In 1990, the Federal Republic of Germany became a united, liberal democracy. After 41 years as separate countries—and 28 years divided by the Berlin Wall—the capitalist West and authoritarian, former German Democratic Republic (GDR) legally rejoined to become today’s modern Germany.

The period of reunification marked a dramatic shift for East Germans in every aspect of their lives, including the sudden transition to a liberal democracy. Since 1990, the five “new states” (Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia) have been conducting a long experiment in building local democracy.

But three decades after reunification, democracy is not a static destination at which Germany has arrived. Populism and democratic skepticism have become part of the political mainstream. Far-right parties have gained increased support and establishment status. Now, Germany also finds itself in a moment of political transition, as Chancellor Angela Merkel steps down from 16 years in office. The United States faces many of these challenges, as well. While our own democratic experiment has always been imperfect, the past five years have indicated that it is concretely under threat. Additionally, from income inequality to bias in the criminal justice system to overt voter suppression,¹ American democracy does not yet fully live up to the ideals it promises.

Today, the United States and Germany also share some of the same policy challenges. Recently, they’ve both faced “similar shifts in demographics, fiscal constraints, and increasing pressure to reinvigorate urban cores.”² Over the last two years, they’ve experienced similar crises, including the public health threat of COVID-19 and its economic impacts, anti-mask protests and misinformation, and systemic racism and injustice. In the space of six months, both even saw citizens storm their respective capitol buildings, albeit at different scales.

Ultimately, despite years of progress and experimentation, the practice of practicing and maintaining democracy has become a much larger question on both sides of the Atlantic.

In both countries, these issues are too complex for federal and state governments to solve alone; municipal governments are becoming increasingly important in these efforts.

Based on political science scholarship, local civic engagement is a promising tool to help meet democratic and public policy challenges.³ However, meaningful and sustainable civic engagement doesn’t happen simply from the grassroots level, and it cannot be effective without strong municipal government buy-in.⁴ At the same time, successful civic engagement programs can be extremely difficult to design and execute. In addressing these similar challenges, American and German city governments can benefit by sharing lessons learned and municipal models for supporting civic engagement.

Located in the German Free State of Saxony, Leipzig offers a particularly interesting case study for several reasons. First, the City of Leipzig has developed a promising infrastructure for engagement, including efforts to expand representative democracy, or the practice of elected individuals making governing decisions on behalf of their constituents. Second, as a city in the former East Germany, Leipzig also recently passed the 30-year mark in its development of local democracy, and its experiences with establishing new institutions for engagement provide concrete lessons for other cities interested in doing the same. These include insights about the relationship between a city and its constituents, designing successful engagement, working through crisis and conflict, and more. Third, because the city is currently working to address common public policy challenges—such as gentrification, urban and economic development, environmental changes, local political polarization, and the mobilization of far-right groups—how Leipzig uses civic engagement tools to address those problems can be instructive for other cities. Finally, given its unique history and modern political climate, Leipzig is an important case study for understanding the way that liberal forces can influence local engagement processes, and how to safeguard local liberal democracy.

The City of Leipzig has not created perfect institutions or a utopian city for civic engagement. But, ultimately, what people in Leipzig have learned from the last 31 years of developing and implementing infrastructure for local participatory democracy—a form of governing that allows constituents to take part in decision-making—are lessons that can benefit American cities and the broader transatlantic democratic experiment.

The City of Leipzig’s experience with civic engagement points to seven key lessons for American cities:

1. Building Lasting Institutions for Civic Engagement
2. Sharing Power with Residents
3. Creating Strong Civic-City Relationships
4. Making Engagement Accessible and Equitable
5. Designing Successful Engagement
6. Engaging Through Crisis and Conflict
7. Supporting Local, Liberal Democracy

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this research was conducted through a combination of desk research and one-on-one interviews through Zoom or via email. The 14 interviews focused on three areas of the city’s political ecosystem: city administrators, city council members, and engaged residents. Initial interviewees were found through desk research, and others were identified through personal reference and snowballing. One result of these limitations is that the interviewee pool over-represents left-leaning representatives and residents in Leipzig. Another limitation is that many of the respondents are involved in the same organizations. However, the research indicates many promising areas for future research, including expanding the study size with a larger sample and greater diversification.

Before turning to the details of engagement in Leipzig, this section will review the political, academic, and democratic context for understanding municipal civic engagement. Specifically, the section will address the state of transatlantic democracy, the changing role and growing importance of municipal governments for public policy and democratic practice, and the ways that civic engagement can contribute to broader democratic health.

For centuries, the United States and Western European countries built transatlantic alliances upon the foundation of shared democratic values—as well as the shared process of experimentation and trial-and-error.

Today, both the United States and Germany find themselves in a moment of democratic crisis, with decreasing popular confidence in political institutions, voters who are disenchanted with mainstream political parties, disinformation, and concerns about increasing executive power.⁵ Specifically in the United States as of 2018, there were high levels of partisan polarization, increasing socioeconomic inequality, and “deeply contested electoral process,” while European countries faced increasing political representation won by extremist and antipluralist political forces, a democratic deficit,⁶ and Euroscepticism that’s unique to the European Union.⁷

These developments have also had negative consequences for democracy. In 2019, American trust in the federal government was at 17 percent,⁸ down three points from its 2017 levels. Between 2017 and 2018, German rates of trust fell 6 points to 24,⁹ though trust in public institutions was already low in the 1990s and early 2000s.¹⁰ Both countries have seen lower rates of support for democracy in recent years too: In 2019, roughly 60 percent of Americans and 53 percent of Germans were satisfied with democracy.¹¹ Additionally, a minority of voters in the two countries have shown degrees of support for strong, authoritarian-leaning leaders. Over a quarter of Americans reported through polling some support for “army rule” or a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections.”¹² In practice, voters in the United States and Germany have also supported far-right and illiberal parties, too, such as the 70 million ballots cast for Donald Trump in 2020 and 5.8 million counted nationally for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party list in 2017.¹³

A strong democratic system that can address these existential doubts and dissatisfaction requires institutions that “channel the representative qualities of democracy, whether it be independent courts, or uncensored media that provide information for an informed citizenry, or strong and independent civil society organizations.”¹⁴ In a democracy, the practice of civic engagement is an institution as much as the individual branches of government, and it requires just as much infrastructural support, informed design, and ongoing maintenance.

As democratic experiments with strengthening this institution continue in the United States, Germany, and around the world, some of the most interesting come from the municipal level, such as in Leipzig.

From public policy to democratic experimentation, cities’ mandates are shifting to include broader questions than were traditionally thought to be part of municipal governing.¹⁵

Soon, “cities will be at the center of the global response to climate change, migration, violence and injustice, health security, economic inequality, and security.” They will not simply be “places that global challenges affect, but also actors and influencers of the solutions.”¹⁶ In no issue has this been more clear than during the COVID-19 pandemic, where mayors found themselves making high-stakes decisions that would have real, life and death impacts on their constituencies.

Similarly, cities around the world have also been at the forefront of democratic experimentation: Participatory budgeting, a practice that gives residents decision-making power over part of a municipal budget, originated at the city level in Porto Allegre, Brazil in 1989 and has since spread to cities across the world.¹⁷ In Murcia, Spain, the city developed an approach of what they called “urban acupuncture,” or a way to use many targeted, civic engagement-based mini-interventions that all contributed towards big-picture solutions.¹⁸ In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the mayor designed a data analysis volunteering program through which residents can help make recommendations for public policy.¹⁹ There are countless stories like these.

With such experimentation, local government has become an important zone for civic engagement and developing residents’ democratic practice, with accessible opportunities to participate outside of elections. When residents do, they are able to engage around issues that are concrete, meaningful, and touch upon some of the greatest policy and institutional challenges of our time.

With all the shapes and models it can take, civic engagement refers to a wide spectrum of activity. Outside of government, this can include activities like joining local groups, volunteering, participating in advocacy, and community organizing. Inside government, engagement can include the basic functions of democracy, such as voting in elections and communicating with representatives, but it can also expand to participation in governing processes.

Opportunities that allow residents to engage in the governing process can be referred to as public participation or collaborative governance (co-governance). Public administration professor Tina Nabatchi defines this participation as having seven characteristics:

• Public participation is based on the belief that those who are affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making process.
• The participation of those who are potentially affected by or interested in a decision should be sought out and facilitated.
• Public participation should seek input from participants in designing how they participate.
• Public participation includes the promise that the public’s contribution will influence the decision.
• How public input affected the decision should be communicated to participants.
• Public participation should recognize and focus on the needs and interests of all participants, including decision makers.
• Public participation should provide participants with the information they need to participate in a meaningful way.²⁰

In addition to these foundational characteristics, successful government-led engagement can be evaluated by several measurements. Harvard University Professor Archon Fung argues that justice, legitimacy, and effectiveness are essential democratic values for engagement.²¹ Other research indicates that elements such as inclusiveness, popular control, considered judgment, transparency, efficiency, and transferability are important criteria.²² Engagement expert Sherry Arnstein’s classic ladder of participation²³ argues that engagement activities typically fall into three categories: nonparticipation (manipulation of residents or what she calls “therapy,” essentially means of public relations), tokenism (informing, consulting, or placating residents), and citizen control (partnership, delegation, and citizen control).²⁴ While public participation and co-governance efforts aim to provide opportunities in the citizen control range, many stay within the tokenism and consulting stage.

When civic engagement is executed well, it can help empower constituencies, overcome social divisions, address distrust of government,²⁵ improve resident acceptance of government decisions, and increase trust in democratic institutions and satisfaction with democracy.²⁶ Participation can increase residents’ democratic competences, provide new ideas and better information for policymakers, and help avoid bad planning and decisions.²⁷ Perhaps as a reflection of this potential, the German federal government also views civic engagement as an element of national reunification in its annual status reports, especially as a tool to help with integration of immigrants.²⁸

Beyond government-led efforts, civic organizations also play an important role in supporting democracy as an institution. This sector refers to voluntary associations that can be formal and informal, such as “interest groups, cultural and religious organizations, civic and developmental associations,” and more.²⁹ French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville saw civic associations as a key part of American democracy,³⁰ and German Vereine, a type of civic associations or organizations similar to nonprofits, have a strong cultural history.³¹ In the United States, political scientist Robert Putnam argues that decreasing membership in American civic associations leads to lower social capital and more democratic disarray.³²

At its best, the “success of democracy depends on the existence of dense networks of civic engagement.”³³ Similarly, sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol writes that democratic health relies on an improved connection between civic organizations and the federal government.³⁴ From a culturalist perspective, these kinds of voluntary associations “mediate between civic society and the state: they inculcate individuals with the rules of compromise and democratic principles; they make individuals more socially active and supportive of democratic norms; and they produce a capacity for trust, reciprocity and cooperation, thereby strengthening democracy.”³⁵ Finally, associations also play a “role in making the state responsive and accountable to its citizens.”³⁶

A 2014 survey study by the Bertelsmann Foundation³⁷ found that in Germany, “satisfaction with the functioning of democracy is higher among democratically active citizens than among democratically inactive citizens and is also higher than the average of all citizens.”³⁸ These benefits range based on the type of participation tools used, which underscores the importance of carefully designed procedures: Satisfaction was highest for citizens who participated in successful direct democracy procedures (48 percent), dialogue processes (48 percent), and institutions and committees of representative democracy (55 percent), compared to the average satisfaction for all citizens (46 percent).³⁹ Ultimately, the improvements in democratic satisfaction for direct democracy and dialogue processes are marginal (48 percent vs. 46 percent), but by increasing satisfaction 9 percentage points, participation in forms of representative democracy such as advisory councils can be particularly impactful when people believe their engagement makes a difference.

At the same time, there are also serious potential pitfalls for engagement.

First, negative experiences with participation can damage residents’ relationships with government and democracy. In fact, the negative effects of unsuccessful engagement “are even more pronounced than the positive effects in the case of successful participation: the proportion of satisfied participants in unsuccessful deliberative procedures decreases by 17 percentage points,” and by 7 percentage points for “unsuccessful direct democratic procedures.” Naturally, failures can also increase dissatisfaction: by 14 percentage points for unsuccessful dialogue processes and 13 percentage points for unsuccessful direct democracy. Notably, “the effect of engagement in the institutions of representative democracy is strongest when it fails: Unsuccessful representative engagement reduces satisfaction by 21 percentage points,” and “increases dissatisfaction by 15 percentage points.”⁴⁰ In short, the impact of unsuccessful engagement on democracy can be substantially larger than the impact made by productive engagement.

Additionally, engagement can create increased conflict and opposition between constituents and politicians or involve the appearance of elected officials shirking their responsibilities. For co-governance efforts in particular, Professor of Public Affairs Don Kettl argues that they “push greater responsibility for achieving public goals into the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, based on an underlying assumption that the non-governmental sectors can do at least as well as and probably at lower cost than the government.”⁴¹

It is also important to note that not all civic engagement is good or democratic, simply by the merit of encouraging people to participate. History Professor Sven Reichardt argues that “energies generated by sheer civic activism do not of necessity feed into a politics of toleration and inclusion; they can just as well be utilized for repressive ends.” The practice and frequency of far-right demonstrations in both the United States and Germany reflect this tension. Therefore, he argues that “instead of naively understanding civil society as a highly normative utopia, it should be seen as a sphere or realm of power relations.”⁴²

Despite the potential for problems with engagement—including increased dissatisfaction, conflict, outsourcing, and illiberal participation—the same 2014 study from the Bertelsmann Foundation found that both German local elected officials and citizens believed the benefits of engagement outweighed the downsides.⁴³ But ultimately, whether civic engagement benefits democratic health depends on the structure and design of the effort, as well as the greater political and structural context within which it takes place.

To understand Leipzig as a case study for civic engagement, this section will first provide an overview of the city’s historic and political context, including its residents’ experience under the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Second, this review will explain the unique context of local democracy in Leipzig and the outside factors influencing the development of democratic institutions in the city government. Finally, this section will describe the current infrastructure for civic engagement in the City of Leipzig and the outcomes it has produced.

For centuries, Leipzig has been an important geographic nexus, connecting the north and south, and bridging the east and west. Since its founding at the crossroads of two ancient trade routes, connecting Spain to Ukraine and Italy to the Baltic, Leipzig has been a center of international trade and became a hub for German manufacturing and banking. The city also has great cultural importance, as the home to one of the oldest universities in Germany and to historical figures like Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Wolfgan von Goethe, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Approximately one-fourth of the city was destroyed by Allied air raids during World War II, and then later rebuilt by the East German government, the GDR. However, the East German government did not adequately invest in the city’s infrastructure or historic buildings. By 1989, the city could not “meet the needs of municipal organization and communication,” and photos broadcasted of historic structures’ “unbelievably poor conditions… created outrage among the public.”⁴⁴

Despite the state of public infrastructure in the city, Lepizig was an economic hub for the entire Soviet bloc, acting as “a meeting point of the two blocks, a gate between East and West.” Though its historic trade fair no longer has national importance, during the GDR era, it meant that Leipzig retained a somewhat more open culture thanks to its many international and western visitors.⁴⁵

One potential outcome of this openness is the role that Leipzig played in ending the GDR regime. The city was one of hundreds of locations where workers held mass protests in 1953, which ended with military force and martial law by Soviet forces.⁴⁶ By 1989, many people in East Germany were pushing for democratic reforms and had begun gathering at peace prayer events hosted at the Protestant St. Nicholas Church (Nikolaikirche) in Leipzig every Monday night,⁴⁷ which ultimately led to a mass protest on October 9.⁴⁸ Despite the fear of police violence—and the presence of armed soldiers—between 70,000–100,000 people peacefully marched in Leipzig that night,⁴⁹ calling for reforms to the GDR⁵⁰ while walking past the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) headquarters.⁵¹ Rallies continued in Leipzig and other parts of East Germany,⁵² and on October 17, the politburo removed GDR President Erich Honecker. The protests continued, including a demonstration of 500,000 in Berlin on November 4. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9.⁵³ After the fall of the GDR, Leipzig became known as the “Hero City” (Heldenstadt), which it is still referred to today.⁵⁴

During reunification, however, many people moved west, including young people who left for better jobs. Brain drain and socio-psychological pessimism resulted from these demographic changes, as well as high levels of blight.⁵⁵ Leipzig became a shrinking city⁵⁶ until 2002, when the population finally grew again after continuous decline since 1965.⁵⁷ This trend has continued, and between 1990 and 2020, the population increased by 16 percent.⁵⁸ As of 2020, the city had a population of 605,407 people.⁵⁹

While the city now has the nickname “Hypezig”⁶⁰ and is known as a trendy city, some problems from the GDR and reunification era still remain. First, the economy in Eastern Germany still lags somewhat behind the West. Eleven years after reunification in 2001, 17 percent of people in the former East were unemployed, compared to an average of 7 percent in Western states.⁶¹ By 2020, the gap was only two points: 8.1 percent versus 6.1 percent.⁶² Still, Eastern Germans today face lower wages, productivity, and living standards,⁶³ and Leipzig was temporarily named the poverty capital of Germany in 2011. Second, the region still has an aging and declining workforce and general population.⁶⁴ While more people are moving to the east, the average age in the five states was still 45 or above in 2017.⁶⁵ In Leipzig, the average age is 42.8 for the overall population, though foreigners and residents with an immigrant background tend to be younger, with average ages of 32.8 and 30.8, respectively.⁶⁶

As a result of this history and the city’s development, Leipzig currently experiences many public challenges shared by cities around the world, including increasing housing prices and gentrification, long-term demographic change, a strained education system, insufficient public transportation, shifts due to climate change, and economic stress.

Thanks to its role in the 1989 uprisings, a spirit of civic engagement has become one of the Hero City’s (Heldenstadt) defining traits. However, its civic roots are much older.

Historically, Leipzig was considered a “citizen city” (Bürgerstadt). This differentiated it from its southeast neighbor, Dresden, the capital of Saxony, which was classified as a "residential city" (Residenzstadt). While the royal court was the center of decision-making in a city like Dresden, a Bürgerstadt was ruled by the citizenry.⁶⁷ The outcome was that people in Leipzig had to be more self-sufficient. As Wolfgang Kurz, a former official in the city planning office, put it in 2003, “Leipzig has a relatively strong tradition of civic activity and civic commitment” without “such a pronounced mentality or attitude of obedience to authority” as in the Residenzstadt. Instead, those in Leipzig “always had to rely on their own skills and resources and a certain degree of pragmatism can be found in Leipzig”⁶⁸—an ethos similar to American ruggedness.

However, under the GDR, residents in Leipzig lived with severe restrictions on political and individual freedoms. In this period, a city administration was effectively the lowest hierarchical element in the centralized, one-party system, so decisions would often be handed down from higher up. Additionally, while citizens may have elected city council members, the Social Unity Party (SED) selected the candidates.⁶⁹

Even so, some degree of political participation was still present during the GDR era. Historian Mary Fulbrook describes the authoritarian regime as a “participatory dictatorship” because it “involved large numbers of its citizens in its political structures and processes.” Among adults, one in five was a member of the SED, and most belonged to the state trade union. Among the youth, the majority belonged to state youth organizations.⁷⁰ Engagement outside the political infrastructure of the state was minimal—confined to the Protestant church and, later, to dissident and pro-democracy groups—and participation could result in negative consequences.⁷¹ Likewise, refusal to join “voluntary organizations,” like the SED, could impact someone’s ability to get a job, get into college, travel outside the country,⁷² and more. However, the country did allow citizens to participate in some specific policy areas, such as healthcare, demography, gender, leisure, housing, and work that were not related to human rights abuses.⁷³ These opportunities included controlled public discussions and formal “letters of complaint” (Eingaben) that required government response. One motive for the government in creating these channels was to “help improve conditions of life because they saw those issues as impacting worker productivity and satisfaction.”⁷⁴ Another was to monitor public opinion.⁷⁵ But citizens could use these channels to engage in the political system, express criticism, and to try to “build a better society, or at least to make the best of the present” through activities like “beautify[ing] their village, construct[ing] a new swimming pool, or organiz[ing] a youth sports festival.”⁷⁶

When West and East Germany were reunited in 1990, the Western German system replaced all Eastern legal, political, economic, and bureaucratic institutions without retaining many qualities or input from the Eastern structure.⁷⁷ As part of the reunification process, cities re-established local self-government, a system of federalism, and a bureaucratic structure based on citizen rights with an orientation towards service.⁷⁸ During this process, many Western Germans moved to the East, drawn by cheap land and property, curiosity, and to help establish a new societal structure. However, this temporary help turned into a permanent elite-transfer,⁷⁹ which has resulted in many positions of power in Eastern government and business being held by Western Germans instead of Eastern Germans, even today.⁸⁰

During the “turning point” (Wende), or the “period of political change around 1989,”⁸¹ Eastern Germany experienced a “time of awakening” (Aufbruchszeit), when the sudden democratic freedoms spurred “relatively widespread citizen participation.” Under the GDR, there were many groups that already worked on local issues, but they could now do so more openly. In addition to these existing groups and the civil society organizations that were transferred into Eastern German society, other citizens formed new groups. Additionally, the historic nature of the moment also gave citizens the sense that “they could truly change things in society.”⁸² Barbara Baumgärtel, who has lived in the Waldstraßenviertel quarter of Leipzig since 1954, got involved in her neighborhood association after reunification because she wanted to take advantage of the new opportunity to participate in democracy. Around her, she observed that people “had a democratic say for the first time and many wanted to use that.” Like her, “people wanted to help make their district more livable, organize something for art and culture, take care of the old people who were overwhelmed with the new situation and much more.” At the time, joining a Verein was “the best way to do that.”⁸³ However, Christian Bollert, a journalist and the head of media relations for the organization We Are The East (Wir Sind Der Osten), points out that engagement was mostly around responding to the immediate crisis at that time: “People were unemployed and they were fighting for their own lives and not thinking about a nice bike lane in front of their house.”⁸⁴

The reunification period also provided exciting new opportunities to participate with some parts of the city government. Because the City of Leipzig was adapting to the new situation—and the people in the administration often did not have much experience—Ralf Elsässer notes that others outside government “could have a little more influence with suggestions and concepts on conceptual processes of the administration itself.” According to Elsässer, the leader of a Leipzig-based organization that works to support civic engagement and civil society in Saxony, there were “a lot more decisions and plans processed in a very short time,” so “more participation was possible” as the city rebuilt.⁸⁵ Former Deputy Mayor for Urban Development and Construction (1990-1995) Nils Gormsen described a “willingness to listen to everyone and to discuss matters openly in order to find the best solution,” as embodied by practices like round tables—a type of discussion forum that emphasized consensus-based, unified decisions, sometimes focused on specific issues.⁸⁶ Professor of public administration Jean-Claude Garcia-Zamor argues that the round tables “prevented anarchy and violence” while also “becoming one of the most important foundations of a new democratic culture in East Germany.”⁸⁷

But according to Karsten Gerkens, who worked to implement civic engagement efforts as the head of Urban Regeneration during reunification, the city’s efforts could be inconsistent. Gerkens explains that his department’s engagement efforts often made him feel like “the fire brigade” — there to solve problems when they arise, and then withdraw. To do so in a sustainable way, they tried to collaborate with forms of engagement that already existed in the neighborhood, such as citizen groups. But that model didn’t translate over the long term into sustained engagement by the city or citizen associations.⁸⁸

According to Elsässer, in the mid-1990s, as many residents moved out of Leipzig to pursue other, often professional, opportunities, the number of people who would participate decreased, and so did opportunities for engagement. As a result, the civil society culture suffered in Leipzig.⁸⁹ This was a common trend in eastern Germany at the time. For example, between 1995-1997, the average citizen “belonged to 1.44 organizations, but only 0.78 in 1999.”⁹⁰ Barbara Baumgärtel, the former head of the Waldstrassenviertel Neighborhood Verein,⁹¹ was in her late thirties when the wall fell. In 2005, she noted that while there was a euphoric spirit during the turning point (Wende) period after 1989 with “project groups, exhibitions, public debates, and workshops,” people were “not able to give this spirit a structure” or a “lasting foundation.”⁹²

When the city began to grow again in the 2000s, “a new generation of committed people came along, and a different climate had emerged.”⁹³ But by this point, the city administration had “developed into a functioning administration that also does a lot itself.”⁹⁴ As a result, Baumgärtel noted in 2004 that without that institutionalization, “participation [today] may happen on a formal base but without satisfying results.”

Over time, however, the city has shifted back towards a more participatory approach. Elsässer notes that for many years, the group of people advocating for incorporating engagement was relatively small. But recently, engagement has “simply become a matter of course again and something that is also actively supported by the administration.” One reason for this is because the administration has seen a demand for engagement that does not only come from the same group of residents.⁹⁵ Another factor has been that the administration has seen benefits from the engagement that it has carried out thus far. While the newly professionalized administration was less receptive to engagement overall, Elsässer found there was still institutional willingness to participate in projects. As various sections of the city government have worked on individual projects over time, those experiments’ success “[have] shown administration employees what is possible in terms of positive effects of citizen participation.” In particular, he believes that these projects have indicated that public participation on complex topics like budget planning is possible, have demonstrated for the administration how to carry out engagement, and have proven that such collaboration with residents “supports the administration’s own work rather than hampers it.” Additionally, the city’s Democracy Balance working group, which carried out an audit of participation and engagement in the city from 2002 to 2005, helped set the foundation for the city’s guidelines for engagement and supported individual departments to “practice citizen participation more intensely,” including those who would not have done so on their own.⁹⁶

Though the GDR period ended thirty years ago, many interviewees agreed that the history still impacts politics today. According to Jörg Reichert, a resident who helps run the Leipzig chapter of the national Code for Germany project, the lack of trust that citizens felt in government under the East German regime and as a result of reunification is still present in politics today.⁹⁷ This is particularly true for older generations who lived through the high hopes and deep disappointments of the Wende period. Their fears are particularly directed at the state and federal levels. But at the local level, Reichert still sees a lack of trust in politics and a belief that city leaders will ultimately follow their preferences over citizens’.⁹⁸ In Bollert’s experience, some people will say, “I don’t understand what the government does and they possibly have their own agenda.”⁹⁹ To Stefan Heinig, the former Office of City Planning department head (2018-2020), history has impacted different generations in different ways. There is not one single East German experience: Some residents who feel they lost during reunification may be more resistant to government decisions, those who were socialized under the GDR may prefer government to act decisively, and others who felt like winners from reunification, particularly value the freedom and democracy they have in the city today.¹⁰⁰ Even its history as a "citizen city" is still present: A city employee who works closely on engagement efforts emphasized that Leipzig has a strong citizenry even today.¹⁰¹

In recent years, Leipzig has been internationally recognized as a strong democratic city. In addition to “its active dissident past under the communist regime, its central role in the peaceful revolution of 1989, [and] the explosion of grassroots citizens’ groups beginning in late 1989,” political science professor Christiane Olivo cites “the structures put in place by the city government to enhance communication with, and policy input from, the citizenry” as a reason that Leipzig can be called the “city of democracy in Eastern Germany.”¹⁰² In 1999, Leipzig won second prize in the Bertelsmann Foundation-sponsored competition “Citizen Oriented Municipalities—Avenues to Strengthen Democracy.” And in 2019, the city was a finalist for the international Innovation Politics Award thanks to its 2018 “Year of Democracy” (Jahr der Demokratie) initiative.¹⁰³

In addition to its history, current public policy challenges, and modern political climate, Leipzig presents an interesting case study in local democracy because of the promising infrastructure for engagement that the city government has developed.

Today, the City of Leipzig has five guidelines for civic participation:

• “Citizen participation benefits all sides: Citizens, city council, and administration are equally involved and benefit from the mutual exchange of knowledge on the respective project.
• Every citizen can get involved: Everyone who is interested has the chance to get involved in the participation process within the scope of his or her own possibilities. You can take part in workshops or use online platforms. Another method is surveys.
• Participation strengthens the city council and administration: Citizen participation has a supportive effect on the decisions of the city council, and enables the administration to plan more reliably in its tasks.
• Citizen participation takes place at an early stage, in parallel with the process, and in several stages: In planning and decision-making processes, public participation accompanies both the administrative and the political process from the start. Citizens are also involved across all project stages—from the goal—setting to implementation.”¹⁰⁴
• Citizen participation coordination advises and supports all those involved: “The coordinator acts as a contact point for all participation issues and supervises and advises the participation projects throughout the entire process, depending on the city-wide importance of the project to varying degrees.”¹⁰⁵

The rules for engagement were created through a working group consisting of representatives from the citizenry and administration, as well as the worlds of politics and science. In 2012, the mayor adopted the guidelines and informed the city council.¹⁰⁶ When the guidelines were announced in 2012, the city argued that they would improve citizens’ ability to “get up-to-date information on the status of specific projects,” “bring their own view and competencies into the discussion,” and to help produce “collaborative planning between the administration, the decisions of the city council, and the ideas of the citizens,” while still retaining the decision-making capacity of city government.

In addition to these guidelines, the City of Leipzig approaches engagement through a “Trialog” model developed in part by participation expert Dr. Helmut Klages, among others. The Trialog considers three categories of engagement partners: the residents, politicians, and city administration.¹⁰⁷ According to an official in the administration who works closely on these issues, leaders in the engagement process aim to make sure that participation and representation are balanced between each of the three areas.¹⁰⁸ In Leipzig, the official explained that the three sides of the Trialog must all get involved and benefit from the engagement process.¹⁰⁹ The tri-sectoral approach to civic engagement is common in other German cities, too, sometimes with a framework that focuses on citizens, the administration, and businesses.¹¹⁰

To put these ideas into practice, the City of Leipzig has a multi-part, formal infrastructure for civic engagement that provides multiple opportunities for resident participation. The following list offers a summary of some of the main elements of municipally-supported engagement. A full description of each entity, as well as related engagement tools and a description of the city’s current municipal structure, can be found in the appendix.

City Council

In addition to engagement with constituents led by individual city council members, the Leipzig City Council has expanded advisory councils into additional opportunities for representative democracy:

• Youth Parliament (Jugendparlament): The Youth Parliament is a body made up of 20 young Leipzig residents who are between 14–21 years old, and are elected by other residents in the same age range. Through the parliament and its youth advisory council, members can submit motions to the full city council. The youth parliament itself has an annual budget of €5,000 EUR (around $5,900 USD).¹¹¹
• Subject Area Advisory Councils (Fachbeiräte): In addition to the youth council, the city council has 11 advisory bodies, specializing in drugs, equality, children and families, migrants, psychiatry, seniors, disability, animal welfare, crime prevention, allotment gardens, and conservation. The councils are made up of residents with relevant expertise and members of the city council. Councils also have the right to submit motions to the full city council, but they do not have their own funding or budget.¹¹²
• Neighborhood Councils: In addition to representation through the city council, the City of Leipzig also includes neighborhood councils. The 10 district councils (Stadtbezirksbeiräte) and 14 regional councils (Ortschaftsräte) act as advisory councils for the neighborhoods and independent municipalities of Leipzig, respectively.¹¹³ Starting with the 2021–2022 budget, district councils receive €50,000 EUR (around $59,000 USD) in funding a year,¹¹⁴ and the regional councils receive €6 EUR (about $7 USD) per inhabitant per year.¹¹⁵

City Administration

Within the administration, the City of Leipzig supports several other noteworthy avenues to engagement that can be replicated elsewhere:

• City Office (Stadtbüro): The City Office is a physical location that acts as a “platform for citizen participation and civic engagement” and as a link between residents and the administration. Residents can visit the office to request help or share feedback. The office often hosts exhibits and events on engagement.
• Leipzig Thinking Ahead (Leipzig weiter denken, LWD): As the coordination office for resident participation, the LWD initiative is tasked with supporting the administration's civic engagement efforts. It is part of the Urban Development department, but works with departments across the city that are interested in incorporating participation into their projects. The LWD office also trains city employees, supports opportunities for engagement, and plays a quality assurance role.¹¹⁶
• Neighborhood Management (Quartiersmanagement): These neighborhood-specific groups are also formed in partnership between nonprofits or associations and city departments. The city and department are responsible for tasks and financing, and the association hires a district moderator who acts as a contact person with whom residents can collaborate. Like the Stadtbezirksbeiräte and Ortschaftsräte, Quartiersmanagement (neighborhood management) groups act as mediators¹¹⁷ between the administration and its constituents, but the Quartiersmanagement groups are more affiliated with city departments instead of the city council. They also receive funding from the city,¹¹⁸ and each cost between €50,00–100,000 EUR a year.¹¹⁹
• Time-Specific Initiatives: Occasionally, the city will create specific initiatives on civic engagement, such as the Year of Democracy (Jahr der Demokratie), which come from the city council¹²⁰ and are sometimes funded in part by the federal government.¹²¹
• Participatory Budgeting: The City of Leipzig will carry out a dedicated participatory budgeting program from 2023–2024.
• Civic Engagement List: The city publishes a list of current civic engagement projects on its website so that residents or city departments who are interested in participating can find relevant information.
• Individual Initiatives:
  • City Funding: In addition to funding for the above participation models, residents and associations may receive city funding for civic engagement and community-related projects.¹²²
  • Citizen Recognition: The city also gives out a variety of awards and honors for engaged residents.

In addition to these city-initiated efforts, Leipzig must also follow and recognize some state and federal requirements for formal engagement. For example, the Federal Building Act requires providing the public with plans and including rejected suggestions from the public in a municipal statement. Municipalities must also give public presentations on a plans’ goals and purposes.¹²³ Additionally, Saxony does set some direct democracy tools for the state, local, and county levels.¹²⁴ Compared to other states, however, Saxony was ranked by More Democracy! (Mehr Demokratie!), a direct democracy NGO (non-governmental organization), as mediocre at the state level and sufficient for the local level, largely because the quorums for these tools are high enough to act as a “deterrent.”¹²⁵

As described above, the City of Leipzig has developed a multi-part infrastructure for engagement, which broadly consists of two parts: expanded representative democracy and city-led information-sharing and deliberation opportunities. This infrastructure is very promising and has many benefits, particularly in the ways that it allows for more residents to participate in influential government bodies. However, the general emphasis on information-sharing is a limitation of the engagement approach, and there are areas where the execution could improve. Even so, the municipal government-supported opportunities for engagement have improved over time, and both the positive and negative lessons can be useful to American cities, particularly when considering how a city’s history can influence present engagement.

Broadly, the city’s infrastructure indicates that supporting participation is a priority of the administration. Particularly through their LWD office, the city administration seems to recognize the importance of instituting civic engagement as a formal part of the municipal government, though its efforts have required trial and error. Something like the LWD office provides an institutional backbone for the city’s engagement efforts. In a city audit of engagement from 2016, the LWD office was “praised for its willingness to experiment with new processes and for the quality of processes carried out there.”¹²⁶

Second, the administration’s approach to representative democracy expands the traditional city council model to include several councils that Leipzig residents can serve on. The Youth Parliament, neighborhood councils, district councils, and subject area councils provide residents with the ability to make concrete changes in their city and participate in decision-making. It is also notable that in many cases, these councils are designed to improve representation and political power for communities that are traditionally excluded from these processes, including youth, immigrants, and residents with disabilities. Though these opportunities are not available to all constituents, they provide a meaningful platform for bringing new perspectives into governing institutions.

Additionally, the city’s individual participation projects, which largely take the shape of information-sharing and deliberation opportunities, have often been effective. According to that same 2016 report published by the city, participation helped to “reduce fears and concerns about upcoming tasks and projects,” strengthen local democracy and neighborhood structures and identities, the collaboration between city employees and constituents, as well as fellow employees in different offices, and increase acceptance and democratic legitimacy, especially for the city council.¹²⁷ The report also found that the city was able to support engagement on broad topics (such as housing policy), and that administrators were becoming more aware of the benefits of engagement.¹²⁸

However, some residents, politicians, and contributors to the city administration’s efforts see room for improvement, including in the areas of consistency and implementation, resources, sharing power with residents, willingness to support engagement, transparency, equity, and timely engagement. In interviews, some residents reflected that they are still not satisfied with the outcomes of engagement, or may feel that the city administration will ultimately make decisions alone rather than in true collaboration with constituents. Some residents feel that city departments won’t even accept information from citizen associations, even if they have hired experts, and that the majority of the city council typically votes in alignment with the administration.¹²⁹ According to Baumgärtel, “participation is made possible in a purely formal manner” today.¹³⁰

Looking at the administration’s infrastructure for engagement, Dieter Rink argues that Leipzig currently meets the lowest levels of Arnstein’s ladder successfully. Rink, who is the head of the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research’s Department of Urban and Environmental and an occasional collaborator with the city, believes the administration executes practices of informing and consulting with residents particularly well. However, he says that “real opportunities for co-decision are relatively small.” This focus on consulting over coproduction is common in many American cities, as well, and in Leipzig, the emphasis is deliberate.¹³¹ When the city released civic engagement guidelines in 2012, it was clear that the resident participation it envisioned did not “explicitly intervene in the decision-making mechanisms of representative democracy,” with the administration still in charge of planning and the city council responsible for political decisions.¹³² Similarly, a city report argues that “consistently combining formats of representative democracy and local participation processes” like this is the only way to produce “a successful, future-oriented and sustainable governance concept.”¹³³

Some of these criticisms—that the city provides more information than fully participatory opportunities, that administrators are not always receptive to engagement, and that residents’ participation is not clearly reflected in decision-making—have been consistent over time. A 2014 report from the Bertelsmann Foundation found in a survey that respondents in Leipzig agreed that “we conduct many procedures in which citizens are heard and participate in political discussions, but the final decision is made by the city council.” This was true for all cities included in the survey, but for Leipzig, 50 percentage points more respondents agreed with that statement than the alternative: “we have many procedures in which citizens can decide on important political issues.”¹³⁴ In her research on engagement in the city from 2011, Olivo came to the conclusion that Quartiersmanagement forums tended to be “more informational than participatory.”

The city’s two studies on local engagement have come to similar conclusions. Most recently, the administration’s challenges included limited resources, inconsistent participation from administrative and political leaders, and lack of transparency after participation.¹³⁵ Participants in the study also reported a lack of clarity around basic participation: how residents or companies could initiate a civic engagement process themselves.¹³⁶ At that same time, Dr. Raban Fuhrmann, an expert on civic engagement who contributed to the audit of participation in Leipzig, commented that the city is “good at downstream citizen participation,” and their efforts “concentrate on projects that have already been planned and reach the committed citizens and those affected,” but could improve by including more residents.¹³⁷ However, these types of challenges are not unique to Leipzig; many American cities experience them, as well.

Some interviewees believe that even if there are areas where the city could do better, engagement has improved over the last few years. According to Mohammad Okasha, a representative on the Migrant Council, “a lot has changed and improved in the last 2-3 years.” He attributes this to increased activism from residents, particularly from the immigrant community. Ralf Elsässer, who has worked with the City of Leipzig on civic engagement since 1996, has also seen changes in Leipzig residents. Today, he sees more initiatives, and “more young adults who are committed to issues themselves,” in particular to sustainability. As a result, the city has been able to shift away from advancing projects in small groups and instead does more networking, and provides support for others doing related work.¹³⁸ Finally, while Thorsten Mehnert, a board member of the local Wake Up Corners Foundation (Stiftung Ecken Wecken),¹³⁹ would like to see the city improve in some ways, he “believe[s] that Leipzig is already on a very good path.”¹⁴⁰

But while engagement may be improving, damage from earlier failed participation efforts may still influence how residents engage with the city. According to Bollert, if residents had the impression from 2000 to 2010 that they could make a difference, there might be “a bigger chance to be really progressive and modern” today, but says that this opportunity has passed. Instead, residents still feel that decisions were made inside the city hall without their input.¹⁴¹ And ultimately, while the city’s engagement efforts “get better and better in the long run, the problem is that the missed chances don’t come back.”¹⁴²

While Leipzig’s history of engagement and political change gives it a unique civic spirit, this may also contribute to some residents’ disappointment, according to Olivo. One group member told her that during the turning point (Wende) period, “many people thought that through their work [in associations] they could change something, really influence things. But in the end, many had to realize that it is not like that.” During the Wende, East Germans were promised miracles and “blooming landscapes.”¹⁴³ Like with many other things, local democracy in practice was not quite what people had hoped for. According to Bollert, people believed from 1989 through 1992 that they “had a voice.” Later, they were disappointed to learn that “they don’t have a voice, or that they had a voice, but it was not powerful.”

Leipzig is a unique city with a special public spirit for engagement, a difficult but rich political and civic history, and years of investment by the city government into building opportunities for engagement. American cities may not share these exact attributes, but they can still learn much from the last 30 years of democratic experimentation and infrastructure building in Leipzig. The remainder of this report will be organized into seven lessons that city government leaders and local civil society groups can learn from Leipzig’s experience. Each lesson will be illustrated through the accounts shared by the 14 stakeholders interviewed for this project (a full list of interview participants is available in the appendix).

The first lesson for how municipalities can promote local democracy focuses on the structures necessary to support lasting institutions for civic engagement, including supportive leadership, binding rules, infrastructure built into the administration and civil society, and resources. The second lesson emphasizes the importance of sharing power with residents through engagement, and moving beyond the standard information-sharing models of participation. It explains the benefits that come from such collaboration, and details how Leipzig’s promising representative democracy model can incorporate more power sharing through direct democracy. The third lesson focuses on building the strong civic-city relationships that are necessary for carrying out engagement, based on open-mindedness from the administration, plus transparency and trust. The fourth lesson points to the necessity of making engagement equitable through many different lenses. Equity in engagement is not just an issue of diverse participation, but also the accessibility of different models and the openness of city government to discussing difficult topics about injustice.

Using these first four lessons as a foundation, the final three lessons also detail characteristics of successful engagement based on interviewees’ experiences in Leipzig. As the fifth lesson indicates, this case study emphasizes the importance of bureaucratic flexibility and engaging residents early, as well as connecting concrete opportunities for engagement to big-picture, long-term goals of an administration. The sixth lesson examines how the City of Leipzig has used civic engagement during challenging periods, including times of crisis and conflict, and considers strategies that other cities can adopt for similar situations.

Finally, the seventh lesson identifies another important and unique lesson from Leipzig: the importance of specifically working to support and protect liberal local democracy from extreme and illiberal forces.

The civic engagement infrastructure that the City of Leipzig has developed over the past three decades is one of the administration’s strongest assets for supporting local democracy. In particular, their experience points to the importance of supportive city leadership, binding rules for engagement, and infrastructure that institutionalizes engagement within the administration, as well as beyond it.

Supportive City Leadership

As is true in most cities, the City of Leipzig’s work on engagement has occurred in no small part because government leadership has prioritized participation. According to a city employee who worked with him, Wolfgang Tiefensee, who was mayor from 1998 to 2005, wanted to build a municipality that was open for citizens.¹⁴⁴ Similarly, Mayor Burkhard Jung of the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), who was elected in 2006, wanted to develop the commitment to further engagement and to better understand which tools would function in tandem with the administration’s tasks.¹⁴⁵ It was also Jung who institutionalized the original Leipzig Weiter Denken project from its origins as a federally funded project in 2012 into a permanent office.¹⁴⁶

The role of a mayor in driving this democratizing work is crucial in a city like Leipzig, which has a mayor with substantial power as the head of the city administration and the city council. The official, who now works on engagement efforts for the city, feels support for civic engagement from the mayor is the most important element for success.¹⁴⁷ But other city leaders can also have an important impact on supporting engagement efforts.¹⁴⁸ For example, city council members, often from the Green and Left parties,¹⁴⁹ have often pushed the administration to carry out engagement efforts by adding requirements for civic engagement into official motions.¹⁵⁰ On a smaller scale, Jörg Reichert notes that his volunteer coding group has not received institutional support from the city—such as hosting individual projects that the group produces using open data, like their website to organize volunteers who water trees in Leipzig.¹⁵¹ However, they have had success working with individual city leaders who understand the value of sharing open data.¹⁵²

Today, Leipzig is an example of what civic-minded leaders can accomplish. However, this strength can easily turn into a structural weakness with changes in who holds office. Currently, engagement efforts could stagnate if a future mayor does not similarly prioritize participation.

Binding Rules for Engagement

Many other German cities have found that institutionalizing rules mandating civic engagement help produce a more consistent model of engagement that can survive changes in administration and personnel.¹⁵³

Today, the administration’s civic engagement guidelines are its main tool for recommending participation standards and expectations.

While the City of Leipzig considered adopting a statute in 2010-2011, the city council and administration ultimately decided against it.¹⁵⁴ One argument against passing a statute made by the mayor¹⁵⁵ and the city council¹⁵⁶ is that it could create a more restrictive bureaucratic infrastructure.¹⁵⁷ Similarly, former Department Leader Karsten Gerkens argued that these requirements could create a dynamic where engagement is carried out simply as a “box-checking” exercise.¹⁵⁸ But even though the statute’s opponents expressed concerns about mandated compliance, volunteer Reichert argues that the city already operates from a box—checking approach and simply follows the basic federal and state regulations for participation.¹⁵⁹

In a recent interview, a city employee who works on engagement efforts said that it would be an advantage for a city to have a civic engagement statute.¹⁶⁰ While city guidelines like Leipzig’s include important information such as the engagement initiation process and how engagement should inform city decision-making, they are still only guidelines. As a result, their effectiveness is based on whether participants and city officials consider them important or not.¹⁶¹ Ultimately, many supporters of a statute, including Leipzig civic engagement expert Ralf Elsässer believe some city departments simply will not provide public participation opportunities without a clear mandate. He also argues that a statute could help the city council put pressure on the administration to engage residents.¹⁶² Finally, for the city employee, a statute is the only way to provide engagement that is truly independent of an individual city administration.¹⁶³

Binding rules for engagement are also beneficial to Leipzig residents. Codifying engagement would help clarify for residents the power they have, what specific opportunities exist for residents who may want to participate, and the money reserved for those processes. It would also help residents both exercise those rights and pressure an administration to uphold them in the long term.¹⁶⁴

Infrastructure for Engagement Built Into the Administration and Beyond

Despite not having binding requirements for engagement, the City of Leipzig’s multi-part infrastructure for engagement is still a major strength of its local democracy because it addresses three areas of governing: the city administration, the representative governing process, and the hyper-local neighborhood level.

First, within the city administration, the LWD office builds support and expertise on engagement into the city government. While it is based in the Office of Urban Development, the LWD office provides specialization in civic engagement to all parts of the city administration, helps support other offices interested in implementing engagement processes, and acts as a consistent, proactive part of the city institution that builds engagement processes and the city’s relationship with its residents.

Only a formal city office since 2012, the LWD has previously struggled to become “sufficiently well known within the administration and on the part of the citizens of Leipzig.”¹⁶⁵ Because departments work with the LWD on a voluntary basis, participation varies based on whether, and to what degree, those offices take advantage of resources like the LWD office.¹⁶⁶ Today, Elsässer still sees some areas of the city where administrators “shy away from carrying out public participation themselves because they have not yet gained much experience with it.” As a result, when they do, they may make mistakes and have a negative experience with engagement. “And with the baggage of negative experiences,” Elsässer explains, “you don’t dare to try again.” Residents may feel frustrated. City officials may get discouraged. The delicate nature of building consistent engagement across an entire city administration is a common municipal challenge, including in American cities. “That is not just typical for Leipzig,” he argues, “it is typical for participation processes in general.”¹⁶⁷ When utilized, a specialized office like the LWD can help departments break that cycle and build in-house expertise. As Elsässer describes the LWD’s work, they are “not there to make engagement easy for the city departments, but to support them in doing the work themselves.”¹⁶⁸

Second, Leipzig’s infrastructure also deliberately creates new opportunities for participation in the representative governing process. In addition to their efforts to institutionalize civic engagement procedures inside the administration, their network of councils offer highly formalized and structured vehicles for expanding representative democracy. Particularly, the Youth Parliament and subject area councils, such as the Senior Council and Migrant Council, do so in a way that brings more residents expertise into the city council’s decision-making procedures.

Outside of those councils, the City of Leipzig also offers residents a more informal way to approach the administration through the City Office (Stadtbüro). Dr. Gerd Landsberg, the current CEO of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities (DStGB), voiced his support for this kind of institution, recommending in 2009 that German cities should adopt models of institutionalized civic engagement that are supported by the government through measures like citizens’ offices.¹⁶⁹

Third, the city’s current infrastructure also helps build engagement opportunities at the neighborhood level, and provides connections between those bodies and the city government. For the city, it’s helpful to have such institutions to help the city identify resident priorities and interests.¹⁷⁰ For residents, the neighborhood and district councils provide hyperlocal institutions for engagement that can have an impact on the administration, but are still officially independent. In the past, some residents have wondered how independent these entities are: Barbara Baumgärtel commented that the district councils were still influenced by the administration and that information wasn’t always shared in a timely manner with citizens in a 2005 interview.¹⁷¹ But today, a city employee argues that such councils are independent from the administration, and that as a result, these institutions help strengthen the process between representative civic engagement and democracy.¹⁷²

Supporting Infrastructure with Resources

The City of Leipzig’s current infrastructure is promising because of its combination of components, types of engagement, and the number of involved areas of the city government. However, many interviewees noted that this infrastructure can only live up to its full potential with adequate resources—a challenge familiar to many American cities as well.

For example, the Youth Parliament is successful in part because it has the necessary institutional support to be effective. Every year, the parliament receives an annual budget of €5,000 EUR ($5,868 USD) for project implementation and administrative costs. Additionally, two city employees work with the parliament to provide administrative and bureaucratic support, helping young members learn how to work within city government, navigate procedure and political processes, and understand technical language.

Similarly, the district councils have gained more power in the city over time as they have received more funding. Quentin Kügler, a current member of the district council for the Southwest neighborhood (Stadtbezirksbeirat Südwest), explained that the councils were once “insignificant,” but now receive €50,000 EUR ($58,685 USD) a year in funding from the city to implement projects.¹⁷³ Simply put, “whoever has money has power.”¹⁷⁴

Not all of the city infrastructure receives adequate resources and support, however. Okasha wishes that the Migrant Council had more administrative support. As a subject area advisory council, the Migrant Council is dedicated to providing the city council with resident expertise on topic areas. The city currently provides a few hours a week of assistance, but he feels that the Migrant Council could benefit from a full-time staff person.¹⁷⁵ City Councilmember Kristina Weyh agrees that the topic councils need more support. For that reason, she says that the city council is currently working to help strengthen those groups, such as providing additional skills and training for members.

Additionally, Weyh argues that the broader city infrastructure for engagement is currently in need of more resources. She believes that part of the reason that the city and city council do not currently do more to implement civic engagement on more topics is that “it simply requires a lot of staff” and time to hear what residents think. To her, that gap between the resources necessary for engagement and the city’s capacity to deliver those resources is a “very, very big problem.” Similarly, Councilmember Franziska Riekewald believes that the LWD office needs more funding. Like everything, she says the office “stands and falls” based on financial support and that currently, it is “not yet well-financed.”

Ultimately, supporting civic infrastructure also means supporting those who will implement it. DStGB suggests that city employees can benefit from receiving training on engagement skills, including how to work best with residents. Similarly, cities may also find it beneficial to offer supervision for volunteers, though these kinds of efforts should be tailored to the needs of engaged residents. Finally, to support bureaucrats who work on civic engagement issues, the DStGB encourages cities to give city employees flexibility in their working location and hours so that they can “attend and participate regularly” in civic engagement events that occur when bureaucrats are off the clock.¹⁷⁶

Limited resources are a constant challenge for municipal governments around the world. One potential solution that a report by the City of Leipzig suggested in 2016 was for administrators to submit “participation concepts” outlining resources and target groups during the preparation phase for projects to improve coordination. This reflects the city’s finding that producing high-quality engagement opportunities—with transparency, targeted outreach, and regular communication—is based on ensuring the necessary resources are in place before a project begins.¹⁷⁷

When making decisions about how to spend limited resources, however, Christian Bollert of We Are the East recommends that cities try to look beyond the immediate financial trade-offs. After reunification in the 2000s, the city sold real estate off to private owners as a way to raise money in an economically devastating time. But now that gentrification and rising rents are a problem throughout Leipzig, Bollert argues that the city missed an important opportunity to preserve and provide the public meeting spaces that clubs need to do their work. As a result, clubs that can’t afford meeting spaces must now move 15 kilometers north or south of the city center. He explains that the city was “so keen to sell everything and to be profitable that they maybe missed the chance to secure one thing that really is outstanding for Leipzig: this vibrant, always fresh, new subculture.”¹⁷⁸

Despite the challenge of limited resources, and the city government’s continued policy of voluntary participation efforts, the City of Leipzig’s engagement infrastructure points to the impact that sharing power with residents can have.

The Benefits of Collaboration

For Quentin Kügler, his participation in elected and appointed institutions gives him the feeling that he could actually make a difference in his city. In the Youth Parliament, which he joined at 15 and recently left after turning 22, he found that he and his fellow members could be creative about ideas they brought to the city council. In 2020, the Youth Parliament, along with the Fridays for Future movement, was part of pushing the City of Leipzig to declare a climate emergency. In 2017, he helped introduce a motion to the city council for improving the holiday and birthday stipend that foster children receive from the city—increasing it from €30 EUR ($35 USD) to €50 ($58 USD). When he went to a school visit with the Youth Parliament later, a student came up to him and thanked him. For him, that moment is what made the participation feel worthwhile.

Though the Youth Parliament is also working to increase residents’ awareness of their work—voter turnout for parliament elections was 6.9 percent in 2021¹⁷⁹—Kügler also felt that his role as a representative empowered other young people to share their ideas and concerns. This is especially true in the Youth Parliament because anyone can come and submit a formal request, even if they are not an elected representative.

To Kügler, this kind of opportunity for youth participation has benefits beyond policy change. He believes that involving young people early through such measures encourages them to stay politically involved in the long run—“because the people who are now in office will not be able to do it forever.”¹⁸⁰

Similarly, Councilmember Weyh observes that Leipzig residents are very grateful to have a public contact point with the district councils, where they can bring up small issues like changing street signs or adding a bench to the public transportation stop by the retirement home.¹⁸¹ Kügler has had a similar experience on the district council: it gives him the opportunity to “change something right outside [his] own doorstep,” from the speed limit to street lights.¹⁸² As one outcome, Hinze observed that through the neighborhood management system in Leipzig, “projects that are implemented by and with the residents are recognized, accepted, and have a lasting effect.”¹⁸³

Like Kügler, Okasha feels that that “a lot” is possible through the Migrant Council, specifically because of that right to submit motions to the city council.¹⁸⁴ No other migrant council in Saxony has that ability. However, he is frustrated that his board cannot do more to influence the slow decision-making process once a motion has reached the full city council. Instead, he would like the council to have the right to make their own decisions.¹⁸⁵

Combining Representative, Direct, and Deliberative Democracy

Mohammad Okasha is not alone in wanting more opportunities to participate in decision-making directly. Direct democracy—the unmediated engagement of citizens in government or in governing themselves¹⁸⁶—is popular with many German residents. Based on a study of the broader German population, researchers found a particularly “high demand” for direct democracy opportunities, which include referendums and citizen initiatives. As of 2014, almost three-fourths of citizens “are either already participating [in direct democracy efforts] today or can imagine themselves doing so for the future.”¹⁸⁷ Similarly, when asked what forms of engagement they would like to use to have an impact on their community, 41 percent chose direct democracy (such as referendums), 36 percent selected deliberative democracy (including public meetings or suggestions for participatory budgeting), and 22 percent said representative democracy (such as serving on a city council committee).¹⁸⁸

City officials tend to be more hesitant, particularly about direct democracy. According to that same study, 80 percent of politicians, 85 percent of mayors, and 79 percent of administration heads view their “representative mandate more freely and independently of specific citizen preferences.” Those respondents “advocate[d] decisions based on the conscience of the elected officials, even against the majority opinion.” Only 43 percent of citizens agreed. When asked about direct democracy specifically, 69 percent of citizens said they wanted more direct decision-making power. In contrast, only 52 percent of mayors, 45 percent of elected city officials, and 38 percent of administration heads agreed that citizens should have that ability.¹⁸⁹

Direct democracy is not appropriate or possible in many instances for local government. Stefan Heinig, the former Office of City Planning leader, finds direct democracy approaches to engagement too prescriptive and, ultimately, restrictive. With tools like referendums, he believes that the “majority that says yes to a topic alienates the minority who have special needs.” Instead, he believes that “the aim of participation should actually be to try to bring together different interests in a new solution” and that direct democracy can make it especially difficult to incorporate a minority’s needs who may not be able to win a majority in a referendum.¹⁹⁰

However, different forms of engagement can be mutually supportive. As the DStGB put it, cities could do more to better establish the “fundamental connections between representative, direct, and cooperative democracy” that make a democratic system work.¹⁹¹ According to Thorsten Mehnert, of the Wake Up Corners Foundation, deliberative democracy can also be a complementary model. He argues that “people no longer feel adequately represented by their representatives,” and that representative democracy “is no longer enough.” While he believes that “representative democracy is right,” he would like it to be complemented by supportive tools that “ensure that the representative democracy is really experienced closer to the citizens again, that they not only talk in the city council but also exchange ideas with people from the neighborhood.”

This principle of complementary democratic approaches could be applied in many different ways. Representative bodies can do more to bring participation into earlier stages of their work ahead of decision-making. For example, participation can be part of budget planning, so that the city council’s later work can be informed by the priorities reflected in that engagement.¹⁹² With municipal decision-making, “offers of dialogue and intensive deliberation are… not only proving to be a prerequisite for the success and acceptance of representative and direct democracy, but they also combine representative and direct democracy into a multifaceted democracy,” according to the Bertelsmann Foundation.¹⁹³

Bringing residents into the decision-making process doesn’t mean residents have to get everything they want to be happy with participation, however. Barbara Baumgärtel, who criticized the City of Leipzig’s engagement models in 2005, indicated that what she wanted was for the administration to consult with residents—not necessarily to defer all decisions to them.¹⁹⁴ To her, failure to provide residents with more of a chance to meaningfully participate—whether because of budget cuts or a lack of support—creates a “vicious cycle where there are no opportunities to participate for the citizens, where there is frustration for those who try anyway, and where there is a shrinking number of people willing to do political work.” The outcome is that “it becomes even easier to call this small group an insignificant minority.”¹⁹⁵

For Okasha, incorporating more elements of democracy is a matter of principle. He was part of the movement to elect members of the Migrant Council by the immigrant population in Leipzig, who are otherwise not permitted to vote in elections. And while today there are still six members of the council who are appointed, Okasha would like to change that, too. The problem is not that those members are too close with the administration. In conversation, he referred to them as friends of his but he would like to see the council become a fully elected body because “that is basic democracy.” To him, the city council appointments are patronizing, and he believes that “communities should have the complete right to vote to elect their representatives.”¹⁹⁶ Councilmember Riekewald shares the same belief in democracy as a principle. She, as well as the broader LEFT party, would like to see the district councils be elected, not appointed. If that were to happen, she says the district councils would be “a completely different body.”¹⁹⁷

In Okasha’s experience, it’s also democratic principles that ensure the council can conduct its work. Each topic council includes seats for representatives of the broader city council, each coming from a different party. For the Migrant Council, this means that one of their members is a representative of the Alternative for Germany (AfD)—a far-right, anti-immigration party. However, because the council makes decisions through votes, and the other members still have a majority, Okasha says it is not an obstacle to their work.¹⁹⁸

These same democratic functions are also useful for the Youth Parliament and their work. In addition to the main parliamentary body, eight members join six city council members to form the youth advisory council. In this body, the youth parliament members still have the majority, but can receive feedback on motions from council members before submitting it to the entire city council. According to Kügler, this process has helped the youth council develop a strong working relationship where members feel that they can negotiate with the city council over disagreements in submitted motions and to find solutions together when obstacles arise—but while still maintaining a healthy antagonism, with the recognition that the Youth Parliament is there to fight for issues they believe in.¹⁹⁹

In contrast to Kügler, who feels that the Youth Parliament is respected by the members of city council, Okasha sometimes feels that the Migrant Council is not “taken seriously as elected representatives.” His concern is that the council isn’t seen as a legitimate representative body by the city administration and city council, but as a “consolation prize” for their limited ability to otherwise participate in politics. He says they “see that in practice sometimes.” Their different experiences suggest that concrete institutional power can translate into procedural power for residents, but that not all forms of combined democracy models are equally effective. Apart from the question of institutional power, a model’s impact is also affected by less tangible factors, such as the relationships between participants and city officials.

As demonstrated by the different experiences that Kügler and Okasha have had in their respective councils, the relationship between the city government and its constituents provides a foundation for collaboration and participation. All parties play an important role, but as the more powerful entity, cities ultimately build the basis for developing these partnerships and their tenor. In particular, examining Leipzig as an example points to the importance of two components: a city’s attitude towards residents and their engagement, and building trust through transparency and communication.

Open-Mindedness and a Willingness to Cooperate

Combativeness may feel inherent to local politics in many cities, with a distinctive government versus constituents dynamic. For example, in Leipzig, despite the city’s infrastructure for engagement, some interviewees described still feeling resistance from parts of the administration.

In her more than 30 years of local participation in Leipzig, Barbara Baumgärtel does not feel a fully collaborative relationship exists with the city yet—and that it is not a problem unique to Leipzig. Through her experience in her neighborhood and from participating in engagement programs through organizations like adult education centers, the Goethe Institute, and the Herder Institute that bring international participants together, she’s noticed a similar trend: “Citizen participation and achieving an understanding of democracy is a real problem everywhere.” She explains that politicians and administrators are resistant to sharing power with constituents, though they may pretend otherwise. Often, she believes they instead see citizens as a “necessary evil,” and prioritize their own expertise. Exceptions, she finds, are rare.²⁰⁰

During his role as the deputy mayor for urban development and construction, Nils Gormsen observed something similar. After retiring and becoming involved as a private citizen, he believed it was a “misunderstanding to see citizens and administrators as enemies, per se,” or to view participation as “a confrontational match someone wants to win.” ²⁰¹

Residents in Leipzig also experience this dynamic with the city council, and may feel that the city council and administration typically side with each other over resident input. Riekewald argues that the relationship between the council and administration has changed over time, and that with the increase in representation from the Left and Green parties, the council now acts against the SPD mayor more often.²⁰² However, Weyh’s perception is that often for administration, “the objections of citizens are worth less than those of us city council members,” or “even colleagues from our own administration.” To her, “it has something to do with a culture that can be changed. People just have to get used to the fact that they don’t invent everything on their own, so to speak, but in cooperation with the citizens.”

Shifting this dynamic between city governments and their residents requires time and continued effort.

One helpful adjustment is for a city government to shift its role to be less hierarchical and more resident-oriented,²⁰³ so that the administration and politicians are more open to input, engagement, and collaboration. In 2005, Baumgärtel explained that she wanted to be heard, for engagement to not feel performative or like an "alibi," and for there to be less disconnect between an administration that said engagement mattered, but seemed to prioritized technical experts over resident feedback.” According to Thorsten Mehnert, what the Wake Up Corners Foundation needs from the city to support collaboration always changes. In some cases, it might be a permit; in others, it may be funding. Consequently, for him, a basic willingness and attitude in favor of participation from the city is key to a productive relationship—a feeling that “if we work together in a citizen group, we achieve more for the city than if we do it alone.”²⁰⁴

Additionally, it can help to have intermediaries to help facilitate a constructive relationship between the city and its constituents. Though the relationship between council members and residents can be contentious, pro-engagement members like Riekewald feel that they can help facilitate collaboration. Riekewald sees her responsibility as a council member to mediate and continually ask what citizens across the city want—standing “in the middle and bring[ing] [both sides] together.”²⁰⁵

Through his organization, Mehnert works to provide channels for residents to collaborate better with the government, and to do so with the benefit of the foundation’s experience with the city and procedural knowledge of how to implement projects and ideas. Weyh notes that even as a city council member, she often struggles to contact the right person in the city’s huge administration and employee base, and then to get clear answers from that communication. “I can imagine the people who aren’t even doing [this professionally] despair and don’t know how to [get answers],” she said.²⁰⁶ Mehnert, along with other staff and volunteers, try to ease this challenge.²⁰⁷

Transparency and Trust

In addition to openness towards engagement and collaboration with intermediaries, transparency and trust are important components for building productive relationships between residents and cities.

Evaluating their performance overall, one city employee reflected that the city does well with informing residents through a variety of methods, including a newsletter, project list, and city office. The project list, in particular, was originally instituted to improve transparency.²⁰⁸ Some interviewees argued that the city could still do more, particularly around informing residents early in the governing process, and communicating implementation and decision-making more clearly. Additionally, Weyh believes that the city website could be better. Currently, she says people attribute the difficulty of finding information to secrecy, when the real reason is an old website that the city is currently working to update.²⁰⁹

To Weyh, communication and information accessibility is about transparency. And transparency helps to “[lower] the threshold which I believe prevents many from participating because they just don't know how.” Beyond facilitating engagement, transparency also helps build trust between residents and their city.

In particular, interviewees pointed to the importance of transparency from city governments in three main areas: limitations, decisions, and implementation.

First, it is important for a city to be clear about which policy areas residents can participate in, as well as transparent about the limitations for that engagement.²¹⁰ Being honest about the restrictions and complications that are unavoidable for local government, including financial limitations, can help avoid misunderstandings or frustration from residents,²¹¹ the Mayor for Urban Development and Construction Dorothee Dubrau noted.²¹² Stefan Heinig also found that it was important to communicate the legal and procedural limits of participation, reiterating that, though residents may participate in different processes, the final decision-making power still belongs to the city council.²¹³ Based on a recent failed engagement process, Riekewald believes that this type of transparency is an area where the city government can still improve.²¹⁴

Second, transparency around how decisions are made by the city council and administration can help avoid frustration from residents who feel like their participation or preferences were not included. For Weyh, it’s “perfectly fine if a citizen’s objection is rejected by the administration because it doesn’t work….But then it is important to me to take the second step, and we have to get better at actually conveying these reasons to people.” She believes this is the case even for sensitive issues like city finances. To her, “you can’t always fully discuss everything in public,” but you still “need feedback” and to be honest with constituents, even when it’s uncomfortable. Karsten Gerkens had a similar experience in his 27 years as the leader of the Urban Regeneration department. Even on challenging topics like budget restrictions, he found that he was able to have productive discussions with residents when they wanted programs that the city couldn’t afford, or when the city needed to decide how to allocate limited resources. He also found that, sometimes, residents actually favored simpler solutions that cost less money than those proposed by the city planners.²¹⁵ However, Weyh thinks that kind of culture of transparency still “has to grow” in the Leipzig city government.²¹⁶

​“In the end, democracy lives from trust.”

Third, interviewees pointed to the importance of transparency around implementation. Baumgärtel argues for more transparency around project timelines to avoid residents becoming frustrated after participating, but seeing no corresponding changes. A study on engagement in Leipzig came to the same conclusion, recommending the city to follow individual engagement projects and report their results and implementation back to residents.²¹⁷

Without this transparency, Heinig argues that a city can easily develop a fractured relationship with its constituents. “With one or two badly made investments where you do something completely different afterwards than you announced beforehand,” he explains, “you can destroy a lot of trust that has been built up over the years.” The trust that engagement depends upon “is not something that can be achieved through one single participation process, but rather is something that a city can create over years and can also be destroyed again.”²¹⁸ And as Weyh puts it, ​“in the end, democracy lives from trust.”²¹⁹

The relationship between the city and constituents—from openness towards participation to trust—is not the same for all residents. Residents’ experiences with government are also shaped by modern and historic issues around accessibility and equity, all of which are particular to the individual city’s context. Many residents, such as immigrants, are legally excluded from fully participating in the democratic process and cannot vote until they become citizens.²²⁰ Even as citizens, Germans of color have often been excluded from institutions of power and face systemic racism in their country.²²¹

Because engagement is the practice of bringing constituent voices into government, who participates is just as important as how they do. In Leipzig, as in American cities, fully achieving equity in government-supported engagement faces several obstacles.

At the grassroots level, Migrant Councilmember Mohammad Okasha describes the engaged community in Leipzig as very diverse. This is not surprising: Almost 10 percent of residents in Leipzig are not originally from Germany, with 14.5 percent of that population made up of immigrants from Syria alone.²²² To Antar Keith, an American living in Leipzig, the city government “is very, very motivated to create a certain semblance of cultural variety and to live up to the hype of being a vibrant, young city that has this edginess but also has an important self-image because of what’s happened in the past.” For him, though, the government is not racially diverse in practice. For example, though there are 70 members of the city council, almost all are white or white-passing.²²³

Similarly, the City of Leipzig’s infrastructure for engagement is also not yet equitable. As noted above, the most powerful forms of resident participation happen through the city’s many different forms of representative democracy, from the neighborhood councils to the Youth Parliament. Like the city council, by definition, these programs benefit a small number of residents, and primarily those privileged with community or party connections, the free time to participate, and the financial resources to allow for volunteer work.

This is especially true for appointed bodies, such as the neighborhood councils; a resident must have a relationship with a party to be nominated and appointed.²²⁴ While this doesn’t require that a resident is a formal party member, the nomination path towards participation is not equally accessible to all residents. Instead, it requires that residents participate in engagement for extended periods of time, develop familiarity with the bureaucratic system, and build relationships with residents who have more institutional power. According to Riekewald, the district councils can then also act as a pipeline to the city council, allowing members to network, “make a name for [themselves],” and learn about the city administration's governing processes.

Though participation is not expected to be a full time job, Riekewald also noted that joining a district council is also not financially accessible for everyone given the amount of work that is involved: Members only receive approximately €25 EUR (around $29.32 USD) per month for their work, according to her. In the Youth Parliament, members receive €26.20 EUR (around $30.73 USD) per month, with members of the youth council receiving an additional €26.20 EUR per month and an additional €31.44 EUR (around $36.88 USD) per council meeting.²²⁵

In the Migrant Council, members do not receive any compensation, though Okasha says he spends approximately 20 to 30 hours a week on related work.²²⁶ As a result, he says that “the working class is not properly represented.”²²⁷ To achieve better representation for the broad migrant population in particular, Okasha is frustrated by what he views as a “parallel society in politics.”²²⁸ Keith agrees that the council is an imperfect form of representation that flattens immigrants into a homogenous group.²²⁹ Ideally, Okasha says he would like to abolish the council, and see migrants represented in Leipzig’s political structures more broadly.²³⁰

Challenges with equity also continue outside of the city’s representative democracy models.

While the strong culture of Vereins and citizen groups may be beneficial to local democratic health, many engaged residents agree that it is difficult to be heard as an individual who is not aligned with a civic group, or in a group that is not as institutionalized as a Verein. In contrast to citizen initiatives, Vereins typically have more members, more financial resources, and often have some paid staff, which allows them to work more and on more topics.²³¹ For example, Jörg Reichert often feels like his smaller group of computer science volunteers and their concerns are not taken as seriously, though they may occasionally participate with the city or a local party.²³² Some individuals can make themselves heard, but according to Kügler, “if you want to have a say in the decision-making process…you should run for an elected position.”²³³

In its engagement projects, the City of Leipzig does try to address issues of accessibility and equity. A city employee involved in those processes noted that by listening only to the strongest resident voices and not hearing the weaker ones, civic engagement cannot work.²³⁴

Today—to make decisions about the construction of a new playground, for example—the city’s engagement model favors discussion groups and meetings to gather residents input. However, a small, engaged group of privileged, self-selected citizens who participate in discussion groups and meetings cannot represent the city as a whole. As Riekewald explains, “those who have less income simply have other problems than dealing with city administration projects,” which then means that “a whole clientele is ignored.”²³⁵

In an attempt to make discussion events more equitable, the city ensures that residents who are randomly selected²³⁶ as working group members are still representative of the neighborhood, considering factors like gender, citizenship status, income, and other demographics. Citizenship status is also considered, as engagement opportunities are open to all Leipzig residents, not just those who are legally German citizens.²³⁷Another factor is whether the residents participating are already involved in other groups or organizing, as their goal is to include people who will both be impacted by the city’s decision-making and whose voices typically aren’t heard. During the events themselves, the moderator is tasked with getting everyone to participate, rather than having the conversation dominated by single individuals.²³⁸

Weyh agrees that “the most important thing is that you have the courage, that you create opportunities and spaces for people you have not previously selected or cast, so to speak, to meet and exchange ideas.” To her, bad engagement means having participants who are “only men over fifty,” who cannot “cover all perspectives.” She believes this is avoidable. “There are always ways I can get in touch with people, I just have to do it actively,” she explains. But in the city council, she does not see that happening often yet. Keith has experienced this problem first hand. Though he is politically engaged in the community, he hasn’t participated in any opportunities provided by the city because they don’t currently feel accessible to him. He feels that the city’s promotion for engagement efforts could be better, especially to target immigrants like him.²³⁹

Within engagement opportunities themselves, the city also can use tools to facilitate equal participation. In the Office for Urban Renewal, one of Stefan Heinig’s priorities was also that even when they had large events with 200 participants, the design of their engagement events could facilitate participation and contribution from every single attendee. As one example, for events where people were broken up into groups sitting at different tables, the office developed tablecloths that participants could write their ideas on. The office would then process those comments and make them available online. This approach helped with transparency, and with their efforts to make sure all attendees could participate.²⁴⁰ Similarly, participants of the city’s 2016 study on local engagement emphasized the importance of using “simple language,” or writing text in such a way that is accessible to residents who are not fluent in German.²⁴¹

Still, making engagement equitable requires more than including diverse participants, good facilitation tools, and translation. It also requires openness to discussing issues around accessibility and equity. Keith, who was a keynote speaker at a Leipzig Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020,²⁴² finds that around issues of racism in particular, there is “tremendous pressure to not really rock the boat,” and that pointing out such problems receives pushback. During his involvement in the Leipzig Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020, and throughout his time living in Germany, he found that many Germans were comfortable discussing racism as a problem that exists in the United States, but have been much less comfortable reflecting on racism at home, or tend to focus on racism solely in its neo-Nazi form. To Keith, “racism is not locked into the past, it’s an ever-changing, mutable creature that changes with the times.”

According to Okasha, there are many engaged residents in Leipzig who got involved for the same reasons that he did: because he was affected by problems in the city and he wanted to help others who faced similar challenges. Okasha describes that when he arrived in Germany, he had “very little money,” didn’t receive government support, and “had no contact with any city councilors or politicians.” He explains that these challenges motivated him to make a difference. Weyh agrees that it is important for marginalized groups, such as immigrants, the unemployed, or differently abled residents, to be able to “explicitly say where the problems are.” Because without being in their position, “you sometimes don’t get it.”²⁴³ Okasha believes that because they are often so closely affected by problems in the city, if more people of color were involved, they could make substantial, “rapid change”.²⁴⁴

“Racism is not locked into the past, it’s an ever-changing, mutable creature that changes with the times.”

Building on a strong relationship with residents and equitable engagement efforts, the City of Leipzig’s experience also points to the importance of two principles of participation design that American cities can learn from: Planning for early civic participation and adopting bureaucratic flexibility, as well as bringing together concrete engagement and long-term goals.

Bureaucratic Flexibility and Early Participation

In 2004, former Deputy Mayor for Urban Development and Construction Nils Gormsen reflected that bureaucracies like the City of Leipzig administration “tend to be inflexible, fixed, and self-contained.” As a result, “once a bureaucratic institution internally decides in favor of a certain strategy, it becomes extremely difficult for citizens to convince it of alternative solutions.”²⁴⁵

In contrast to the rigidity of bureaucracy, a city employee explained that, in his experience, engagement is not a static state, but one that requires consistent reflection and self-examination, especially during challenging times like the current COVID-19 pandemic.²⁴⁶ This is also true during more non-crisis periods. For example, in a document about the Quartiersmanagement system, a former city employee in the Social Welfare Office, Klaus Hinze, recommended that the Quartiersmanagement system cannot be a “static process,” and instead “requires constant adjustment.”

Needless to say, “constant adjustment” is challenging for inflexible governing systems. Based on his experience in Leipzig, Hinze recommended an evaluation process that identifies deficits, offers recommendations, and checks “the objectives of the administration and the agency and compares them to the respective status of work.”²⁴⁷

Another important strategy for creating flexibility in engagement processes is to allow residents to participate early in the governing process. To Gormsen, the rigidity he observed in the Leipzig government in the early 2000s was due to a decision-making approach where the city would use technical expertise to “plan internally first, and then [go] public to inform the citizens.” For Gormsen—and other city employees who participated in recent interviews—this approach is a “mistake.”²⁴⁸ Instead, the officials argued for incorporating engagement early in the process, before “bureaucratic opinion is fixed,” as Gormsen put it.

Engagement is not a static state, but one that requires consistent reflection and self-examination, especially during challenging times…

Indeed, when the city has engaged residents early on, leaders have seen clear benefits. First, Stefan Heinig found that participation was actually less expensive when residents were brought in during the early stages of planning. With early participation, it was easier to prevent additional, expensive investments that surpass the original project budget. Second, he noted that earlier participation made incorporating resident feedback much more feasible.²⁴⁹ Riekewald agrees that when engagement is included after city plans are in place, the criticism becomes much larger and it can delay the project timeline. Finally, Riekewald also points out that including residents earlier also helped improve acceptance of city decisions, especially because they can hear from other Leipzig residents. She explains that through participation, someone who may not agree with the final decision could “sit at the table” with someone from the majority who supported that outcome. In retrospect, that allows residents to say, “well, okay, the majority wanted it that way. My neighbors think that’s great. I have to accept that I’m not in the majority.”²⁵⁰

Bridging Concrete Engagement with Long-term Goals

One major challenge of including residents early is to avoid frustration with the slow nature of the bureaucratic process. In Riekewald’s experience working on transport and mobility as a city council member, it can be “very, very difficult” to tell people that the contributions of their engagement will only be incorporated several years later. To her, this means that “not all projects are suitable for increasing public participation.” Rink agrees that “it is not particularly interesting for citizens to be involved in something for years, to invest a lot of time,” and then not feel like they have seen any benefits apart from participation for its own sake.²⁵¹

To navigate these challenges, Heinig believes that communication is particularly important, so that it’s clear to everyone involved what individual engagement efforts are building to, and how the final result is a product of that participation.²⁵² Gerkens also found that engagement was most successful when individual participation efforts around highly specific topics were connected back to long-term goals. For example, during reunification, the city experienced a large problem: a broken housing system. By breaking a large problem into smaller, concrete participation projects and incorporating feedback and reflection, he felt that his office was able to reach a solution of “higher quality.”²⁵³

Despite the difficulty of long-term engagement, Gerkens saw that when residents were involved—even in large projects like creating the city’s master plan for development—the process was faster than when they engaged residents around one-off, individual development projects. In part, this is because he found that the same questions that came up during engagement, particularly those about funding and timelines, would also come up again later in city council meetings. In the end, he found that participation saved him time and produced better projects. Today, he believes that engagement should be factored in from the beginning as a standard project cost.²⁵⁴

Over the last 31 years, the City of Leipzig has faced many tumultuous challenges, beginning with the chaotic, difficult reunification process of the early 1990s. From the Peaceful Revolution and reunification round tables to the COVID-19 crisis today, civic engagement during crisis and conflict has consistently been part of the city’s local democracy.

For many municipal governments in the United States, it is exactly these kinds of conditions that can make city leaders resistant to engagement. After all, including residents can be difficult in the best of times. While the City of Leipzig is still learning how to best facilitate engagement during such challenges, their experiences can also be instructive.

Crisis-era Engagement

During the Wende period, Gerkens found engagement to be helpful for making the important decisions that the city administration faced. At that point, the administration had to renovate a majority of apartment buildings in the city, but with very little funding and resources. Gerkens described it as a difficult period because of the number—and range—of people impacted by those decisions, including tenants, renters, developers, and investors. And the consequences had serious impacts on peoples’ lives: where they lived, who their neighbors were, whether their apartment building was torn down or not, and so on. While the decisions were difficult, the city also wanted to make sure residents accepted those outcomes and that their plans had buy-in from the constituents.

To do so, the city held public workshops where planners would explain their plans for urban development and residents could participate in discussions. These events would include lectures, round tables, the opportunity for residents to submit written feedback, and collaboration with citizen moderators for more difficult conversations. His office also collaborated with advisory boards and Quartiermanagement groups. At this point, Gerkens describes the exchange of information—with residents learning from the city and the city learning from residents—as being very useful for the city planning office. Though the decisions were ultimately decided by the city council, politicians at that time also prioritized participation from residents, in part because financial resources were so limited. Participation events provided the city with “reassurance” that they were making the correct decisions that would align with citizens’ goals. However, at that time, their work did not come with resources or from explicit directions from the city administration.

Now, in 2021, many of the city’s problems and the administration’s approach to civic engagement have changed. Today, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the city has tried to maintain engagement by adapting to pandemic restrictions, such as in-person engagement with social distancing and masks when it was safe, but ultimately found that online tools like Zoom were useful. Interestingly, in Elsässer’s experience, when facilitating conversations through digital tools like Zoom, the discussion tends to be more objective and less emotional. However, he argues that Zoom should only be supplemental in the long term, and should not replace in person engagement.²⁵⁵ Historically, when the city attempted online participation, a high majority of the participants were already involved in associations, and it was harder to ensure equal engagement.²⁵⁶ Additionally, a city employee involved in these processes pointed out that an important part of relationship-building was missing: those small moments interacting in line for food, or the specific dynamic created by meeting another person face-to-face.²⁵⁷

Though engaging during crisis periods is more difficult, it may also be more mobilizing. Particularly during reunification, Mehnert believes that in situations with such upheaval and where there is an opportunity to “build something new,” people want to be involved. In his work with the foundation, he has also seen a dramatic increase in the number of volunteers during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, he observes that “the more normality takes hold…the less [people] feel the need to get involved.” Particularly when things go well, people may not feel the same urgency to prioritize engagement ahead of other demands in their life. To continue engagement in the long term, Mehnert believes it needs to be fun, too: “Compared to a visit to the zoo or to the [local] Cospudener Lake to lie on the beach, what is the motivation?”²⁵⁸

Navigating Conflict and Engagement

Of course, compared to a trip to the beach, engagement can also be difficult because conflict is unavoidable in local politics. From tensions between constituents and the city government to conflict among bureaucrats to disagreements between different groups of residents, conflict can make engagement feel less productive and more unpleasant.

Over three decades, the City of Leipzig has implemented several strategies to manage engagement and conflict.

According to a city employee who is involved in participation efforts, working through contentious engagement requires sharing information, receiving feedback and protests from residents through meetings and workshops, and then changing plans in response. To resolve some conflicts, the city may even bring in a mediator.²⁵⁹ Another strategy that the city uses for hosting difficult conversations is to personally invite randomly selected residents to “reach a broader social spectrum” than would typically volunteer through a public invitation. During these conversations, Elsässer notes that it’s also important to find easy common ground, with “as low a threshold as possible to win people.”²⁶⁰He also emphasizes the importance of facilitating personal conversations through models like round tables where people talk to each other directly. In these settings, he explains that “there is no big stage where individuals can present themselves,” and that extreme opinions become “less effective because those residents get feedback from their peers.” Crucially, that critique “does not come from the administration, but from the other citizens.” In this way, he finds that another important benefit of engagement is not just supporting dialogue between the administration and its constituents, but also between residents themselves to help keep people in discussion with each other and to help counteract residents’ drifting into separate, polarized social spheres. For him, “it is important that residents not only talk about each other, but also with each other.”

To work through conflict, the city administration also turns to the subject-area committees, Stadtbezirksbeiräte and Quartiersmanagement councils to help work with residents to find solutions. The independence of those institutions helps them act as facilitators, separate from potential baggage or distrust of the administration.²⁶¹

However, from his time as a department head, Heinig also believed that conflict was an important part of the engagement process. He found that consensus did not only develop from the additions that residents contributed, but also from the points of conflict. As a result, he thought it was important to record everything that arose in participation processes, both positive and negative.²⁶²

To consider one example of these efforts in practice, the Connewitz neighborhood in Leipzig is an infamous site for protests and political conflict. That area has a strong history in activism that’s rooted in an antifascist movement, and today, the neighborhood is home to a communist, antifacist ideology that’s often skeptical of the police and the federal government.²⁶³ Activists there often hold protests against gentrification and rising rents, including squatting in buildings under development, and hold demonstrations against the far-right.²⁶⁴ To engage with residents there, the mayor holds conversations with citizen initiatives and associations, and hosts round table discussions for particularly difficult conversations to identify areas for collaboration.²⁶⁵ For these discussions, they find that it’s important to host a time-restricted series: more than one conversation, but not so many discussions that nothing else happens. In these conversations, the city may also ask a community leader, such as an artist or a musician, to moderate.²⁶⁶

Of course, there are limits to the kinds of conflicts that these strategies can mediate. A city employee commented that in his opinion, the social climate has become more aggressive and protests more violent since the peaceful revolution in 1989.²⁶⁷ And many interviewees agreed that some political ideologies should not be accommodated in participation—such as the far-right LEGIDA movement, or the anti-mask, anti-lockdown “Contrarian Thinkers” (Querdenker) movement that has often held protests in Leipzig during the pandemic.

The recognition that not all conflicts or ideologies can be mediated through participation points to a final lesson from Leipzig: Not all engagement is pro-democratic.

To reinforce a healthy local democracy, the city’s experience suggests two important takeaways for American cities. First, building local democracy is a slow process and requires consistent investment and support. But, second, a strong democracy is not enough to deter destructive and illiberal efforts. Thus, supporting local democracy cannot happen without dedicated efforts to protect liberal democracy.

Christian Bollert, the Head of Media Relations with We are the East, notes that “democracy building takes time.” Kügler, a member of the Southwest District Council and a former speaker for the Youth Parliament, agrees that the process can be hard, but that “democracy means always staying in conversation.” Though he was born after reunification, the city’s history under the GDR—both the lack of a liberal democracy and the way that the regime fell—is instructive to him.²⁶⁸ At 22, he is still inspired by the way that the 1989 movement took place without violence, and emphasized discussions as a way for residents and the city to find solutions together. To him, that doesn’t mean that engagement is only successful if every participation process results in a solution.²⁶⁹ Through We Are the East, Bollert has also seen the benefits of continued engagement, despite its challenges. While their work may go unrecognized, he sees that eastern Germans’ local participation does give them the sense that democracy is working, and that they can eventually create change.²⁷⁰ Bollert also argues that he has seen it help overcome divisions in German society—from the Eastern German man who became less skeptical of Western Germans, or the Germans in Leipzig whose attitude towards Syrian refugees became more welcoming over time.²⁷¹

A city like Leipzig can help encourage these efforts. Bollert suggests supporting grassroots initiatives, finding people already doing the work, and “giving them a voice, giving them power, giving them money, and trying to build bottom-up.”²⁷² This kind of work may take time, but the benefit is that people feel like their work is appreciated.²⁷³

However, a city employee with over 20 years of experience in the Leipzig government reflected that while he believes engagement is good, it is not enough to maintain a democracy, and not enough to solve violence.²⁷⁴

Influenced by the city’s history, Kügler believes it’s important to protect the democracy that exists in Leipzig today, and to not give right-wing extremists a chance to destroy that model. To him, it’s important to be clear “where the limit is” for what kind of ideas receive time, attention, and a platform.²⁷⁵

Some specific models of engagement may lend themselves more to co-option than others. For example, political science professor Christiane Olivo noted that the anonymous, virtual participation by the Leipzig Stands Up and Gohlis Says No groups—which may have concealed astroturfing efforts by the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany—raised questions about the authenticity and legitimacy of such engagement models. In these cases, it wasn’t clear who in Leipzig supported these groups, how many people these efforts represented, and how many of them actually were Leipzig residents. However, these groups still purported to speak for the population as a whole, misappropriating the historic 1989 chant of “We are the people.” Therefore, it is important for anonymous and virtual engagement to include measures of authentication.²⁷⁶

Ultimately, Olivo argues that, “modern democracy combines constitutional guarantees with popular sovereignty… It tempers pure democracy with liberal elements.” Such a model recognizes that the people are not a sovereign monolith, and prioritizes a balance between engagement and respect for liberal democratic protections.²⁷⁷

In Weyh’s opinion, efforts to strengthen liberal democracy are especially important today. Observing politics today, she sees “dissatisfaction” and disinterest, and that because people “no longer feel represented” or heard, they distance themselves from politics and the state. She believes one consequence is that people become “very receptive to populists with very simple answers,” like the far-right AfD. That scares her. And that has also been her motivation to “implement democracy well” through civic engagement.

For modern cities around the world, government-supported civic engagement has become the new normal. According to a city employee in Leipzig, this is in part because people have more choice now to decide where they live; his grandfather could only travel by horse. Regardless of the time period—or whether the government in question is a dictatorship or a democracy—he believes that people are interested in where they live. In today’s globalized world where there is so much more choice than ever before, people can really “take root where they live,” and become actively involved in their city in a way that’s different from civic engagement of the past.²⁷⁸

At first glance, Leipzig may appear to be special in its emphasis on engagement, particularly by its residents. Its experience with establishing local democracy over the last 30 years seems too fresh. Its reputation as the Hero City and a "citizen city" can create the impression that there is an inherent climate of participation—something that other cities simply couldn’t replicate. Leipzig civic engagement expert Ralf Elsässer disagrees. He argues that this climate did not happen simply because of historical events, but that it was created by a culture of freedom and possibility. In particular, he points to the way that residents could be creative about how to use abandoned buildings and public space during the time of a shrinking city. To him, that example points to the broader importance of building a culture of possibility and freedom—what he calls “free space,” whether it is physical or metaphorical. “If a city has the chance to have free space, whatever that is,” he argues, “it is money well invested to support this free space and the use of such free space.”

Put another way, Wake Up Corners Foundation board member Thorsten Mehnert explains that, “I think you are only a hero city if [you] always give birth to new heroes. You will not remain a hero city if you only adore heroes from the past. You also have to create new ones.”

Residents in Leipzig like Barbara Baumgärtel certainly are committed to maintaining that civic spirit. After 20 years in the neighborhood association, she still finds that formal errors and bureaucratic hurdles in the participation process, such as the procedure for petitions, can be discouraging. She says that to make change, one needs persistence. Without “a lot of time and energy, at some point you will give up.” For her, she credits her persistence to the fact that she is an “incorrigible optimist.”

That optimism and persistence is not unique to Leipzig. Countless residents in Germany, the United States, and countries around the world are dedicated to making their cities better. The questions then become whether city governments subscribe to the belief that the governing process is “better with the citizens than without them,” as the city employee described it, and whether they implement that belief well in practice. By sharing lessons from Leipzig, and continuing transatlantic collaboration on issues large and small, hopefully more cities and their residents can work together to support a robust local democracy.

Many thanks to the 14 individuals who participated in interviews for this research. Those who have chosen to participate publicly are included in this list. Affiliation is given only for identification. Views of the interviewees reflect their own opinions, not those of their employers or organizations:

Residents

Quentin Kügler, former speaker of the Jugendparlament, current member of the Southwest Stadtbezirksbeirat with the Green Party, and a volunteer with Stiftung Ecken Wecken
Barbara Baumgärtel, former member of the Bürgerverein Waldstraßenviertel, e.V.
Mohammad Okasha, current member of the Migrantenbeirat and organizer
Jörg Reichert, volunteer with OK Lab Leipzig
Christian Bollert, head of media relations with Wir Sind Der Osten
Antar Keith, affiliated with various political groups supporting human rights
Dieter Rink, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Deputy Head of the Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology
Thorsten Mehnert, board member of Stiftung Ecken Wecken (Wake Up Corners Foundation)
Ralf Elässer, civic engagement expert and owner of Civixx

City Officials

Karsten Gerkens, former leader of the Housing and Urban Development Department
Stefan Heinig, former leader of the City Development Department

Politicians

Franziska Riekewald, city councilmember, LINKE
Kristina Weyh, city councilmember, Grüne

The German constitution establishes a model of government with three levels: local (cities and counties), state, and federal. Article 28 specifically gives municipalities “the right to regulate all local affairs,” including granting “financial autonomy” and the right to set and collect local taxes.²⁷⁹ Some tasks are delegated to the municipal government with strict rules about their execution (such as social benefits, public safety, ID laws), and others are mandated tasks without instructions, which gives city governments the ability to implement them as they see fit (such as fire brigades or schools). Finally, voluntary tasks give city governments the ability to regulate local community issues, such as sports facilities.²⁸⁰

As in the United States, city administration, and city council are the most important authorities at the municipal level. Their distribution of power varies by state. In Saxony, and in Leipzig, the mayor leads both the city administration and the city council. Citizens elect city council members and the mayor. Council members are elected by citizens every five years through a proportional representation system that awards parties seats based on the number of votes they receive. After the most recent elections in May 2019, the council includes the CDU (13 seats), The Left (15 seats), the SPD (nine seats), the Greens (15 seats), the AfD (11 seats), the FDP (three seats), the Pirate Party (one seat), WVL (one seat), and The Party (two seats), for 70 total council members.²⁸¹ The city council then appoints supporting committees, who work on specific issue areas.²⁸² While the mayor leads the city council, the council does have some control over the administration, such as managing “the execution, implementation, and compliance with its decisions.”²⁸³

The current mayor, Burkhard Jung, is a member of the center-left SPD and has been in his position since 2006. Saxony has particularly strong mayors, in part because of their seven year terms and also because they have the highest quorum for impeachment of all 16 German states (requiring 50 percent of the electorate to support a referendum).²⁸⁴ In leading the city administration, the mayor oversees 10 departments, ranging from City Planning Office to the Department of Migration and Integration.²⁸⁵

Full descriptions of the City of Leipzig's programs and infrastructure for civic engagement discussed in this report are included below.

City Council

Citizens can engage in this traditional form of representative democracy by electing council members and bringing issues to their attention once they are in office. However, the Leipzig city council is unique in its use of more direct forms of engagement within this governing institution:

• Youth Parliament (JuPa): Since 2015, the Youth Parliament has existed to represent the interests of the city’s young population. This body is made up of 20 young Leipzig residents, who must be between 14–21 years old and are elected through an online election by other residents in the same age range who have lived in Leipzig for at least three months. Young residents can communicate directly with the youth parliament, attend meetings, and participate in JuPa working groups,²⁸⁶ which discuss culture, free time, and urban development, as well as organization public relations.²⁸⁷ Members from the youth parliament then join the City Council’s Youth Advisory Council, which is also attended by city council members. JuPa members, as well as young residents, can submit motions to the youth parliament. From there, motions are considered by the youth council, and then passed to the full city council, where it goes through other committees, receives a financial and legal review from the administration, and then can be voted on by the city council. The youth parliament receives support from two city employees, one who helps with “content-related questions” and collaboration, and another who manages organizational tasks. JuPa representatives serve two-year terms. The first JuPa electoral term began in 2015.²⁸⁸ Members of the youth parliament receive a monthly allowance (as of 2018, 26.20 euros/month for members of the youth parliament, 26.20 euros/month for members of the youth council, and an additional 31.44 euros per youth council meeting). The youth parliament itself has an annual budget of 5,000 euros.²⁸⁹ This body is the only one of its kind in Saxony. There are other youth parliaments in other Saxon and German cities, but they operate as a more limited committee. For example, these parliaments cannot submit motions to the full city council.²⁹⁰
• Subject Area Advisory Councils: In addition to the youth council, the city council has 11 total advisory bodies, specializing on drugs, equality, children and families, migrants, psychiatry, seniors, disability, animal welfare, crime prevention, allotment gardens, and conservation. These boards advise the council on decisions pertaining to their subject area and are made up of residents with expertise on this topic,²⁹¹ as well as members of the city council.²⁹² Regulations for the advisory councils may vary. For example, 16 members of the Migrant Council are residents of Leipzig with migration backgrounds. Some are appointed by the city and others are directly elected by other residents with similar backgrounds who are at least 18 years old and have lived in Leipzig for at least three months. These councils also have the right to submit motions to the city council.²⁹³ However, they do not have their own funding or dedicated budget.²⁹⁴
• Neighborhood Councils: In addition to representation through the city council, the City of Leipzig also includes neighborhood councils. The 10 Stadtbezirksbeiräte and 14 Ortschaftsräte act as advisory councils for the neighborhoods and incorporated municipalities of Leipzig, respectively.²⁹⁵
  • Stadtbezirksbeiräte: The neighborhood councils include 11 members who are appointed by the city council after each election. This process means that many members belong to specific parties, but residents who are not official party members may still be appointed by party representatives in the city council. City residents must be at least 18 years old, an EU citizen, and live in the district to qualify for membership of a council. The city council must consult the neighborhood councils before making a final decision on issues that would impact that district. Additionally, city council committees must review any information submitted by neighborhood councils about their district (“Wichtige Angelegenheiten”).²⁹⁶ Finally, the councils receive 50,000 euros in funding from the city each year to carry out projects.²⁹⁷
  • Ortschaftsräte: During state municipal reforms, 14 municipalities officially became part of the City of Leipzig. Today, their corresponding municipality councils grant these areas extra political power so that they can “retain their public weight” and “preserve their public identity.” The members of these councils are elected and advise on issues from the Leipzig city council that will impact their municipality. They can also make legal decisions about some local issues, and specially elected representatives can speak at city council assemblies, among other powers.²⁹⁸ Each year, the councils receive funding from the City of Leipzig of six euros per inhabitant.²⁹⁹

City Administration

Within the administration, the City of Leipzig supports several other avenues to engagement:

• Stadtbüro: The “city office” was originally established in 1998 to “develop new forms of civic involvement and stimulate the dialogue between the city council, the administration, the citizens, and their associations.” A founding principle of the office is to use this position as intermediary and moderator to understand residents’ perspectives on public issues in early phases of projects.³⁰⁰ Today, the Stadtbüro still provides a “city platform for citizen participation and civic engagement,” and acts as “a link to the city administration.” This is a physical office in the city, which often displays, “among other things, exhibitions on urban planning and urban development projects for local democracy, organizes events such as informal participation opportunities, cooperates closely with the volunteer agency, and also publishes information on formal participation procedures for urban planning.”³⁰¹ The office is open for residents to visit five days a week to share feedback or request help.³⁰²
• City Initiatives:
  • Leipzig weiter denken: This effort began in 2012 with support from the federal government³⁰³ to discuss “questions about the future of urban development with the general public”³⁰⁴ using tools like future series, online dialogues, and workshops. In 2014, Mayor Jung decided to institutionalize it as an “umbrella brand for a new culture of participation.”³⁰⁵ Now, the coordination office “Leipzig Thinking Further” initiative is an ongoing effort to build civic engagement into the traditional administrative process of the city. Officially, LWD falls under the urban development department and often works on issues related to that topic. Additionally, “the office also advises other participation procedures from other departments.”³⁰⁶ For example, a city department may come to the LWD team for help hosting a representative neighborhood focus group to discuss the details of building a new school.³⁰⁷ They also provide training to other city employees on topics such as moderating,³⁰⁸ and give “advice on promoting volunteering.”³⁰⁹ In addition to their work with the Stadtbüro, the LWD office also monitors the city newspaper to make suggestions to the administration about potential areas for engagement based on residents’ priorities.³¹⁰ As described in the announcement of civic engagement guidelines in 2012, the “public participation coordinator” (Bürgerbeteiligungskoordination) plays a “quality assurance” role, and “acts as an interface between the administration, politics, and citizens by mediating, advising, controlling, and moderating.”³¹¹
  • Time-Specific Initiatives: Occasionally, the city “supports the promotion of local democracy with specific initiatives,”³¹² such as the Jahr der Demokratie. The Jahr der Demokratie (Year of Democracy) was an effort to “promote mutual dialogue and strengthen local democracy.”
  • Quartiersmanagement: Quartiersmanagements are only located in neighborhoods with “a strong demand for social stabilization.”³¹³ These neighborhood-specific groups are also formed in partnership between nonprofits or associations and city departments. The city and department are responsible for tasks and financing, and the association hires a district moderator who acts as a “contact person” for residents to collaborate with. Like the Stadtbezirksbeiräte and Ortschaftsräte, Quartiersmanagement (neighborhood management) groups act as “mediators”³¹⁴ between the administration and its constituents, but the Quartiersmanagement groups are more affiliated with city departments instead of the city council. For some groups, this includes a council (Quartiersrat). In one neighborhood, these are elected positions open to any citizens who live or work in the district and are over 18 years old.³¹⁵ Unique to the Quartieresmanagement groups is a focus on developing residents’ ability to identify problems and become part of the solution. With this aim, they work on issues ranging from urban development to local economic policy, all closely tailored to the specific neighborhood.³¹⁶ Like the Stadtbezirksbeiräte, the Quartiersmanagement groups receive financial support from the city, but are independent.³¹⁷
  • Participatory Budgeting: In February 2021, the Leipzig city council voted to approve a participatory budgeting program starting with the budget for 2023/2024. Residents as young as 14 may propose projects for funding from the Stadtbezirksbeiräte.³¹⁸ Outside of this new process, citizens also have the ability to give input on the annual budget for the city, based on Section 76(1) of the Saxon municipal code. Citizen objections are then recorded on the City website.³¹⁹
  • Civic Engagement List: Since the end of 2017, based on a city council resolution,”³²⁰ the city has regularly published a list of current civic engagement projects on its website so that residents who are interested in participating can find that information [details from the Wie Weiter PDF].
• Individual Initiatives:
• City Funding: In addition to funding given to the Stadtbezirksbeiräte and Ortschaftsräte, residents and associations may receive city funding for civic engagement and community-related projects³²¹ through specialist funding guidelines.³²² To name a few, projects may be related to efforts like promoting engagement in the city and neighborhood (efforts like citizen forums) and collaboration with city projects, as well as individual efforts like the publication of local newspapers, nature conservation, and preserving neighborhood history.³²³
• Citizen Recognition: The city also has a variety of awards and honors for engaged residents, such as the Golden Badge of Honor and the Certificate of Honor; events recognizing volunteers; and area-specific awards, such as the Sports Club of the Year.³²⁴

To implement these different engagement efforts, the city often uses combinations of the following tools: Bürgerforum, Bürgerplattform, Bürgerversammlung, Zukunftswerkstatt, Repräsentative Befragung/Bürgerpanel, Online-Kommunikation, etc.³²⁵

Based on city documents from 2012, when considering specific goals, conducting needs analyses, and considering potential solutions, the city uses a range of potential engagement tools, including but not limited to the following:

1. To develop project contents, the city may use:

• Information sessions
• "Future workshops"
• General workshops

2. To create a reliable picture of citizen opinions, the city may use:

• Information sessions
• Representative surveys or citizens' panels
• Citizens' assemblies or forums
• Online communication

3. To address conflicts or diverging citizen interests, the city may use:

• Information sessions
• Round table discussions
• Meditation

Another tool used in this phase are commissions, which may be used to address specific issues, such as renaming city streets to replace racist historical figures or names. Commissions with “knowledgeable citizens” may give input to the city council.³²⁶

Later, during the decision-making phase, the city consults with the district councils (Stadtbezirksbeirat and Ortschaftsrates) and city council to consider different arguments and communicate feedback to the public. At this stage, civic engagement may be used for different purposes:

1. To incorporate public participation in the decision-making: The administration provides information and results from civic engagement “as a basis and orientation for further action and decision-making.”

2. To communicate feedback to the public, the city may use:

• Information sessions, potentially with the local media
• Citizens' forums
• Citizens' platforms
• Citizens' assemblies

Finally, to provide citizen participation for the project implementation phase, the city may also use project groups.³²⁷

Outside of the city government, Leipzig also includes formal and informal infrastructures for engagement, such as citizen initiatives (Bürgerinitiativen), political parties, and citizen-organized demonstrations.

Of the citizen groups, Vereine (associations) are the most formal and the most powerful. Compared to organizations in the United States, Vereine is most like nonprofits, which may have some staff,³²⁸ but are largely run by volunteers. In Leipzig, these groups focus on the quality of life and urban development issues such as green spaces, parking and traffic, and historic buildings. They may also mobilize around local priorities, such as keeping a neighborhood library open. Some have been around for decades, and most of the older ones were established in 1989 during the peaceful revolution (called “Wendekinder,” or “children of the time of political change”).³²⁹ They’re typically run by volunteers, who engage with other associations, organize neighborhood projects, publish district newspapers, hold festivals, and aim to influence city government. To accomplish their goals, Vereine may use tools including petitions, informational meetings, on-site inspections, and letters to administrators, city council members, or advisory group representatives. Between each other, the Vereine also compete for “committed members, sponsorship money, and financial and other forms of support from the city.”³³⁰