Imaginative policy surveys in divided societies: Feasibility, effect and perceived legitimacy

Abstract

We suggest a new democratic decision-making (or recommendation-making) device for divided societies that may be added to the democratic toolkit. Imaginative Policy Surveys in divided societies seek to combine the advantages of conventional attitude surveys (ability to generalise to the wider population) with some of the advantages of deliberative mini-publics (citizens learn about policy options and consider the perspective of members of the ethno-national out-group). Imaginative Policy Surveys consist of a conventional survey design with two added features: videos providing information and arguments and an imagined policy dialogue with an out-group member. We test the feasibility, effect and perceived legitimacy of Imaginative Policy Surveys in the deeply divided context of Northern Ireland, drawing on evidence from two experiments. We conclude that Imaginative Policy Surveys in divided societies are feasible, have a slight positive pro-compromise effect, and are perceived to be a legitimate decision-making mechanism to an equal extent by rival ethno-national groups.