As societies face increasingly complex sustainability challenges, researchers at DTU Management are exploring new ways to strengthen democratic decision-making. A new project, STÅSTEDER, led by Professor Anders Kristian Munk and Professor Anders Koed Madsen, has received a 5 million DKK grant from the Velux Foundation to investigate how artificial intelligence might help public institutions better understand citizens’ diverse perspectives in the green transition.
Public administrations are often confronted with a lack of tools to systematically capture and represent the different standpoints people hold on issues such as sustainability, resource use, and social change. Traditional policy models tend to rely on pure assumptions about rational preferences, which can – and often do – overlook deeper cultural values and worldviews.
STÅSTEDER seeks to bridge that gap.
In collaboration with Aarhus Municipality and CAISA - The National Center for AI in Society, the project will explore how language models and perspectival modelling can serve as new, data-driven methods for democratic decision support. The goal obviously isn’t to replace human judgment, but to provide decision-makers with richer insights into the variety of perspectives that shape local responses to sustainability efforts, so that they can make more informed decisions.
Through three case studies in Aarhus Municipality, the research team will develop, and test computational models designed to represent different cultural and social “lifeworlds.” These models will be used to study whether digital representations of citizen perspectives can foster cognitive diversity in policy processes and help manage disagreement and conflict in more legitimate and sustainable ways.
“This is a bit of a dream project,” says Professor Anders Kristian Munk. “We’re trying to push the boundaries of what qualitative and ethnographic methods can become when they are supported by computational tools. It fits perfectly with the mission of our new ECHOlab, where we explore how digital methods can enrich the understanding of complex societal dynamics.”
By combining theories of reflexive modelling and cultural standpoints with the latest advances in digital and generative AI methods, STÅSTEDER will contribute new knowledge about how language models can achieve legitimacy and strengthen democratic governance.
The project is part of the Velux Foundation’s Democratic Sustainability Initiative, which supports research that enhances democratic engagement and sustainable decision-making in Denmark.
