What Do Elected Representatives Actually Think About Deliberative Democracy? Carnegie UK Has Answers.

Carnegie UK's Engaging Democracy programme has released Parliamentarians' Perspectives on Deliberative Democracy, a polling study conducted by Savanta in late 2025 surveying elected representatives across the UK Parliament, Scottish Parliament, Senedd, and Northern Ireland Assembly on their awareness of, attitudes toward, and openness to deliberative democratic processes. The research finds that while elected representatives across all jurisdictions display cautious openness to deliberative approaches, significant barriers persist — including concerns about legitimacy, role duplication, and institutional capacity — and that awareness and experience vary substantially by jurisdiction and political affiliation. A consistent and actionable finding across the report is that direct experience of deliberative processes tends to reduce scepticism, pointing to education and structured exposure as critical pathways for the field. The report is essential reading for NCDD members working at the intersection of deliberative democracy and formal governance, offering both empirical grounding and concrete recommendations for advancing deliberative practice within legislative institutions.

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As practitioners in the dialogue and deliberation field work to expand the use of citizens' assemblies, juries, and panels as tools for democratic renewal, a critical question has remained underexplored: how do the elected representatives who would need to support, commission, or act on these processes actually view them? Carnegie UK's Engaging Democracy programme commissioned polling agency Savanta to find out, surveying elected representatives across all four UK legislative jurisdictions — Westminster MPs, Scottish MSPs, Welsh MSs, and Northern Ireland MLAs — in late 2025. The resulting report, Parliamentarians' Perspectives on Deliberative Democracy, offers the field of dialogue and deliberation a rare, empirically grounded window into the attitudes, assumptions, and concerns of sitting legislators — and the findings carry implications well beyond the United Kingdom.
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​The report's headline finding is one of cautious but genuine openness, complicated by significant barriers rooted in institutional culture, limited familiarity, and concerns about legitimacy and role duplication. Awareness and experience of deliberative processes varied considerably across jurisdictions: Scottish MSPs were the most familiar, with 84 percent having heard of deliberative democracy and nearly a third having participated in or observed a process. Northern Ireland MLAs were the least familiar, yet paradoxically expressed the strongest optimism about deliberation's potential to resolve entrenched problems and rebuild public trust — a finding that points to the complex relationship between experience and attitude. Westminster MPs were the most sceptical overall, with more than a third unwilling to consider involvement in a deliberative process, and sharp partisan divides between Labour and Conservative members on nearly every measure. Across jurisdictions, one of the most consistent findings was that direct experience of deliberative processes tended to reduce concerns about role duplication and increase openness — suggesting that familiarity is itself a meaningful intervention point for the field.
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Carnegie UK's recommendations point to three priorities: building awareness of deliberative processes among elected representatives through education and direct exposure; developing clearer frameworks that position deliberation as complementary to, rather than competitive with, representative democracy; and better institutionalizing deliberative processes within existing legislative structures. For NCDD members and practitioners making the case for deliberative democracy at the institutional level — whether in the US, UK, or beyond — this report offers both a diagnostic and a strategic roadmap. The finding that scepticism frequently accompanies limited understanding rather than principled opposition is particularly important: it suggests that the field's challenge is less about winning ideological arguments and more about creating structured opportunities for legislators to encounter deliberative practice directly. The full report is available through Carnegie UK at https://carnegieuk.org/publication/parliamentarians-perspectives-on-deliberative-democracy/