Bridging Political Divides Through Democratic Dialogue: The »Speaking & Listening« Approach in Germany
Gustaf Ö Hjalmars for Fine Acts x OBI
Introduction: Why We Do What We Do
We at Mehr Demokratie e. V. believe in pluralism—that the best decisions emerge when all affected voices are included. This requires democratic processes that not only engage citizens but also feel meaningful, and deliver sustainable outcomes. The »Speaking & Listening« approach can be a vital element in democratic decision-making, helping participants feel genuinely included through the surprisingly transformative experience of being heard.
Authoritarianism stands in stark contrast to these values. It concentrates power among a small group, persuading majorities through divisive narratives of “us versus them” and claims to represent “the true people.” It reduces diversity, marginalizes diverging experiences, and results in decisions benefiting only a few. It is important to oppose authoritarian populism with fact-checking and critique, but we believe it is also crucial to pursue a positive, alternative vision. For us, this vision is an embodiment of democratic values, best expressed by the narrative: “Even when I strongly disagree with your opinion, I still see and accept you as a human being”. Fundamentally, we want to change how democracy is done by working towards a mode of politics that is more collaborative in its processes, more relational in public discourse, and takes a systemic perspective to address challenges.
What we are presenting with »Speaking & Listening« is a cultural democratic practice incompatible with both populism and authoritarianism, because it offers the experience of a democratic, pluralist and inclusive mode of politics. The initiative for the »Speaking & Listening« approach was born from two critical developments in 2022-2023: a research project on trauma and democracy involving 350 citizens (1), and the proliferation of so-called "Bürgerdialoge" (citizen dialogues) organized by the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Eastern Germany in 2023. Attending these “dialogues” was a deeply unsettling experience and left us with a chilling sense of a politics built on exclusion. This stood in stark contrast to the profound hope and connection we witnessed in our trauma-and-democracy work. These events together showed a need and shaped a mandate: to develop new practices that could build stronger relationships and strengthen democratic collaboration. This work is especially urgent with the AfD increasingly winning elections in Eastern Germany, and showing growing approval rates in all of Germany, systematically poisoning the discourse and threatening the foundations of our democratic institutions (2).
The impetus for creating »Speaking & Listening« came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when we experienced intense polarization firsthand within our own organization and felt an urgent need for a constructive tool to deal with it. We developed the core principles of the method over the course of several months, with the active collaboration of many of our team members.
We are Mehr Demokratie e. V., a leading NGO in Germany for direct democracy and citizen participation, with more than 11,000 members. For more than 35 years, we have been working to improve the conditions for citizens to directly make decisions in referenda (direct democracy), transparency, electoral laws, and citizen participation, e.g., through randomly selected citizens' assemblies. Our core conviction: People want to live self-determined lives, feel a sense of belonging, and have a say in democratic decisions. Since 2018, we have been extending our activities to the field of democratic culture. This means we develop prototypes of new processes and formats that support people participating in democracy. For that purpose and in the context shared above, we started the project “Conversations from Human to Human – Because We Live Here”, which piloted a series of in-person dialogue events at the communal level in Eastern Germany in 2024.
The Project “Conversations from Human to Human – Because We Live Here”
From early 2024 until April 2025, we conducted 55 in-person dialogue events across 38 different municipalities in Germany—with 34 of the events taking place in rural Brandenburg, a state in Eastern Germany where our project employees live (or live near to), and where we have witnessed the aforementioned so-called Bürgerdialoge. Additionally, we hosted 15 online events, collectively reaching 3,214 participants (1,393 in person and 1,863 online). All in-person events were organized in collaboration with local stakeholders, such as mayors, Democracy Partnerships (3), or civil society initiatives. In most municipalities we hosted one or two dialogue events, while in one community we held a six-part series that allowed deeper exchange and relationship-building.
The dialogues addressed a spectrum of highly controversial and polarizing topics, such as: COVID-19 policies, East-West German relations, responses to far-right populism, the migration crisis, and the war in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine. But also supposedly less emotionally charged topics like democracy and local politics. In most cases, we used the dialogue format we developed – »Speaking & Listening« – though in a few events we experimented with other formats such as Democratic Constellations, Deep Democracy, and Democracy Fitness.
Our conclusion after the pilot phase: The »Speaking & Listening« dialogue format always worked, i.e., it provided the experience of being heard – and positive outcomes related to it, like calmness, belonging, and a sense of solidarity. Its simple rules and clear, appreciative moderation, enabled the participating citizens to express their personal experiences related to a certain topic. In this way, the emotional aspects of even contentious issues become more palpable and the structured conversation becomes a starting point for connection, community, and democratic decision-making.
In the following sections, I will introduce the dialogue format »Speaking & Listening«, discuss our insights on addressing polarization and emotional triggers, and conclude with an assessment of both challenges and future possibilities for scaling this work throughout Germany and beyond.
The »Speaking & Listening« Dialogue Format
»Speaking & Listening« is a dialogue format developed and widely tested by Mehr Demokratie that promotes a democratic culture of conversation and discussion. Its goal and purpose is to facilitate deeper understanding of one’s own opinions, as well as across differences. The format provides conditions that make it easier for participants to talk about potentially triggering topics while truly hearing one another, regardless of opposing viewpoints. This is because in »Speaking & Listening«, participants do not convince each other of their positions; instead, they listen and observe themselves while doing so. In the best-case scenario, participants engage in what quantum physicist and philosopher David Bohm calls “sustained attention,” out of which a shared, new, third position may organically emerge (4).
The format is accessible, requiring no special training for participants, yet depends on a few non-negotiable rules which are essential for its success. At its core, it is about each person getting the same amount of speaking time to engage in an in-depth exchange about their own experiences and their opinions regarding the event's topic. In groups of four, participants talk about how they feel regarding a specific communal or societal issue. Each person speaks uninterrupted for exactly four minutes, with the process repeated through three complete rounds. This structure is followed by a facilitated whole-group reflection.
The simple rules for the conversation rounds are (5):
For many people, it is at first surprising that in »Speaking & Listening« there is only one question for the three conversation rounds. This is actually a key aspect of the format as the three rounds on the same question facilitate a gradually deepening reflection on one’s own opinion. Often it is in the third round when the most important, touching, and transformative experiences are shared.
The question of the dialogue is carefully chosen to suit the occasion. The phrasing usually begins with “How are you feeling about…?” or “How are you doing with regard to…?” The connection to personal experiences is significant. The topics can be diverse, ranging from election results, political events or crises, and local politics, to general questions or themes like looking towards the future.
After completing the small-group conversations, we come back to the whole group—the plenum—and we first ask about the effect of the format: “What has changed since you arrived here?” or “What is different now than before »Speaking & Listening«?”. After this reflection, we facilitate an exchange with everybody about the question that was discussed in the small groups. We ask participants to limit their contributions to what is essential. In our experience, it works well, even in very large groups of 60 people or more, if contributions are short, only comprise one or a few sentences, and usually do not last longer than one minute. In this last part of the event, it is possible but not necessary to take notes, gather collective insights and formulate next steps. Our empirical observation shows that most of the time the experience of participating in the structured dialogue is already reward enough for participation.
For the in-person events, which typically run two and a half to three hours (a shorter version of two hours is possible, too), we have noticed that serving soup and bread during the break has a significantly positive impact on the atmosphere, allowing for casual conversations and a down-to-earth vibe.
Typical schedule of a 2.5 – 3-hour dialogue event:
1. Welcome & Context (20 min)
Framing the purpose and topic
Creating initial connections through brief acquaintance activities or sociometric constellations
2. Format Introduction (20 min)
Explaining the dialogue process and core rules
Presenting the central question
Answering questions
3. »Speaking & Listening« Structured Dialogue (60 min)
Forming groups of four participants
4 speakers × 4 minutes × 3 rounds = 48 min
4. Community Break (20-30 min)
Sharing simple food (e.g., soup and bread)
Informal conversations
5. Collective Reflection and Closing (30-50 min)
Processing the dialogue experience
Gathering insights on both process and content
Exploring implications and next steps
Closing with takeaways
The Effects of Being Heard
Our evaluation data, both quantitative and qualitative, show three consistent outcomes across all dialogue settings, regardless of participant demographics and topic.
Enhanced Connection and Psychological Safety
The feedback from participants on »Speaking & Listening« was overwhelmingly positive across all demographic groups and political orientations. In all events, during the reflection on the impact of the conversation rounds, people mentioned terms like “calmer,” “more hopeful,” “relaxed,” “inspired,” and “satisfied.” They report experiencing states of “connectedness,” “courage,” “curiosity,” “gratitude,” “openness,” “confidence,” and “solidarity,” that were notably absent when they first arrived. While we acknowledge that some participants report more neutral effects, like “thoughtful,” “ruminative” or “no change,” we were again and again surprised by the change in atmosphere and by the vast majority of participants that were affected positively. Table 1 shows a sentiment analysis of the feedback from three online events, results which align with our observations at the in-person events.
An initial quantitative survey of 103 participants at three different in-person dialogue events shows a significant growth in the sense of safety. Based on our observations, this change in feeling safe is also true for the events without a survey, and can be noticed by a significant change in the perceived atmosphere.
Figure 1. Please indicate how you feel now compared to before the event within the group of participants: Scale -3 to +3
No. of participants
Note: N = 103.
It is also interesting to mention that we have often heard statements like, “I have rarely received such deep insight about what’s going on in the village in such a short amount of time.” Maybe not surprisingly, the equal distribution of speaking time seems to lead to more information being shared overall. This is valuable from a community point of view, strengthening the sense of belonging and enabling participation, because when citizens are informed, they are more likely to engage.
Reduced Affective Polarization
Perhaps most remarkably, participants demonstrate the capacity to hear and accept starkly differing viewpoints without showing defensiveness or dismissal. Even when discussing the most contentious topics, participants report stronger interpersonal connections and mutual acceptance despite maintaining distinct political positions. A sentiment analysis of data gathered at three different online dialogue events indicates the reduced affective polarization, as shown in table 1. It is important to note the potential of self-selection bias: Since participation was voluntary, attendees may be inherently more open to dialogue and mutual understanding than the general population.
Table 1. Sentiment Analysis of Participant Chat Responses Before and After Online Dialogues
Note: Data reflects a manual qualitative coding of 351 (Before) and 364 (After) valid participant comments from three separate online dialogue events, in response to the question “How do you feel now?“. The differing total numbers arise because not all participants submitted a response at both times.
In our in-person events, we have witnessed different people expressing opposing opinion statements, one after the other, and in quick succession, without the individuals themselves becoming agitated. Thus, we conclude that participants achieve the ability to separate the person from their position, which reflects the democratic attitude that we see embodied in our core narrative: “I disagree with your opinion, but I see you as a human being.” In other words, while ideological polarization, i.e., disagreement on political content, may persist, affective polarization—negative emotions toward those with different views—decreases or even disappears (at least momentarily).
The format reliably transforms defensive reactions into constructive dialogue by allowing people to express their genuine emotions in an atmosphere of careful, nonjudgmental listening. Various policy related work groups have reported back to us that when they have engaged the »Speaking & Listening« method, their participants have subsequently behaved differently in content-focused discussions. That is, group participants show greater willingness to let others finish speaking, to listen more attentively, to respond less impulsively, and to collaborate toward solutions with broader support. This enhanced quality of deliberation represents a tangible shift toward a more democratic culture of debate—one with a sense of the greater good. Nevertheless, these groups have also reported that the positive effect dissipates without regularly applying the method.
Mutual Appreciation Between Citizens and Officials
We have had some events that were joined by both “ordinary” citizens and elected officials. When both politicians and constituents were part of the same small groups, they often both reported fundamentally shifted perceptions of each other. The officials were impressed and touched by the depth, seriousness, and genuine passion with which citizens were engaging with the topic. For their part, citizens expressed newfound respect and appreciation towards the politicians for the immense complexities and the huge workload they have to deal with on a daily basis, also developing a more nuanced understanding of the requirements of political office. Furthermore, politicians frequently tell us these dialogues provide meaningful encounters with constituents where they gain valuable insights into their constituents’ real needs, while citizens report feeling genuinely heard by those who govern them.
This mutual appreciation offers promising potential for addressing the crisis of trust in democratic institutions and political leadership. In Germany, being a politician ranks among the least respected professions. But when citizens and officials meet each other in a conversation from human to human, a different narrative than the authoritarian-populist “us vs. them” can emerge: We are all human beings and trust in our shared humanity is possible.
Simple Rules Create Safety, Trust, and Inner Freedom
The transformative power of the »Speaking & Listening« format lies in its simple rules, which accomplish multiple layers of benefit for both individuals and democratic culture.
Personal Benefits of Structured Dialogue
The format liberates both speakers and listeners from the mental burdens that typically make political discussions exhausting. The person speaking is freed from having to anticipate or worry about how someone else might respond, judge, or counter what they're saying. This creates freedom in both thinking and speaking. Combined with the fact that the speakers have three rounds to follow their thoughts, they develop a differentiated understanding of their own opinion. Many discover previously unconscious aspects of their beliefs. This process helps participants feel more grounded in their opinions by being more aware of and connected to the underlying experiences and values that shape their views, ultimately strengthening their self-confidence.
At the same time, the listeners are freed from the cognitive load of having to think about how they might respond to what is being said while they are listening. Unlike typical discussions where mental capacity splits between hearing and preparing counterarguments, participants can use their full mental resources for understanding what's being shared and for observing their own internal reactions. This creates optimal conditions for gaining a nuanced impression of where they stand in relation to the opinion presented by the speaker, significantly increasing the likelihood of recognizing shared values and aspects with which the listener can agree.
These experiences are rather rare in modern, digital life. Many participants have reported that they want to become better at listening, and to bring more listening into their daily lives. Neuroscience has an interesting explanation for this motivation: Being genuinely heard activates the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting relaxation and calm while triggering oxytocin release – the bonding hormone that facilitates social connection, trust, and empathy (6). This process can also be called co-regulation where a speaker's emotions are perceived by a listener, which reduces emotional stress and leads to such pleasant states as described above.
Experiencing Democratic Culture in Practice
At the group level, the format creates a hierarchy-free space where all voices receive equal time and attention. Because all participants speak and listen several times in succession, the opinion formation of individuals does not take place as an isolated monologue but can be subtly influenced by other statements in the group. This creates space for organic perspective shifts without direct persuasion attempts. Being heard is especially essential for emotions and experiences to be validated. When emotions are expressed and genuinely received, they naturally subside, trust emerges, and participants become more open to incorporating new perspectives – a self-reinforcing positive cycle.
The rules also prevent participants from falling into the argumentative and often escalating pattern typical of many discussions. The predetermined speaking times delay or impede reactive responses to triggering content, while the space for personal storytelling allows speakers to appear as complex human beings rather than abstract political opponents, easily put into stereotypical boxes. The person sharing their experiences becomes visible as a parent, a sports club member, a neighbor, a community member, or a professional—all roles that are familiar to everyone, thus inviting connection.
In the plenary exchanges, participants may witness a respectful interaction that honors multiple voices and shows how democracy can be pluralistic. It is a social space that includes and is able to hold complexities, ambivalences, and contradictions. In this kind of democratic culture, all participants’ opinions are valid. Validation is crucial for the establishment of psychological safety, which is the foundation for authentic democratic engagement where citizens can risk vulnerability and remain open to learning rather than defensively protecting their predetermined positions.
Challenges and Remedies
While our experiences with »Speaking & Listening« have been overwhelmingly positive, we have identified several challenges.
Participation Challenges
As with all participation formats, we also face the challenge of motivating people with little or no involvement in community life to participate in our dialogues. Reaching beyond “the usual suspects” requires trustworthy local partners who are well-connected and can personally approach disconnected residents. We see great opportunity in sortition-based municipal dialogues where local administration and politics formally invite randomly selected citizens, because it creates legitimacy and reduces self-selection bias. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that »Speaking & Listening« isn't suitable for everyone because successful participation requires willingness to share personal experiences, often even with strangers.
On the other hand, considering the people who are actively involved in local community life, a frequent criticism is that participants are from “the same political bubble”. We have found that because many engaged citizens are at risk of political burnout from constant exposure to negative messages, conflict and sometimes even violence, »Speaking & Listening« can serve as a tool for cultivating a regenerative culture by creating spaces where people can process heavy emotional content around issues like rising extremism and democratic backsliding. The dialogues on these topics were reported to offer emotional support and to strengthen solidarity. Thus, coming together with like-minded people to process worries and transform them into hope and empowerment can be seen as a practice to strengthen in-group resilience.
Demographic representation presents another challenge, particularly in Eastern Germany, where migrant populations are considerably smaller than in other contexts like major cities or more diverse countries such as Great Britain or the United States. While the limited experiences we have had with people from different ethnic backgrounds have been encouraging, due to their positive feedback, we recognize the need for deeper exploration of how the approach functions across racial and cultural differences.
Facilitation Challenges
One challenge we hadn't initially considered is that facilitating a dialogue in the political field requires different competencies than in business or therapeutic contexts. We have found that it is crucial for the facilitators to confidently “hold space” for intense emotions like anger, fear, and despair as well as for polarized opinions – without getting triggered themselves, and maintaining calmness and portraying security.
We have identified two main elements to this: One is experience in the political field and the other is inner work—the latter being that facilitators must be comfortable feeling these emotions themselves, in order to create the safe space necessary for others to be open to showing vulnerability.
Furthermore, we have developed clear frameworks for handling divisive rhetoric. When participants use “us versus them” narrative, e.g., by referring to “those corrupt elites up there”—facilitators can respond with reframing: “I've experienced it differently in our dialogue events” or directly challenge the narrative: “I notice that's the classic 'true people versus corrupt elites' story. Let's focus on your personal experience instead. What is your personal experience right now?”
While we are often asked how to deal with racist or offensive language, we have to say that, so far, we have not witnessed discriminating language. We believe that by setting the framework of focusing on the personal and staying at the emotional level, as well as strictly enforcing the speaking and listening rules, instances of offensive language are way less likely to occur compared to confrontational political discussions.
Also, the face-to-face encounter decreases the likelihood of offensive language compared to asynchronous posts on social media. Of course, we would not tolerate discriminatory and aggressive language. We draw a firm line that is anchored in the guiding principle of the German Constitution: “Human dignity is inviolable.“ Comments that are defamatory, insulting, racist, or that incite hatred are direct attacks on this dignity and will not be permitted.
Lastly, we do not expect to convert committed populist functionaries, who we have indeed not experienced as interested in participating in open and honest dialogue. Neither do we intend to change somebody's opinion. We believe an attitude of impartiality forms the basis of getting in touch with voters who have lost trust in the established democratic parties. Our aim is to strengthen the democratic process, and we understand contact on a human level as a starting point for democratic opinion building and debate.
Scaling and Sustainability
Our facilitator training program represents one core root of our scaling strategy. To date, we have trained more than 400 facilitators to apply the »Speaking & Listening« format through free one-day workshops, developing a growing community of practitioners. As of May 2025, there are more than 14 regional groups of facilitators that regularly meet to practice facilitation, and increasingly organize dialogues themselves. So far, more than 30 additional dialogues have been organized by community members. In order to support this organic growth, we host bi-weekly online sessions with changing topics such as: the facilitators' attitude, challenges when organizing dialogues, or how to deal with difficult situations in facilitation. This requires dedicated resources, with one employee of Mehr Demokratie in the role of community and engagement manager.
Geographically, we are also expanding. In 2024 we focused on Brandenburg, now we have employees organizing dialogues in four more German states: Saxony-Anhalt, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, and Schleswig-Holstein. We're simultaneously building a bigger audience with our monthly »Speaking & Listening« online sessions every first Wednesday at 7 PM, allowing interested parties to get to know the format directly. Usually we have between 150 and 250 participants, with each session having a couple dozen first time attendees.
Another challenge is financing the dialogues, both the organizing and the facilitation. Besides Mehr Demokratie member contributions, which guarantee independence and a solid foundation of our activities, we collaborate with several foundations and sometimes acquire state funding for the facilitation itself.
Outlook and Why You Should Try it Yourself
Looking toward the future, we envision a growing network of skilled facilitators contributing as process designers and democratic culture shapers in their local contexts. We see tremendous potential for integrating social technologies such as »Speaking & Listening« into formal political processes, making encounters between politicians and constituents positive and memorable rather than adversarial and draining. Regular application of deeper dialogue practices improves interpersonal trust in working teams across politics, civil society, and business sectors.
The response has been so positive – bringing joy alongside challenge – that we continue this work with genuine enthusiasm and high motivation. We're not just addressing democratic deficits; we're practicing a democratic culture that makes political engagement regenerative rather than exhausting, connecting rather than dividing, hopeful rather than despairing.
Why This Matters Now
This matters now because our vision is to change how politics itself is done. We are working towards a more collaborative, relational, and systemic political culture – one that makes democracy work for everyone and brings joy and meaning. »Speaking & Listening« represents practice that is not merely anti-authoritarian. In our understanding, it conveys an embodied attitude of democratic collaboration which transcends a polarizing fighting against each other, but allows better democratic decisions by focusing on allowing all voices to be heard. While authoritarian populism cultivates belonging through fear and marginalization of identified “others”—reinforcing toxic narratives of “elite versus the people” and “us versus them”—our approach offers belonging without othering and belonging through a shared sense of humanity. We advance two crucial transformative narratives: “Even though I strongly disagree with your opinion, I still see your humanity,” and the recognition that “how we speak, often matters equally to what we speak.” It is not rare that the relational quality of our interactions carry as much impact on the quality of the outcome of a debate or decision-making process as the content.
The feedback we get lets us deduce that the experience of being heard responds to a longing that has been growing for quite some time, probably even more in our screen-dominated times. When meaningful person-to-person encounters seem to become more precious and rare, the format offers what participants consistently describe as profoundly valuable: authentic human connection. The work is simultaneously challenging and nourishing, building the democratic culture our communities desperately need while leaving people energized rather than depleted.
Join The Movement
We extend this invitation not as experts offering perfect solutions, but as practitioners sharing tools that have proven to have transformative potential. Democratic culture emerges through practice. Every conversation conducted with attentive listening and speaking from the heart is one small step toward making democracy more humane, inclusive, and effective.
We invite you to join this practice. If you experiment with »Speaking & Listening« in your community, we're eager to learn from your experience. We offer our free facilitation guide5 and welcome dialogue about adaptations for different contexts. This work grows through shared learning. The future of democracy depends not only on defending its institutions, but on cultivating the relational culture that makes democratic institutions work for everyone. Let’s practice treating each other in more democratic ways: with openness, compassion, and the courage to speak our truths. The invitation is: try it yourself, and discover what becomes possible when we listen to each other as if our democracy depends on it—because it actually does.
Endnotes
The AfD employs many of the tactics outlined in the Authoritarian Playbook: https://protectdemocracy.org/work/the-authoritarian-playbook/
Democracy Partnerships, in German Partnerschaften für Demokratie, are local state-funded agencies to strengthen communal democracy.
David Bohm, On Dialogue, ed. Lee Nichol (London: Routledge, 1996).
A detailed guide incl. FAQs can be found here: https://www.mehr-demokratie.de/fileadmin/img/2025/Mehr_Wissen/Mehr_Demokratie_Guide_for_Speaking_and_Listening_Dialogue_Format.pdf
Stephen W. Porges, “The Polyvagal Perspective,” Biological Psychology 74, no. 2 (2007): 125; Markus Heinrichs et al., “Social Support and Oxytocin Interact to Suppress Cortisol and Subjective Responses to Psychosocial Stress,” Biological Psychiatry 54, no. 12 (2003): 1392; Ruth Feldman, “Oxytocin and Social Affiliation in Humans,” Hormones and Behavior 61, no. 3 (2012): 384.
Author bio:
Dr. Josef Merk is a transdisciplinary researcher, coach, facilitator, and public speaker dedicated to bridging the worlds of psychology and democracy. As a member of the Board of Directors at Mehr Demokratie e. V., Germany's largest non-governmental organization for democratic development, he works to integrate methods like systemic constellations, dialogue practices, deep democracy, and inner work into mainstream political practice. Josef Merk holds a PhD in psychology and is the developer of democratic constellation work.