Can Stories Strengthen Democracy, and Can Imagining Its Collapse Save It?

What if community storytelling could strengthen civic engagement? And what if imagining the loss of democratic rights could make people more committed to protecting them?

Two new University of Michigan research projects are exploring those questions through the 2026 Presidential Awards for Understanding Democracy, with each project receiving approximately $50,000. These awards are the final awards in this program, capping off a successful democracy theme year commitment.

Can community stories strengthen civic engagement?

Bridging Stories and Scholarship: Prototyping Participatory Impact Frameworks for Place-Based Narrative Infrastructure will study how community storytelling can build civic engagement and trust, drawing on five years of work by U-M’s Detroit River Story Lab.

The project team includes David Porter, Professor of English and Comparative Literature; Kristin Hass, Professor of American Culture; and Melissa Duhaime, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. They will develop practical tools to measure the impact of projects that bring universities and communities together around local stories, history, and public scholarship.

The team hopes the resulting frameworks and resources can help U-M and other universities better understand, improve, and expand this type of community-based work.

Could imagining the loss of democracy make people more committed to it?

The As-If Machine: Increasing Support for Democratic Institutions By Imagining Their Erosion takes a different approach. The researchers will test whether imagining life without basic democratic rights can make those rights feel more important and increase support for democratic institutions.

The project team includes Eric Gilbert, Professor of Information; Patrick Barry, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law; Ceren Budak, Associate Professor of Information; and Joshua Ashkinaze, PhD candidate in the School of Information.

The team has developed an AI system called The As-If Machine, which allows participants to create personalized stories imagining their lives after constitutional rights have eroded. In an initial study, participants who imagined losing the right to a jury trial showed stronger support for related policies than those who read informational material. The new research will use six randomized controlled trials to test whether the approach works across different constitutional rights.

Two projects, one larger investment

The projects approach democracy from different directions: one examines how stories can build civic connection, while the other explores how imagining the loss of democratic rights can strengthen support for them.

Together, they represent the final Presidential Awards of U-M’s inaugural democracy theme year, building on existing awards of $250,000 into groundbreaking democracy research. The work will continue beyond the theme year as the Initiative for Democracy and Civic Empowerment transitions into the Center for Democracy and Civic Empowerment, embedded in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

The center will provide a permanent institutional home for research, teaching, and civic engagement focused on understanding and strengthening democracy.