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In the wake of a crisis of representation and a growing detachment of citizens from institutions, the debate on alternative models of democracy proposes inclusive procedures to complement representative mechanisms (Barber 1984; Held 1987; Patenam 1970; Elster 1998). Deliberative tools, including deliberative polling, public assemblies, online communities and mini-publics, allows citizens with different viewpoints to discuss political issues in a context of mutual respect and equality. Empirical research has shown that these practices would produce positive outcomes, such as knowledge of issues (Grönlund et al. 2010), an understanding of the complexity of the political process, recognition of others’ views and changes in opinions (Luskin et al. 2002) as well as an attenuation of opinion polarization (Grönlund et al. 2015), and, above all, democratic legitimacy and trust (Boulianne 2019). Advocates of deliberation argues that this has the potential to transform people’s political attitudes and arrive at shared decisions providing alternative policy solutions (Bächtiger et al. 2018). One central tenet of deliberative democratic theory is that democracy should be inclusive and non-discriminatory. In order to foster inclusion deliberative theory has focused on the selection of participants to deliberative democracy, arguing that random selection is the least discriminatory strategy to bring people to discuss and deliberate. However, much less attention has been devoted to other components of the process and the way they might affect the rate of participation and the motivation to participate (e.g., Gherghina et al. 2021). In the light of this, we propose a conjoint experiment (Hainmueller et al. 2013; Hainmueller et al. 2015) to dig deeper into the conditions that foster participation, exploring which conditions, beside the mode of selection, can affect the decision to join a deliberative mini-public. The single conjoint experiment we discuss below focuses on eight main conditions that characterize deliberative mini-publics: mode of selection (self-selection, random selection and based on level of expertise); topic (one controversial topic – immigration – and one more consensual topic – environment); scope (distance from the respondent); duration; financial incentives; impact on policy-making (consultative versus decision-oriented deliberation); mode of deliberation (on line or in person) and sponsorship (academics, vs. partisan vs. public authorities). The study has the potential to contribute to the policy debate on how to increase citizens’ engagement in deliberative democracy.

Domestic political conditions shape foreign policy decisions in democratic systems. According to international relations theory, leaders will incur in domestic audience costs if they escalate a foreign military crisis through the threat of the use of force and then back down. The possibility of suffering electoral losses and drops in approval ratings would prevent democratic leaders from issuing empty threats, making their international commitments more credible than those of their autocratic counterparts. This study extends the literature exploring many aspects so far largely neglected by research on audience costs. The theory of audience costs has been developed considering almost always the case of the United States (US), with basically no research analysing European Union (EU) member states. This is largely justified, since the US is a world leader and a security provider while the EU lacks common infrastructures for military intervention and defence, and each member state decides to engage or not in foreign military crises as the result of international agreements and its participation in supranational institutions (NATO, UN). However, the EU has developed a Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) with different activities that could be implemented in this framework (i.e., deploying combat forces in crisis management or centralising European military spending in Brussels). In addition, the need for a coordinated defence policy has become even clearer after recent international crises (e.g., Afghanistan). To get a better understanding of a common security and defence policy, it is thus essential to understand how the European publics react when exposed to a possible foreign policy crisis: whether they would approve a military intervention involving their own country’s troops across different possible outcomes, whether this happens with or without the help of other EU allies, and, finally, whether they would punish their national leaders for issuing empty threats or fail to uphold a preceding promise to not intervene. Following previous research, audience costs would apply not only when a leader backs down from an issued threat, but also when the same leader fails to uphold a promise to not engage in a conflict. For this reason, when evaluating the audience costs theory, it is important to consider both types of commitment and the related forms of inconsistent behaviour, revealing the possible impact of both empty threats and unkept promises on Prime Ministers’ approval. Finally, costs of inconsistency between words and deeds may depend on the outcome of the policy pursued. Indeed, any course of policy action leads to a potential outcome which might, in turn, mute or amplify audience costs. To study the relevance of audience costs in the European Union, we conduct a set of randomised online survey experiments on representative samples in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. In the experiments, participants are asked about their evaluation of one’s own country leader during a hypothetical foreign military crisis, under different scenarios. In a baseline version of the experiment, we manipulate three conditions in a 2x2x2 fully factorial design. The first treatment considers whether a) the Prime Minister of the respondent’s country reacts to an aggressive behaviour against a third country (i.e., an invasion) by admonishing the attacking country that the country “would push out the invaders”; or b) s/he promises to “stay out of the conflict”. The second treatment considers whether this would happen a) in agreement with other European allies which “have decided to participate in the military intervention”; b) or not, as “other European allies have decided not to participate in the military intervention”. The third treatment addresses the consistency of the Prime Minister’s words and deeds, presenting her/his decision after the initial commitment. After being told that “the attacking country continues to invade”, the respondent is informed whether, as a response, a) the Prime Minister eventually decided to “engage the military”; b) or “did not engage the military”. This applies both when the president had issued a threat as well as when he had promised to stay out of the dispute, thus, allowing us to assess the impact of “following through” or “backing down” with respect to a bargaining action or non-action. After asking the respondent’s evaluation of the Prime Minister’s conduct, we allow her/him to continue the experiment adding further information on whether a) “the attacking country takes over the neighbouring country; or b) “is pushed out by its neighbouring country” (also despite the country/EU allies’ intervention). This probe version of the experiment allows the evaluation of audience costs vis-à-vis any potential success or defeat as an outcome of the intervention. This article is one of the first steps in the understanding of the audience costs theory in parliamentary democracies and has implications for studying the preferences of European citizens on foreign military crises and the enactment of a common defence strategy.

Supplemental material, eup-17-1385-File002 for Deciding about the unknown: The effect of party and ideological cues on forming opinions about the European Union by Mariano Torcal, Sergio Martini and Lluis Orriols in European Union Politics

This work is set around three empirical papers concerned with the political foundations and consequences of trust among people. The first one addresses the question of how trust evolves and whether this is shaped by life-events related to economic shocks vis-à-vis experiences related to the individual engagement in civic life and to the institutional environment. The second paper turns the attention to the characteristics of the partner involved in the interaction investigating how intergroup political conflicts affect social cooperation and trust. This allows assessing whether heuristics about political group membership and identities shape the individual trust radius. The third paper considers, instead, the consequences of trust addressing whether it favors involvement in unconventional political participation, a still understudied relationship. This is done also accounting for other selective and collective incentives. Overall, this thesis offers a novel approach and new evidences on both political origins and implications of trust among people. Este trabajo de tesis consta de tres artículos empíricos sobre las orígenes y las consecuencias políticas de confianza social. El primer articulo se propone investigar la cuestión esencial de cómo se forma confianza social y si esta es el resultado de shocks económicos, frente a experiencias relacionadas con la participación en la vida cívica o el contexto institucional. El segundo articulo se centra en la interacción de confianza entre individuos investigando cómo los conflictos políticos entre grupos afectan la confianza y la cooperación entre individuos. Esto nos permite evaluar si los individuos emplean heurísticos cognitivos e identidades sociales y políticas y si estos afectan al perímetro de la confianza social. En fin, el tercer articulo estudia las consecuencias políticas de confianza social analizando como esta influye en la participación política en formas no convencionales de protesta, en el marco de una teoría de los incentivos selectivos y colectivos, una discusión que sigue abierta en la literatura científica. En general, este trabajo de tesis se propone ofrecer nuevas evidencias empíricas sobre las orígenes y las implicaciones de la confianza social entre personas a través de soluciones metodológicas innovadoras.

PPQ685933_Appendix for Trust across political conflicts: Evidence from a survey experiment in divided societies by Sergio Martini, and Mariano Torcal in Party Politics

En este trabajo se presentan los resultados sobre confianza social en España medida a través de un juego experimental realizado en una encuesta en internet (on-line). Este experimento nos ha permitido diferenciar la confianza social general de la confianza social condicionada por determinados conflictos políticos y ha mostrado como la confianza social se ve negativamente afectada por dos de los conflictos que más han polarizado a la sociedad española en los últimos años: el partidista entre el PSOE y el PP, y el conflicto nacional/ territorial. Esta creciente polarización tiene como consecuencia el descenso de la confianza social, pero también por extensión el descenso general de la confianza en las instituciones de representación, In this article we present the results of an on-line survey experimental design to measure social trust in Spain. This methodology has allowed us to differentiate between general social trust (anonymous) and the social trust which radius is politically conditioned. We have shown that politically conditioned trust has a negative impact on the aggregate levels of social trust, but only for those political conflicts that has been more divisive in the Spanish political arena: the partisan conflict PP and PSOE, and the national/territorial conflict. Therefore, the increasing political polarization taking place in Spain about these two conflicts are affecting negatively to the general levels of social trust, and also indirectly to the general levels of institutional trust