How can emotions be used to promote participation?
The topic of emotions is of great interest to participation professionals, judging by the high level of attendance at the March 19, 2025 workshop ran by Smarter Together in partnership with the city of Strasbourg at the 7th edition of the “Rencontres Européennes de la Participation”.
Victor Lauret, of Dreamocracy, facilitated the discussion with Carole ZIELINSKI, deputy mayor of Strasbourg, Stephen Boucher of Dreamocracy, Prof. Loïc Blondiaux , and the nearly 100 participants who were joined and contributed actively to the discussions.
Here are 6 ideas to explore that emerged from our collective reflection
✅ 1️⃣ Participatory democracy must recognise and include emotions. Excluding emotions reinforces inequalities in access to the spoken word, by excluding groups that are less familiar with the codes of rational argument.
✅ 2️⃣ Theories of deliberative and participatory democracy have historically excluded emotions, seeing them as an obstacle to the rational exchange of arguments. Today, there is a growing desire to take emotions into account in participation, although we don’t always know how to go about it.
✅ 3️⃣ Taking emotions into account invites us to explore forms that go beyond traditional political codes: the artistic, the playful, the sensitive. Tools exist, such as photolanguage and forum theatre… Much remains to be invented! The challenge is to give credence to these new methods, which are often perceived as ‘not serious’ or ‘childish’.
✅ 4️⃣ Once the emotions have been expressed, how can they be captured? One solution would be to take note of them in the same way as the arguments exchanged. Focus groups, which seek to capture participants’ non-verbal expressions as well as their words, can provide inspiration.
✅ 5️⃣ Let’s make more room for positive emotions like joy and enthusiasm! Our participatory approaches are often too serious and sad. In other cultural contexts, we are seeing the emergence of forms of participation that are joyful, festive and therefore a source of collective energy.
✅ 6️⃣ We are taught from school onwards to neutralise our emotions. Yet it’s at school that we should be learning to recognise and share them. It’s an essential skill for democratic involvement!
More specifically, the three panelists made the following remarks.
Carole Zielinski, Deputy Mayor of Strasbourg
Emotions, often negative (anger, frustration), are at the root of commitment but can make public meetings difficult.
For example, a meeting on a public space project in Strasbourg (500 people) was extremely tense, with booing, mockery and staff afraid to attend.
Elected representatives and staff can feel frightened when faced with hostile audiences; setting a framework is essential to avoid excesses.
A good framework does not stifle emotions; it allows them to be expressed respectfully.
A positive example was provided by a citizens’ jury on the Strasbourg Christmas market, with participants holding opposing views, but with a structured framework, and a calm debate, key recommendations were reached and voted on collectively.
Stephen Boucher, founder of Dreamocracy and Smarter Together
Citizen participation must include the emotional dimension, which is currently little taken into account or even stifled in deliberative processes.
The current political context is marked by a rise in (often instrumentalised) emotions, which practitioners often feel powerless to deal with.
The OECD survey (2024) shows that the feeling of being listened to is a key factor in democratic confidence.
Based on the work of political scientist Vivien Schmidt: democratic legitimacy rests on three pillars – input (citizens’ contributions, including emotions), throughput (quality of the process) and output (results).
Our current systems only capture the tip of the iceberg (words), not the deep emotions, even though emotions precede decisions (contribution of neurosciences).
Three levers to explore:
- Before: there are few practices for welcoming emotional reactions as soon as people are invited to participate.
- During: the rationalist framework sometimes prevents emotional expression; tools exist (photolanguage, theatre-forum, intuitive voting), but remain marginal.
- Afterwards: lack of tools to capture, interpret and transmit the emotions expressed to decision-makers.
As we can see, there is a whole field to be invented around emotional participation.
Definitions:
- Emotions: Emotions are complex psychological states that involve subjective experience, physiological response, and behavioural expression. In policymaking, they shape how individuals perceive issues, engage with processes, and make decisions—both as citizens and as leaders.
- Collective intelligence (CI): The ability of groups to outperform individuals in learning, decision-making, and problem solving. It is an evolutionary adaptation common to many species, from ants to spider monkeys, all use CI to survive. We as humans are unique though, in that our collective intelligence depends largely on culture, the person-to-person transfer of human-generated knowledge, rules and behaviours.
- Emotional Intelligence (EI): The capacity to be aware of, take into consideration, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.
Loïc Blondiaux, political scientist, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Historically, emotions have been sidelined in theories of participatory and deliberative democracy, particularly under the influence of Habermas, who valued the rational exchange of arguments. In practice, they are often perceived as an obstacle to the smooth running of debates.
Today, we are witnessing a change of perspective: it is no longer a question of avoiding them or ‘managing’ them as disruptive elements, but of learning to welcome them, not for the sake of simple catharsis, but with a view to collective transformation.
This disqualification of emotions also has a political dimension: it is based on a hierarchical vision in which the elites are said to be in control of their emotions, unlike the “people” who are deemed uncontrollable.
A number of researchers in deliberative democracy have criticised this logic, pointing out that by valuing only rational forms of expression, subaltern groups are excluded and equal access to the democratic process is denied.
This also means recognising the emotions of participation practitioners, who carry out invisible emotional work (a concept borrowed from sociology), often at the cost of strong pressure for neutrality and control, generating emotional fatigue.
It is essential to make room for positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm and collective energy, which are rarely mobilised in current participatory processes, which are all too often marked by ‘sad passions’.
Reading suggestions
Three chapters in The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intelligence for Democracy & Governance document the role that emotions play…:
1. In Prof. James Fishkin and Dr. Alice Siu’s chapter on AI-assisted moderation on deliberative platforms, we learn that an AI-assisted platform can enable quality online deliberations.
2. In Dr. Carina Antonia Hallin and Naima Lipka’s review of the Slagelse municipality in Denmark supported, we see how Natural Language Processing is being used to manage large amounts of citizen inputs.
3. In Cris Ferri’s case relating how the Parliament of Brazil implemented an AI-chatbot, we discover how an automated dialogue system can help handle citizen questions.
Remarks by the participants
Use methods such as non-violent communication and ‘Bono hats’ to express emotions within a structured framework.
More playful and sensitive approaches are accepted for children, but rarely for adults, even if they are effective. Why not draw inspiration from them and apply them more generally?
Use of ‘heat maps’ and ‘sensitive walks’ to express the emotions associated with an area. However, it is still difficult to know what to do with this data.
Reception and atmosphere have a huge influence on emotional state and participation. We need to avoid infantilisation, while creating a warm and friendly environment that provides the psychological security that is essential to any collective intelligence effort.
Verbatim” transcriptions of exchanges enable the emotions expressed to be recognised and recorded, which is essential for monitoring the emotional evolution of the group and facilitating constructive consultation.
The Dixit game can be used to lead discussions and facilitate the expression of participants’ emotions using the images on the cards.
More generally, as emotions are not always expressed through words, it is essential to explore non-verbal means of expression, such as photolanguage and theatre.
Before using any tools, it’s crucial to ask yourself the right questions about the emotions likely to emerge in a given context. The tools must be simple, especially when the emotions are strong.
Places have an influence on the expression of emotions. Sometimes informal spaces can encourage greater freedom of expression.
Sharing your own enthusiasm and emotions as a facilitator helps to build trust and increase participation.
