Seeing the other side? perspective-taking and reflective political judgements in interpersonal deliberation
Muradova, LalaORCID: 0000-0002-7615-6779
(2020)
Seeing the other side? perspective-taking and reflective political judgements in interpersonal deliberation.
Political Studies, 69
(3).
pp. 644-664.
ISSN 0032-3217
This paper tests the possibility of embedding the benefits of minipublic deliberation within a
wider voting public. We test whether a statement such as those derived from a Citizens’
Initiative Review (CIR) can influence voters who did not participate in the pre-referendum
minipublic deliberation. This experiment was implemented in advance of the 2018 Irish
referendum on blasphemy, one of a series of social-moral referendums following the
recommendations of a deliberative assembly. This is the first application of a CIR-style
voting aid in a real world minipublic and referendum outside of the US and also the first
application to what is principally a moral question. We found that survey respondents
exposed to information about the minipublic and its findings significantly increased their
policy knowledge. Further, exposing respondents to minipublic statements in favour and
against the policy measure increased their empathy for the other side of the policy debate.
Metadata
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
political psychology; deliberation; political reasoning; perspective-taking; empathy