Do the origins of climate assemblies shape public reactions? Examining the impact of partisanship

Abstract

Governments around the world are experimenting with deliberative mini-publics as a means of integrating public input into policymaking processes, including as a method for directly creating policy. This raises the important question of when ordinary people will judge the outputs of mini-publics to be legitimate and support their use. We investigate how public support for mini-publics is shaped by: (1) whether the mini-public is held in response to calls from politicians or from the general public; (2) which political party sets up the mini-public; and (3) whether there is partisan conflict surrounding the mini-public's creation. To do so, we use two pre-registered survey experiments fielded in the United Kingdom that focus on climate assemblies, a prominent form of deliberative mini-public. Results are three-fold. First, we find some evidence that assemblies are more positively evaluated when they stem from the demands of local residents rather than partisan actors, but this effect is relatively modest and does not emerge consistently across our analyses. Similar findings are noted with regard to partisanship. Partisan conflict, by contrast, has a more robust effect – leading respondents to adopt more ideologically stereotypical views of the assembly, with left-wing (right-wing) respondents being more supportive of Labour-sponsored (Conservative-sponsored) assemblies.