Does Party Identification Matter for Deliberation? Evidence from the Poland Speaks Experiment

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.