Research question/goal:

Liberal democracies face growing strain from populist pressures and authoritarian tendencies that erode citizens’ trust in political institutions. Strengthening democratic resilience requires tools that expand participation, boost self-efficacy, and foster trust. Citizen councils - randomly drawn citizen groups that deliberate on concrete issues and develop recommendations - have shown promise for enhancing participants’ attitudes. Yet, it remains unclear whether these benefits spill over to the wider public. NexCiCo+ answers this by launching citizen councils in three German municipalities. Each council brings together 30 randomly drawn residents. We aim to design the citizens' councils in a way that they generate community-wide effects beyond the participants. We measure the effects with pre-, post- and follow-up surveys of the entire municipal population. The NexCiCo pilot project has already shown that a local citizen council in one municipality could increase appreciation of democratic principles and satisfaction with democracy. NexCiCo+ aims to expand this evidence base by implementing citizen councils in new municipalities with more inclusive participant recruitment, thereby increasing the assemblies' representativeness. This could strengthen external effects and the democratic resilience of a community. Thus, our "next-generation citizens' assemblies" would be a scalable tool for revitalizing democracy.

In cooperation with:
Sebastian Ziaja (GESIS)
Hannah Göppert (Initiative Offene Gesellschaft e. V.)