Empowering citizenship education programs in times of multiple crises: fighting populism, xenophobia, and racism

The last decade has witnessed a series of crises around the world - from austerity and climate crisis to populism - but also new forms of political participation like Occupy and black-life-matters. These new developments pose a challenge to the old model of European liberal democracy and its civic education to satisfy young peoples need for political activism and wishes to influence decision-making processes in transnational, global, and postcolonial perspectives. But what should be the content of such education, and through what forms can it be brought into society? Are state guidelines and programs for the formation of a "suitable" democratic citizen as well as a civil society supporting the political system desirable at all any longer? Interestingly, a determined attempt aiming at an activated democratization, preventing xenophobia, and racism and shaping diversity is currently to be found in Germany. Since the 1990s, special programs of the German government have promoted new contents and forms of civic education for young people in extracurricular settings. In the last years, these programmes have experienced a massive expansion. The government is currently working on a law to promote democracy, which is due to be passed in 2024 and which unique within the EU. This article analyses the tension between the state and citizens/civil society in these new modes and forms of civic education. After an insight into the historical development of the programs, we discuss the implications of different conceptions of society and citizenship, advantages and disadvantages of short-term project funding versus permanent institutionalization, and the potentials and limitations of the programmes. Methodologically, the study uses a mixed method design: It is based on the one hand, on a document and secondary data analysis (guidelines of the governmental special funding programmes; debates, committees and expert hearings in the German Parliament; reports of the program evaluations; context analyses for the years in the years 1980-2023), and on the other hand on survey and interview data from civic society organisations working within programme (in the years 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023).