Lessons for Local Democracy

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.¹ 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.² 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.³

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.⁴ But other city leaders can also have an important impact on supporting engagement efforts.⁵ For example, city council members, often from the Green and Left parties,⁶ have often pushed the administration to carry out engagement efforts by adding requirements for civic engagement into official motions.⁷ 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.⁸ However, they have had success working with individual city leaders who understand the value of sharing open data.⁹

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.¹⁰

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.¹¹ One argument against passing a statute made by the mayor¹² and the city council¹³ is that it could create a more restrictive bureaucratic infrastructure.¹⁴ 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.¹⁵ 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.¹⁶

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.¹⁷ 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.¹⁸ 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.¹⁹ Finally, for the city employee, a statute is the only way to provide engagement that is truly independent of an individual city administration.²⁰

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.²¹

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.”²² 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.²³ 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.”²⁴ 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.”²⁵

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.²⁶

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.²⁷ 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.²⁸ 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.²⁹

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.³⁰ Simply put, “whoever has money has power.”³¹

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.³² 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.³³

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.³⁴

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.”³⁵

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 2021³⁶—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.”³⁷

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.³⁸ 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.³⁹ 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.”⁴⁰

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.⁴¹ 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.⁴²

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 themselves⁴³—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.”⁴⁴ 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).⁴⁵

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.⁴⁶

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.⁴⁷

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.⁴⁸ 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.⁴⁹ 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.⁵⁰

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.⁵¹ 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.”⁵²

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.”⁵³ 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.”⁵⁴

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.⁵⁵

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.⁵⁶

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.⁵⁷

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.” ⁵⁸

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.⁵⁹ 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,⁶⁰ 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.”⁶¹

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.”⁶²

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.⁶³ Mehnert, along with other staff and volunteers, try to ease this challenge.⁶⁴

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.⁶⁵ 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.⁶⁶

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.⁶⁷ Being honest about the restrictions and complications that are unavoidable for local government, including financial limitations, can help avoid misunderstandings or frustration from residents,⁶⁸ the Mayor for Urban Development and Construction Dorothee Dubrau noted.⁶⁹ 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.⁷⁰ Based on a recent failed engagement process, Riekewald believes that this type of transparency is an area where the city government can still improve.⁷¹

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.⁷² However, Weyh thinks that kind of culture of transparency still “has to grow” in the Leipzig city government.⁷³

​“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.⁷⁴

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.”⁷⁵ And as Weyh puts it, ​“in the end, democracy lives from trust.”⁷⁶

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.⁷⁷ Even as citizens, Germans of color have often been excluded from institutions of power and face systemic racism in their country.⁷⁸

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.⁷⁹ 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.⁸⁰

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.⁸¹ 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.⁸²

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.⁸³ As a result, he says that “the working class is not properly represented.”⁸⁴ To achieve better representation for the broad migrant population in particular, Okasha is frustrated by what he views as a “parallel society in politics.”⁸⁵ Keith agrees that the council is an imperfect form of representation that flattens immigrants into a homogenous group.⁸⁶ Ideally, Okasha says he would like to abolish the council, and see migrants represented in Leipzig’s political structures more broadly.⁸⁷

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.⁸⁸ 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.⁸⁹ 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.”⁹⁰

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.⁹¹

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.”⁹²

In an attempt to make discussion events more equitable, the city ensures that residents who are randomly selected⁹³ 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.⁹⁴Another 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.⁹⁵

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.⁹⁶

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.⁹⁷ 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.⁹⁸

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 2020,⁹⁹ 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.”¹⁰⁰ 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”.¹⁰¹

“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.”¹⁰²

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.¹⁰³ 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.”¹⁰⁴

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.”¹⁰⁵ 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.¹⁰⁶ 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.”¹⁰⁷

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.¹⁰⁸

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.¹⁰⁹ 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.”¹¹⁰

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.¹¹¹

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.¹¹² 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.¹¹³ 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.¹¹⁴

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?”¹¹⁵

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.¹¹⁶ 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.”¹¹⁷He 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.¹¹⁸

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.¹¹⁹

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.¹²⁰ Activists there often hold protests against gentrification and rising rents, including squatting in buildings under development, and hold demonstrations against the far-right.¹²¹ 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.¹²² 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.¹²³

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 1989.¹²⁴ 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.¹²⁵ 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.¹²⁶ 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.¹²⁷ 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.¹²⁸

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.”¹²⁹ This kind of work may take time, but the benefit is that people feel like their work is appreciated.¹³⁰

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.¹³¹

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.¹³²

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.¹³³

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.¹³⁴

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.