Germann, MichaMarien, SofieMuradova, Lala2023-07-272023-07-272024Germann M, Marien S, Muradova L. Scaling up? Unpacking the effect of deliberative mini-publics on legitimacy perceptions. Polit Stud. 2024;72(2):677-700. DOI: 10.1177/003232172211374440032-3217http://hdl.handle.net/10230/57682Deliberative mini-publics are increasingly used to try to tackle public discontent with the functioning of democracy. However, the ability of mini-publics to increase perceptions of legitimate decision-making among citizens at large remains unclear, given especially that existing studies have not considered the potentially damaging effects of mini-public recommendations not being followed. We designed, pre-registered, and ran a survey experiment in Ireland to test the effects of mini-publics on legitimacy perceptions conditional on whether or not their non-binding policy recommendations are honored (N = 1309). We find that mini-publics increase legitimacy perceptions among the broader citizenry; however, these beneficial effects are largely limited to situations in which their recommendations are honored. Additional results suggest that it makes no difference whether mini-public recommendations are overturned by elected representatives or by citizens in a referendum. Finally, we find that the legitimacy-enhancing effects of participatory processes are driven by citizens with low political trust.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00323217221137444mini-publicsdeliberative democracyparticipatory democracylegitimacy perceptionsprocedural fairnessinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess