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Authors: Tine De Moor, Darinka Czischke, Carola van Eijk, Marianne Groep-Foncke, Lukas Held, Ina Horlings, Lise Jans, Reinout Kleinhans & Ingmar van Meerkerk
Society is facing urgent crises, such as climate change and housing shortages, which reinforce feelings of insecurity and distrust of the government. Many citizens feel powerless and experience a decreasing control over their living environment. At the same time, we see a growing movement of self-organisation, with citizen collectives taking responsibility for local challenges in domains such as energy, care and housing. These often local and engaged ecosystems of citizens offer unique solutions through their focus on shared values, sustainability and decentralised decision-making. Yet cooperation with governments is often difficult, due to divergent goals and practices, because their specific institutional logic is not recognised. They are seen as "hybrid" organisations, somewhere between market and government, but are neither one nor the other. Zooming in on the Dutch situation, this paper explores what arrangements are needed to enable citizen collectives and governments to work together more effectively, identifying the knowledge gaps in the scientific literature. We will argue that the effectiveness of this form of public-civil cooperation will benefit from a better understanding of the specific institutional logics of citizen collectives.
This essay offers practitioners more insight into what is typical of a citizen collective and how this can give rise to a different relationship with government parties. It positions citizen collectives as a possible vehicle for regaining citizens' trust in society and democracy as well as a form of organisation that can realise social transitions.
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As society faces multiple and interrelated crises, citizens experience feelings of uncertainty, stress and powerlessness, polarisation and distrust of government (Den Ridder et al., 2022). In 2023, the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) explained that citizens also experience a declining sense of control over their lives and living environment. From housing shortage and liveability in cities and rural areas to climate change and the transition to sustainable energy sources (Bovens et al., 2023): it is often no longer clear to individual citizens whether and how they can contribute to solving these problems themselves.
Citizens' trust in government institutions as potential "partners" in seeking solutions has fallen to an all-time low in recent years. In 2021, only 21% of Dutch people trusted the national government and only one-third trusted local governments (Engbersen et al., 2021). When citizens face obstacles in accessing public goods and services-through financial constraints or a lack of digital skills (Olsthoorn et al., 2017)-distrust in government increases further. Alleged inaction also plays a role. For instance, over 65% of the Dutch are concerned about climate change (Hammingh et al., 2022; IPSOS, 2022), with many believing that the government is not taking sufficient action (Kloosterman & Akkermans, 2022). In addition, public scandals defaming institutional biases in governmental algorithms play a role. The above factors combined fuel a decline in trust and an increase in democratic apathy, with people increasingly keeping aloof from the democratic process.
On the other hand, however, we have for some time seen a growing trend of self-organisation, driven from the bottom up (De Moor, 2013): communities of citizens, in the form of citizen collectives, take responsibility for their own living environment. These are forms of collective action by citizens taking the lead in their neighbourhood, village, city or region. A citizen collective can be defined as a collective of citizens (as natural persons) initiated and led from the bottom up by citizens themselves, aimed at a shared goal, generally centred on a jointly managed good or service. Examples include energy and care cooperatives, food collectives, resident businesses and shared sustainable housing (De Moor, 2013; Edelenbos & Van Meerkerk, 2016; Czischke et al., 2023). Scholars have pointed out that the withdrawal of the state from public facilities, such as housing and other services, is a major cause for the rise of collective self-organisation as a way to compensate for (local) welfare gaps (Bosch, 2016; Atkinson et al., 2017; Mullins & Moore, 2018), often also because the market developments expected by the government simply do not happen (De Moor, 2013 and 2023). Citizens organise themselves in collectives, not only to create their own facilities that the government no longer provides, or to get a grip on their own living environment, but also because of idealistic motives such as charity, social connection, wanting to help build the local community and striving for a more sustainable society. In some situations, citizens involved in citizen collectives believe that they can also create better solutions than the (local) government or the market. They see their solutions as more effective, and often the argument is made that things can be done more cheaply this way.
In some cases, collectives apply for funds to realise an alternative to public services through the “right to challenge” (Driessen et al., 2019), when a citizen collective is commissioned to implement the service. However, most citizen collectives choose to build services for their own members, sometimes even losing faith in a sustainable cooperation with the local government after a difficult quest. As such, citizen collectives are often quite distant from government action, and generally have no immediate intention of influencing government policy (De Moor et al., 2020).
Across Europe, citizens have been called upon to do much more themselves, at a time when citizen collectives had already manifested themselves for some time in sectors such as energy and healthcare. Britain's Conservative coalition government adopted the “big society” agenda in the 2010s, while the term “participation society” was minted during the 2013 State Opening of Parliament in the Netherlands. Critical voices argue that these are attempts by the state to shirk its responsibilities (Foucault, 2002), using the language of citizen participation to justify cuts to the welfare state (Verhoeven & Tonkens, 2013; Bulley & Sokhi-Bulley, 2014). Regardless of these possible underlying motivations, it is fair to say that local governments in particular have experimented intensively in recent years with various forms of citizen participation to restore the lack of legitimacy and trust in government and political institutions. These range from traditional public participation to more daring attempts to co-create, a way of working in which the actors involved shape the process, content and "product" together (De Moor, 2013; Edelenbos & Van Meerkerk, 2016; Czischke et al., 2023). But in practice, citizen collectives still appear to be more on the fringes of the debate on participation, as they function as separate organisations and, as mentioned above, often do not immediately intend to influence policy. This is partly because citizen collectives are primarily focused on participation within their own organisation, emerging from their own community from the bottom up, rather than at the invitation of or initiated by the government from the top down. In the past, the debate on the role of citizen collectives in society has often been confused with the debate on participation as a tool for policy influence (De Moor, 2020). In order to properly describe and evaluate the role of citizen collectives, they should, in our view, be separated from that participation debate.
In this paper, we explore what citizen collectives stand for, using their specific institutional logic as a starting point. We address the question of how this affects relations and working forms, assuming that it is not the government that sets the rules of the game in advance, but the members of the collective themselves. Although they often facilitate an originally public service (healthcare, energy, mobility) without the intention of taking over the government's role, in some cases there is government involvement. This is the case, for instance, when the government provides municipal infrastructure for the citizen collective's activities. Their specific form ensures that citizen collectives (can) take on certain roles that a government or a market player cannot or does not want to take on, because the respective institutional logics do not allow it. Whereas market players usually start from the potential to scale up and will not take the initiative when that potential is lacking, citizen collectives generally have a very local focus and only a limited interest in scaling up as an organisation. At the same time, the local focus of citizen collectives actually ensures that local problems are picked up more quickly, and are thus more in line with what can be expected of a local government. When governments better understand the possible roles of citizen collectives, they can better shape their expectations of this relatively new organisational form and make more use of its democratic potential.
Such co-creation and fostering of grassroots organizations will be necessary to achieve resilient societies also at the level of neighbourhoods and communities, which allow for adequate responses to challenges such as energy transition and climate change (Bovens et al., 2023). Resilience involves much more than adapting to changing circumstances. Resilience requires enabling and equipping individuals and communities to be self-sufficient. Often citizens themselves come up with innovative ideas that fit local conditions, creating incubators for the social transitions needed to meet the challenges of housing, liveability, climate change and the energy transition. Both scientific and policy reports emphasise that citizen collectives have the potential to make a significant contribution to addressing major societal and environmental challenges, while improving the well-being of the individuals involved (Hubert, 2011; Rosenthal et al., 2014; European Environment Agency, 2019; Igalla et al., 2020; Fransen et al., 2022; European Parliament, 2023). Citizen collectives experiment with new ways, approaches and innovative solutions to persistent societal challenges, starting at the level of the everyday living environment (Igalla et al., 2020; Schreuder & Horlings, 2022). From small-scale initiatives, they contribute to broader societal transitions (Cajaiba-Santana, 2014; Loorbach et al., 2020; Jans, 2021; Wittmayer et al., 2024), as they can reinforce the first difficult steps and critical mass needed for transition. Citizen collectives have also been described as examples of prefigurative politics (Avelino et al., 2024; Ferreri, 2024), or a movement that works towards a desired future through targeted actions. Indeed, various citizen collectives are trying to realise ideas for a radically different future through social practices (Schiller-Merkens, 2022). Many are also focused on social transitions: fundamental transformative change processes that a society must undergo to achieve long-term sustainability (cf. Loorbach et al., 2020; Wittmayer et al., 2024). Co-creation between governments and citizen collectives can accelerate those transitions.
However, utilizing the transitional potential of citizen collectives requires that they are treated as equal partners by government agencies and officials. This enables them to jointly develop solutions and local innovations that benefit the wider community. While a vibrant community of citizen collectives has emerged in recent years, they often face significant challenges that hinder their engagement, impact and long-term sustainability. A significant part of these challenges stem from poor cooperation with governments and other institutions. Examining different participatory design and creation methods is essential to understand the strengths and limitations of citizen collectives.
In recent decades, citizen collectives have emerged and grown in number in many sectors across Europe (De Moor, 2013, 2021, 2023; Horlings & Wills, 2024). They collectively create resources to perform their activities and can set up a democratic and formal organisation to manage and distribute these collective resources to the members of the collective in the long term. These civil society initiatives, also known as "commons", or institutions of collective action (Ostrom, 1990), are a specific form of grassroots organisations, with diverse goals. For example, energy cooperatives tend to focus on a combination of environmental, social and economic goals (Germes et al., 2021), with the main objective of providing sustainably produced energy for their own members. Care cooperatives fill the gap when commercial care parties withdraw from sparsely populated areas. In doing so, they respond to government demands to involve social networks in (home) care and lean heavily on feelings of belonging in a neighbourhood (Wittenberg et al., 2024). Citizen collectives are not temporary partnerships, but start from long-term goals and work together on the basis of shared values such as reciprocity, solidarity and sufficiency – i.e., the available resources are sufficient to meet the basic needs of their own members. These values are essential to the functioning of the organisation and enable it to focus on utility, social justice and efficiency for its members (De Moor, 2021).
Zooming in on the Dutch situation, we observe that, after decades of experimentation, the movement of citizen collectives is showing signs of professionalisation and consolidation. This evolution is marked by the emergence of support networks, intermediary organisations at higher scales and the introduction of franchise models, which facilitate the rapid and formal establishment of new citizen collectives throughout the country (De Moor, 2023). In some sectors, these networks have managed to put issues important to them on the agenda at the highest political levels and influence decision and policy-making, resulting in legislative changes at the national level. Energy cooperatives, through their own networks, have promoted the decentralisation of energy transition (Horlings et al., 2023). The recognition of the cooperative as a separate form of housing in the 2015 Housing Act enables collective, self-organised housing initiatives that contribute to several societal transitions, such as the decommodification of housing – i.e., the process by which people depend less on the (housing) market to meet their basic needs (Brysch & Czischke, 2022; Ferreri & Vidal, 2022), reducing loneliness (Van den Berg et al, 2023) and facilitating social inclusion of marginalised groups (Czischke & Huisman, 2018; Mahieu & Van Caudenberg, 2020)
Franchise organisations have in turn succeeded in gaining a foothold in specific sectors in recent years. Bread funds developed a model for donation circles for self-employed people; the collective organic farming organisation Herenboeren supports the creation of consumer cooperatives; the "courtyard model" for elderly housing was revived as a franchise model. Franchisors share their solution to a social problem, which often allows franchisees to start up faster, avoid some risks and teething problems and become part of a larger movement. This can, although it does not necessarily, come at the expense of the local nature of the individual citizen collective (Giudici et al., 2020; Tracey & Jarvis, 2007). By setting up such models that allow for rapid spread throughout the country on the one hand, but leave room for interpretation by local groups on the other, more organisational homogeneity gradually emerges. This is further enhanced by information exchange between networks of citizen collectives. To gain more leverage and bargaining power, citizen collectives often apply networking strategies such as forming top cooperatives, in which several smaller cooperatives with similar needs work together to achieve sufficient critical mass.
Network strategies are particularly important in sectors where professional actors dominate the market and where persistent financial and regulatory barriers prevent the growth of new players, as in the case of housing cooperatives (Czischke et al., 2023; Czischke, 2023). This allows them to retain their local focus and small scale relevant for attracting new community members (Jans et al., 2024), while benefiting from shared resources, increased efficiency and collective bargaining power (De Moor, 2023; 2024). At the same time, this also increases the visibility of the many local initiatives that would otherwise remain under the radar of national governments. The visible actions of citizens can thus motivate those who are not members of such collectives to act, by changing norms and strengthening connectedness in the local community (Jans, 2021). This plays out, among others, in housing cooperatives, which also allow others to shape their housing situation in ways still mostly ignored by governments and market players. Research in three European countries shows that, in addition to formal accountability obligations, successful residents' cooperatives maintain all kinds of informal strategies of representation and accountability in order to keep their own constituencies engaged and to be able to tell a clear story to the outside world as well (Kleinhans et al., 2020).
Despite their growth and potential, citizen collectives still experience bottlenecks by and frictions with government agencies, due to existing policies, institutional structures, a lack of understanding of these voluntary and partly informal forms of organisation, and opposition from established actors. There is also fragmentation in some sectors: there are different types of collectives and sometimes conflicting agendas, hindering a shared identity and position vis-à-vis the government. These barriers hinder productive cooperation between citizen collectives and the government (Kleinhans, 2017; Duijn et al., 2019; Spekkink et al., 2022; Pera & Bussu, 2024). A major barrier to effective cooperation is the lack of alignment between government structures and procedures on the one hand and the goals, structures and practices of citizen collectives on the other (Voorberg et al., 2014; Duijn et al., 2019; De Moor et al., 2020). Citizen collectives are often reluctant to establish closer ties with local government because they want to preserve their autonomy and fear influence, co-optation or bureaucratisation (Edelenbos & Van Meerkerk, 2016; Goedkoop & Devine-Wright, 2016; Kleinhans et al., 2020), or dependence on subsidies. There is a contradiction between the logics of citizen collectives and those of governments regarding goals, timing, mode of planning, agendas, roles and approaches (Brown et al., 2020). At the same time, citizen collectives often do need support from governments and other external parties to overcome institutional and financial barriers (Bomberg & McEwen, 2012; Seyfang et al., 2013; Goedkoop & Devine-Wright, 2016; Markantoni, 2016; Barnes & Hansen, 2022; Czischke et al., 2023; Czischke, 2023). Cooperation with local governments need not hinder citizens' acceptance and participation in citizen collectives (Jans et al., 2024). Better cooperation between citizen collectives and local governments is thus crucial to achieve shared goals, improve policy content and accelerate transition processes.
As mentioned, part of the explanation for frictions between citizen collectives and governments lies in the way governments view citizen collectives, namely as a form of citizen participation that provides input to pre-set policy goals and processes. Too little attention is paid to the role of citizen collectives as an independent coordination mechanism and organisational form that provides collective services and goods to their members or the local community (Edelenbos et al., 2018; Hendriks & Dzur, 2022; De Moor, 2023). Since citizen collectives arise on their own initiative, they can therefore also function independently of the government, and not infrequently this is also a conscious choice to avoid dependence on subsidies.
When exploring new forms of collaboration between governments and citizen collectives, it is crucial to recognise that citizen collectives, as mentioned above, follow their own and different institutional logic than governments or commercial companies. Based on the literature, we can distinguish the following characteristics of this institutional logic (Igalla et al., 2019; Hendriks & Dzur, 2022; De Moor, 2023; De Moor, 2024):
The logic of citizen collectives is regularly at odds with that of governments (Van der Steen et al., 2015; Nederhand et al., 2019; Karré & Van Meerkerk, 2023). Local governments operate from hierarchical and bureaucratic structures. Following formal procedures and a rule-bound culture in which accountability to the political-administrative top is central can lead to rigid and time-bound processes that clash with the decentralised, flexible and horizontal nature of citizen collectives. Governments work with political time cycles, often requiring more time to make choices. Indeed, governments have to weigh up and integrate more responsibilities, preconditions, political goals and interests. In practice, this leads to less unambiguous goals in which trade-offs are also made that may clash with the values, idealistic and more community-oriented goals of citizen collectives. Because of the political-administrative environment-with possible political repercussions-and the emphasis on legal due diligence, many governments are risk-averse (Driessen, 2024). This clashes with the urge of citizen collectives to experiment and innovate, to do things differently than existing structures have done so far. This leads to the situation where governments want to facilitate innovation, but at the same time frustrate it.
Besides being characterised by unique organisational and governance structures and institutional logic, citizen collectives generally have different growth ambitions than traditional organisations, especially those of a commercial nature. Thus, they follow their own development path or life cycle. Their primary focus is usually on local impact, based on the characteristics of the place or area and the immediate needs of the community, rather than growing in size or geographical reach (De Moor et al., 2020). This localised approach means that they focus more on strengthening their impact within their own organisation, local community and network than on scaling up. Reasoned from available resources (in a broad sense), they broaden their service offerings within the community rather than broadening that community of members itself. Such a "multi-purpose approach" increases their relevance and sustainability for their own organisation, without significantly increasing the number of members. For example, some cooperatives in the Netherlands have expanded their activities from energy supply to healthcare services, becoming multi-purpose organisations (De Moor, 2024). This approach, combined with members' willingness to reciprocate, strengthens the cooperative business model.
Both the European Union and national research agencies (in the Dutch context: Scientific Council for Government Policy, Netherlands Institute for Social Research, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) have recognised citizen collectives as potential, albeit partial, solutions for promoting indirect control over citizens' lives (Bovens et al., 2023). There is, in other words, the necessary potential for social value creation at the level of individual citizens. Critical reflections point to possibly too high expectations (see Blok et al., 2023) or even argue that citizen collectives and other "civil society organisations" are too much seen by governments and think tanks as panaceas that could solve intractable social, economic and political problems (Edwards, 2004). Others argue that citizen collectives do not necessarily contribute to a fairer and more equitable society if they are not representative of the wider community (Jans et al., 2025). We argue that it is indeed necessary to better assess the potential of citizen collectives for social value creation, but that, in doing so, we need to better clarify and define which roles we can and cannot expect from citizen collectives, so that citizen collectives are not ascribed the same miracle powers as have often been the case in the past when choosing to market public services. The now quite large maturity of the citizen collectives movement in the Netherlands allows us to identify and further shape the possible roles of citizen collectives, also taking into account the sectors in which they fulfil these roles.
As shown in Figure 1, citizen collectives have the potential to play multiple roles in driving societal transitions. From the literature, we can distinguish several roles:
This intermediary role strengthens democratic participation, improves policy outcomes, and builds more responsive and inclusive governance structures. Citizen collectives can help to gather and articulate the needs, concerns, and aspirations of their members to government entities. By doing so, they ensure that the voices of often underrepresented or marginalized groups are heard in policy discussions. The collectives inform their members about relevant government policies, regulations, and opportunities. This helps community members stay informed about how government actions affect them and how they can engage in civic processes. In instances of conflict between community members and government authorities, citizen collectives can mediate to find mutually acceptable solutions. They, or their networks, negotiate on behalf of their members with government officials, ensuring that any agreements or policies reflect the community’s needs and perspectives. Citizen collectives collect feedback from their members regarding government policies and services, providing a structured way for community members to voice their opinions, conveying this feedback to relevant government bodies, ensuring that citizen perspectives are considered in policy evaluations and adjustments.
Despite their potential, civic collectives remain relatively unknown to the general public. In addition, members are often not representative of the diversity of the wider local community in which they are rooted. Nor is this necessarily necessary if the collective does serve the wider local community and is regularly accountable in appropriate ways (Kleinhans et al., 2020). The necessary social transitions in housing, care, energy and climate are certainly not necessarily equitable or democratic in the first instance, but "you have to start somewhere". Providing direction is crucial for any transition process: there are multiple paths that can be considered and pursued (Leach et al., 2010). Transitions can achieve equity and sustainability, but they can also lead to inequality and uncertainty for citizens, and the exclusion and polarisation of people who are not involved in a citizen collective (Jans et al., 2025). Increasing effective and representative citizen engagement is widely recognised as necessary to ensure equitable and sustainable transitions, but achieving this on a sufficiently large scale and with the necessary depth remains a challenge. Citizen collectives can bridge that distance between the major societal transitions needed and the individual citizen, playing a key role in providing action perspectives. The limited available literature on the interaction between those who are and those who are not involved in citizen collectives emphasises the need to increase inclusiveness to reduce inequality in large-scale transitions (Broekhuizen & Michels, 2017; Axon, 2020).
To better use the potential of citizen collectives as identifiers, educators, enablers and go-betweens in social transitions in cooperation processes with governments, more insight is needed into the conditions under which citizen collectives function optimally. To this end, further thought should first be given to policies for facilitating the functioning of citizen collectives. It is known from previous research that a supportive and facilitative role of governments contributes to the development and effectiveness of citizen collectives, partly by reducing structural barriers (Seixas & Berkes, 2009; Igalla et al., 2020; Kleinhans et al., 2023), taking into account their specific institutional logic in, for instance, procurement processes. Currently, this role often remains limited and is highly dependent on individual officials who want to play a connecting role and ensure proper coordination and facilitation (Van Meerkerk and Edelenbos, 2018). This makes this support vulnerable. Moreover, the relationship usually remains very asymmetrical (Edelenbos et al., 2018; Spekkink et al., 2022). We still see few equal partnerships in which the parties involved all learn from each other in the process.
To ensure long-term engagement and impact, new partnerships between the civil and public sectors must be forged, with careful consideration of the divergent institutional logics. However, rather than seeing the different logics as obstacles to co-creation, they can be used as opportunities for governments to address societal challenges more effectively. In order to better respond to the growing movement of citizen collectives, an inviting government is needed: a government that knows about the initiatives present in the region, is sensitive to what is going on in local communities, and that brings together interests, actors and ideas, offers clarity on policy goals and also stimulates new spatial images and designs aimed at a sustainable future (Van der Steen et al., 2015; Van Buuren, 2017; Horlings, 2017). The literature still offers little insight into the organisational and institutional conditions that are important for inviting action towards citizen collectives and how public professionals can give concrete substance to this (Hofstra & Edelenbos, in print; Visser, 2023; Van Arkel & Tromp, 2024). Moreover, reliable quantitative data on the number of citizen collectives is lacking, which complicates understanding trends and their potential impact on different societal transitions. In addition, a steering style that focuses more on responsiveness to and cooperation with citizen collectives has implications for the role perceptions of politicians, administrators and civil servants (Visser, 2023). However, little is still known about this.
In addition, research is desirable on the ideas among officials and citizens on appropriate steering styles and strategies in relation to citizen collectives. Existing research shows that citizens' and civil servants' perspectives on this differ (Nederhand et al., 2019). Officials and citizens also think differently about the public value of citizen collectives and do not know that there are also differences in motives and goals within these groups (Hasanov & Zuidema, 2022; Blok et al., 2023). This can lead to different, sometimes conflicting expectations on both sides, which fosters distrust and frustration. It is therefore important to gain more insight into the images, mutual expectations and perspectives, in order to arrive collectively at a better understanding of the roles that citizen collectives and governments can play in more equal partnerships. In addition, co-creation with citizen collectives requires a specific mindset among policymakers and other professionals, where self-organised citizens are seen as experts in their own right, with their own set of skills and resources to contribute to the process (Czischke, 2021).
Conversely, citizen collectives and their networks need new practical, evidence-based insights to deepen their engagement in transition processes, strengthen their self-reliance and foster equal partnerships. By making developments in the field of citizen collectives much more visible, they need not invent the wheel over and over again. In addition, evidence-based knowledge on the potential and development of citizen collectives helps make the impact of the movement transparent. This benefits not only the movement as a whole, but also the individual citizen collectives, by giving them legitimacy towards governments and funders.
While many citizen collectives deliberately want to remain small for various reasons, more insight is also needed into how this desire translates within the life cycle of these organisations and at what points in that life cycle specific decisions are made to invest in their own group rather than to grow "traditionally". Furthermore, an empirical basis is lacking to explain what factors play a role when citizen collectives fail in their mission, due to the fact that these organisations are often not sufficiently documented due to their bottom-up nature.
In addition, a better understanding of the life cycle and growth patterns of citizen collectives, their impact on members and non-members, and translating these insights into policy guidelines, would make an important contribution to creating a better mutual understanding between citizen collectives and governments. This also enables governments to consider citizen collectives as serious partners in societal transitions on a realistic and constructive basis. Below, we indicate some focal points for better cooperation.
Although the number of citizen collectives is increasing (De Moor, 2023), only a small minority of the population is actually familiar with and involved in a collective (e.g. in the energy sector: Schwanitz et al., 2023). It is often assumed that when given the chance, people will automatically participate, but in practice this is not always the case (Perlaviciute, 2022). Citizen collectives often seem to attract specific groups of citizens who differ from those who do not participate, for instance in terms of values, motivation and demographic characteristics (Sloot et al., 2018; Sloot et al., 2019; Goedkoop et al., 2023). More insight is needed into the social drivers of citizens who do and do not participate in citizen collectives. The same applies to the strategies and leadership needed to effectively engage non-participants in transitions. This is particularly true for groups that have lost trust in institutions or are sidelined in the development of citizen collectives for various reasons. The perspective of groups with lower socioeconomic status (SES) is also currently still a blind spot (Broekhuizen & Michels, 2017). An important question in future research is which cooperative models and methods can ensure equitable cooperation between civil society initiatives, government and academia. There is also the question of how collectives can contribute to a more equitable distribution of resources, for example in the context of energy transition. The perspective of underrepresented groups is crucial to engage them effectively in processes and avoid polarisation. In addition, it is essential to explore how citizen collectives can strengthen the sense of control over one's own life and increase active citizenship in societal transitions (Czischke & Huisman, 2018; Hamann et al., 2024).
Solutions to these challenges are likely to vary depending on the lifecycle stage of the citizen collective, capacity, regional dynamics and the specific issues at hand. Thereby, people's attachment to the place where they live and work and attachment to the local community is a good starting point for using the utilization of the democratic potential of citizen collectives. Starting from the meaning that the environment and community has for people is an appreciative approach that can mobilise people around a shared approach and agenda for their neighbourhood, village, city or area (Grenni et al., 2020).
Citizen collectives have a unique potential to promote societal transitions through their local anchoring, decentralised decision-making and innovative approaches. Their divergent institutional logic offers opportunities to link up with local, potentially impactful processes (Itten et al., 2021; Brysch et al., 2023), provided that governments recognise them as equal partners and respect their autonomy. This requires an inviting government that is sensitive to local dynamics and capable of breaking down structural barriers. To fully exploit this potential, further insights are needed into the life cycles of citizen collectives, their impact on various societal challenges, and the conditions for equal partnerships. Both governments and citizen collectives can learn from best practices to shape effective collaborations and develop tools for inclusive and equitable transitions. A more responsive and collaborative approach not only offers prospects for strengthening citizen collectives, but can also contribute to broader societal resilience and a sustainable restoration of trust between citizens and government.
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