New publication: Making the case for democracy: A field-experiment on democratic persuasion
This study with my friend Florian Foos was special. During the COVID pandemic we held townhalls on COVID politics with citizens and politicians and we participated in all of them as moderators or experts. For many citizens, this was the first time they could voice their grievances, fears and hopes in a public forum. So, being part of this project, was quite different from our typical office jobs. Also, we learned important insights on how to foster democracy’s societal foundations, see below.
Abstract
Ordinary citizens can serve as a critical defence against democratic backsliding. But beneath the surface, citizens’ commitment to democracy is sometimes fragile, with crises exacerbating existing anxieties. We introduce ‘democratic persuasion’ as an actionable intervention to foster the resilience of citizens’ commitment to liberal democracy. ‘Democratic persuasion’ seizes the opportunity of communicating with wavering democrats. ‘Democratic persuasion’ entails actively making the case for democracy and discussing democracy’s inherent trade-offs while engaging existing doubts and misperceptions. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which stirred frustrations with democracy and highlighted democratic trade-offs, we invited citizens via Facebook to participate in one of sixteen Zoom town halls to engage in discussions on pandemic politics with members of German state and federal parliaments. Each representative hosted two town halls, with random assignment to a condition of ‘democratic persuasion’ in one of the two town hall meetings. The field experiment yielded mixed results, demonstrating significant effects on some indicators of democratic commitment but not on others. This study contributes to the nascent body of research aimed at reinforcing the societal pillars of liberal democracies.