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Increasing citizen dissatisfaction with democracy leads governments and municipalities across the globe to seek new ways of including and empowering citizens. Little is known about whether ‘Digital Democratic Innovations’ (DDIs) could contribute to this goal. We developed a new DDI in a Swiss municipality, dubbed Demokratiefabrik, where 1,079 citizens co-created a questionnaire that served as an official Voting Advice Application for candidates and voters in communal elections. We find that while sophisticated and allegiant citizens and left-green voters participated more in the DDI, they did not dominate the process of creating the questionnaire. Intriguingly, citizens with lower political trust were particularly active on the platform, suggesting that DDIs might give disenchanted citizens a new voice in the political process. Overall, carefully designed DDIs can be a venue for inclusive citizen participation, involving and empowering local citizens in decision-making.

Presentation of our Digital Democratic Innovation Digital Democratic Innovations (DDIs), represent democratic innovations such as mini-publics held online (see, e.g., Kennedy et al. 2021). In our study, we use a self-developed DDI to let citizens create a vote leaflet with pro and contra arguments for an upcoming popular vote held in Switzerland. Research goals Our first goal is to assess the effects of DDI-participation on political engagement variables including political interest, respect, trust, competence, and internal efficacy (RQ1). Our second goal is to understand the capacity of DDIs to generate political legitimacy (RQ2). In particular, we research whether having information about the process held on the DDI and the produced output positively affects non-participants’ legitimacy of the process and the output created (i.e., vote leaflet). Besides, we test if a gamification feature of the DDI enhances participation in the DDI (RQ3) and we will further examine the functioning of the platform's peer-review feature by investigating the extent to which argument congruence influences peer-review decisions (RQ4). Procedure In this study, we invite citizens (Swiss German citizens between the age of 18 and 79 who use the internet at least once a week) to participate in a self-developed DDI dubbed “Demokratiefabrik”. Here, they can develop a vote leaflet with arguments in favor and against the issue on the ballot in a popular vote in Switzerland held in June 2023. In the first step, citizens will state their willingness to participate. After stating their willingness, a first survey (T1), in which some political attitudes, variables on political participation, and sociodemographic variables will be collected. Citizens willing to participate will then be randomly divided into treatment and control groups. In the experiment, 1000 citizens of the treatment group will have access to the DDI and thus help develop the vote leaflet (i.e., participants). 400 citizens of the control group receive no access to the DDI. Although they wanted to participate, they were not selected to do so (non-participants). Both groups will then be surveyed again after the vote leaflet is created (T2) and after the vote (T3). Moreover, we will survey (T2bis) 400 randomly drawn Swiss German citizens entitled to vote. This sample will be comparable to the baseline of our sample recruited to participate in our experiment study (Swiss German citizens between the age of 18 and 79 who use the internet at least once a week). Since our control group only consists of participants who showed interest in participating in our DDI, it is not representative of the broader public. Asking a randomly selected sample of Swiss German citizens about their opinions on the Demokratiefabrik and the resulting output (vote leaflet) will give a more representative picture of what the broader public, including citizens showing more skepticism towards online participatory projects, think about digital democratic innovations.

In light of current challenges to representative democracy, research on different democratic governance modes from a citizen perspective is essential. Rather than adopting a standard model-based approach to governance modes we take a problem-based perspective with an eye on generic democratic practices (Warren 2017). In this study, we apply such a perspective to the analysis of democratic preferences to get a more accurate picture of which combinations of democratic practices citizens would support in particular contexts (König et al. 2022). Specifically, we draw on a conjoint experiment with a large-scaled sample of citizens from the United States and Germany to analyze which scenario of democratic decision-making on concrete policy measures people would prefer. This scenario design can take good account of the diverse nature of democratic governance. We focus on deliberative citizen forums, parliaments, and strong executive leaders as main institutions dealing with a specific policy to compare participatory, representative, and executive forms of democratic governance. By adding the mode of executive governance, our study significantly contributes to research on citizens’ democratic preferences often focusing on participatory vs. representative democracy. We then distinguish between different stages of the policy-making process, such as the phase of preparation of a policy, the way to come to a decision, and the final decision. The experiment combines these features with issue- and outcome-related aspects of democratic governance. Our study makes a novel contribution to research on citizens’ democratic preferences by adopting a problem-based and comparative perspective.

To date, we know little about the exact role of different communication modes on opinion formation and the complexity of thinking. Psychological research (Schweiger et al. 1986) found that while contestatory communication formats (e.g. devil´s advocacy) produce higher validity recommendation than consensual formats, the latter lead to higher decision acceptance and procedural satisfaction. In a recent study, Erisen/Redlawsk/Erisen (2018) found that exposure to congruent information increases the integrative complexity of opposing thoughts. This population-based survey experiment compares the effects of different communication modes – “contestatory” vs “appreciative inquiry” vs “free communication” – and two control conditions - information-only and Placebo - on opinion formation (polarization, depolarization, opinion stability), argument quality (breadth and depth of argument) and procedural satisfaction in the context of the Covid-19 crisis (with a focus on the prioritization of health vs freedom).

To date, we know little about the exact role of different communication modes on opinion formation and the complexity of thinking. Psychological research (Schweiger et al. 1986) found that while contestatory communication formats (e.g. devil´s advocacy) produce higher validity recommendation than consensual formats, the latter lead to higher decision acceptance and procedural satisfaction. In a recent study, Erisen/Redlawsk/Erisen (2018) found that exposure to congruent information increases the integrative complexity of opposing thoughts. This population-based survey experiment compares the effects of different communication modes - „contestatory“ vs „appreciative inquiry“ vs „free communication“ – and two control conditions - information-only and Placebo - on opinion formation (polarization, depolarization, opinion stability), argument quality (breadth and depth of argument), ambivalence and procedural satisfaction in the context of the Covid-19 crisis (with a focus on the prioritization of health vs freedom).

Research on democratic preferences has barely focused on young people. This is especially true for pupils in school, who are yet to become democratic citizens. Regarding democratic attitudes, the controversial study by Foa and Munck (2016) – using data from the World Values Survey- claims that young adults in the U.S. and Europe are abandoning democracy as the key procedural value. The various refutations notwithstanding (e.g., Norris 2017; Wuttke et al. 2022) Such traditional survey research on democratic preferences may tap into non-attitudes, requiring the adoption of more advanced methods, namely scenario designs including an information package (see Goldberg and Bächtiger 2022). By the same token, existing research on democratic preferences using scenario designs usually focuses on representative vs participatory forms of decision-making (Werner and Marien 2022), ignoring the fact that citizens (and pupils) may also favour “executive” forms of decision-making (whereas studies focusing on technocratic ´Stealth´ attitudes only use traditional survey techniques; Van der Molen 2017). To close these various research gaps, we perform a conjoint experiment with a large-scaled representative sample of approximately 2000 15-year old German pupils in Baden-Württemberg (conducted in February/March 2022) focusing on three forms of policy-making: a representative mode in form of a parliament, a participatory approach in form of a citizen forum, and an executive model approach focusing on an assertive “leader”. The conjoint experiment contains further attributes, such as consultation with experts vs making decisions on their own, fast vs slow decision-making, various forms of authorization (including direct-democratic voting) as well as the winner/loser dimension.

A “deliberative wave” with increasing uses of deliberative citizen forums (DCFs) is sweeping the globe (OECD, 2020). Whereas DCF enthusiasts claim that they represent appropriate tools to re-connect citizens with politics and demand a stronger empowerment of DCFs (e.g., Buchstein, 2019; Landemore, 2020), critics argue that they will reduce rather than increase democratic legitimacy (e.g., Lafont, 2019; Parkinson, 2006). This study sheds new light on roles of DCFs in democratic system from the perspective of the citizens. It not only asks whether citizens support the use of DCFs (e.g., Bedock and Pilet, 2020; Jacquet et al., 2020), but takes DCFs as a given institutional practice and asks how DCFs must be designed in order to solicit support among (different strata of) non-participating citizens. It employs conjoint experiments with representative samples of citizens in the USA, Ireland, and Finland and considers various institutional design elements that are crucial both from a theoretical and a practical perspective in connection with issue characteristics, outcome favourability, and heterogeneous citizen preferences.

Citizen involvement in deliberative mini-publics is frequently discussed with an eye on boosting the legitimacy of decision-making. However, this idea has been radically challenged by Cristina Lafont (2015; 2017; 2020), arguing that deliberative mini-publics may decrease rather than increase legitimacy. Yet Lafont's legitimacy challenge has been primarily discussed at a theoretical level without taking the perceptions of non-participating citizens into account. This conjoint-based experiment examines how non-participants assess deliberative mini-publics. It focuses on different institutional design features and combines them with different policy issues and non-participants output preferences, citizen heterogeneity, and citizens’ awareness of such forums.

A growing body of research observes that parties and candidates tend to target more narrowly defined groups than in the past. Trading policies in exchange for the electoral support of particular groups of voters is seen as an important cause of unequal representation. Targeting means that the positive (e.g. additional spending) or negative (e.g. sanctions or obligations) effects are emphasized with respect to an identifiable group or “target”. Starting from the intuition that group targeting influences the appeal of electoral programs, this study focuses on voter responses. We argue that to decide which program to support, voters reason both in terms of personal concern, and of their “deservingness perceptions” of other groups. To assess how far voters respond to electoral promises based on whether they are personally affected, or based on the deservingness they attribute to affected groups, we rely on a paired-conjoint experiment conducted during the election campaign for the 2021 legislative elections in Germany and for the 2022 presidential election in France. The replication of a similar experimental design across these contrasted political settings allows us to maximize the external validity of our observations. Relying on real election promises allows us to make our experiments as realistic as possible. Our results shed light on how voters evaluate and respond to targeting in campaigns and has wider implications for voting behavior, group politics and representation.