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The quality of public debate and democratic exchange is under pressure. Increasing polarization and changing media habits are making it difficult to create a shared understanding of society's main challenges, and to hold respectful, solution-oriented discussions without ideological blinkers. The “Citizens' Assembly 2025” project of the Universities of Zurich and Geneva examines whether and how people's councils can enrich democratic debates and create space for differentiated discussions - well-founded, controversial and peer-to-peer.
Challenges: polarization and media habits
Two major developments pose challenges to the quality of democratic exchanges: increasing polarization and changing media habits. Political polarization in itself is hardly problematic, being above all a welcome expression of a wide diversity of opinions and perspectives. On the other hand, so-called affective polarization is more problematic for democratic discourse. This is the tendency to feel particularly strong negative emotions towards other political positions or social groups. This entails the risk of different social groups listening to each other less, losing mutual understanding of other points of view, and no longer accepting the arguments and viewpoints of dissenters in order to find the best solutions together.
The changing landscape and use of the media also influences democratic debate. A recent study by the “Media Quality” yearbook shows that the use of news media has declined in recent years, and that today over 40% of the population hardly consume any news at all. The increasing concentration of the media and the consequent decline in content diversity are further aggravating the situation. At the same time, teenagers and young adults in particular are using social media as their main source of information on political issuues. This encourages the consumption of unfiltered, sometimes unverified information, and carries the risk of evolving into opinion bubbles.
One of the aims of the “Assemblée Citoyenne 2025” project is to study the extent to which new forms of democracy can respond to these challenges. The central question is to what extent Citizens' Assemblies lend themselves to the organization of important social debates, to the understanding of different points of view and thus contribute to a constructive and diversified public debate. To answer these questions, this research project also examines the extent to which the outcome of the Citizens' Assembly contributes to opinion formation among people who have not themselves participated in the Citizens' Assembly discussions.
In focus: healthcare costs as the main concern
The choice of themes for the Citizens' Assembly was made in a transparent and widely-supported process, which identified healthcare costs as a particularly pressing issue. The choice of healthcare policy is not surprising: for years, this topic has been one of the population's main concerns, and politicians have struggled to adopt sustainable reforms. Not least because healthcare policy is marked by influential and often conflicting interests, and is characterized by many conflicting dimensions. Do we want a healthcare system that emphasizes individual responsibility, or one that places greater emphasis on solidarity between the sick and the healthy? How should responsibilities be divided between the Confederation and the cantons? Do we want a healthcare system that focuses more on costs or on the quality of services?
The healthcare system is an example of a policy area where there are many conflicting objectives. The Citizens' Assembly cannot definitively resolve the challenges facing the healthcare system. Rather, the Citizens' Assembly creates a space in which a diverse reflection of the population negotiates these conflicts of objectives together, and participates in the discussion of possible reforms to the healthcare system. The results of these discussions reflect a shared, negotiated and informed opinion from a cross-section of the population on how to deal with rising healthcare costs. The Citizens' Assembly's point of view thus contributes to an informed public debate on one of the population's greatest concerns.
Andri Heimann