Institute for Democratic Engagement at Ohio State

Meet Elise Britton, one of our 2026 IDEA Summer Fellows!

Elise kicked off her fellowship this week, working in the office of Congresswoman Shontel Brown () on Capitol Hill. She will be there through the first week of August, gaining hands-on experience at the intersection of democratic accountability and public service.

We are so proud to have Elise representing IDEA in Washington. Stay tuned as we introduce the rest of this year’s fellows cohort!


IDEA PublicService

🦖 Okay, this one made us smile.

Turns out dinosaur parents were already doing the "you eat the good stuff, I'll have the leftovers" thing 75 million years ago.

New Ohio State research suggests Maiasaura adults fed their babies softer, more nutritious food, a parenting move we usually credit to birds.

Sometimes you just have to stop and appreciate that Ohio State paleontologists are out here decoding ancient parental guilt. 💚

🎨 Illustration by Brian Regal
📰 Read the full story:

https://news.osu.edu/dinosaur-dental-fossils-reveal-bird-like-parental-care-bonds?utm_campaign=asc_marketing-activity_fy26&utm_content=1780333921&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin

🇺🇦 Big news in deliberative democracy.

Three Ukrainian communities are preparing to host citizens' assemblies with support from the Council of Europe:

🔹 Obolon district in Kyiv (2025)
🔹 Rivne community (2026)
🔹 Lviv Agglomeration (2026)

Residents will be chosen by random sortition to deliberate together and bring recommendations to the local government.
This is the same field IDEA works in internationally. 🌍

EuComMeet has been embedding deliberation across the European Union. Our Deliberative Town Halls in Nigeria adapted the model for a different national context. In Chile, we tested deliberation while drafting a new constitution. The Global Innovations in Democracy Exchange connects legislators worldwide who are building these tools.

Seeing the work take root in Ukrainian communities during a war says something about why deliberation matters now. ✊

🔗 https://www.coe.int/en/web/congress/-/deliberative-democracy-in-ukraine-congress-to-support-three-citizens-assemblies-in-2025-2026

Beyond Christian Nationalism: The Place of Christian Values in Public Life The Center for Christianity and Public Life hosted a timely conversation about what it looks like to move beyond Christian nationalism toward a more faithful...

Today, we honor the Americans who gave their lives in service to our democracy. 🇺🇸

At Gettysburg in 1863, Lincoln spoke of the "unfinished work" the living owe to those who died defending self-government.

That work is still ours. Every deliberative town hall, every citizens' assembly, every conversation that brings real voices to the table is part of it.

We remember them by continuing it. 🕊️

Today is World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.

Notice the full name. The UN paired diversity with dialogue for a reason. Different perspectives in the same room don't automatically lead anywhere. What turns difference into something useful is the conversation between them.

That's what IDEA does. From deliberative town halls in Malawi and Nigeria to our DC Fellows program, the work is building the spaces where diverse voices actually shape decisions.

What if a town hall actually worked?

Most do not. They attract the same partisans every time. The questions stay broad. The format turns into points being scored rather than communication happening. Members leave with little new information. Constituents leave with little reason to change how they think.

The deliberative town hall (DTH) is IDEA's answer.

1) A representative cross-section of constituents instead of self-selection.

2) A single issue at a time.

3) Non-partisan background materials in advance.

4) A neutral moderator.

5) The Member of Congress present and answering questions in real time.

Simple choices, but they change what the event is for. Our director, Dr. Michael Neblo, testified about this model before the US House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.

Learn more: https://democracyinstitute.osu.edu/news/dr.-neblo-testifies-congress-americans-want-real-conversation-not-just-more-communication

Why do political parties keep drifting to the extremes? Most people assume it is ideology, voters splitting left and right, while parties chase them outward.

A new study in Social Science Quarterly says that is not the real story. Solbi Kim of the University of Georgia looked at 61 elections across 31 countries and found that ideological division among citizens has no consistent effect on how far apart parties move. Sometimes it even pulls them back toward the middle.

What moves parties apart is trust. When the public is split between people who trust the government and those who do not, parties widen the gap between their platforms. That held across economic policy, immigration, and welfare.

This is why IDEA's work matters. Polarization grows out of divided trust, and trust is something a community can rebuild.

Our deliberative forums bring citizens and government together to reason through real decisions, and that is where rebuilding starts. Learn more about our work: https://democracyinstitute.osu.edu/

Read the open-access study: https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.70124

A man in Bende, Nigeria, sat down with his representative and afterward said it was the first time in his life he had felt like a real citizen, and not, in his words, "a pauper going to see the big man."

For thirty years, the assumption has been that citizens in places like Nigeria don't want a more serious kind of democracy, or can't picture one. We spent two town halls finding out that's wrong. The appetite for reform was there the whole time. In one of the bigger surprises of the project, it even spread to people who never attended, just from hearing about it.

You can read more about IDEA's work in Nigeria here: https://democracyinstitute.osu.edu/programs/international-programs/nigerian-deliberative-town-halls