Reconstructing Democracy in Times of Crisis: A Voter-Centred Perspective

Project Information

REDEM

Grant agreement ID: 870996

DOI

10.3030/870996

Project closed

EC signature date 13 November 2019

Start date 1 December 2019

End date 31 July 2023

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Europe In A Changing World - Inclusive, Innovative And Reflective Societies

Total cost

€ 1 496 783,75

EU contribution

€ 1 495 783,75

Coordinated by

FONDATION NATIONALE DES SCIENCES POLITIQUES
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - REDEM (Reconstructing Democracy in Times of Crisis: A Voter-Centred Perspective)

Reporting period: 2021-06-01 to 2023-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Elections are supposed to legitimise governments. However, it is elections themselves whose legitimacy seems to be in question. Voters are increasingly unwilling to vote, even at national elections and, when they do, are attracted to parties whose stated platforms and appeal seem flatly at odds with democratic norms of freedom and equality. These developments raise a question-mark over the long-term capacity of elections to legitimize political institutions and policies in Europe.
A response to the crisis of legitimacy surrounding democratic elections needs to understand the ethical dimensions of voting as these present themselves to citizens as voters. The general goal of REDEM, therefore, is to create a network of normative political theorists as well as of social scientific and non-academic experts on electoral democracy and voting behaviour in order to develop a voter-centred perspective on the ethics of voting. This voter-centred perspective on voting will offer novel approaches to diagnosing and ameliorating the problems of representative democracy in Europe.
The objectives of the REDEM project are: 1. To support research into the ethics of voting in diverse electoral settings 2. To describe and analyse the moral and political choices which citizens typically face at elections; 3. To find new ways of engaging citizens with elections; 4. To educate by developing materials written in a non-technical language, designed to help school-children and teachers, adult voters and policymakers engage with the ethical dimensions of voting; 5. To design and experiment with prototypes of game-based interactive materials in order to attract and interest citizens in voting; 6. To engage by organising international workshops and conferences bringing together academic and non-academic partners and policymakers.

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

The work and the results achieved by the project over its first 18 months are significant, important and considerable:
- The project has organised 4 international workshops with a world-wide speaker participation and audience on the challenges of electoral democracy from a voter perspective. The events (www.redem-h2020.eu) hosted by the Sciences Po Paris, the University of Leiden, the University of Bucharest and the University of Genoa.
- The project has created and is maintaining a website with materials of interest to thousands of users.
- The project has created a platform for the exchange of opinions, interaction and collaboration between tens of organisations in Europe and thousands of users worldwide.
- One of the major outputs of the project so far are two on-line large databases with thousands of references to materials on democracy and voting. The materials cover all major aspects of this research area, as well as links to relevant resources such as news, electoral databases and media.
- REDEM has released 5 major synthetic reports which provide an extended overview and analysis of the ethical challenges of voting.
- The project has created educational materials for young students to help them familiarise themselves with the challenges of voting. Based on these materials teachers have conducted debates in schools with hundreds of students in Italy and Romania on various aspects of voting and democracy and the associated ethical challenges.
- The consortium has proposed and offered solutions to civil society organisations for the engagement citizens on electoral issues. One of consortium's important contributions in this direction has been the support for the todayIvote civic tech start-up to reach a level where it has been accepted in a prestigious accelerator and where it attracts considerable interest and a growing user base.
Research conducted so far as part of the project has been presented in numerous international workshops and conferences and has garnered considerable interest and appreciation. Based on this feedback several papers based on the project work are under review or have been already accepted in prestigious political science publications.

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)

The project has achieved important innovations on several fronts:
1. REDEM has released 5 key reports which provide unique overviews on various aspects related to ethical voting challenges:
a. A first report provides a synthesis of democratic political systems and institutions in Europe and argues for the necessity to design electoral institutions which minimize, as far as possible, the ethical burdens of electoral democracy for voters and distribute them more fairly within each country’s population.
b. A second report discusses the ethically relevant dimensions of different election types, exemplifies their impact on elections and presents some considerations on heuristic shortcuts that might help voters faced with the ethical challenges of voting.
c. A third report presents a synthesis of different philosophical conceptions of democracy and their implications for the ethics of electoral participation. The report shows that existing research on the ethics of voting has paid insufficient attention to minimalist, deliberative, and counter-majoritarian conceptions of democracy and argues that a voting ethics compatible with these views of democracy will need to treat voters as one element within a complex political structure, and tailor any ethical prescriptions and permissions in light of voters’ distinctive place within democracy.
d. A fourth report offers a detailed synthetic overview on the challenges facing democracy in Europe, based on a comprehensive review of academic sources, policy briefs and media articles, with special attention to the interval 2019-2021. This report offers a roadmap to study challenges that face European countries taken collectively and individually.
e. A fifth report describes the ethical considerations relevant to voter choices, including reasons relevant to whether to vote and, if one votes, what criteria one should take into account. It compares and contrasts a voter’s perspective on the ethics of voting with alternative perspectives (those of politicians, of social scientists) and shows that the former are not reducible to the latter. The report highlights the need to pay attention to the moral and political dilemmas that arise from the different democratic functions that elections can serve.
2. REDEM has succeeded in creating a large and heterogeneous network of organisations capable of creating, promoting and supporting solutions to the ethical challenges of voting. True to its mission as a coordination and support action, REDEM brings together research groups, electoral institutions, civil society organisations, electoral policy-making units at national and European level and civic tech.
3. In response to the special conditions created by the Covid-19 pandemic, the project consortium has succeeded in creating a functional organisation platform which has allowed all activities to be transferred and to be implemented in a remote interaction mode. The remote collaboration framework created by REDEM is based on innovative technical solutions and has been instrumental in the creation of the extended and viable network of external partners described above which currently reaches tens of organisations throughout Europe.
4. REDEM has been one of the very few projects which in its first 18 months has supported a civic tech start-up - todayIvote - to get off the ground and be included in a prestigious accelerator programme.

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