MZES project director Dr. Antonia May and colleagues from GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and the Initiative Offene Gesellschaft e.V. have been awarded a grant by the Volkswagen Foundation. The researchers will investigate whether and to what extent citizens’ assemblies change citizens’ attitudes towards democracy beyond participants. An initial pilot project supports the assumption that the citizens’ assemblies might have an impact beyond the participants themselves, extending to the wider community. The team is now setting up three new citizens’ assemblies in collaboration with municipalities across Germany. In doing so, they are testing new ways of making the recruitment of citizens’ assembly participants more inclusive, with the aim of increasing the representativeness of the assemblies and enhancing the democratic resilience of communities.
Further information is available at the Volkswagen Foundation (in German).