Deliberation and civic virtue: lessons from a citizen deliberation experiment

Abstract

This paper focuses on the “side-effects” of democratic deliberation. More precisely, we analyse the potential of deliberative mini-publics to enhance political knowledge, efficacy, trust as well as political and other collective action. The empirical analysis is based on a deliberative experiment on nuclear power. This “citizen deliberation” was held in November 2006. Our initial finding is that the volunteers who were willing to take part in the experiment were more inclined to act politically than those who did not volunteer; they also possessed a higher level of internal political efficacy and had more trust in the parliament and politicians. When it comes to the impact of deliberation, participation in the experiment increased energy related knowledge but reduced slightly internal political efficacy. The sense of external political efficacy was not directly affected, but the participants‟ trust in parliament and politicians did rise. Interpersonal trust increased slightly as well as the participants‟ willingness to take a particular kind of collective action (electricity saving). However, deliberation did not to increase the participants‟ preparedness to act politically.