A Europe-wide Deliberative Polling Experiment
At a time when the EU’s legitimacy and democratic capacities are questioned, it is important to address the issue of what would happen if EU citizens became substantially more informed about EU institutions, decision-making processes, and policy issues, as well as more aware of the policy preferences of other European citizens.
To answer these questions, the EuroPolis project tests the contribution of deliberative democracy in addressing the democratic deficit in Europe just before the European Parliamentary Elections in June 2009. The project, which is ongoing, is run by an international team of European universities1, funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme and a group of European donors2.
Drawing its main hypothesis from the theory of deliberative democracy (which suggests that democratic legitimacy rests on open deliberation, and prescribes that citizens should become involved in politics), EuroPolis conducted a three-day Deliberative Polling®3 (DP) experiment in Brussels. This focused on two topical issues, namely immigration and climate change.
A random sample of approximately 400 EU citizens was invited to first discuss the two selected topics among themselves in small groups, and later with policy experts and politicians. The participants were interviewed before, during and after the DP, and once again a few days after the Parliamentary elections. Their views were compared to those of a control group – a sample not invited to the deliberative weekend – which was questioned both at the time of participant recruitment, and again after the elections. The post-election survey is still in progress. It will show whether or not those citizens who took part in the DP have undergone a change in their attitudes towards the European integration process. If so, it will show whether this change has prompted them to vote in the elections of the European Parliament, and how.
Based on this evidence, the Europolis experiment provides a unique opportunity to rigorously observe and evaluate how exposure to thorough and balanced policy information, deliberation and discussion during election periods affects citizens’ awareness of politically relevant information, perceptions of the legitimacy of EU institutions, sense of belonging to the EU, attitudes towards electoral and non electoral forms of participation in EU politics, voting intentions and behaviour in EU Parliamentary elections.
This article describes the project research design and its main general results after the three-days DP event.
Details about the experimental design
First, a cross-sectional random survey (T1) was organised and administered to a representative sample of EU’s population of citizens aged 18 and above (N=4300). The purpose of this survey was to gauge people’s policy preferences and levels of knowledge about policy issues that would later structure the DP event. The questionnaire contained items that measure the following information: people’s policy preferences, levels of knowledge about the two policy issues, views on European integration process, and perceptions of EU institutions and public policy decision making processes. This questionnaire also asked people to assess what distance they perceive to exist between them and their national parliaments, EU Parliament, Council, Commission, and EU citizens from other nationalities. In addition, the questionnaire collected data about people’s level of political participation, interest in politics, level of information, trust in others and sense of belonging to the EU. Socio-demographic data of respondents was collected as well through this questionnaire. This survey was run from April 2009. Participants were interviewed by phone in their mother tongue through TNS Opinion national agencies. Most interviews used CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing) system.
Second, a random sub-sample (N=400) of those citizens first targeted to answer to the cross-sectional survey was invited to attend the DP event. Those who accepted to take part into the event received balanced background materials to inform them about the issues to be discussed and to incite them to put more attention and think harder on the selected topics. This briefing material was translated into 21 languages.
Third, experts and politicians who participated in the process of drafting the briefing material were also invited to attend the DP to answer participants’ questions during plenary sessions.
Fourth, the participants came together for three days in Brussels, they filled out a questionnaire (T2) and were randomly assigned to moderated small groups to discuss the issues (25 small groups). As part of their small group discussions, they developed questions to ask a balanced panel of experts and politicians about each issue.
Fifth, at the end of the event the participants (the test group) filled out another questionnaire (T3). Then, citizens’ changes of opinion from before and after the deliberation were analysed, and highlights and results of the process were disseminated. This allowed to guarantee accountability and also sought to raise public interest in EU politics and levels of political participation. Finally, the participants in the experiment have been questioned again after the 2009 European Parliament elections (T4).
To explore the impact of the DP event, the attitudes of the test group have been compared with those of the random sample of the population surveyed through cross-sectional surveys (the control group). Both test and control groups were surveyed as shown in Figure 1.
Europolis Experimental design
A three-days intensive event
The DP took place on Friday 29th, Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st of May 2009 at Dolce La-Hulpe Hotels and Resorts in Brussels. 348 participants from 27 Countries attended the event. At their arrival the staff responsible for the logistics helped welcome the guests in the auditorium (orientation). Participants received a timetable of the experiment, the briefing material in their own language, information of the discussion groups they belong to, and the halls location.
After the welcome plenary, on Friday afternoon, participants were lead to the small group rooms to proceed with the filling of the T2 questionnaire. In each small group two-three languages were represented and overall more than 150 interpreters were involved.
When all the questionnaires were completed, the discussion on the first topic (immigration) started and concluded with the formulation of the questions for the plenary session with experts scheduled for the next day.
On Saturday morning, three experts intervened in the immigration panel. Participants returned then to their small group sessions for conclusions, and they moved to discuss climate change. Again, after discussion and formulation of questions, the second plenary with two experts on climate change followed. The second day ended with a social dinner in Brussels downtown.
The three-day intensive DP ended on Sunday morning with a plenary session with Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato, former Danish MEP Jens Peter Bonde, and former Belgian deputy prime minister Isabelle Durant. The participants were able to put their questions on immigration, climate change and EU decision-making to the politicians. After the plenary, participants returned to fill in the T3 questionnaire.
The post-election survey
The EuroPolis research design included also the conduct of a final cross-sectional random survey of approximately 1400 EU citizens. The process started two weeks after the 2009 EU Parliamentary elections. Survey respondents came from the test group, that is, from the 348 participants of the DP event. A control group of approximately 1000 interviewees will complete the sample of this final survey.
The sampling design of this last survey is to be the same as the first cross-sectional survey run prior to the DP experiment. This final survey will allow to see whether any attitudinal and behavioral changes observed in the experimental test group are due to their involvement in thoughtful deliberation and not to other factors.
The added value of a pan-European DP
The scientific added value of the EuroPolis project derives from the testing of DP methods at the transnational level in an electoral context and across linguistic and national divisions. Shortly, the EuroPolis added value is derived from its pan-European nature.
This is conceived as essential to create a European-wide public sphere in which any citizen can obtain information and freely take part in the dialogue on European policies. If, at the end of the discussions, the participants feel that the issues put to them have a bearing on their lives as Europeans, they might then attach greater importance to a given decision taken at European level, whether their attitude is one of approval or disapproval.
By crossing national and linguistic boundaries, EuroPolis shows that creating a living embodiment of the European-wide public sphere is feasible and will model how it could inform electoral calculations of EU voters. This allows to contribute to clarify the role of deliberation and information not only in the formation of individual and collective policy preferences but also in affecting electoral behaviour and voting turnout.
Further scientific value of the project may come from the comparison of EuroPolis polling data with that of other deliberative fora.
The major results of the deliberation
By the end of the three-days intensive exchanges in small groups, and with experts and politicians in the plenary sessions, 348 citizens from across the 27 EU Member States frequently modified their positions on immigration, climate change and the EU as a political system. They also changed their vote intentions. Unambiguously, these are the main conclusions from the EuroPolis project in deliberative polling: informed discussion can change policy attitudes and vote preferences.
The experiment demonstrated that participants became more European, more tolerant and greener.
Vote intentions
Participants were asked both before and after the deliberation if they intended to vote in the upcoming European elections. Those who intended to vote were asked which party they preferred. As there are over 260 parties standing in the Euro elections across the 27 member states, party preferences were grouped to correspond to the European Parliament’s eight major party groupings.
The deliberative weekend dramatically increased support for the Greens, whose vote share increased from 8% before deliberation to 18% after. Before the weekend (T2), support was strongest for the EPP (40%), PES (22%), Liberal Democrats (9%) and Greens (8%). Afterward (T3), the vote shares changed to 30% for the EPP, 21% for the PES, 8% for the Liberal Democrats, 2% for Independence/Democracy, 4% for the Radical Left, 4% for the Radical Right, 3% for the EuroConservatives, and 18% Greens.
Serious deliberation on climate change significantly increased the electoral popularity of the Greens. The electoral impact of deliberation on immigration is less clear.
Attitudes toward climate change
The respondents were asked to choose between the view that “we should do everything possible to combat climate change even if that hurts the economy” and “we should do everything possible to maximize economic growth, even if that hurts efforts to combat climate change”. Before deliberation 49% wanted to maximize combating climate change; after deliberation this rose to 61%.
Similarly, respondents were asked to choose between the view that the EU “should reduce greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly and as much as possible even if that means we have to make radical changes in the way we live” and the contrasting view that “the EU should make no effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even if that means that climate change will get much worse”. Before deliberation, 72% wanted the EU to do as much as possible; after deliberation this increased to 85%.
After deliberation the participants became more enthusiastic about energy efficiency (increasing from 75% to 84%) and the use of an emissions trading system (increasing from 39% to 49%). Support for renewable energy like wind and solar started high and increased slightly (89% to 91%). But opposition to investing in nuclear energy increased from 35% to 43% and support for investing in biofuels decreased from 55% to 50%.
Attitudes toward immigration
Among all participants, the belief that immigration is an important problem increased from 44% before deliberation to 64% afterwards. Before deliberation, participants were divided between those who want to send illegal immigrants back to their country (23%), and a larger group (40%) that wanted to legalize them. Deliberation left this division virtually unchanged, with equivalent figures of 22% and 40%.
Deliberation affected participants’ views of how governments should deal with immigration. The percentage in favour of reinforcing border controls fell from 66% before deliberation to 59% afterwards. By contrast, those who favoured imposing “penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants” increased from 74% to 88%.
The deliberators also became more tolerant in relation to the criteria for admitting non-EU immigrants. Before deliberation, 69% considered it important that immigrants be committed to the receiving country’s way of life; after deliberation only 52% did so.
There were comparable, though smaller, falls in the importance of “coming from a similar culture” (from 25% to 17%); and in “being Christian” (13% to 9%). This increased tolerance extended to policies for dealing with illegal immigrants living in EU countries.
Before deliberation, 63% of participants agreed that “illegal immigrants should be eligible for national health care”; afterwards, this figure increased to 71%.
Prior to deliberation, when invited to describe immigrants on a set of five characteristics, 26% of the participants consistently viewed them negatively on all five; 32% consistently viewed them positively. After deliberation, those taking a consistently positive view rose to 39%. For example, the percentage of respondents who considered immigrants “honest” increased from 25% to 34%, while those agreeing that “immigrants have a lot to offer our cultural life” rose from 37% to 43%. In a similar vein, those who thought that “immigration increases crime in our society” fell from 48% to 40%.
Knowledge gains
The participants clearly learned a great deal about both immigration and climate change, and also about the EU as a whole. They were asked nine knowledge questions. Some of them were first asked in the initial interview (recruitment), while the remaining ones were first asked only at the beginning of the event some weeks later. Since the participants begin learning from the moment they are initially interviewed and invited to the event (and are sent the briefing materials well in advance), the six items first asked in the initial interview show a distinctly greater gain than the three asked only on arrival (16.5% versus 7.5%). The participants presumably learned about as much on the latter as on the former; it is just that on the latter our earliest measurement (on arrival) occurs too late to capture all the learning.
There was also a noticeable difference in how much the participants learned by topic. They learned most about immigration (a 20.2% before-after knowledge gain), next most about the EU (10.5%), and least—though still very significantly—about climate change (9.9%). All these numbers are probably underestimates, because all three indices include one item measured only from arrival.
European Citizenship
Three indicators: before deliberation 37% of participants considered their country’s membership of the EU to be “a very good thing”, after deliberation, this figure rose to 52%; before deliberation, 47% of participants considered it their duty to “vote in EU elections”, after, the equivalent figure was 56%; before the event, 72% of participants thought of themselves “as just being from” their own country, after deliberation, this percentage fell dramatically to 56%.
We assume that exposure to open political discussion among people from all parts of the EU made people less nationalistic and fostered a sense of European identity in addition to national identity.
Conclusive remarks
The representativeness of the 348 participants has been checked by comparing them to the non-participants (the original 4.384 interviewees who did not attend the DP event).
In terms of age, class and other demographics, the participants and non-participants were very similar, although men were slightly over-represented among participants (54%). On the standard 0 to 10 left-right scale, participants and non-participants were virtually identical. The two groups also had nearly identical pre-deliberation attitudes on climate change, although the participants had slightly more “liberal” attitudes on immigration. The participants were also more interested in politics, had a stronger sense of civic duty, included somewhat more people intending (at the time of the initial interview) to vote for the EPP supporters and somewhat fewer intending to vote for the PES. These modest differences do not affect the results. The before-after changes in attitudes, vote intentions, and knowledge would be approximately the same if the participants had looked exactly the same as the non-participants (and thus the whole sample).
An evaluation of the DP by the participants was also conducted before the conclusion. The participants enjoyed and appreciated the experience. Asked to rate the event as a whole on 0 to 10 scale, 86% rated it at 8 or above, and 59% gave it a perfect 10. The ratings of the plenary sessions both with politicians and with experts were also high, with each being found useful by 74%. The ratings of the small group discussions were still higher, with 92% finding them useful.
On average, the participants thought the event extremely balanced. Of those who said that they had had read more than half of the briefing materials (a large majority of the participants), roughly two-thirds saw them as balanced, and only 11% saw them as clearly favouring some positions over others. Similarly, 69% agreed that their small group moderator “tried to makes sure that opposing arguments were considered”, while 86% disagreed that the moderator “sometimes tried to influence the group with her/his ideas”.
The participants also considered the quality of the discussion to be high. More than 60% saw their fellow group members as participating equally in the discussion. Almost 90% thought that they “had ample opportunity” to express their own views. 84% felt that their fellow participants “respected what I had to say, even when they didn’t agree”. They also saw their fellow participants as taking their roles seriously:87% saw them as “express[ing] what was truly on their mind”. Only 18% considered that they “expressed strong views without offering justifications”, while only 23% considered that they “had made up their minds [so that] the discussion had little effect on them”.
The experience of meeting and talking with other people from all across the continent and from all walks of life also had an impact: 81% thought that they learnt “a lot about people different from me—about who they are and how they live”.
All the small group discussions have been recorded. This means that we still have lots of qualitative data also available, to be analysed together with the quantitative data coming from the questionnaires, and the results of the post-election survey. Also the role of the plenary sessions with politicians and experts must be considered. So, further analysis will be presented.
Footnotes
1 The research team is composed by the University of Siena – Circap, Italy (Pierangelo Isernia, coordinator); the University of Essex, United Kingdom (David Sanders); the University of Mannheim, Germany (Herman Schmitt); Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, France (Bruno Cotres); University of Oslo, Arena, Norway (Hans-Joerg Trenz and John Erik Fossum); Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain (Marta Fraile); European Policy Centre, Belgium (Jacki Davis); Avventura Urbana, Italy (Iolanda Romano); TNS Opinion, Belgium (Pascal Chelala); Median Research Centre, Romania (Gabor Toka) and James S. Fishkin (Stanford University) and Robert Luskn (University of Texas at Austin).
The EuroPolis’s team has a unique first-hand experience in conducting deliberative polls at the local, national and European level. These experiences include five national DP in Britain, a national Danish DP on the Euro, two national Bulgarian DP, a recent local one in Rome and another in Turin, Italy, coordinated by the InTune Integrated Project financed under the EU 6th Framework Programme.
2 The network is led by the Compagnia di San Paolo (Italy). Other members are: the King Baudouin Foundation (Belgium), the Bosch Foundation (Germany), and the Open Society Institute (Switzerland). EuroPolis’s research team includes some of the main contributors to the first wave of deliberative experiments conducted in 2006-2007 under the Plan D initiative, namely the European Citizens’ Consultation led by the King Baudouin Foundation, in addition to Tomorrow’s Europe led by Notre Europe.
3 Deliberative Polling® is a trade mark of James S. Fiskin and it is used to support research at the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University.
© 2010 Italian Society of Political Science - [Valid markup]