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Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-psw-10.1177_14789299231169491 for The Substantive Representation of Future Generations in Bicameral Parliaments: A Comparison of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives and the Senate (2010–2014) by Daan Vermassen and Didier Caluwaerts in Political Studies Review

Citizens’ assemblies (CAs) have been heralded as a potential antidote to the alleged crisis of democratic legitimacy and effectiveness. However, CAs are used in a variety of designs, on a variety of topics, and in a variety of political and institutional contexts. As the experience with CAs deepens and competing designs proliferate, demands for concrete evaluation standards and tools have risen. This chapter aims to offer a comprehensive account of central evaluation criteria for CAs, both in the input, throughput, and output phases, and it gives an overview of potential methods for evaluating CAs. Moreover, the chapter also outlines a new operational evaluation tool, the Citizen Assembly Evaluation Survey (CAES), which taps into the different dimensions.

This chapter looks at Belgium’s process of federalization, more specifically as a conflict management technique from the perspective of consociational democracy, and includes a theoretical discussion of the paradox of federalism. To identify the arguments surrounding the defederalization or refederalization debate in Belgium, a critical frame analysis is conducted. The decentralization, known in Belgium as ‘defederalization’ of competences, thus, seems to have increased demands for further regionalization and set in motion fundamental institutional reforms. Although all six institutional reforms have systematically been driven by a centrifugal dynamic, the demands for defederalization still seem to be important, particularly with regard to the Dutch-speaking political parties. However, the French-speaking parties have given greater support to these refederalization demands at least since the 2007 federal elections. Scholars have pointed out that there are inherent dangers to power-sharing democracy, chief among which is the ‘paradox of federalism’.

The last decades have witnessed a proliferation of democratic innovations and deliberative minipublics in response to the crisis of democracy. Much attention has hitherto been devoted (1) to the transformative effects of these innovations, i.e. the question whether deliberation can lead to opinion, identity and attitude changes, and (2) to their legitimacy. In recent years, we have also seen a rise in studies addressing the question who conceptually supports such innovations. However, the question that has only received scant attention (and mostly from qualitative researchers) is why citizens would be willing to engage in such innovations themselves. After all, it is one thing to support democratic innovations ideationally, but is it quite another to be willing to engage with them. In the paper we propose to write on this, we will argue that the drivers of support for DIs and the willingness to engage in DIs are quite distinct. Support for DIs is driven mainly by perceptions of other citizens’ political competence; willingness to engage with DIs is driven mainly by perceptions of ones’ own political competence. This project will make multiple contributions to the literature: 1) Many studies have focused in recent years on whether and why citizens support (the idea of) democratic innovations, but few have also taken into account whether individual citizens were willing to engage in them themselves if given the opportunity. Both are theoretically (and empirically) very distinct. 2) Extant research on why citizens would engage in DIs is mostly qualitative in nature, and the evidence is often anecdotal and very case-specific (i.e. the question why people refused to participate in a very specific mini-public). 3) Previous research has focused on internal political efficacy (i.e. whether people felt competent to participate in politics) in trying to explain support for democratic innovations, but there is an emerging literature on perceptions of the political competence of others. 4) Most previous studies focus on either referendums or mini-publics. Few have looked at them in combination, and even fewer on a new type of innovation, namely randomly selected parliamentary assemblies. 5) The relationship between support for DIs, willingness to engage in them, IPE and perceptions of the competence of others has not received any attention yet.

We argue that perceived threat can predict intentions to engage in violent behaviors, such as violence against the government. However, the connection may be different across geopolitical contexts and for people supporting or opposing their reigning governments. Radical behavior was mostly associated with people with right-wing political orientation in Western and Eastern democracies in previous research (Heitmeyer, 2003; Klandermans, & Mayer, 2005; Kende & Krekó, 2020; Goldstein, 2021), but we argue that people with both left-and right-wing political orientation can be radicalized based on specific threats they experience in their societal context. For example, left-wing people can be radicalized in response to actions of a right-wing government. We expect that economic threat (referring to an existential insecurity) can predict violent behavior through an increase in political threat (referring to concerns about political decisions) and institutional distrust (referring to a general concern about the political and legal system). However, political threat will be influenced by respondents’ voting preference (whether they support the reigning government) and the geo-political context (the general level of institutional trust in their specific country). This study allows us to take country-level differences into account in investigating the psychological underpinnings of approval of violent political behavior.

The study focuses on educational differences in support for Democratic Innovations (DI’s) and willingness to engage in DI’s. Neblo et al. (2010) studied people’s willingness to participate in deliberative initiatives (citizens’ assemblies). Among people who did not want to participate in a deliberative forum, educational groups differed in how they justified non-participation (Neblo et al., 2010). Among non-college graduates who did not want to participate, 35% cited “not knowing enough” whereas college graduates only cited it 16% of the time. This renders it plausible that we find (1) substantial educational differences in people’s willingness to participate in DI’s themselves, while (2) there are no (or even reverse) educational differences in whether people support the implementation of DI’s itself. In this concrete example, an awareness among the less educated about the dominance of the higher educated in contemporary politics contrasts with a self-exclusion informed by a lack of a sense of entitlement due to the stigma of ‘being’ less educated. Such a pattern would link people’s beliefs about representation to interesting and well-known intergroup processes, threats, and identities. It can be expected that this pattern is most clearly visible when Democratic Innovations entail social interaction (cfr. talk-centred vs. vote centred). RQ: This proposal is based on three, closely related, research questions: • To what extent do citizens with different levels of educational attainment support democratic innovations? • To what extent do the relationships between support for DI’s and people’s willingness to participate in DIs, vary according with people’s educational attainment? • To what extent do internal political efficacy and perceived competence of others explain the educational differences mediate or moderate the educational differentials?

In many Western countries populism has gained momentum during the last decade(s). Besides the continued electoral success of populist and radical politics, events like Brexit, the election of Trump, and the storming of the Capitol building, have also proven that populist forces can have clear tangible and threatening effects. In response to such events, much research has been carried out that studies who supports populist and radical politics, and under what circumstances. Much less is known about whether some citizens explicitly reject the primacy of the people in politics, or formulated differently: Who feels threatened by ‘the people’ and supports a form of elitism that clearly rejects the primacy of ‘the people’ in politics? In answering this question we start from 5 propositions: · The rise and success of populism is often seen as a warning signal (e.g. Mény and Surel, 2002; Taggart, 2002) and linked to group-conflict: ‘populism has its roots in a reaction of the ruled to their rulers’ (Taggart, 2002, pp. 72-3). Public opinion research on the support for populist attitudes has shown a consistent relationship with educational attainment. Moreover, in recent years educational differences in political opinions and behavior have increasingly been approached from an intergroup perspective. Rather than seeing education purely as a source of human capital, it has been argued that labels like ‘the less educated’ and ‘higher educated’ are associated with stereotypes. People can identify with these labels and rendering educational differentials ‘salient’ may be an independent source of intergroup behavior. · The relationship between the less and higher educated can be considered a relationship of dominance (cf. Jackman, 1994), that is, a relationship where one group has a structural advantage over the other and institutional practices guarantee and ‘freeze’ the relationship between both groups. Indeed, educational credentials serve as a form of objectified symbolic (or social?) capital, and this frees those who hold them from the need to constantly demonstrate their superior skills and knowledge (i.e., Diplomas as ‘a “being perceived” guaranteed as a right’; Bourdieu, 1985, p. 733). Dominant groups stand to gain from the status quo, the ‘inertia is on their side’ (Jackman, 1994, p. 379). Open conflict threatens the status quo and drastically reduces the dominant group’s opportunities to exert influence. For dominant groups like the higher educated, it is more appealing to represent the dominated as 'different' and subsequently express a general appreciation for differences. According to Jackman (1994, p. 180), dominant groups develop attitudes that can best be described as 'paternalism', a conditional appreciation in which the dominant hangs on to a positive picture of the dominated for as long as the dominated do not fundamentally question the dominant’s socio-political position. · The key question, then, becomes what happens when the dominant group (here: the higher educated) faces a situation where the status quo is questioned? There are many reasons to assume that the success of populism can be perceived as a threat to the status quo (i.e., Brexit, the election of Donald Trump). · One of the core characteristics of populism is its ‘people centrism’. Populism is about “government of the people, by the people, for the people” (Canovan, 1999: 10). In populism, ‘the people’ - sometimes called ‘ordinary people’ or ‘the common man’ - are considered good and wise. Given the centrality of the category ‘the people’ in populism, the key question becomes: do dominant groups (the rulers) react to the success of populist forces by reporting perceived threat from ‘the people’? And what factors moderate this relationship? · There are reasons to assume that when people feel threatened by ‘the people’, they will reject the ‘people centrism’ component of populism and flee into a form of elitism. The latter was exemplified by Hillary Clinton’s statement that “you could put half of Trump supporters into what I call a basket of deplorables”. More importantly, in recent years several political philosophers (e.g., Daniel Bell, Jason Brennan) have openly questioned basic democratic principles and plead for a political meritocracy where people who are better politically informed have more to say . They complain about voting pollution (cfr., Brennan) and argue that “the uncomfortable truth is that the best (perhaps only) way to reduce the political influence of ignorant voters is to deprive them of the vote” (Bell, 2015: 30). In this way, anti-people elitism has become a real phenomenon and the outcome variable that we study has ecological validity. The latter further underscores the importance of advancing our understanding of the support of anti-people elitism among the public at large.

En juin 2017, le Parlement de la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale décide d’organiser un panel citoyen portant sur la mobilité dans et autour de la capitale. Ce panel citoyen labélisé « Make your Brussels Mobility » a réuni 40 citoyens tirés au sort pendant 4 jours (en matinée les 21 et 28 octobre et toute la journée le 18 et 19 novembre). A l’issue de ces rencontres, le panel soumet au Parlement une « résolution citoyenne » reprenant une liste de recommandations et demandes. Ce document fait ensuite l’objet des travaux d’une commission spéciale en décembre 2017. Celle-ci adopte en décembre 2017 une « résolution parlementaire » soutenant la résolution citoyenne et demandant au Parlement d’en effectuer le suivi. Les participants se sont vu adressé des questionnaires rédigés par le comité scientifique désigné par le Parlement, à la fois avant et après les rencontres du panel. Les perceptions des participants sont en effet des sources importantes d’informations pour l’évaluation des panels citoyens. Ce court rapport présente les résultats de ces deux enquêtes : avant et après le déroulement du panel. Les deux enquêtes contenaient des questions similaires, dans l’objectif de comparer les attentes a priori des citoyens sur certains éléments du panel à leur évaluation a posteriori de ces mêmes éléments. Cet objectif est explicité aux participants au début de l’enquête. Au travers des deux enquêtes, il est demandé aux participants de donner leur avis sur certaines affirmations en utilisant une échelle de 0 (pas du tout d’accord) à 10 (tout à fait d’accord). Ces affirmations concernent les aspects relatifs à la qualité de leur participation et de la délibération, impact du panel, la confiance des participants envers les institutions politiques, leurs visions de la démocratie de même que leurs opinions par rapport à la mobilité à Bruxelles. Dans les pages qui suivent, les résultats de ces enquêtes sont présentés sous trois catégories : les questions concernant le panel citoyen, celles ayant trait à la participation citoyenne et à la politique et celles liées à la mobilité à Bruxelles. Chaque graphique présente le nombre total de répondants (leur fréquence et non le pourcentage) pour chaque valeur (de 0 à 10), en comparant ces fréquences par valeur entre l’enquête avant (« PRE ») et l’enquête après (« POST ») le déroulement du panel. A ce propos, il est important de préciser que le nombre de répondants diffère entre les deux enquêtes. Par conséquent, il est nécessaire de faire preuve de la plus grande prudence lors de leur comparaison.