Project description DEENESFRITPL 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. Show the project objective Hide the project objective 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 social sciencessociologygovernancesocial sciencespolitical sciencesgovernment systemsdemocracyhumanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionphilosophypolitical philosophysocial scienceslawsocial sciencespolitical sciencespublic administration Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2020-ADG - ERC ADVANCED GRANT Call for proposal ERC-2020-ADG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant Coordinator INSTITUT BARCELONA D ESTUDIS INTERNACIONALS, FUNDACIO PRIVADA Net EU contribution € 2 477 902,50 Address Calle ramon trias fargas 25 campus de la ciutadella 08005 Barcelona Spain See on map Region Este Cataluña Barcelona Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all INSTITUT BARCELONA D ESTUDIS INTERNACIONALS, FUNDACIO PRIVADA Spain Net EU contribution € 2 477 902,50 Address Calle ramon trias fargas 25 campus de la ciutadella 08005 Barcelona See on map Region Este Cataluña Barcelona Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Other funding € 0,00
