Parliamentarians’ perspectives on deliberative democracy

Executive summary

This report summarises polling commissioned by Carnegie UK and conducted by the research agency Savanta to better understand the views and opinions of elected representatives across the UK in relation to deliberative democracy.

This work forms part of Carnegie UK’s Engaging Democracy programme, which aims to contribute to improving democratic wellbeing for people across the UK, with a focus on participatory and deliberative democracy. We undertook this work to understand how parliamentarians across the UK understood and perceived this important area of democratic innovation.

The surveys in each jurisdiction were conducted in late 2025 and gathered responses from MPs, MSPs, MSs and MLAs, weighted to reflect the political composition of each legislature. Key findings from this work include:

• Elected representatives across the UK display cautious openness to deliberative democratic approaches, alongside recurring concerns about legitimacy, role duplication, and institutional capacity to adopt these processes.
• Concerns about duplication of roles were widespread.
• Attitudes varied by jurisdiction, with elected representatives in devolved nations consistently more positive about the potential of deliberative processes.
• Whilst there was relatively low optimism overall, left‑leaning elected representatives were more likely to believe deliberation could enhance trust between the public and democratic institutions and help resolve entrenched problems, while right of centre elected representatives were more doubtful.
• Sitting in Westminster further shaped attitudes: Conservative MPs were consistently more sceptical than Labour MPs about these processes, but this pattern was less consistent in devolved contexts.
• Levels of prior awareness and direct experience of deliberative democracy varied across jurisdiction. MSPs in Scotland were the most familiar and most likely to have participated in or observed a deliberative process, while MLAs in Northern Ireland were the least familiar overall.
• Across devolved legislatures, around three‑quarters of representatives indicated they either would consider or had already taken part in a deliberative democratic process. Westminster MPs were notably more sceptical, with over a third saying they would not consider involvement.

While elected representatives’ awareness of deliberative processes varied between jurisdictions, there was less variation in relation to how likely they were to say that they had taken part in and/or would consider taking part in such processes, as shown in Figure 2.

As with other questions, there were some clear differences by jurisdiction when it comes to whether elected representatives agree that ‘deliberative democracy would lead to increased trust between the public and democratic institutions’. On this, elected representatives in Northern Ireland were most likely to agree (55%). Less than half of elected representatives in Wales and Scotland agreed (44% respectively), and only 35% of those at Westminster agreed.

Party politically, representatives of left-leaning parties were more likely to agree than parties more right-leaning. As with the question on openness, this was compounded by the Westminster factor. Specifically, at Westminster the gap between political parties is particularly wide: three times as many Labour MPs agreed (39%) with this statement than Conservative MPs (13%).

In Scotland and Wales, there was also a gap between pro-independence parties and other parties, while in Northern Ireland a similar gap was seen between nationalist and other parties compared to unionist parties.

In general, this reflects the issues at stake with deliberative democracy, which aims to disperse influence over decision-making to a more local or personal level or, as one Labour MP put it, “sharing agenda-setting power”. However, there are other issues at stake that contribute to a belief that deliberative democracy would not improve trust in democratic institutions.

For example, some elected representatives were concerned that the selection process behind deliberative democracy could lead to panels being “Made up of political activists” (Conservative MSP). Others felt that the process “may not get consensus from communities we don’t already hear from” (Labour MP) or could be seen “as selective democracy, reducing trust in political institutions which is the opposite of what we want to do” (Plaid Cymru MS).

Concerns around issues like panel selection partly reflect differing understandings of what deliberative democracy is and is not and could be addressed by robust processes (such as Sortition-style random panel selection) and greater education for representatives about these processes.

However, concerns around public acceptability and legitimacy appear to be more deeply held. This is reflected in the fact that having had experience with deliberative democratic processes did not always improve the likelihood of feeling among elected representatives that they would improve public trust. For example, while MPs with direct experience were slightly more likely to agree that it would improve public trust than those without direct experience, MSPs with direct experience were slightly less likely to agree that it would improve trust than those without direct experience.

Solving entrenched problems

Elected representatives were asked whether deliberative democracy would help resolve entrenched problems within society, Figure 4 shows the results to this question.

The elected representatives polled in our survey only expressed limited agreement that deliberative democracy can help resolve entrenched problems, though there was again a split in perceptions between left-leaning and right-leaning political affiliation, as well as differences by jurisdiction.

Interestingly, despite MLAs in Northern Ireland being the least likely to have heard of or used deliberative democracy, they were the most likely to agree that it would help resolve entrenched problems in society, with over half agreeing. This compares to levels of agreement of 28% for MPs, 32% for MSs and 36% for MSPs.

In most jurisdictions, prior direct experience of deliberative democratic techniques was likely to lead to more positive responses. For example, roughly half of MPs and MSs who had previously used deliberative techniques agreed, compared to about a quarter of MPs and MSs who had not. However, for MSPs the trend did not appear, with slightly fewer MSPs who had used these techniques agreeing than those who had not been involved in deliberative democracy.

It is notable that for some elected representatives, the idea of using deliberative democracy as a tool to help resolve problems conflicts with their perception of their own role. Several comments suggest that for many elected representatives there is a strong sentiment that resolving entrenched problems is a core part of an elected member’s mandate, without the need for additional deliberative processes. For example:

Across the board there was a general lack of optimism that any institution could comprehensively take deliberative democratic processes into account and act on findings and recommendations. While each jurisdiction scored institutions slightly differently, there was a relative parity between them.

Within this overall picture, elected representatives in devolved jurisdictions were generally more positive about the capacity of all institutions to adopt processes.

MSPs and MPs agreed that the institution most likely to have capacity to adopt and act on deliberative democratic processes is local government, albeit still only at levels of 39% and 34% respectively scoring this between 7 and 10.

Respondents with previous direct experience of deliberative democracy were slightly more likely than those without to believe that such processes could effectively be adopted. This was especially the case in relation to the capacity of devolved governments and parliaments.

There were also differences according to party affiliation, with left-leaning and pro-independence parties once again more likely to answer more positively. In Northern Ireland, nationalist and other parties were more likely to respond positively than unionist parties. In general, the scores suggest that only a minority of elected representatives have confidence that institutions can adopt and act on findings from deliberative democracy. This is likely to reflect a key theme that arose when asked about barriers to legislatures adopting deliberative processes: resources.

Across jurisdictions, resource and procedure were the most-commonly noted barriers. This related both to time and money, with one MSP noting that “done well, deliberative democracy takes time and detailed input/facilitation” (MSP, Other political party), with concurrent costs attached. One elected member felt that “everybody [is] too busy” (Conservative MS) to adopt these new processes, and another agreed that “logistics and capacity” (Labour MP) were the key barriers.

Besides resources, several elected representatives noted that existing procedures and cultures would be a barrier to the adoption of deliberative processes:

Each of these comments, and others that echo similar sentiments, suggests that many elected representatives believe institutions have limited capacity to adopt deliberative processes without wider-ranging changes to either resourcing or long-standing procedures.

There was a general consensus that UK Parliament, UK Government, local government, devolved government or executives, and devolved parliaments or assemblies all have a role to play in responding to these concerns. Elected representatives were most likely to see their own institution as having a role to play in responding to concerns. A small but still significant number of elected representatives said that civil society had a part to play.

Some elected representatives said that none of the institutions listed should have a role in responding to concerns about public trust in democracy.

While elected representatives were very likely to feel that their own institution had a role to play, the same is not true when asked who should have a lead role in this space, indicated on Figure 8. For this question they were asked to give one answer.

MPs were still most likely to select their own institution (UK Parliament), but most elected representatives in devolved jurisdictions gave the lead role to either UK Parliament or UK Government. In all three devolved jurisdictions, elected representatives were more likely to suggest that civil society should take a lead role on these issues than their own parliaments or governments.

Taken together, this suggests that while elected representatives consistently understand that their own institutions have a role to play, they mostly believe that leadership on these issues should primarily be taken centrally by the UK Parliament or UK Government, or even by civil society.