What Citizens Think They Should and Can Do in Democracies

• Applicant: Peter Luca Versteegen, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 589320779

Wider research context/theoretical framework. In representative democracies, citizens elect politicians to address the issues they care about. Yet, the recent sequence of complex societal crises (e.g., climate change, inequality, wars, a pandemic) makes it complex for politicians to address or even solve issues satisfactorily. In turn, citizens get increasingly polarized about how to address societal issues, turn to populist parties for “simple solutions,” or withdraw from politics altogether. Other citizens demand more participatory models of democracy or engage in voluntary and prosocial acts to help address a crisis. This project aims to examine what citizens themselves think they should and can do in a democracy, especially in times of crisis. While some research examined what citizens (and experts) think “good citizens” should do, other work shows that citizens can rarely meet these ideals. How citizens themselves experience the tension between should and can, however, is largely unknown. Hypotheses/research questions/objectives. What do citizens understand as “constructive citizenship behavior” in democracy, especially in times of societal crisis? The objectives of this project are to a.) conceptualize how citizens understand their role in democracy and b.) examine the predictors and consequences of this understanding. I aim to abductively conceptualize this understanding by combining citizens’ first-person perspectives with established multidisciplinary research. Next, I seek to test relevant predictors and consequences of the concept. For the latter, I will particularly draw from recent insights on how emotions and social identities shape information-processing and political behavior. Specifically, I argue that emotions and social identities may be among the key factors determining what citizens think they should and can do. Approach/methods. To fulfill the project’s objectives, I envision three stages of empirical evidence. I will first use qualitative interviews with citizens to describe their understandings of what citizens should and can do in a democracy, especially during crises. Using these insights, I will use comparative and cross-sectional data to develop a quantitative measure of “constructive citizenship behavior.” Finally, I will use experiments to test the predictors and consequences of this concept. Level of originality/innovation.This project is innovative in that it employs literature and methods from various disciplines to conceptualize what laypeople understand to be “constructive citizenship behavior.” This evidence may help scientists understand and improve societies’ responses to the many current crises. The project is methodologically original in that it develops open science tools to connect better the qualitative and quantitative results of its mixed-methods approach.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants