More than Votes, Democracy Needs to Listen

As public life across Europe is strained by polarisation, distrust, disinformation, and a growing sense that politics happens above citizens’ heads rather than with them, many are rethinking how to improve democratic engagement. Common ideas include establishing mandatory or remote e-voting, social media regulation, or even shuffling traditional electoral principles to better rank political contenders. These ideas aren’t necessarily bad, but they are fraught and onerous. Jürgen Habermas, the German philosopher who died in March, has long offered a solution that doesn’t come with bells and whistles.

Public deliberation is one such solution. Habermas described “public spheres” as spaces where citizens gather to debate public issues, compromise on solutions, and form better opinions. The idea is that an outcome shaped by collective discussion feels more legitimate than one imposed from above—or decided by vote in the ballot box once every few years.

Habermas believed that power should pursue mutual understanding in these spaces through rational communication. In 1984, he already clarified that a rational person is one who can interpret desires and feelings in light of shared values, and adopt a reflective attitude towards those very same values. Even so, the pervasive idea that emotions and interests do not belong in rational communication persists.

The dangers of such thinking are visible in many countries today. As our MORES project suggests, ignoring citizens’ feelings in discussions about democracy alienates citizens and misreads how legitimacy works, leaving room for populist manipulation based on anger and fear. Even worse, such a strategy moves citizens further apart, usually minorities that won’t fit in what antidemocratic actors label as “we the people”. A democratic politics that ignores feelings is not more rational. Rather, it’s technocratic and oblivious to real life.

We have studied how citizens feel about and judge EU policy using a crowdsourcing experiment inspired by Habermas’s approach. For four months in 2015, 1,300 citizens across Europe shared their views with us on five core EU policy areas: support for Ukraine, migration, climate policy, economic governance, and food safety. We asked participants not only whether they supported these policies, but also how they emotionally react to them.

As outlined in our new working paper (download below), these policies spark mixed feelings. EU policy support for Ukraine stands out in our sample as the only one combining high familiarity and appropriateness, strong European identification, and overwhelmingly positive emotions. Compassion (73%) and pride (71%) were among the strongest responses in the sample. Yet even here, frustration (39%) and fear (33%) show that solidarity remains vulnerable if expectations are not met.

By contrast, migration produces the strongest emotional divide. While moderate levels of pride (50%) signal solidarity, this policy area is strongly seen with anger (55%) and fear (42%), even among citizens highly familiar with the policy details (62%). Only 17% consider EU action appropriate here. These reactions are hardly surprising: previous research suggested that migration policy is shaped by deeply rooted beliefs, identity concerns, and emotional predispositions. And because greater familiarity with migration policy does not translate into greater legitimacy, it makes it especially vulnerable to polarisation, disinformation, and political exploitation.

The other policy areas occupy a more ambivalent middle ground. Climate policy was widely recognised (60%) and generated both satisfaction (55%) and enthusiasm (48%), but also frustration (45%), with appropriateness remaining modest at 44%. Fiscal policy showed a similarly mixed pattern: moderate familiarity (53%), modest appropriateness (44%), and a blend of satisfaction (61%), relief (50%) and disappointment (47%). The data suggest that criticisms of economic policy are rooted in the bloc’s actual performance rather than emotional opposition. Food safety follows a different logic. It was the least visible policy area (42% familiarity), yet one of the most accepted once recognised, with 51% seeing EU action as appropriate; positive associations such as safety (64%) outweighed negative ones, which reveals latent legitimacy.

Ignoring citizens’ feelings in discussions about democracy alienates citizens and misreads how legitimacy works

Zooming out from these themes, citizens do not evaluate EU policies solely on knowledge about them or how they perform. They do so through a mix of familiarity, emotions, and perceived legitimacy.

These results reveal clear lessons for policymakers. First, rebuilding trust in democracy is not simply a matter of communicating more facts. It also requires gauging public sentiment, which, as Habermas and our crowdsourcing show, is intrinsic to understanding citizens’ interpretations of public action. Policies that fail to connect with people’s experiences and emotions risk generating political apathy, distrust, and misinformation. They may feel illegitimate.

Second, maintaining spaces for citizens to speak out about their ideas, values, and emotions—the public spheres—is imperative to strengthening democracy. Habermas’s legacy remains relevant for its simplicity. While crowdsourcing cannot solve Europe’s democratic problems on its own—and the MORES sample is not representative of the entire EU population—it is a simple communication tool that can be scaled up at low cost and help institutions listen to and connect with citizens, a step towards the public spheres Habermas envisioned.

Conducting such experiments, assessing the results, and acting upon citizens’ emotional concerns to achieve what Habermas called “mutual understanding”—the real listening—may be simpler than devising complex policies to boost voter turnout or decide how information is consumed, and would make democracy feel more relatable.

Meet the Author

Nicolò Triacca is a MORES researcher and project manager at ECAS (European Citizen Action Service). After completing a Master’s degree in Philosophy, he began working to strengthening civil society in Italy and later at European level in Brussels. For over a decade, he has collaobrated with with civil society organisations, public institutions, and European networks to promote citizen participation, volunteering, democratic engagement, and social innovation. His work focuses on the intersection of democracy, technology, and civic participation. He has served on the board of the Centre for European Volunteering (CEV) since 2025.

Download Information

Triacca, Nicolò; Kamkhaji, Jonathan C.; and Lironi, Elisa (2026). MORES Working Paper Series, 6. Download this open-access MORES publication here.

Sign up to our Newsletter

Gain exclusive scientific insights from MORES. Sign up to our newsletter today.

Write to us

Get in touch with the MORES team: [email protected].