Do Deliberative Effects Travel? Testing Citizens’ Assembly Impacts in Wartime Ukraine

Democratic innovations, such as citizens’ assemblies, show consistent positive effects on citizens’ democratic attitudes in consolidated democracies and high-trust societies. Yet, such effects are less understood in low-trust societies and democracies, constrained by conflict. This paper addresses this gap by examining the democratic effects of participating in a local citizens’ assembly in Ukraine, a society with historically modest levels of interpersonal and institutional trust and the extraordinary pressures of the full-scale Russian invasion. This paper examines the effects of a citizens’ assembly on sustainable urban mobility, held in October-November 2025 in Zhytomyr, a 270,000-resident city two hours West of Kyiv in Ukraine. It asks how participating in a citizens’ assembly affects citizens’ democratic attitudes: trust in (local) government, interpersonal trust, political efficacy (individual and collective), and support for democracy as a political regime. The study uses a quasi‑experimental field design, combining pre‑ and post‑participation attitudinal surveys of citizens’ assembly participants with a matched control group, alongside participant observation and focus groups. Preliminary findings suggest a significant increase in trust in other people and perceptions of collective political efficacy, as well as a moderate increase in confidence in democracy (from a rather high level) and in trust in local government (from a rather low level). Qualitative survey components emphasize further positive effects on citizens' political efficacy, both individual and collective, but they reveal rather reserved attitudes towards local government. These results offer, first, unique evidence that theoretical expectations of deliberative democracy to improve citizens' democratic attitudes do travel to a democracy in a more constrained security and socio-political context. Yet these effects are primarily at the individual and community levels, while attitudes toward institutions are harder to change and likely require regular engagement.