Project Description

The research project focuses on citizen assemblies (“Bürgerräte”), which are designed to address critical challenges to the liberal democratic order, such as declining political trust, the spread of misinformation, and inequalities in political representation. These assemblies bring together randomly selected citizens to discuss political issues, propose solutions, and provide recommendations to policymakers. By including a diverse range of perspectives, citizen assemblies aim to enhance political representation, reduce elitism, and improve trust in political institutions. The project seeks to understand which citizens participate in these assemblies and how their involvement affects political trust and susceptibility to misinformation. The findings will provide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of citizen assemblies in revitalising democracy and addressing political inequalities.

Research Questions

We seek to answer two research questions:

1. Which citizens participate in citizen assemblies and which strategies could be employed to increase the likelihood that they participate?

2. What is the effect of participating in a citizen assembly on political trust and the vulnerability to conspiracy theories and fake news?

Research Approach

We conducted a field experiment in collaboration with an NGO and Members of the German Bundestag. Our study compares 435 randomly selected constituents from six electoral districts, who participated in citizens' assemblies with their Bundestag representatives, to a control group of 2,748 randomly selected constituents from the same districts.

Relation to the Liberal Script

The project examined how citizen assemblies can address fundamental challenges to the liberal script such as decreasing political trust, declining political participation and the spread of conspiracy theories. By facilitating direct citizen involvement in decision-making, these assemblies aim to enhance political representation and trust, counteracting the erosion of confidence in democratic institutions and the spread of misinformation. In this project, we tested their effectiveness.

Core Findings

We show that the participation in citizens’ assemblies significantly and sizably increase political trust, political efficacy and the propensity for political participation while they decrease the receptiveness to conspiracy theories.

Academic Innovations

The project introduces a novel empirical approach by conducting a large-scale field experiment with real-world citizen assemblies, comparing participants to a control group within the same electoral districts. This method enables the assessment of the impact of direct citizen engagement on political trust and susceptibility to misinformation. This way, the study breaks new ground in understanding how participatory democratic practices can address challenges to the liberal script.

Publications

Wappenhans, Tim / Clemm, Bernhard / Hartmann, Felix / Klüver, Heike 2024: The Impact of Citizens’ Assemblies on Democratic Resilience: Evidence from a Field Experiment, OSF Preprints, doi:10.31219/osf.io/hnp8k.