Citizen's Evaluations of Participatory Democratic Procedures: Normative Theory Meets Empirical Science

Abstract

Participatory democratic theorists claim that citizens would be transformed if they participated more directly in decision-making. These theorists, however, disagree about how participatory opportunities ought to be structured. In an attempt to integrate normative political theory and empirical political science, I examined one possible benefit of citizen participation: collective decision acceptance. Models of participation offered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill are incompatible with contemporary participatory democracy, but Marsiglio of Padua offers a persuasive argument connecting participation and collective decision acceptance. In three experiments, I compared citizen's collective decision acceptance, individual assumption reevaluation, and group satisfaction for two different participatory structures -liberal and strong democratic procedures. Citizen's short-term perceptions were influenced most by their majority or minority status; with extended participation, however, the participatory structures significantly affected citizen's evaluations of the participatory process. Contrary to expectations, the liberal democratic group scored higher on all three measures. I theorize that participatory opportunities should occur frequently, across a variety of issues, and should be structured so that citizens do not feel personally attacked in the decision-making process.