NEWSLETTER: Facts Won't Save Democracy; Nor Will Voting; City Twin on Fire

Also: 'Allocracy," Ukraine Farming, Municipal Mandates Exceed Borders

Welcome to the monthly newsletter of Democracy Local, a planetary publication of stories, ideas, data, scholarship, and events about everyday people governing themselves.

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FACTS WON’T SAVE DEMOCRACY

Are you eager to help people better understand democracy? Do you want to convince others to support democracy, and engage and participate it?

Then keep facts out of your arguments.

Statistics, too.

Those are among the thought-provoking conclusions of a research brief, How to Talk About Democracy: What We Know (and Don’t Know) the third in a three-piece series from one of the world’s most ambitious democracy coalitions, The Democracy Narratives Alliance, consisting of more than 40 organizations, researchers and funders.

The alliance also goes by its initials—DNA—and its work has involved trying to understand how we humans understand, and misunderstand, democracy at a cellular level. The alliance describes the problem it is trying to address this way: “global dissatisfaction with democracy is now at a record high, even though the evidence consistently shows that democracies outperform alternatives in delivering public goods, protecting rights, and limiting corruption.”

The “How to Talk About Democracy” follows a literature review on democracy, and a third document on behavior change. “How to Talk About Democracy” is both academic (it relies on more than 150 studies) but quite practical. It maps the dominant narratives for and against democracy.

It’s most useful in offering specific strategies and points to avoid in making the case for democracy. Among these are facts and reason. “Reason-based appeals that rely mainly on facts and statistics to make their case are often the least effective,” it concludes.

A related finding, quoted directly from the brief. “Do not focus on countering false claims or debunking competing narratives. It is proven to be ineffective and often backfires by reinforcing the false claim or narrative in people’s minds.”

Another topic to avoid: voting. You should talk about, and encourage others to participate in, non-electoral forms of democracy, so they feel agency. The trouble with voting is that when votes produce outcomes that people don’t like, they can begin to turn against democracy itself. “An overemphasis on voting as the primary (or only) form of participation can deepen reductive understandings of democracy and discourage other forms of participation,” the brief says.

More advice: avoid “crisis framing,” or framing democracy as being in crisis—because it makes people feel like action and improvement are too hard, even futile. Don’t exaggerate, either threats or solutions related to democracy And don’t push too hard for democracy—acknowledge its limitations and failures.

Be careful about relying too much on personal stories, since they may not land with people of different backgrounds or generations than you. But also, the brief suggests, don’t stay silent. “If pro-democratic voices are absent or silent, especially on social media, it can give the impression that anti-democratic perspectives represent the majority opinion,” the brief reports.

So, thinking more affirmatively, hat should you do?

One strong theme is that you should emphasize democracy as a tool for mutual understanding, across disagreement. In the process, emphasize the power and agency of the person or people with whom you’re communicating.

Even better, tell stories about the future, and try to inspire audience to imagine a better version of democracy for themselves.” In other words, don’t get bogged down in arguments about how democracy works or doesn’t work now. Get together with others and talk about the future.

Read the whole brief here. And watch an event on the DNA just below.

URBAN TWINS AREN’T JUST SISTER CITIES ANYMORE

City twins have a long, distinguished history in mutual aid, going back to the 1930s “sister city’ partnership of Toledo, Ohio (USA) and Toledo, Spain.

But today, when resilience is cherished in a dangerous world, your twin is most likely to be yourself, digitally.

The modern Digital Twin is no longer just a static 3D map; it is a live “cyberinfrastructure” that integrates hydrological models and simulated fires to predict the cascading effects of urban crises.

More examples are emerging. Madrid’s Digital Twin uses and AI to manage public safety during massive events and to test the impact of a new pedestrian zone or a change in bus routes virtually before anything is built.

When a flood is predicted for Waterloo, Iowa, a city-scale digital twin simulates which specific bridges and roads will become impassable, allowing the city to reroute emergency vehicles in real-time before the water even rises.

The trend is: less “smart city” gadgetry, and more “adaptive,” life-like modeling in the digital world.

Does your city have a twin? If you don’t know, it’s a great question to ask at your local government office.

BRUNO GETS VOLCANIC. In his latest “Where in the World Is Bruno Kaufmann?” report, the intrepid democracy reporter-and-supporter goes to an Icelandic harbor community that had to evacuate in 2023 because of volcanic eruptions. But while people left the community, they didn’t abandon it, or its local democracy, permanently. Now, some are going back.

MORE HISTORY IN LA

The Los Angeles City Charter Assembly—the first sortition lottery-selected assembly in Southern California history— completed its deliberations on March 8, with 9 big recommendations. Two days later, those recommendations, which included the first expansion in the size of the LA city council in a century, were accepted by the city’s appointed charter commission.

The recommendations go next to the L.A. city council itself. That may sound like a conflict of interest—for the council to debate the council’s future—but it’s also a requirement. Changes in the LA city charter, or constitution, can only be made by the voters, and the council has the power to put ideas from the charter commission, the assembly or anyone else on the November 2026 ballot.

Learn more about the assembly and its recommendations here.

READINGS:

How to make better public meetings in Anchorage, Alaska.

Zócalo Public Square on how local farming in Ukraine became an act of resistance.

The voter-approved July Charter in Bangladesh is a huge opening for local government.

Reports and photos from People Powered’s big March meeting in Nairobi.

ASIA DEMOCRACY CHRONICLES LOOKS AT A HUGE AND LOCAL SCANDAL.

It’s worth spending time with the second part of a terrific Asia Democracy Chronicles series on how Chinese local governments punish people who complain by sending them to psychiatric detention. The piece reports:

As early as a year before the supposed abolition of labor camps, Chinese authorities began to formulate the Mental Health Law, which came into effect on May 1, 2013. Its stated purpose emphasized patient rights, voluntariness of treatment, and protection against arbitrary confinement. In practice, however, the law created a parallel pathway for deprivation of liberty outside the criminal justice system.

Unlike re-education through labor, psychiatric detention requires no formal adjudication, no defined sentence, and no clear exit mechanism. The law introduced the concept of compulsory treatment based on assessments of “risk to self or others,” with significant discretion granted to the police and medical professionals.

This legal structure proved especially useful to local authorities facing the sudden loss of an arbitrary detention tool that re-education through labor had provided – and as dissidents and individuals engaged in public criticism no longer fit neatly into criminal categories, yet were still perceived as destabilizing.

The Ankang system of high-security psychiatric hospitals under the new law offered a solution that was legally defensible, politically deniable, and operationally flexible. Inevitably, it began to be practiced in other hospitals, such that the process came to be called “Ankang” as well.

Also at ADC: Rohinga women got kicked out of Myanmar and now Delhi, but are making their mark.

OUT IN CALIFORNIA

Democracy Local founder-publisher Joe Mathews writes a weekly syndicated column for California newspapers that is often about local government. Recent columns looked at why Gavin Newsom shouldn’t be president, at a monument to a 1880 massacre that shaped California, and at why a gubernatorial candidate is not talking much about the governance successes of his hometown city, fast-growing Dublin (that’s California, not Ireland).

EVENTS

 Africa — 26 March 2026, Nairobi, Kenya (youth leadership and digital resilience against kleptocracy and democratic erosion)

 Americas — 23–24 April 2026, Asunción, Paraguay (community-driven democratic renewal and participatory governance)

 Europe — 19 May 2026, Prague, Czech Republic (AI, disinformation, and cross-border interference in electoral integrity)

 Asia-Pacific — 11 June 2026, Seoul, South Korea (democratic backsliding, civic space, and inclusive policy dialogue)

April 8-10, United Cities and Local Governments Executive Bureau meets in Mexico City, part of the municipal organization’s advancement of local multilateralism and a new local, global social contract.

April 21-24, Marmalade Festival, part of Skoll World Forum, Oxford, UK

May 5-7, African Open Government Forum, Rabat, Morocco

May 11-12, Urban 20, Los Angeles.

May 17-22. World Urban Forum. Baku, Azerbaijan

May 18-22, Open Gov Week, everywhere.

June 4-7. US Conference of Mayors. Long Beach, California

June 23-26. United Cities and Local Governments World Congress. Tangier, Morocco

July 7-15, High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, United Nations, New York.

September 21-23, International Observatory of Participatory Democracy. Krakow, Poland

October 6-10, The 2026 Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy. Gaborone, Botswana

October 12-13. UN Forum of Mayors. Geneva Switzerland.

LOCAL DEMOCRACY QUOTES OF THE MONTH

Winner:

The municipal mandate exceeds our borders and must be a driver internationally... Paris remains a lighthouse for lovers of freedom.

– Anne Hidalgo, departing mayor of Paris

Honorable mention:

“Democracy can be boring—and that’s OK! It’s not something we inherit; it’s something we co-create, meeting by meeting, budget hearing by budget hearing.”

-editorial in Lookout, Eugene and Springfield, Oregon

DEMOCRACY TYPE OF THE MONTH.

“Allocracy”, a new coinage by Dr. Wayne Liebman, Public Democracy Los Angeles

SUGGESTED LINKS TO DEMOCRACY LOCAL RESOURCES AND PARTNERS

International Democracy Community

Asia Democracy Chronicles

Berggruen Institute and NOEMA

University College London Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.

International IDEA newsletter

Zócalo Public Square

Democracy Next

Federation for Innovation in Democracy-Europe and FIDE North America