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

Project Information

ActEU

Grant agreement ID: 101094190

DOI

10.3030/101094190

Project closed

EC signature date 6 December 2022

Start date 1 March 2023

End date 28 February 2026

Funded under

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Total cost

€ 3 044 120,00

EU contribution

€ 2 999 870,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAET DUISBURG-ESSEN
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ActEU (Towards a new era of representative democracy - Activating European citizens’ trust in times of crises and polarization)

Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

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.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

State of play after the first half of the project

In the first half of the ActEU project, we focused on providing an innovative conceptual framework as well as an original empirical infrastructure based on new quantitative and qualitative empirical data (focus groups, experimental surveys, web scraping) and an innovative combination thereof to study political trust, legitimacy and representation in polarizing times in the European multi-level system (represented by the “ActEU Triangle”). ActEU’s conceptual triangle suggests that low levels or a decline of trust in institutions and actors of representative democracies are strongly interrelated with other observations which are linked to contemporary issues of legitimacy. The focus groups added different values to provide input to the conceptual framework: Qualitative data has been collected, analyzed and interpreted which allows us to gain an in-depth understanding of the decline of citizens’ approval and support of politicians and institutions in representative democracy, demands and changes regarding participatory patterns and the role of emotions in subjective representation. Data, analyses and interpretations from the focus group discussions enhance our understanding about process-related, informal, emotional aspects and the demand side of how different sub-groups of citizens of the European Union perceive their participation options on the different state levels. In addition, the focus group discussions were utilized to prepare in the appropriate detail the items of the survey supports the web-scraping exercise by informing about words in context with regard to the ActEU policy fields migration, gender and climate. To map and investigate the issue of legitimacy of European representative democracies we started with to report on the general dynamics of trust based on secondary data analysis.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Enhancing trust in and legitimacy of representative democracy is necessary in order to deal with societal polarization, restore a societal consensus around the rule of law and make Western democracies more resilient in face of external aggression. Following the challenges to European democracy described above, ActEU aims at contributing to the reinvigoration and resilience of representative democracy across Europe. Therefore, ActEU will generate meaningful outcomes and impacts implementing its two main objectives during the project’s three years’ lifetime and beyond. Building upon the scientific work of the project’s first year, the second phase of ActEU will contribute to give a new push to European democracy, in particular by co-creating a toolbox of remedial actions to activate (young) citizens and enhance trust across Europe.
1) The first toolkit will include scientifically robust policy recommendations for political parties and policymakers at the European, national, regional and local level as well as for the administrations of regional and national parliaments and the European Parliament – key institutions of representative democracy. ActEU therefore has the potential to lead to policy change and to contribute to reinvigorated and more resilient representative democracies, to an increased legitimacy of public policymaking, and to greater transparency and trustworthiness of democratic institutions.
2) The second toolkit will address civil society actors and the educational sector (high school teachers, university lecturers, and other actors involved in citizenship education). This toolkit will especially focus on expanding political participation and civic engagement as well as mitigating societal polarization, contributing to a more active and inclusive citizenship.
The thorough involvement of civil society throughout the research process, in particular through the ActEU Civil Society Network and the ActEU youth democracy labs in 13 European cities, will ensure that the toolbox of remedial actions will be inclusive and duly take into account the needs and concerns of citizens across Europe.
ActEU therefore has the potential to lead to policy change and to contribute to reinvigorated and more resilient representative democracies, to an increased legitimacy of public policy-making, and to greater transparency and trustworthiness of democratic institutions.

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