In this article, we examine the determinants of citizens’ democratic preferences in federal states with politically significant national or linguistic diversity. Using original survey data from Belgium, Canada and Switzerland, we test whether members of national or linguistic minorities prefer different (electoral, direct or deliberative) forms of decision-making than majority members – since some give advantage to them more than others. While we find effects of citizens’ objective and subjective minority-majority position on their democratic preferences, individual-level predictors such as satisfaction with the current functioning of democracy, economic well-being and political ideology remain at least as strong predictors. These findings enrich the literatures on democratic fatigue, reform and innovation by showing that even in states with significant national-linguistic diversity, democratic preferences seem to transcend communities, indicating room for cross-group consensus. Yet, since group-level factors have some relevance, democratic reforms need to pay attention to them to be inclusive of all societal segments.

Despite their multiplication over the last 15 years, studies on the support for assemblies composed of citizens selected by lot are rare and the few that exist analyse citizens’ attitudes towards such mini-publics as consultative bodies associated with traditional representative institutions. In this article, we examine support for citizens selected by lot as new policymakers who take the most important political decisions instead of political representatives. We contrast support for this radical democratic innovation with support for two other reforms that increase citizen participation: generic support for a greater involvement of citizens in policymaking, and specific support for citizen-initiated referendums. The goal is to understand whether the drivers of support for citizens selected by lot overlap or differ from the drivers of support for other forms of citizen participation. We rely upon data from the 2017 French Election Study.