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Towards a new era of representative democracy - Activating European citizens’ trust in times of crises and polarization

Project description

Do citizens trust their elected representatives?

Does Europe’s democracy require the same amount of citizen support at the regional, national and EU levels? How does social polarisation on key policy issues like immigration, climate change and gender inequality challenge political trust? What can policymakers and civil society do to overcome these challenges? The EU-funded ActEU project will answer these questions by studying and mapping persistent problems of declining trust, legitimacy and representation in Europe. The focus will be on the polarisation of societies and the EU’s multilevel structures. The project will design a conceptual framework on political attitudes, behaviour and representation across Europe. It will then use this information to create a toolbox of remedial actions.

Objective

How can we conceptualize and empirically measure political trust and legitimacy beyond the usual survey question “How much trust do you have in the parliament?”? Does the multi-level nature of European representative democracies require an identical level of citizen support at the regional, national and EU levels? How does social polarization on key policy issues of our times –immigration, climate change, and gender inequality– challenge the political trust in, and legitimacy of, democratic political systems? And what can policymakers and civil society do to master these challenges? ActEU aims at finding answers to these questions pursuing two overarching goals: In phase 1, we map and investigate persistent problems of declining trust, legitimacy and representation in Europe with a particular attention to the polarization of societies and the EU’s multi-level structures. Providing an innovative conceptual framework on political attitudes, behavior and representation across Europe, we establish an original empirical infrastructure based on an innovative combination of methods and newly collected quantitative and qualitative empirical data (focus groups, experimental surveys, web scraping). In phase 2, these results will flow directly into the creation of a toolbox of remedial actions to enhance political trust in and legitimacy of European representative democracies. In cooperation with a newly created Civil Society Network, Youth Democracy Labs across 13 European cities and in exchange with political cartoonists “Cartooning for democracy”, we will develop context-sensitive solutions for all polity levels and some of the most polarizing policy areas, and craft tailor-made toolkits for both policymakers and civil society and the educational sector. Finally, we deploy a differentiated dissemination strategy to maximize ActEU’s scientific, policy and societal impact in activating European citizens’ trust and working towards a new era of representative democracy.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL2-2022-DEMOCRACY-01

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITAET DUISBURG-ESSEN
Net EU contribution

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.

€ 609 600,00
Address
UNIVERSITATSSTRASSE 2
45141 ESSEN
Germany

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Region
Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf Essen, Kreisfreie Stadt
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

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.

€ 609 600,00

Participants (12)

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