Objective
With advanced democracies facing a “crisis of representation” and protest on the rise, PROPEL considers the interplay between protest and public opinion (PPO) as a key force shaping the future of democratic politics. Whereas extant research has studied how movements capture parties or how street mobilizations develop into electoral challengers, PROPEL scrutinizes the essential—but critically overlooked—dynamic underlying these movement-party interactions: the impact of protest on public opinion, in its most consequential form being the party preferences citizens hold.
PROPEL asks: What is it in public opinion that gets affected by protest? And, when and how does this impact materialize? To address these questions, PROPEL develops an original political communication theory of PPO impact. Presented as a causal chain, the theory takes the features of protest (size, disruption, organizer, claim), the mechanisms of mediatization (mass and social media) and politicization (reactions of political actors in the public sphere), and the features of citizen receivers (predispositions) into account as key factors driving four kinds of PPO effects (issue-specific, system-generic, group-identity and party preference).
Empirically, PROPEL leverages an ambitious three stage research approach, moving from the first large N analysis of PPO impact by means of systematically mining extant protest and survey data, over unique tailored panel surveys tackling upcoming protest events, to full control experimental designs unrivalled in drawing causal inferences. Together, this threefold approach overcomes the case-study, sampling and exposure biases plaguing current work, moving the field from whether protest matters, to when and how it does. Doing so, PROPEL investigates the implications of protest in an era of shifting cleavage politics and assesses how an increasingly relevant means of democratic linkage deepens or endangers democracy as we know it.
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.
- social sciences political sciences political communication
- social sciences political sciences government systems democracy
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
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-2025-COG
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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.
3500 Hasselt
Belgium
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.