Limited Congruence: Citizens’ Attitudes and Party Rhetoric About Referendums and Deliberative Practices

Both citizens and political parties refer to novel participatory practices in the contemporary crisis of representative democracy. Survey data indicate a growing demand for such practices within the electorate, while political parties have also begun discussing them more frequently. However, previous studies on citizens’ attitudes and parties’ discourse on democratic innovations rarely speak to each other. It remains unclear whether citizens’ attitudes and parties’ discourse are congruent. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature and analyses the extent to which political parties reflect citizens’ attitudes towards referendums and citizens’ deliberation in their manifestos. We cover 15 political parties in Germany and the UK. Our analysis uses party manifesto data between 2010 and 2024, and data from surveys conducted on national representative samples. Our findings reveal that political parties and citizens rarely have congruent approaches towards referendums and deliberative practices. People’s enthusiasm about referendums is hardly reflected in parties’ rhetoric, but the latter reacts gradually to the public appetite for deliberation. There are visible differences between opposition parties and those in government.