Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RESDEM (RESilient DEMocracies: Rethinking Democratic Resilience through Citizens' Public Connection in Societies Under Pressure)
Berichtszeitraum: 2025-09-01 bis 2027-08-31
Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts
To address the combined pressures of global challenges like climate change, economic instability, and disinformation, democratic societies must undergo significant transformations—transitioning to sustainable energy, reshaping urban areas, and adapting social safety nets. However, a troubling pattern has emerged across Europe: as governments tackle these pressures, the burdens of change often disrupt citizens’ lives, fuelling declining trust in institutions, increasing news avoidance, growing intolerance, and even political violence. This democratic erosion, in turn, makes addressing the original global stressors even more challenging, creating a negative feedback loop that persists despite extensive research on institutional crisis management.
RESDEM addresses a key yet underexplored aspect of this dynamic: citizens’ democratic resilience. While scholarly attention in times of crisis typically focuses on state institutions, media, and elite actors, the critical role of citizens—how they adapt, engage, and sustain democratic practices when the pressures of societal change come to bear on their everyday lives—remains inadequately researched and conceptualised. RESDEM fills this gap by developing a theoretical framework of citizens’ democratic resilience through the lens of their public connection: how individuals orient themselves towards the world of shared concerns through media use, discursive engagement, and participation in social and informational networks.
The project’s approach is distinctly citizen-centric and practice-oriented. Rather than treating resilience as an inherent trait of individuals, RESDEM examines it as patterned adjustments in citizens’ engagement with public life when faced with disruptions. These adjustments manifest in shifting dynamics of attention to public affairs, information-seeking, political discussion, trust in institutions and fellow citizens, and political participation. Crucially, RESDEM seeks to distinguish between engagement that maintains democratic foundations and engagement that undermines them.
To ground this research empirically, RESDEM studies onshore wind turbine projects – a case where global environmental challenges materialise in citizens’ immediate environments, often sparking grassroots mobilisation that, while legitimate, can also fuel polarisation and illiberal sentiments. The project was originally designed as a comparative ethnographic study of wind power conflicts in Norway and Germany. Due to the shortened project duration (6 of 24 planned months), the fieldwork was concentrated on Baden-Württemberg, Germany, which proved to be a particularly rich case. Baden-Württemberg is Germany’s third-largest federal state but accounts for under 3% of the country’s installed wind power capacity. Recent federal legislation (the 2022 “Wind-an-Land-Gesetz”) requires 1.8% of the state’s land area to be allocated to wind parks by 2025, while the state government passed additional laws to accelerate approval processes, in some cases enabling project developers to bypass or significantly shorten public consultations. This combination of top-down pressure and localised decision-making has generated intense conflicts involving municipal councils, nature protection organisations, citizens’ initiatives on both sides, project developers, regional planning agencies, and ordinary citizens.
A major theoretical development during the fellowship was a reframing of the project’s central concept. Engagement with the empirical material and with recent polarisation theory led to the concept of “anticipatory democratic resilience”, defined as practices aimed at maintaining participatory conditions before destructive polarisation consolidates. Wind power projects emerged as sites characterised by high political urgency, asymmetries of power, and material interventions into everyday environments, making them likely to produce polarisation as a communicative process that actively reshapes citizen participation. The question thus shifted from “how do citizens cope after disruption?” to “how do different actors work to preserve the conditions for democratic engagement in the first place?”
RESDEM draws on an interdisciplinary foundation that integrates insights from communication studies, political science, urban sociology, and psychology. Communication studies provide tools for analysing media use and discourse; political science frameworks help interpret these patterns in terms of democratic participation; urban sociology’s focus on physical spaces and local infrastructure complements the digital emphasis of communication research; and psychological concepts of individual resilience are contextualised within broader sociological and political frameworks of community and democratic resilience. This integration of the social sciences and humanities is essential for understanding a phenomenon that is at once deeply personal and rooted in everyday media habits, conversations, and sense of belonging, as well as fundamentally political and governance-related.
The project aligns with EU priorities for the European Green Deal (clean energy transition) and the New Push for European Democracy, and contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals #7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), #13 (Climate Action), and #16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). By providing insight into how democratic participation can be sustained during contested energy transitions, RESDEM offers evidence relevant for designing more inclusive infrastructure planning processes and for understanding the communicative conditions under which citizens’ engagement with the green transition remains democratically functional.
RESDEM addresses a key yet underexplored aspect of this dynamic: citizens’ democratic resilience. While scholarly attention in times of crisis typically focuses on state institutions, media, and elite actors, the critical role of citizens—how they adapt, engage, and sustain democratic practices when the pressures of societal change come to bear on their everyday lives—remains inadequately researched and conceptualised. RESDEM fills this gap by developing a theoretical framework of citizens’ democratic resilience through the lens of their public connection: how individuals orient themselves towards the world of shared concerns through media use, discursive engagement, and participation in social and informational networks.
The project’s approach is distinctly citizen-centric and practice-oriented. Rather than treating resilience as an inherent trait of individuals, RESDEM examines it as patterned adjustments in citizens’ engagement with public life when faced with disruptions. These adjustments manifest in shifting dynamics of attention to public affairs, information-seeking, political discussion, trust in institutions and fellow citizens, and political participation. Crucially, RESDEM seeks to distinguish between engagement that maintains democratic foundations and engagement that undermines them.
To ground this research empirically, RESDEM studies onshore wind turbine projects – a case where global environmental challenges materialise in citizens’ immediate environments, often sparking grassroots mobilisation that, while legitimate, can also fuel polarisation and illiberal sentiments. The project was originally designed as a comparative ethnographic study of wind power conflicts in Norway and Germany. Due to the shortened project duration (6 of 24 planned months), the fieldwork was concentrated on Baden-Württemberg, Germany, which proved to be a particularly rich case. Baden-Württemberg is Germany’s third-largest federal state but accounts for under 3% of the country’s installed wind power capacity. Recent federal legislation (the 2022 “Wind-an-Land-Gesetz”) requires 1.8% of the state’s land area to be allocated to wind parks by 2025, while the state government passed additional laws to accelerate approval processes, in some cases enabling project developers to bypass or significantly shorten public consultations. This combination of top-down pressure and localised decision-making has generated intense conflicts involving municipal councils, nature protection organisations, citizens’ initiatives on both sides, project developers, regional planning agencies, and ordinary citizens.
A major theoretical development during the fellowship was a reframing of the project’s central concept. Engagement with the empirical material and with recent polarisation theory led to the concept of “anticipatory democratic resilience”, defined as practices aimed at maintaining participatory conditions before destructive polarisation consolidates. Wind power projects emerged as sites characterised by high political urgency, asymmetries of power, and material interventions into everyday environments, making them likely to produce polarisation as a communicative process that actively reshapes citizen participation. The question thus shifted from “how do citizens cope after disruption?” to “how do different actors work to preserve the conditions for democratic engagement in the first place?”
RESDEM draws on an interdisciplinary foundation that integrates insights from communication studies, political science, urban sociology, and psychology. Communication studies provide tools for analysing media use and discourse; political science frameworks help interpret these patterns in terms of democratic participation; urban sociology’s focus on physical spaces and local infrastructure complements the digital emphasis of communication research; and psychological concepts of individual resilience are contextualised within broader sociological and political frameworks of community and democratic resilience. This integration of the social sciences and humanities is essential for understanding a phenomenon that is at once deeply personal and rooted in everyday media habits, conversations, and sense of belonging, as well as fundamentally political and governance-related.
The project aligns with EU priorities for the European Green Deal (clean energy transition) and the New Push for European Democracy, and contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals #7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), #13 (Climate Action), and #16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). By providing insight into how democratic participation can be sustained during contested energy transitions, RESDEM offers evidence relevant for designing more inclusive infrastructure planning processes and for understanding the communicative conditions under which citizens’ engagement with the green transition remains democratically functional.
Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse
During the six-month fellowship period (September 2025 – February 2026), the project achieved substantial progress despite operating within a fraction of the originally planned 24-month timeline. The fieldwork was concentrated on Germany, with the comparative Norwegian case set aside due to time constraints. The work performed can be grouped into four areas.
Ethnographic fieldwork in Baden-Württemberg
The researcher conducted extensive multi-actor fieldwork across several districts in Baden-Württemberg (Reutlingen, Tübingen, Heilbronn, Göppingen, Rems-Murr-Kreis, Enzkreis, Böblingen, and the Stuttgart region), covering actors on all sides of the wind power conflict:
• 7 site visits to wind turbine project locations, including observation and informal conversations with local residents
• 27 semi-structured interviews with a diverse range of stakeholders: municipal council members (5), regular citizens (4), representatives of local citizens’ initiatives both in favour of (4 organisations) and against (4 organisations) wind power, regional planning agency staff (3), local journalists (2), wind power project developers (2), mediation actors (3), and nature protection organisation representatives (multiple individuals across BUND and NABU at state and local levels)
• 5 additional interviews are outstanding and planned for completion
• Attendance at 3 municipal council meetings as participant observer
• Attendance at 3 local anti-wind power meetings as participant observer
• Attendance at a 3-day nature protection organisation event, with interviews of several participants
Document and media data collection
• Collection and archiving of approximately 1,400 local newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and opinion pieces (covering the period from 2022 onwards), spanning four main outlets in the region: SÜDWEST PRESSE, Reutlinger General-Anzeiger, Stuttgarter Zeitung and Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen.
• Scraping and archiving of 10 local initiative websites (pro- and anti-wind power)
• Collection of videos of public consultations and information events (available on the website of the website of Energiedialog Baden-Württemberg and on Youtube), final count: 20 videos.
Theoretical and conceptual development
• Refinement of the project’s theoretical framework: the original focus on democratic resilience as a response to disruption was reframed drawing on McCoy & Somer (2019) on pernicious polarisation and Esau et al. (2025) on destructive polarisation, as well as Betts et al. (2022) on anticipatory resilience, toward the concept of “anticipatory democratic resilience”: practices aimed at maintaining participatory conditions before destructive polarisation consolidates
• Development of revised research questions: (RQ1) How do different actors on all sides of the issue perceive, experience, and participate in discussions around the wind power rollout and/or organise in favour or against it? (RQ2) Which strategies do they employ to navigate perceived polarisation?
• Systematic mapping of the actor landscape in the Baden-Württemberg wind power conflict, including regional planning associations, municipalities, civil society (nature protection NGOs, local citizens’ initiatives), media actors, wind power development companies (private and state-owned such as EnBW), mediation actors (including the state-funded Dialogforum Energiewende), and citizens of designated areas
Dissemination
• Project presentation at the University of Groningen (February 2026)
• Project presentation at the University of Bergen (February 2026)
• Abstract accepted for the ECREA conference (forthcoming, September 2026)
• Invitation to speak at the opening panel of the ECREA conference on the topic of resilience (forthcoming, September 2026)
• Journal article in preparation on preempting polarisation in local energy conflicts (target journal: Political Communication)
• Journal article planned on “alarmed citizens" and democratic engagement in contested energy transitions (target journal: International Journal of Press/Politics)
Ethnographic fieldwork in Baden-Württemberg
The researcher conducted extensive multi-actor fieldwork across several districts in Baden-Württemberg (Reutlingen, Tübingen, Heilbronn, Göppingen, Rems-Murr-Kreis, Enzkreis, Böblingen, and the Stuttgart region), covering actors on all sides of the wind power conflict:
• 7 site visits to wind turbine project locations, including observation and informal conversations with local residents
• 27 semi-structured interviews with a diverse range of stakeholders: municipal council members (5), regular citizens (4), representatives of local citizens’ initiatives both in favour of (4 organisations) and against (4 organisations) wind power, regional planning agency staff (3), local journalists (2), wind power project developers (2), mediation actors (3), and nature protection organisation representatives (multiple individuals across BUND and NABU at state and local levels)
• 5 additional interviews are outstanding and planned for completion
• Attendance at 3 municipal council meetings as participant observer
• Attendance at 3 local anti-wind power meetings as participant observer
• Attendance at a 3-day nature protection organisation event, with interviews of several participants
Document and media data collection
• Collection and archiving of approximately 1,400 local newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and opinion pieces (covering the period from 2022 onwards), spanning four main outlets in the region: SÜDWEST PRESSE, Reutlinger General-Anzeiger, Stuttgarter Zeitung and Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen.
• Scraping and archiving of 10 local initiative websites (pro- and anti-wind power)
• Collection of videos of public consultations and information events (available on the website of the website of Energiedialog Baden-Württemberg and on Youtube), final count: 20 videos.
Theoretical and conceptual development
• Refinement of the project’s theoretical framework: the original focus on democratic resilience as a response to disruption was reframed drawing on McCoy & Somer (2019) on pernicious polarisation and Esau et al. (2025) on destructive polarisation, as well as Betts et al. (2022) on anticipatory resilience, toward the concept of “anticipatory democratic resilience”: practices aimed at maintaining participatory conditions before destructive polarisation consolidates
• Development of revised research questions: (RQ1) How do different actors on all sides of the issue perceive, experience, and participate in discussions around the wind power rollout and/or organise in favour or against it? (RQ2) Which strategies do they employ to navigate perceived polarisation?
• Systematic mapping of the actor landscape in the Baden-Württemberg wind power conflict, including regional planning associations, municipalities, civil society (nature protection NGOs, local citizens’ initiatives), media actors, wind power development companies (private and state-owned such as EnBW), mediation actors (including the state-funded Dialogforum Energiewende), and citizens of designated areas
Dissemination
• Project presentation at the University of Groningen (February 2026)
• Project presentation at the University of Bergen (February 2026)
• Abstract accepted for the ECREA conference (forthcoming, September 2026)
• Invitation to speak at the opening panel of the ECREA conference on the topic of resilience (forthcoming, September 2026)
• Journal article in preparation on preempting polarisation in local energy conflicts (target journal: Political Communication)
• Journal article planned on “alarmed citizens" and democratic engagement in contested energy transitions (target journal: International Journal of Press/Politics)
Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)
Although the project ended before the originally planned completion date, the fieldwork and analysis conducted during the fellowship have yielded several contributions that advance beyond the current state of the art.
First, RESDEM introduces the concept of anticipatory democratic resilience, which shifts the analytical focus from how citizens respond to democratic crises after they occur to how various actors proactively work to maintain conditions for democratic participation before destructive polarisation takes hold. Existing resilience research—across political science, psychology, and communication studies—has predominantly treated resilience as a reactive phenomenon. By contrast, the RESDEM framework foregrounds the anticipatory and communicative dimensions of resilience, drawing on the communication theory of resilience and connecting it to the polarisation literature in a novel way.
Second, the project’s preliminary findings reveal that the choreography of wind power conflicts has become predictable and, as such, manageable for willing local authorities. All actors across the conflict landscape (municipal councils, project developers, nature protection NGOs, anti-wind initiatives, and uninvolved citizens) anticipate destructive polarisation and employ distinct strategies to address it. Municipal councils focus on preemptive information provision and avoiding referenda; companies seek to build trust through early stakeholder outreach; nature protection NGOs focus on endangered species as an evidence-based counter-strategy; anti-wind initiatives appeal to reason and local identity while attempting to overwhelm with detailed technical information; and uninvolved citizens try to inform themselves with minimal effort and emotional arousal. These patterns suggest a more nuanced picture than the dominant NIMBY/LULU framing allows.
Third, the multi-actor ethnographic approach—interviewing and observing stakeholders across all sides of the conflict rather than focusing on one group—provides a more holistic and democratic view of how participation, trust, and conflict dynamics unfold in contested energy transitions. This approach responds to a gap in the literature, which has tended to study either protest movements or institutional actors in isolation.
Further research is needed, particularly additional citizen interviews and systematic analysis of the newspaper corpus and website data, to fully substantiate these preliminary findings and develop them into a validated theoretical framework.
First, RESDEM introduces the concept of anticipatory democratic resilience, which shifts the analytical focus from how citizens respond to democratic crises after they occur to how various actors proactively work to maintain conditions for democratic participation before destructive polarisation takes hold. Existing resilience research—across political science, psychology, and communication studies—has predominantly treated resilience as a reactive phenomenon. By contrast, the RESDEM framework foregrounds the anticipatory and communicative dimensions of resilience, drawing on the communication theory of resilience and connecting it to the polarisation literature in a novel way.
Second, the project’s preliminary findings reveal that the choreography of wind power conflicts has become predictable and, as such, manageable for willing local authorities. All actors across the conflict landscape (municipal councils, project developers, nature protection NGOs, anti-wind initiatives, and uninvolved citizens) anticipate destructive polarisation and employ distinct strategies to address it. Municipal councils focus on preemptive information provision and avoiding referenda; companies seek to build trust through early stakeholder outreach; nature protection NGOs focus on endangered species as an evidence-based counter-strategy; anti-wind initiatives appeal to reason and local identity while attempting to overwhelm with detailed technical information; and uninvolved citizens try to inform themselves with minimal effort and emotional arousal. These patterns suggest a more nuanced picture than the dominant NIMBY/LULU framing allows.
Third, the multi-actor ethnographic approach—interviewing and observing stakeholders across all sides of the conflict rather than focusing on one group—provides a more holistic and democratic view of how participation, trust, and conflict dynamics unfold in contested energy transitions. This approach responds to a gap in the literature, which has tended to study either protest movements or institutional actors in isolation.
Further research is needed, particularly additional citizen interviews and systematic analysis of the newspaper corpus and website data, to fully substantiate these preliminary findings and develop them into a validated theoretical framework.