Support for direct and deliberative models of democracy in the UK: understanding the difference

ABSTRACT The models of direct and deliberative democracy are broadly considered the major alternatives to representative democracy. So far, the two models have been merged under the broad umbrella of participatory democracy and thus little is known about why citizens support direct democracy and/or deliberation. They are distinct procedures, driven by different logics and outcomes and this makes it likely that the preference for them rest on different premises. This article fills this gap in the literature and distinguishes between the models proposing two central arguments. First, we expect that several general determinants have a positive impact on the support for both direct democracy and deliberation because they are different from representative democracy. Second, we test the effect of specific determinants that drive people towards supporting more one of the two alternative models of democracy. We use individual level data from an original survey conducted in December 2018 on a representative sample of 1094 respondents in the UK. The results indicate that the supporters of direct democracy differ from those of deliberative democracy in several ways.