Improving the Quality of Democracy: The case of Deliberative Poll held in 2007 in Turin

Abstract

In our study, we will evaluate the case of Deliberative Polling that took place in Turin in 2007 in order to understand, whether the Deliberative Poll could satisfy the democratic criteria outlined in the volume’s framework. Many empirical studies have explored the effects of deliberation using the deliberative poll, confirming that participation in deliberation produces different “democratic” effects: political sophistication, political interest, internal political efficacy, political trust, political “respect”, political empathy, “sociotropism” and more positive attitudes toward the political system (Luskin and Fishkin, 2002, Fishkin 2009, Mansbridge, 2010). Although the main idea on which deliberative experiments are based is that discussion and deliberation have a positive effect both on the health of democracy and the citizens involved in the deliberations, the main focus of empirical research remains primarily concerned with understanding the effects of deliberation on citizens' opinions about the issue at hand. This chapter will follow the analytical framework outlined by the editors. In order to explore the effects of deliberative poll on the quality of democracy, it will cover all of the evaluation areas outlined by the framework except the one on effectiveness. Additionally, using previous analyses of Deliberative Poll outputs, this study will analyse the perceived legitimacy of the process through different phases of DP. The results from previous DPs have already offered some support for the idea that deliberation makes citizens more supportive of the democratic system (Luskin and Fishkin, 2002). The novelty of our research is the use of the indicator of citizens' assessment of how well democracy works – an indicator already used in quality of democracy studies – and to assess how it changes through different experimental phases of DP. In this way, we hope to understand not only whether the citizens would become more supportive of the political system, we also hope to learn which phase has the strongest effect on this support. We expect that during the phase in which citizens interact withpoliticians they will develop a better understanding of the political process and thus, increase their satisfaction with democracy. First, we will briefly describe the Deliberative Polling experiment that took place in Turin.