The retreat in Prague at the beginning of April marked another milestone in the Participation Hub’s ongoing series of gatherings that bring together Ashoka’s democracy changemakers from across Europe.
Each retreat is designed to deepen collaboration, surface shared challenges, and build the collective imagination needed for democratic renewal. The Prague edition focused on one crucial theme: how public narratives shape the future of democracy.
The Agenda
Participants began by mapping the landscape of current narratives, drawing on their own experiences and sharing quotes that reflect commonly heard perspectives. These quotes were then clustered to form a broader narrative landscape, capturing key patterns in how democracy is currently perceived.
Building on this map, participants selected specific narratives and explored possible shifts—from predominantly negative framings toward more constructive and empowering ones. This process focused on identifying how changes in systems and experiences could lead to corresponding changes in narratives.
The retreat concluded with the articulation of these narrative shifts and an exercise in applying them to the participants’ own work contexts. This helped ground the insights in practical realities and identify opportunities for action.
Mapping Today’s Narrative Landscape
Building on these stories, the group collectively mapped the narratives currently shaping democratic life. They identified the following dominant public perceptions :
Institutional distrust : It is a foundational narrative that disengage or polarize people. Here institutions are not seen as neutral or functioning systems, but as corrupt, captured, or ineffective structures. People perceive that rules are not applied equally, justice is not accessible, and decisions are made elsewhere, often by elites or distant actors.
Citizens are losing agency in democratic processes : it reveals a deep tension around the role of citizens. On one hand, people feel excluded (“about us without us”), and on the other, they are often framed as disengaged or incapable (“people don’t care”, “people are too dumb”).
Democratic ideals : Democratic ideals act as a counterweight to negative narratives. However, they are often disconnected from lived experience, creating a gap between aspiration and reality.
Democracy is dominated by NGOs and elites : These actors are often seen as unaccountable, disconnected from ordinary people or pursuing their own agendas, imposing constraints on citizens.
Pluralism narratives : Diversity is experienced as a source of tension, conflict, or unfairness. Pluralism narratives reflect social fragmentation and weakened cohesion, making collective action and shared democratic processes more difficult.
The information crisis : people feel overwhelmed by conflicting information and uncertain about what to believe, undermining the epistemic foundation of democracy.
Authoritarian narratives : they represent the “exit option” to a slow and weak democracy that is not able to deliver tangible outcomes.
Democratic delivery narratives : Democratic processes are, overly complex, time-consuming, unclear in their outcomes and disconnected from real-world problem-solving. These narratives focus on its perceived inability to deliver outcomes.
The different perceptions and experiences of democracy are not isolated but instead form a self-reinforcing cycle. This cycle helps explain why distrust, disengagement, and polarization persist, even when individual reforms are introduced.
This diagnosis helped participants see that many democratic innovations struggle not because the ideas are weak, but because they operate inside old public stories about what is realistic, legitimate, or possible.
Creating New Democratic Narratives
The second phase of the retreat focused on creation. In a “Narrative Shift Lab,” participants transformed limiting assumptions into stronger democratic beliefs that could support their work.
First, there is a need to move from a widespread perception that “the system does not work for 100% of the people” toward a reality in which “the system empowers and engages people.” This shift reflects the ambition to make democracy more inclusive, responsive, and capable of delivering for diverse groups, ensuring that people feel the system works for them—not just in principle, but in practice.
Second, the work seeks to transform the role of citizens from being “objects of decisions” into “actors in decision making.” This implies redesigning democratic processes so that people are not merely consulted but meaningfully involved in shaping outcomes. It is about embedding participation as a core feature of how democracy functions, rather than an occasional or symbolic exercise.
Third, there is a shift from narratives that portray people as “not capable (enough) for democracy” toward an understanding that “democracy is fun, when we change things together.” This reflects a move away from deficit-based views of citizens toward a recognition of collective capability, where people build confidence, skills, and motivation through shared participation and tangible impact.
Finally, the work aims to address a pervasive sense that “nothing can be trusted”, replacing it with a form of relational confidence captured in “we (or I) trust in you.” Rather than relying on abstract or institutional trust alone, this shift emphasizes trust that emerges when people experience transparency, fairness, and accountability, and when they can build direct, meaningful connections with others in the system.