The effects of participating in government-led citizens’ assemblies

Abstract Contemporary democracies face growing public disaffection and mistrust. Governments have tried to revert these trends by promoting participatory governance. Prior studies established how deliberation can empower citizens. However, whether these effects hold in real-life initiatives initiated by partisan governments remains unclear. We test the ability of citizens’ assemblies to foster democratic attitudes in a natural experiment leveraging the random selection of participants to Lisbon’s citizens’ assemblies Participation led to an increase in issue knowledge and salience, external political efficacy and institutional trust. However, it did not impact internal political efficacy nor helped citizens better recognize the challenges of collective decision-making. The results hold for two assembly editions and reveal the potential of government-led participatory initiatives to reconnect citizens with democracy.