Politicians' perceptions of deliberative citizen engagement

This project fills an existing knowledge gap in Australia by investigating what shapes elected officials' views on adopting deliberative citizen engagement within representative institutions. There is a pressing need to understand the political supply and demand for institutional innovations that build adaptive capacity while rebuilding public trust. Yet there is currently no Australian evidence base on elected officials’ perceptions of deliberative processes.

The project will design and administer an elite survey of attitudes to deliberative engagement held by federal and state sitting MPs, and candidates in the most recent election. Tasks include literature review of best practice methodology and comparative data, comprehensive database building of contact emails, questionnaire design, ethics application, implementation of multi-step response rate strategy, analysis of results, and dissemination of findings in academic and impact-related outputs.