Citizens' Council, which SCRIPTS investigated in a field experiment with the NGO “Es geht los”. © SCRIPTS
Mrs. Klüver, you are also a political scientist at SCRIPTS. You are researching a challenge to the liberal script that we are all currently experiencing first-hand: the rise of populism.
Heike Klüver:In my projects at SCRIPTS, I look at various instruments that can be used to increase what I call the democratic resilience of citizens. In recent years in particular, there has been increasing polarization and radicalization. We are investigating which instruments can help us to successfully counter growing populist extremist forces in particular.
Specifically, for example, we investigated the extent to which new forms of democratic participation can lead to voters regaining confidence in established democracy and also becoming more involved in the democratic process themselves.
What forms of democratic participation could these be?
Klüver: This could be, for example, so-called “citizens' councils”, for which we conducted a field experiment together with the NGO “Es geht los”. Citizens' councils are randomly selected groups of citizens who come together to discuss political issues and, if necessary, develop recommendations for decision-makers. Citizens are randomly selected to form a representative and diverse group that reflects the entire population so that the discussions and recommendations take into account as many perspectives and interests as possible.
“Es geht los” has held a total of 17 such citizens' assemblies, in which around 25 people came together for a weekend and discussed a political topic with the respective constituency representative. We scientifically monitored these citizens' assemblies as part of a field experiment to investigate the extent to which participation in citizens' assemblies can strengthen the democratic resilience of citizens. We were able to show that participation has a significant positive effect on their trust - both in democracy and in political institutions. Participation also has a positive effect on whether people want to participate in the political process again. At the same time, it has a negative effect on whether people are susceptible to conspiracy theories.