Periodic Reporting for period 3 - DEMED (Democracy under Threat: How Education can Save it)
Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2025-02-28
One of the key challenges today is a global trend of democratic backsliding. Unexpectedly, contemporary democratic recessions are characterised by bottom-up processes with authoritarian leaders taking power through elections and enjoying popular support. To understand these phenomena and to scientifically study solutions on how to strengthen democracy, the research of DEMED is centred on the role of citizens. The project thereby addresses the premise by Diamond (2008: 294) who argued, “for democracy to endure, their leaders and CITIZENS must internalise the spirit of democracy” (emphasis added). The overall objectives of DEMED, therefore, are to investigate 1) the origin of popular demand for democracy or autocracy, including the role of indoctrination and 2) solutions to build more resilient democratic societies.
In the first 2.5 years of the project, we achieved key milestones and objectives. In total we have published one original dataset, two peer-reviewed journal articles, and one practical handbook for academics and practitioners that has been downloaded over 2,000 times. Further, we have eight working papers (five currently under review) that in total were presented 19 times at conferences, workshops, and invited seminars, and finally, we have another eleven scientific papers that are in preparation with ongoing data collection and/or data analyses. As part of our research, we have developed methodological tools to effectively recruit research participants via social media platforms. We have used these tools for our various studies part of this project and in total almost 100,000 people from 35 countries have participated in our online surveys, which are administered using Qualtrics. We also launched a training webinar series on “Using Social Media as a Research Tool” based on the DEMED research and have organised eleven sessions with about 1,000 participants. The recordings of these sessions have been viewed more than 18,000 times on our YouTube channel.
Here we briefly summarise the key work that we conducted so far.
Firstly, we made theoretical and empirical advances in understanding indoctrination to better understand the causes of democratisation and backsliding. We developed a new theoretical framework on indoctrination and published the draft as a working paper. Based on this theoretical work, we developed and conducted a global expert survey with our partner, the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, to collect the Varieties of Indoctrination (V-Indoc) dataset, which includes innovative measures on education and media policies and practices. The data draws on the information provided by 760 country experts and offers unrivalled coverage of 160 countries from 1945-2021. To achieve the highest data quality and to recruit education experts for this data collection, we contacted over 24,000 scholars in this field and vetted more than 1,000 for their credentials. In complement to our original variables, we further harmonized over 200 additional variables on education, the media, and country background indicators from international organizations and academic projects to facilitate easy analysis of the data. The V-Indoc data set was publicly launched on February 28, 2023, and the online webinar was attended by 171 individuals from various disciplines, including political science, economics, sociology, and education.
Secondly, we have conducted multiple studies to understand how citizens think about democracy and autocracies and the factors that affect these core values that are central to democratic stability. 1) We have started work investigating whether regime indoctrination affects the level of democratic/authoritarian values. 2) We have contributed our resources of collecting survey data in multiple countries to a large consortium that develops new survey indicators to measure democratic support. 3) We ran two survey experiments (one in multiple countries and one in Spain) for two separate papers to understand the impact of authoritarian nostalgia on support for democracy, populism, and radical-right voting. 4) We conducted a survey experiment in Turkey to investigate how citizens living in autocracies structure support for this regime and how this support is affected by economic performance. And 5) in Dec 2022, we started fielding a conjoint experiment in over 30 countries to measure how people think about democracy and the potential trade-off they make with economic and social preferences.
Thirdly, DEMED researches the impact of adult civic education on strengthening citizens’ core values and political behaviour central to democracy. In the first step, we are conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of the existing research in this field. Work on this commenced in the Autumn of 2020 and is still ongoing. In a second step, we developed five original civic educational online videos on the merits and functioning of democracy, which are experimentally tested using national samples recruited through social media. We piloted the videos and their impact on citizens' political attitudes and behaviour in Turkey in June 2022 and are currently in the process to roll out this experiment in more than 30 English- and Spanish-speaking countries from around the world. Based on the data, we are currently working on writing four different scientific articles. The first proof-of-concept study, which was conducted in Tunisia in 2019 and was finalised using DEMED resources was published in the highly-ranked American Journal of Political Science in January 2023.
Here we briefly summarise the key work that we conducted so far.
Firstly, we made theoretical and empirical advances in understanding indoctrination to better understand the causes of democratisation and backsliding. We developed a new theoretical framework on indoctrination and published the draft as a working paper. Based on this theoretical work, we developed and conducted a global expert survey with our partner, the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, to collect the Varieties of Indoctrination (V-Indoc) dataset, which includes innovative measures on education and media policies and practices. The data draws on the information provided by 760 country experts and offers unrivalled coverage of 160 countries from 1945-2021. To achieve the highest data quality and to recruit education experts for this data collection, we contacted over 24,000 scholars in this field and vetted more than 1,000 for their credentials. In complement to our original variables, we further harmonized over 200 additional variables on education, the media, and country background indicators from international organizations and academic projects to facilitate easy analysis of the data. The V-Indoc data set was publicly launched on February 28, 2023, and the online webinar was attended by 171 individuals from various disciplines, including political science, economics, sociology, and education.
Secondly, we have conducted multiple studies to understand how citizens think about democracy and autocracies and the factors that affect these core values that are central to democratic stability. 1) We have started work investigating whether regime indoctrination affects the level of democratic/authoritarian values. 2) We have contributed our resources of collecting survey data in multiple countries to a large consortium that develops new survey indicators to measure democratic support. 3) We ran two survey experiments (one in multiple countries and one in Spain) for two separate papers to understand the impact of authoritarian nostalgia on support for democracy, populism, and radical-right voting. 4) We conducted a survey experiment in Turkey to investigate how citizens living in autocracies structure support for this regime and how this support is affected by economic performance. And 5) in Dec 2022, we started fielding a conjoint experiment in over 30 countries to measure how people think about democracy and the potential trade-off they make with economic and social preferences.
Thirdly, DEMED researches the impact of adult civic education on strengthening citizens’ core values and political behaviour central to democracy. In the first step, we are conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of the existing research in this field. Work on this commenced in the Autumn of 2020 and is still ongoing. In a second step, we developed five original civic educational online videos on the merits and functioning of democracy, which are experimentally tested using national samples recruited through social media. We piloted the videos and their impact on citizens' political attitudes and behaviour in Turkey in June 2022 and are currently in the process to roll out this experiment in more than 30 English- and Spanish-speaking countries from around the world. Based on the data, we are currently working on writing four different scientific articles. The first proof-of-concept study, which was conducted in Tunisia in 2019 and was finalised using DEMED resources was published in the highly-ranked American Journal of Political Science in January 2023.
DEMED has made some methodological contributions, which already appear to make an important impact in the scientific community on how to conduct research via social media. We have used the data collection for our substantive papers to conduct additional methodological work, trying to find optimised ways for using these platforms for research participant recruitment. The first paper was published in the peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal PlosONE. The working paper of this article has already been downloaded more than 1,000 times (https://osf.io/3g74n/(opens in new window)). A second paper on this topic is currently under review.
A further achievement, which we would like to highlight, is the V-Indoc dataset, which we publicly released in February 2023. The V-Indoc data set aims to enable richer and more expansive empirical examinations of the causes and consequences of indoctrination around the world and over time. The data set should be particularly useful for advancing the understanding of how states use education as a political tool. Whereas existing comparative education data mostly measure the quantity of education, or code factual (de jure) information based on primary or secondary archival records, the V-Indoc data capture de facto education practices, covering diverse topics such as school curricula, teachers, and patriotism. This kind of data should allow researchers to directly examine the mechanisms that link education practices to outcomes of interest, which could not be previously tested explicitly due to the absence of requisite data. The data has been nominated for the 2023 Lijphart/Przeworksi/Verba Dataset Award, which is awarded annually by the American Political Science Association.
A further achievement, which we would like to highlight, is the V-Indoc dataset, which we publicly released in February 2023. The V-Indoc data set aims to enable richer and more expansive empirical examinations of the causes and consequences of indoctrination around the world and over time. The data set should be particularly useful for advancing the understanding of how states use education as a political tool. Whereas existing comparative education data mostly measure the quantity of education, or code factual (de jure) information based on primary or secondary archival records, the V-Indoc data capture de facto education practices, covering diverse topics such as school curricula, teachers, and patriotism. This kind of data should allow researchers to directly examine the mechanisms that link education practices to outcomes of interest, which could not be previously tested explicitly due to the absence of requisite data. The data has been nominated for the 2023 Lijphart/Przeworksi/Verba Dataset Award, which is awarded annually by the American Political Science Association.