Research

This horizon consortium received 3M-euro funding in the call for the Democratic governance for times of disruptive changes to the social contract, HORIZON-CL2-2023-DEMOCRACY-01-06. The collaboration between Anna Björk and Demos Helsinki (DRI) team and Emilia Palonen from HEPP. The interim leader for the project starting 1 February is Szilvia Horváth who joins University of Helsinki from ELTE in Hungary.

A social contract is a political-theoretical concept which describes the (fictive) basic agreement between the members of a polity on the principles of this polity. There is a long legacy of various definitions of a social contract in political theory. There is also a long historical legacy of practiced social contracts, in countries inside and outside the European union. To grasp the impact of the social contract between individuals and groups as well as between the demos and the state across societies, it is crucial to understand the concept in plural and analyse how definitions and practises shape also the scope, implications, and resilience of social contracts in the face of societal transformations. This requires a high-level of context sensitivity and ability to shift between local, regional, national, and transnational settings. Based on the analyses of the limitations of, and challenges to the social contracts in political theorising and practices, CO3 aims at developing and promoting a more democratic, more inclusive and more open model of social contracts, which manifest political and social resilience in the face of major societal challenges, crises, and anti-democratic tendencies. Drawing from 8 empirical case studies in EU member states, and in 3 non-member states, CO3 researchers safeguards and mechanisms for resilient social contracts overtime. While the theoretical ambition of the CO3 project is to analyse how the contemporary theories of the social contract contribute to our understanding of the social contracts in the current crises-driven European political environment, the empirical ambition is to investigate contradictions and tensions between practices, narratives and lived experiences in social contracts across EUrope through concrete cases. As a result, CO3 generates evidence-based knowledge on the safeguards and mechanisms for promoting resilient social contracts, which support citizen involvement and democracy across EUrope.

Partners:

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO (Coordinator until late 2024)

UPPSALA UNIVERSITET - UU

CENTRO DE ESTUDOS SOCIAIS - CES

FONDATSIYA TSENTAR ZA LIBERALNI STRATEGII - CENTER FOR LIBERAL STRATEGIES FOUNDATION

DEMOS RESEARCH INSTITUTE OY - DEMOS RESEARCH INSTITUTE (Coordinator from late 2024)

HOCHSCHULE FULDA-UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES - HOCHSCHULE FULDA-UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES

ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITESI - BILGI

SVEUCILISTE U ZAGREBU FAKULTET POLITICKIH ZNANOSTI - FPZG

THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF PARIS

HIGHER EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENT UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY - Ukrainian Catholic University (Joining)

This consortium received 2.8M euro EU funding the emotional politics of democracies call at the HORIZON-CL2-2023-DEMOCRACY-01-04. The PLEDGE project preparation was led by Mikko Salmela together with Ruta Kazlauskaite and Tereza Capelos from the UK. The coordinator for this project starting on 1 February is Emilia Palonen from HEPP, in collaboration with Mikko Salmela who takes over from 2025.

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.

Partners:

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO (COORDINATOR)

LUNDS UNIVERSITET

FREIE UNIVERSITAET BERLIN - Freie Universitaet Berlin

ETHNIKO KAI KAPODISTRIAKO PANEPISTIMIO ATHINON - UOA

UNIWERSYTET WARSZAWSKI - UNIWARSAW

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL - VUB

UNIVERSITAT DE VALENCIA - UVEG

INTERNATIONAL PSYCHOANALYTIC UNIVERSITY BERLIN GGMBH

ISTANBUL BILGI UNIVERSITESI - BILGI

TARSADALOMTUDOMANYI KUTATOKOZPONT - CENTRE FOR SOCIAL SCIENCES

PETRO MOHYLA BLACK SEA NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - PMBSNU

STIMMULI FOR SOCIAL CHANGE - STIMMULI

And

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON

THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM – UoB

THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY AISBL - The Democratic Society (TBC)