Project description
Public administration and democratic values
Does public administration reinforce the values of representative government? Why and how? The ERC-funded REPGOV project presents a unified normative and positive theory of how institutions and practices both should and do reinforce democratic values. Theory building draws on democratic theory and formal models of politics. A mixed-methods empirical strategy qualitatively explores the mechanisms of value reinforcement in various administrative settings in contemporary Europe, employs machine learning to explore the syntax of value reinforcement in laws and regulations, and experimentally examines structured choices about reinforcing values. REPGOV illustrates how the democratic value trade-offs made by public administrators are a missing link in contemporary discussions about the quality and nature of representative government.
Objective
How does representative government function when administrative policymaking has the authority to reshape democracy? The discretion that modern governments give to unelected officials, who have policy preferences themselves, not only captures the means for implementing policies, but also the authority to make tradeoffs among important democratic values to promote the outcomes they desire. REPGOV aims at exploring how governance structures shape the way officials make democratic value tradeoffs. REPGOV’s mixed-method design, scale, and scope have the potential to recast the study of public administration into more richly democratic terms, and to make unique and significant contributions to the study of political philosophy, institutions and behavior. The project has four main objectives. First, it will develop a unified theoretical approach grounded firmly political science and allied disciplines that explains why and how governance structures reinforce the values of the representative government by shaping officials’ belief systems. Second, the project grounds theory into practice through rigorous qualitative research into the way that formal and informal institutions shape belief systems. Third, through state-of-the-art machine learning methods, REPGOV will construct an important database that captures democratic values in laws and regulations and conduct large-scale observational tests of the relationship between institutional politics and the democratic values in delegated authority. Fourth, through survey and laboratory experiments, REPGOV will examine the effect of formal and informal institutions on officials’ democratic beliefs
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences political sciences government systems democracy
- social sciences law
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2020-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
20136 Milano
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.