Descrizione del progetto
I cittadini si fidano dei loro rappresentanti eletti?
La democrazia europea richiede lo stesso sostegno da parte dei cittadini a livello regionale, nazionale e comunitario? In che modo la polarizzazione sociale su questioni politiche chiave come l’immigrazione, i cambiamenti climatici e la disuguaglianza di genere mina la fiducia politica? Cosa possono fare i politici e la società civile per superare queste sfide? Il progetto ActEU, finanziato dall’UE, risponderà a queste domande studiando e mappando i problemi persistenti di calo di fiducia, legittimità e rappresentanza in Europa. L’attenzione si concentrerà sulla polarizzazione delle società e sulle strutture multilivello dell’UE. Il progetto prevede l’elaborazione di un quadro concettuale sugli atteggiamenti, i comportamenti e la rappresentanza politica in Europa. Utilizzerà quindi queste informazioni per creare una serie di azioni correttive.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
- social sciencessociologysocial issuessocial inequalitiesgender inequality
- social sciencespolitical sciencesgovernment systemsdemocracy
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical policiescivil society
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- social sciencessociologydemographyhuman migrations
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinatore
45141 Essen
Germania