Project description
How citizens view politics and policymaking
Political scientists collect data on citizens’ policy preferences, but often struggle to identify the biggest problems and most urgent policy issues. This is partly because creating comparable survey questions is challenging. The ERC-funded CATNIP project will use innovative techniques to assess citizen views on the severity and priority of various issues. This research will deepen our understanding of how citizens perceive the goals of politics and policymaking, engage with the media, and interact with their representatives. Key questions include: Who prioritises global issues over local ones? How do the media and political actors influence this? What are the electoral implications of emphasising specific issues? When is it vital for politicians to highlight problems without solutions?
Objective
Political scientists have collected rich data for understanding the preferences of citizens regarding which policies their governments ought to enact, as well as for investigating where these preferences do and do not exist, and how they arise. In contrast, we have poor data and methods for understanding which problems citizens think are most severe and which government policy should be urgently addressing. These questions of problems and priorities are difficult to investigate because they are challenging to formulate in terms of closed-ended survey questions that yield cross-nationally and inter-temporally comparable data. This project addresses this gap by using innovative techniques to measure citizens’ views about problem severity and priority. The proposed applications, in turn, will push forward our understanding of how citizens understand what politics and policy-making are trying to achieve, how they interact with media information sources and their representatives, all of which are core concerns of the study of political behaviour and public opinion.
This research would enable a major step forward in our understanding of several political science questions. First, which people, in which countries, are relatively engaged with and prioritise global problems (e.g. international environmental, security, and economic issues) by comparison to more immediate local or national problems? Are views about political problems generally stable over time, at the level of individual citizens or at the level of populations? Second, to what extent do major media sources and/or political actors set the problem agenda for citizens, versus responding to citizens’ existing problem agenda? Third, what are the electoral implications of politicians and media emphasizing or de-emphasizing specific problems? When is articulating a problem, perhaps even in the absence of articulating a policy solution, an important component of gaining credibility with voters?
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-ADG
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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.
WC1E 6BT LONDON
United Kingdom
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.