Bring the Public In: Assessing Non‐Participants' Legitimacy Perceptions of a Digital Democratic Innovation in a Swiss Experiment

Abstract Democratic innovations, i.e., participatory processes where citizens deliberate and produce various outputs, typically involve few participants. Since the produced outputs impact the entire population, the small number of participants raises legitimacy concerns. This study examines whether providing non‐involved citizens with additional information about the participatory process enhances the legitimacy of democratic innovations. Using a framed field experiment with a digital democratic innovation (DDI), it explores how citizens who did not participate but watched an explanatory video about the DDI process perceived the DDI's legitimacy compared to a control group that did not watch the video. The findings reveal that additional information on the process influenced perceptions of process legitimacy positively but affected perceptions of output legitimacy negatively. The study thus contributes to the discussion on democratic innovations by highlighting the complex nature of legitimacy perception in digital democratic contexts.