Democratic Innovation in the Poly-Crises: How Civic Anti-Discrimination Projects Adapt to and are Threatened by Global Challenges

Democracies have faced multiple global challenges over recent years: from the pandemic to wars and refugee movements to inflation and the rise of right-wing populism. Civic education has long addressed social schisms such as discrimination that threatens the foundations of democracy. Yet, as social and political faultlines are broadening, how do civil society projects that address discrimination with civic education deal with these crises? Specifically, which impact did the overlapping crises since 2020 have on civil society groups? How did they constrain their engagement with target groups, specifically children and young adults? But also, what democratic innovations did they trigger? Ultimately, we inquire how the global poly-crises both threat the civic foundations of democracy but also, can lead to new and adapted approaches to confront the socio-political consequences of these challenges. We have interviewed 75 civil society projects across Germany each year since 2020. These projects address different forms of discrimination as part of a large program by the Federal Ministry of Family, Seniors, Women and Youth to strengthen democracy. In our qualitative panel study, complemented by an annual quantitative survey among the projects, we find that the crises led to very different challenges to civil society. The pandemic triggered a digital revolution in the field that offers new paths to hard to reach target groups and novel methods of civic education. Yet, the inflation of 2022 was threating to many projects as costs for rent, travel and staff rose and may lead to a shrinking of the overall field of civic engagement. Yet, the projects reported notable shifts in discrimination and discriminatory threats with each crisis, especially the pandemic, the Ukraine war, and the Israel/Palestine conflict, bringing about specific forms discrimination they had to address. Thus, we argue that while projects become mor sophisticated in their work, the layering of discriminations in the poly-crises in combination with financial constraints leads to a weaking of civil society and of the foundation of democracy.