from the Australian context. This paper addresses two key questions: To what extent do Australians support deliberative forms of citizen engagement, and does providing information about how deliberation operates increase that support? We address these questions using original evidence from a representative survey of 4,200 Australians, including a vignette experiment. Our design allows us to map the correlates of diffuse support for deliberation, while also testing whether exposure to information about a deliberative mini public in a parliamentary committee shifts specific support. The contributions of the article are threefold. First, we conceptualize support for deliberative engagement along an Eastonian spectrum from diffuse to specific. Second, we test theories of information updating and perceptual fluency that predict that increasing citizens’ familiarity with deliberation will induce more positive attitudes. Third, we provide the first systematic evidence from Australia, with implications for comparative debates on democratic innovation and the future of representative institutions.| Period | 16 Nov 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Democracy Reimagined: Advancing Democratic Resilience and Renewal |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | AustraliaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |