The Estonian Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) was initiated in late 2012 as a direct consequence of a legitimacy crisis of Estonian political parties and representative institutions. The spark igniting this crisis was the unraveling of a scheme of illegal party financing. The response from governmental institutions took the form of a democratic innovation involving public crowd‐sourcing and deliberative mini‐publics. This study reports on a survey among the participants in the online crowd‐sourcing process of the ECA (n = 847). The study examines how this democratic innovation influenced participants’ social and political trust as well as the impact of participants' predispositions and level of satisfaction with the ECA on changes in trust. We find that participants that had positive predispositions and who were satisfied with the ECA were more likely to gain trust. Furthermore, we also find that the participants, in general, became more distrustful of political institutions, while their participation fostered increased social trust. This outcome differs from the intentions of the Estonian institutions which organized the ECA and sheds new light on the role of democratic innovations in the context of legitimacy crises. This is an important step forward in the scholarly understanding of the relationship between democratic innovation and trust.

中文翻译：

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危机时期的民主创新：探索社会和政治信任的变化

爱沙尼亚公民大会（ECA）于2012年底启动，这是爱沙尼亚政党和代表机构合法性危机的直接后果。引发这场危机的火花是解散了非法政党筹资计划。政府机构的回应采取了民主创新的形式，涉及公众众包和审议性迷你公社。这项研究报告了ECA在线众包过程中参与者的调查（n = 847）。该研究考察了这种民主创新如何影响参与者的社会和政治信任，以及参与者的倾向和对ECA的满意度对信任变化的影响。我们发现，具有积极倾向和对ECA感到满意的参与者更有可能获得信任。此外，我们还发现，总体而言，参与者对政治机构变得更加不信任，而他们的参与则促进了社会信任的增加。这一结果与组织非洲经委会的爱沙尼亚机构的意图不同，并为合法性危机背景下的民主创新作用提供了新的启示。这是学术上了解民主创新与信任之间关系的重要一步。