What happens when mini-publics are held in a deeply divided place? Evidence from Northern Ireland

Jamie Pow; John Garry

doi:10.1017/S1049096523000409

What happens when mini-publics are held in a deeply divided place? Evidence from Northern Ireland

Jamie Pow^*, John Garry

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

A pessimistic view of the potential of deliberative mini-publics to effectively contribute to democratic decision making on highly contested issues in deeply divided places asserts that (1) deliberative quality would be low due to the bitterness prompted by discussion of divisive issues, and (2) levels of opinion change would be low given the stubbornly enduring nature of political attitudes in divided places. We empirically examined this pessimistic view using a quasi-experiment involving mini-publics on two separate issues in Northern Ireland: (1) the contentious ethno-national question of Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, and (2) the much less contested and non-ethno-national issue of social care. Contrary to the pessimistic view, we find evidence that from the perspective of the participants themselves, deliberative quality was higher in the mini-public on an ethno-national issue. However, in line with the pessimistic view, levels of self-reported opinion change were significantly lower in the ethno-national mini-public. Overall, the findings highlight the potential for carefully designed deliberative mini-publics to address divisive ethno-national issues: they provide a space for participants to engage with such issues in open and respectful discussion—even if the prospects for attitudinal change are more limited.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	572-578
Number of pages	7
Journal	PS: Political Science & Politics
Volume	56
Issue number	4
Early online date	10 Aug 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096523000409
Publication status	Published - 10 Oct 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Versions of this article were presented at the International Political Studies Association’s 2019 “Conference on Diversity and Democratic Governance in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Herzegovina” and at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Political Studies Association of Ireland in Maynooth. This research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom (Grant No. ES/R000417/1). We thank Tim Hughes, Rebekah McCabe, and Kaela Scott at Involve for facilitating our research collaboration with the Citizens’ Assembly for Northern Ireland. We also thank the reviewers for their helpful comments. Any errors, of course, are our own.

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Sociology and Political Science

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10.1017/S1049096523000409Licence: CC BY

What happens when mini-publics are held in a deeply divided place? Evidence from Northern Ireland
Copyright 2023 the authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited.
Final published version, 341 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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abstract = "A pessimistic view of the potential of deliberative mini-publics to effectively contribute to democratic decision making on highly contested issues in deeply divided places asserts that (1) deliberative quality would be low due to the bitterness prompted by discussion of divisive issues, and (2) levels of opinion change would be low given the stubbornly enduring nature of political attitudes in divided places. We empirically examined this pessimistic view using a quasi-experiment involving mini-publics on two separate issues in Northern Ireland: (1) the contentious ethno-national question of Northern Ireland{\textquoteright}s constitutional status, and (2) the much less contested and non-ethno-national issue of social care. Contrary to the pessimistic view, we find evidence that from the perspective of the participants themselves, deliberative quality was higher in the mini-public on an ethno-national issue. However, in line with the pessimistic view, levels of self-reported opinion change were significantly lower in the ethno-national mini-public. Overall, the findings highlight the potential for carefully designed deliberative mini-publics to address divisive ethno-national issues: they provide a space for participants to engage with such issues in open and respectful discussion—even if the prospects for attitudinal change are more limited.",

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What happens when mini-publics are held in a deeply divided place? Evidence from Northern Ireland

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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