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Politics of Grievance and Democratic Governance

Project description

Emotional dynamics of grievance politics: navigating challenges and opportunities

Grievance politics dominate the emotional landscape of European democracies grappling with heightened political animosity and unyielding antagonisms. The intricate emotional landscape of grievance politics signals frustrations and disaffections, which when ignored can sway towards anti- or pro-democratic outcomes. In response to this urgent concern, the EU-funded PLEDGE project aims to decipher the emotional economy of political grievances and their anti- and pro-democratic trajectories. It fosters collaboration between academics, policymakers, civil society and citizens, and co-creates tools and practices for emotionally intelligent governance. This interdisciplinary initiative spans 11 countries and addresses major crises, offering a transformative approach to bolster democratic engagement and policy communication.

Objective

Contemporary politics is angry and vengeful, with affective polarization and uncompromising antagonisms posing a significant challenge for European democracies and their governance. PLEDGE interprets political grievances as emotional signals of disaffection, frustration and insecurities that can develop into either anti- or prodemocratic outcomes. By engaging in collaborative research design and implementation involving academics, policy-makers, civil society actors, and citizens, the PLEDGE project intends to offer new understanding of anti- and pro-democratic trajectories of political grievances, and to co-create tools and practices of emotionally intelligent and responsive democratic governance and policy communication that promote prodemocratic forms of civic engagement. The project will provide a framework of the emotional mechanisms of anti- and prodemocratic grievance politics that explain dynamic interrelations between the emotions, values, and identities of citizens and groups, and empirically decode the psychological, sociocultural, and political drivers of these emotional mechanisms into operationalizable measures and indicators, focusing on 11 countries and 3 major crises (pandemic, war in Ukraine, climate/energy crisis). PLEDGE will achieve these objectives through a cross-national interdisciplinary research project involving 15 partners and its policy outputs, co-created and piloted in design coalitions, will inform democratic innovation of processes and practices and incorporate emotions in the designed-for outcomes, thus improving their efficiency.

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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-CL2-2023-DEMOCRACY-01

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Coordinator

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
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.

€ 868 915,00
Address
FABIANINKATU 33
00014 HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Finland

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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.

€ 868 915,00

Participants (11)

Partners (2)

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