Does Party Identification Matter for Deliberation? Evidence from the Poland Speaks Experiment
| Published date | 01 November 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299241245609 |
| Author | Ramon van der Does,Honorata Mazepus |
| Date | 01 November 2024 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299241245609
Political Studies Review
2024, Vol. 22(4) 1055 –1063
© The Author(s) 2024
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299241245609
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Does Party Identification
Matter for Deliberation?
Evidence from the Poland
Speaks Experiment
Ramon van der Does1
and Honorata Mazepus2
Abstract
Deliberation among the public appears wanting, even in many of the world’s established democracies.
This apparent lack of mutually respectful conversation among citizens about politics involving a
give-and-take of reasons is often ascribed to growing affective polarisation. The more the citizens
come to think of each other as belonging to opposing groups, the less likely it allegedly becomes
that they will show respect towards each other or exchange arguments while talking politics.
However, the empirical support for this common supposition remains tentative, as prior research
suffers from potential endogeneity problems and selection bias. To address these limitations, we
introduce a novel experimental design involving an imagined conversation on refugee policy in
Poland. Our experimental test shows that, on average, participants’ inclination to deliberate did
not significantly differ based on whether they imagined talking to someone from an ingroup or to
someone from an outgroup instead. Our findings thereby suggest that the relationship between
group identification and public deliberation might not be as straightforward as is often assumed. At
least in some contexts, a lack of mutual group identification does not spell disaster for deliberation.
Keywords
deliberation, deliberative democracy, groups, affective polarisation, political talk
Accepted: 27 February 2024
Introduction
Public deliberation is often considered a key ingredient to making democracy work but it
equally often seems in short supply. Political theorists and pundits routinely suggest that
affective polarisation is a root cause of the apparent lack of public deliberation, that is,
mutually respectful conversation among citizens about politics involving a give-and-take
1
Institute of Political Science Louvain-Europe (ISPOLE), Université catholique de Louvain, Ottignies-Louvain-
la-Neuve, Belgium
2Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Honorata Mazepus, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 19268, 1000 GG Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Email: h.mazepus@uva.nl
1245609PSW0010.1177/14789299241245609Political Studies Review X(X)van der Does and Mazepus
research-article2024
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