Attitude Change on Redistributive Policies through Deliberation: Evidence from a Citizens’ Assembly

Research on the persistence of economic inequalities increasingly examines public attitudes towards redistribution, their formation, and the role of perceptions, ideologies, and information. Existing studies, however, usually rely on short-term interventions such as survey experiments or focus groups, where information and deep-seated predispositions have been shown to matter. Our study investigates attitude change and persistence in a novel setting: a citizens’ assembly. Citizens’ assemblies (or mini-publics) convene a small but representative group of citizens to deliberate on salient political issues, often addressing contested questions of justice and fairness. Beyond policy recommendations, such deliberations are frequently associated with shifts in participants’ long-held beliefs. We draw on data from the “Bürgerdebatte zu gerechten Steuern und Finanzen”, a mini-public of 40 citizens in Germany. The assembly met over two weekends in June and July 2025, combining expert input, information provision, and structured group deliberation. Our dataset comprises four surveys administered before, during, and after the sessions. The paper examines whether informed and sustained deliberation on redistributive policies in a mini-public shifts participants’ perceptions, attitudes, and policy preferences. We also explore the mechanisms underlying such changes and situate our findings within research on inequality perceptions, attitude formation and persistence, and democratic innovations such as mini-publics.