Project acronym AFRIGOS
Project African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns and Port Cities in Transition
Researcher (PI) Paul Christopher Nugent
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary AFRIGOS investigates the process of 'respacing' Africa, a political drive towards regional and continental integration, on the one hand, and the re-casting of Africa's engagement with the global economy, on the other. This is reflected in unprecedented levels of investment in physical and communications infrastructure, and the outsourcing of key functions of Customs, Immigration and security agencies. AFRIGOS poses the question of how far respacing is genuinely forging institutions that are facilitating or obstructing the movement of people and goods; that are enabling or preventing urban and border spaces from being more effectively and responsively governed; and that take into account the needs of African populations whose livelihoods are rooted in mobility and informality. The principal research questions are approached through a comparative study of port cities, border towns and other strategic nodes situated along the busiest transport corridors in East, Central, West and Southern Africa. These represent sites of remarkable dynamism and cosmopolitanism, which reflects their role in connecting African urban centres to each other and to other global cities.
AFRIGOS considers how governance 'assemblages' are forged at different scales and is explicitly comparative. It works through 5 connected Streams that address specific questions: 1. AGENDA-SETTING is concerned with policy (re-)formulation. 2. PERIPHERAL URBANISM examines governance in border towns and port cities. 3. BORDER WORKERS addresses everyday governance emerging through the interaction of officials and others who make their livelihoods from the border. 4. CONNECTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE looks as the transformative effects of new technologies. 5. PEOPLE & GOODS IN MOTION traces the passage of people and goods and the regimes of regulation to which they are subjected. AFRIGOS contributes to interdisciplinary research on borderland studies, multi-level governance and the everyday state.
Summary
AFRIGOS investigates the process of 'respacing' Africa, a political drive towards regional and continental integration, on the one hand, and the re-casting of Africa's engagement with the global economy, on the other. This is reflected in unprecedented levels of investment in physical and communications infrastructure, and the outsourcing of key functions of Customs, Immigration and security agencies. AFRIGOS poses the question of how far respacing is genuinely forging institutions that are facilitating or obstructing the movement of people and goods; that are enabling or preventing urban and border spaces from being more effectively and responsively governed; and that take into account the needs of African populations whose livelihoods are rooted in mobility and informality. The principal research questions are approached through a comparative study of port cities, border towns and other strategic nodes situated along the busiest transport corridors in East, Central, West and Southern Africa. These represent sites of remarkable dynamism and cosmopolitanism, which reflects their role in connecting African urban centres to each other and to other global cities.
AFRIGOS considers how governance 'assemblages' are forged at different scales and is explicitly comparative. It works through 5 connected Streams that address specific questions: 1. AGENDA-SETTING is concerned with policy (re-)formulation. 2. PERIPHERAL URBANISM examines governance in border towns and port cities. 3. BORDER WORKERS addresses everyday governance emerging through the interaction of officials and others who make their livelihoods from the border. 4. CONNECTIVE INFRASTRUCTURE looks as the transformative effects of new technologies. 5. PEOPLE & GOODS IN MOTION traces the passage of people and goods and the regimes of regulation to which they are subjected. AFRIGOS contributes to interdisciplinary research on borderland studies, multi-level governance and the everyday state.
Max ERC Funding
2 491 364 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31
Project acronym aidsocpro
Project Aiding Social Protection: the political economy of externally financing social policy in developing countries
Researcher (PI) Andrew Martin Fischer
Host Institution (HI) ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2014-STG
Summary This research proposal explores the political economy of international development assistance (aid) directed towards social expenditures, examined through the lens of a particular financial quandary that has been ignored in the literature despite having important economic and political repercussions. The quandary is that aid cannot be directly spent on expenditures denominated in domestic currency. Instead, aid needs to be first converted into domestic currency whereas the foreign exchange provided is used for other purposes, resulting in a process prone to complex politics regarding domestic monetary policy and spending commitments.
The implications require a serious rethink of many of the accepted premises in the political economy of aid and related literatures.
It is urgent to engage in this rethinking given tensions between two dynamics in the current global political economy: a tightening financial cycle facing developing countries versus an increasing emphasis in international development agendas of directing aid towards social expenditures. The financial quandary might exacerbate these tensions, restricting recipient government policy space despite donor commitments of respecting national ownership.
The proposed research examines these implications through the emerging social protection agenda among donors, which serves as an ideal policy case given that social protection expenditures are almost entirely based on domestic currency. This will be researched through a mixed-method comparative case study of six developing countries, combining quantitative analysis of balance of payments and financing constraints with qualitative process tracing based on elite interviews and documentary research. The objective is to re-orient our thinking on these issues for a deeper appreciation of the systemic political and economic challenges facing global redistribution towards poorer countries, particularly with respect to the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals.
Summary
This research proposal explores the political economy of international development assistance (aid) directed towards social expenditures, examined through the lens of a particular financial quandary that has been ignored in the literature despite having important economic and political repercussions. The quandary is that aid cannot be directly spent on expenditures denominated in domestic currency. Instead, aid needs to be first converted into domestic currency whereas the foreign exchange provided is used for other purposes, resulting in a process prone to complex politics regarding domestic monetary policy and spending commitments.
The implications require a serious rethink of many of the accepted premises in the political economy of aid and related literatures.
It is urgent to engage in this rethinking given tensions between two dynamics in the current global political economy: a tightening financial cycle facing developing countries versus an increasing emphasis in international development agendas of directing aid towards social expenditures. The financial quandary might exacerbate these tensions, restricting recipient government policy space despite donor commitments of respecting national ownership.
The proposed research examines these implications through the emerging social protection agenda among donors, which serves as an ideal policy case given that social protection expenditures are almost entirely based on domestic currency. This will be researched through a mixed-method comparative case study of six developing countries, combining quantitative analysis of balance of payments and financing constraints with qualitative process tracing based on elite interviews and documentary research. The objective is to re-orient our thinking on these issues for a deeper appreciation of the systemic political and economic challenges facing global redistribution towards poorer countries, particularly with respect to the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals.
Max ERC Funding
1 459 529 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-05-01, End date: 2020-04-30
Project acronym AnCon
Project A Comparative Anthropology of Conscience, Ethics and Human Rights
Researcher (PI) Tobias William Kelly
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary This project is a comparative anthropology of conscience, ethics and human rights. Numerous international human rights documents formally declare their commitment to protect freedom of conscience. But, what is conscience and how do we know it when we see it? How do we distinguish it from self-interest or fanaticism? And what happens when the concept, often associated with a distinct Christian or liberal history, travels across cultural boundaries? The project will examine the cultural conditions under which claims to conscience are made possible, and the types of claims that are most persuasive when doing so. The project addresses these issues through the comparative analysis of three case studies: British pacifists, Sri Lankan activists, and Soviet dissidents. These case studies have been carefully chosen to provide globally significant, but contrasting examples of contests over the implications of claims to conscience. If claims of conscience are often associated with a specifically liberal and Christian tradition, mid-twentieth century Britain can be said to stand at the centre of that tradition. Sri Lanka represents a particularly fraught post-colonial South Asian counterpoint, wracked by nationalist violence, and influenced by ethical traditions associated with forms of Hinduism and Buddhism. Soviet Russia represents a further contrast, a totalitarian regime, where atheism was the dominant ethical language. Finally, the project will return specifically to international human rights institutions, examining the history of the category of conscience in the UN human rights system. This project will be ground breaking, employing novel methods and analytical insights, in order to producing the first comparative analysis of the cultural and political salience of claims of conscience. In doing so, the research aims to transform our understandings of the limits and potentials of attempts to protect freedom of conscience.
Summary
This project is a comparative anthropology of conscience, ethics and human rights. Numerous international human rights documents formally declare their commitment to protect freedom of conscience. But, what is conscience and how do we know it when we see it? How do we distinguish it from self-interest or fanaticism? And what happens when the concept, often associated with a distinct Christian or liberal history, travels across cultural boundaries? The project will examine the cultural conditions under which claims to conscience are made possible, and the types of claims that are most persuasive when doing so. The project addresses these issues through the comparative analysis of three case studies: British pacifists, Sri Lankan activists, and Soviet dissidents. These case studies have been carefully chosen to provide globally significant, but contrasting examples of contests over the implications of claims to conscience. If claims of conscience are often associated with a specifically liberal and Christian tradition, mid-twentieth century Britain can be said to stand at the centre of that tradition. Sri Lanka represents a particularly fraught post-colonial South Asian counterpoint, wracked by nationalist violence, and influenced by ethical traditions associated with forms of Hinduism and Buddhism. Soviet Russia represents a further contrast, a totalitarian regime, where atheism was the dominant ethical language. Finally, the project will return specifically to international human rights institutions, examining the history of the category of conscience in the UN human rights system. This project will be ground breaking, employing novel methods and analytical insights, in order to producing the first comparative analysis of the cultural and political salience of claims of conscience. In doing so, the research aims to transform our understandings of the limits and potentials of attempts to protect freedom of conscience.
Max ERC Funding
1 457 869 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-08-01, End date: 2020-07-31
Project acronym Becoming Men
Project Becoming Men: Performing responsible masculinities in contemporary urban Africa
Researcher (PI) Eileen Marie Moyer
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary This anthropological study examines the reconfiguration of masculinities in urban Africa over the last 30 years. Focusing on how practices and discourses of empowerment and equality shape male subjectivities, this study builds upon a significant body of nuanced research on masculinities in Africa. Since the mid-1980s academic and public discourses have depicted African masculinity as both precarious and predatory. Economic insecurity, urbanization, shifting gender norms, and growing gender parity have accompanied claims that African masculinity is ‘in crisis’. More recently, new stories of urban men embracing responsible fatherhood, condemning intimate partner violence, and demanding homosexual rights have emerged as exemplars of progressive possibility. To disentangle these seemingly competing claims about African masculinities and shed light on the scientific, political, and economic projects that shape them, this research theorises that the discourses and practices that pathologise and politicise masculinity are simultaneously performing and producing gendered selves on multiple scales in the name of gender equality. Recently, ‘male involvement’ has become a rallying cry throughout the vast global development assemblage, around which governments, NGOs, research networks, activists, and local communities fight gender inequality to promote health, economic development, and human rights. In this research, a range of male-involvement initiatives provides a lens through which to study how masculinities are diversely imagined, (re)configured, and performed through men’s engagements with this assemblage, in both its local and global manifestations. Multi-sited ethnographic research will focus on six cities where the PI has active research ties: Nairobi and Kisumu, Kenya; Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa; and Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, Tanzania.
Summary
This anthropological study examines the reconfiguration of masculinities in urban Africa over the last 30 years. Focusing on how practices and discourses of empowerment and equality shape male subjectivities, this study builds upon a significant body of nuanced research on masculinities in Africa. Since the mid-1980s academic and public discourses have depicted African masculinity as both precarious and predatory. Economic insecurity, urbanization, shifting gender norms, and growing gender parity have accompanied claims that African masculinity is ‘in crisis’. More recently, new stories of urban men embracing responsible fatherhood, condemning intimate partner violence, and demanding homosexual rights have emerged as exemplars of progressive possibility. To disentangle these seemingly competing claims about African masculinities and shed light on the scientific, political, and economic projects that shape them, this research theorises that the discourses and practices that pathologise and politicise masculinity are simultaneously performing and producing gendered selves on multiple scales in the name of gender equality. Recently, ‘male involvement’ has become a rallying cry throughout the vast global development assemblage, around which governments, NGOs, research networks, activists, and local communities fight gender inequality to promote health, economic development, and human rights. In this research, a range of male-involvement initiatives provides a lens through which to study how masculinities are diversely imagined, (re)configured, and performed through men’s engagements with this assemblage, in both its local and global manifestations. Multi-sited ethnographic research will focus on six cities where the PI has active research ties: Nairobi and Kisumu, Kenya; Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa; and Dar es Salaam and Mwanza, Tanzania.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 830 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym COMPEN
Project Penal Policymaking and the prisoner experience: a comparative analysis
Researcher (PI) Benjamin Crewe
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary Recent years have seen renewed interest in the political economy of punishment, yet almost no attention has been given to the factors that translate socio-political arrangements into penal practices or the specific nature of imprisonment in different political-economic systems. Based on research in England & Wales and one Nordic nation, the project goals are to expose the dynamics of the penal state and the nature of penality in countries that are considered ‘exclusionary’ and ‘inclusionary’ respectively in their socio-economic and penal practices. These goals will be achieved through four comparative sub-projects: first, a study of penal policymaking and the ‘penal field’ (the players and processes that shape penal policy and practice); second, an exploration of the texture of imprisonment for women and sex offenders, groups presumed to experience inclusionary and exclusionary penal practices in distinctive ways; third, a study of how these prisoners experience entry into and exit from the system; fourth, a study of the ‘deep end’ imprisonment in both countries.
A central aim is to interrogate widespread assumptions about the relative mildness/severity of penal practices in inclusionary and exclusionary nations. The research will employ an emerging framework that conceptualises the prison experience through notions of ‘depth’, ‘weight’, ‘tightness’ and ‘breadth’. It will foreground the roles of shame and guilt in shaping prisoners’ orientations, concepts that feature in theories of offending and reintegration, but are absent from the sociology of imprisonment. Through the concept of ‘penal consciousness’, the project will also explore the interaction between the punitive intentions of the state and prisoners’ perceptions of the purposes and legitimacy of their punishment. The research will be groundbreaking in several ways, reshaping the field of comparative penology, and linking macro issues of the penal state with the lived realities of the prison landings.
Summary
Recent years have seen renewed interest in the political economy of punishment, yet almost no attention has been given to the factors that translate socio-political arrangements into penal practices or the specific nature of imprisonment in different political-economic systems. Based on research in England & Wales and one Nordic nation, the project goals are to expose the dynamics of the penal state and the nature of penality in countries that are considered ‘exclusionary’ and ‘inclusionary’ respectively in their socio-economic and penal practices. These goals will be achieved through four comparative sub-projects: first, a study of penal policymaking and the ‘penal field’ (the players and processes that shape penal policy and practice); second, an exploration of the texture of imprisonment for women and sex offenders, groups presumed to experience inclusionary and exclusionary penal practices in distinctive ways; third, a study of how these prisoners experience entry into and exit from the system; fourth, a study of the ‘deep end’ imprisonment in both countries.
A central aim is to interrogate widespread assumptions about the relative mildness/severity of penal practices in inclusionary and exclusionary nations. The research will employ an emerging framework that conceptualises the prison experience through notions of ‘depth’, ‘weight’, ‘tightness’ and ‘breadth’. It will foreground the roles of shame and guilt in shaping prisoners’ orientations, concepts that feature in theories of offending and reintegration, but are absent from the sociology of imprisonment. Through the concept of ‘penal consciousness’, the project will also explore the interaction between the punitive intentions of the state and prisoners’ perceptions of the purposes and legitimacy of their punishment. The research will be groundbreaking in several ways, reshaping the field of comparative penology, and linking macro issues of the penal state with the lived realities of the prison landings.
Max ERC Funding
1 964 948 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym COMPROP
Project Computational Propaganda:Investigating the Impact of Algorithms and Bots on Political Discourse in Europe
Researcher (PI) Philip Howard
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2014-CoG
Summary Social media can have an impressive impact on civic engagement and political discourse. Yet increasingly we find political actors using digital media and automated scripts for social control. Computational propaganda—through bots, botnets, and algorithms—has become one of the most concerning impacts of technology innovation. Unfortunately, bot identification and impact analysis are among the most difficult research challenges facing the social and computer sciences.
COMPROP objectives are to advance a) rigorous social and computer science on bot use, b) critical theory on digital manipulation and political outcomes, c) our understanding of how social media propaganda impacts social movement organization and vitality. This project will innovate through i) “real-time” social and information science actively disseminated to journalists, researchers, policy experts and the interested public, ii) the first detailed data set of political bot activity, iii) deepened expertise through cultivation of a regional expert network able to detect bots and their impact in Europe.
COMPROP will achieve this through multi-method and reflexive work packages: 1) international qualitative fieldwork with teams of bot makers and computer scientists working to detect bots; 2a) construction of an original event data set of incidents of political bot use and 2b) treatment of the data set with fuzzy set and traditional statistics; 3) computational theory for detecting political bots and 4) a sustained dissemination strategy. This project will employ state-of-the-art “network ethnography” techniques, use the latest fuzzy set / qualitative comparative statistics, and advance computational theory on bot detection via cutting-edge algorithmic work enhanced by new crowd-sourcing techniques.
Political bots are already being deployed over social networks in Europe. COMPROP will put the best methods in social and computer science to work on the size of the problem and the possible solutions.
Summary
Social media can have an impressive impact on civic engagement and political discourse. Yet increasingly we find political actors using digital media and automated scripts for social control. Computational propaganda—through bots, botnets, and algorithms—has become one of the most concerning impacts of technology innovation. Unfortunately, bot identification and impact analysis are among the most difficult research challenges facing the social and computer sciences.
COMPROP objectives are to advance a) rigorous social and computer science on bot use, b) critical theory on digital manipulation and political outcomes, c) our understanding of how social media propaganda impacts social movement organization and vitality. This project will innovate through i) “real-time” social and information science actively disseminated to journalists, researchers, policy experts and the interested public, ii) the first detailed data set of political bot activity, iii) deepened expertise through cultivation of a regional expert network able to detect bots and their impact in Europe.
COMPROP will achieve this through multi-method and reflexive work packages: 1) international qualitative fieldwork with teams of bot makers and computer scientists working to detect bots; 2a) construction of an original event data set of incidents of political bot use and 2b) treatment of the data set with fuzzy set and traditional statistics; 3) computational theory for detecting political bots and 4) a sustained dissemination strategy. This project will employ state-of-the-art “network ethnography” techniques, use the latest fuzzy set / qualitative comparative statistics, and advance computational theory on bot detection via cutting-edge algorithmic work enhanced by new crowd-sourcing techniques.
Political bots are already being deployed over social networks in Europe. COMPROP will put the best methods in social and computer science to work on the size of the problem and the possible solutions.
Max ERC Funding
1 980 112 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31
Project acronym CORPNET
Project Corporate Network Governance: Power, Ownership and Control in Contemporary Global Capitalism
Researcher (PI) Eelke Michiel Heemskerk
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2014-STG
Summary The character of global business networks has long fascinated but continues to divide scholars of global markets and governance. A well-established perspective looks at the changes in global networks and sees an emerging cohesive transnational capitalist class. However, a rival line of inquiry sees the rise of competing corporate elites. Scholars also disagree on the origins of emergent patterns of corporate networks. Do they reflect institutional preferences of corporate and political elites? Or are they unintended by-products of corporate conduct? Third, there are fundamental differences of opinion on how patterns of global corporate ownership relate to actual power in the governance of such networks.
Past research has been unable to adjudicate these debates in part due to insufficient data clarifying the full breadth of corporate interactions globally, and insufficient analytical tools for analysing that breadth. This project seeks to do what has so far eluded existing scholarship: to fully explore the global network of corporate ownership and control as a complex system. Network structures may appear to be the result of a grand design at macro level, but are the outcome of the sum of the actions of a large set of interdependent actors. Using cutting-edge network science methods, the project explores for the first time the largest database on ownership and control covering over 100 million firms. Exploiting the longitudinal richness of the new data in combination with state-of-the-art methods and techniques makes it possible to model and empirically test generating mechanisms that drive network formation.
By doing so the project bridges the hitherto disjoint fields of social network studies in socio-economics and political science on the one hand, and the growing body of literature on network science in physics, computer science and complexity studies on the other.
Summary
The character of global business networks has long fascinated but continues to divide scholars of global markets and governance. A well-established perspective looks at the changes in global networks and sees an emerging cohesive transnational capitalist class. However, a rival line of inquiry sees the rise of competing corporate elites. Scholars also disagree on the origins of emergent patterns of corporate networks. Do they reflect institutional preferences of corporate and political elites? Or are they unintended by-products of corporate conduct? Third, there are fundamental differences of opinion on how patterns of global corporate ownership relate to actual power in the governance of such networks.
Past research has been unable to adjudicate these debates in part due to insufficient data clarifying the full breadth of corporate interactions globally, and insufficient analytical tools for analysing that breadth. This project seeks to do what has so far eluded existing scholarship: to fully explore the global network of corporate ownership and control as a complex system. Network structures may appear to be the result of a grand design at macro level, but are the outcome of the sum of the actions of a large set of interdependent actors. Using cutting-edge network science methods, the project explores for the first time the largest database on ownership and control covering over 100 million firms. Exploiting the longitudinal richness of the new data in combination with state-of-the-art methods and techniques makes it possible to model and empirically test generating mechanisms that drive network formation.
By doing so the project bridges the hitherto disjoint fields of social network studies in socio-economics and political science on the one hand, and the growing body of literature on network science in physics, computer science and complexity studies on the other.
Max ERC Funding
1 497 764 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym DATACTIVE
Project Data activism: The politics of big data according to civil society
Researcher (PI) Stefania Milan
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2014-STG
Summary With the diffusion of ‘big data’, citizens become increasingly aware of the critical role of information in modern societies. This awareness gives rise to new social practices rooted in technology and data, which I term ‘data activism’. While activists see massive data collection by governments and businesses as a challenge to civil rights, big data also offer new opportunities for collective action.
This research will investigate civil society’s engagement with massive data collection by addressing three research questions: How do citizens resist massive data collection by means of technical fixes (re-active data activism)? How do social movements use big data to foster social change (pro-active data activism)? How does data activism affect the dynamics of transnational civil society, and transnational advocacy networks in particular?
The project will develop a multidisciplinary conceptual framework integrating social movement studies, science and technology studies and international relations. It will analyze organizational forms, action repertoires and the enabling role of software in data activism, and will identify emerging structures and strategies of transnational advocacy networks. Data will be collected via qualitative (interviews with activists, field observations, infrastructure ethnography on software platforms) and computational methods (such as data mining in online repositories).
This research is groundbreaking in four ways: 1) by analyzing civil society’s engagement with massive data collection, it evaluates risks and promises of big data; 2) by addressing an uncharted but rapidly growing field of human action, it sets the basis for understanding future civic engagement; 3) by integrating adjacent disciplines that seldom interact, it magnifies their ability to understand the interplay between society, information, technology and power; 4) by developing dedicated data collection tools, it adds to methodological innovation in big-data analytics.
Summary
With the diffusion of ‘big data’, citizens become increasingly aware of the critical role of information in modern societies. This awareness gives rise to new social practices rooted in technology and data, which I term ‘data activism’. While activists see massive data collection by governments and businesses as a challenge to civil rights, big data also offer new opportunities for collective action.
This research will investigate civil society’s engagement with massive data collection by addressing three research questions: How do citizens resist massive data collection by means of technical fixes (re-active data activism)? How do social movements use big data to foster social change (pro-active data activism)? How does data activism affect the dynamics of transnational civil society, and transnational advocacy networks in particular?
The project will develop a multidisciplinary conceptual framework integrating social movement studies, science and technology studies and international relations. It will analyze organizational forms, action repertoires and the enabling role of software in data activism, and will identify emerging structures and strategies of transnational advocacy networks. Data will be collected via qualitative (interviews with activists, field observations, infrastructure ethnography on software platforms) and computational methods (such as data mining in online repositories).
This research is groundbreaking in four ways: 1) by analyzing civil society’s engagement with massive data collection, it evaluates risks and promises of big data; 2) by addressing an uncharted but rapidly growing field of human action, it sets the basis for understanding future civic engagement; 3) by integrating adjacent disciplines that seldom interact, it magnifies their ability to understand the interplay between society, information, technology and power; 4) by developing dedicated data collection tools, it adds to methodological innovation in big-data analytics.
Max ERC Funding
1 498 352 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
Project acronym DEMSEC
Project Democratic Secrecy: A Philosophical Study of the Role of Secrecy in Democratic Politics
Researcher (PI) Dorota Maria Mokrosinska
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2014-STG
Summary Transparency in politics is the mantra of democratic governance. Should state secrecy, such as classified intelligence programs or closed-door political bargaining be abolished? Despite its revered status, many feel that complete transparency would undermine effective functioning of governments. Take the public responses to the Wikileaks disclosures: many of the disclosures were assessed favorably, but few people defended the idea of total transparency that inspired them.
If both complete secrecy and complete transparency are to be rejected, what ratio of secrecy and transparency in politics should we seek? Democratic theory leaves this question unanswered: no systematic assessment of the role of secrecy in a democracy is available. This project solves this problem. By employing the tools of analytic political philosophy, social choice and game theory, we develop a theory of democratic secrecy centred around three theses:
1. Secrecy in exercising executive and legislative power can be democratically authorized;
2. Secrecy protects the integrity of democratic decision-making processes;
3. Balancing secrecy and transparency is an exercise in balancing the values underlying democratic authority and democratic decision-making mechanisms.
The results of this philosophical study set a new course in democratic theory by demonstrating that democratic governance requires less openness than traditionally assumed. To complement the theory, criteria for political accountability for wielding political secrets and criteria for assessing responsibility for their unauthorized disclosure are designed. Our results have practical relevance: understanding when and why secrecy is morally acceptable may change the policy approach to transparency provisions, and provide a better fit between the “public right to know” and the needs of governments. Scholars from Poland and the Netherlands assess the use of governmental secrecy in these two, respectively old and new, EU member states.
Summary
Transparency in politics is the mantra of democratic governance. Should state secrecy, such as classified intelligence programs or closed-door political bargaining be abolished? Despite its revered status, many feel that complete transparency would undermine effective functioning of governments. Take the public responses to the Wikileaks disclosures: many of the disclosures were assessed favorably, but few people defended the idea of total transparency that inspired them.
If both complete secrecy and complete transparency are to be rejected, what ratio of secrecy and transparency in politics should we seek? Democratic theory leaves this question unanswered: no systematic assessment of the role of secrecy in a democracy is available. This project solves this problem. By employing the tools of analytic political philosophy, social choice and game theory, we develop a theory of democratic secrecy centred around three theses:
1. Secrecy in exercising executive and legislative power can be democratically authorized;
2. Secrecy protects the integrity of democratic decision-making processes;
3. Balancing secrecy and transparency is an exercise in balancing the values underlying democratic authority and democratic decision-making mechanisms.
The results of this philosophical study set a new course in democratic theory by demonstrating that democratic governance requires less openness than traditionally assumed. To complement the theory, criteria for political accountability for wielding political secrets and criteria for assessing responsibility for their unauthorized disclosure are designed. Our results have practical relevance: understanding when and why secrecy is morally acceptable may change the policy approach to transparency provisions, and provide a better fit between the “public right to know” and the needs of governments. Scholars from Poland and the Netherlands assess the use of governmental secrecy in these two, respectively old and new, EU member states.
Max ERC Funding
1 075 109 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-08-01, End date: 2020-07-31
Project acronym DynaMech
Project Linking Transcription Factor Binding Dynamics to Promoter Output
Researcher (PI) Frank Charles Patrick Holstege
Host Institution (HI) PRINSES MAXIMA CENTRUM VOOR KINDERONCOLOGIE BV
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS2, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary "Transcription is a stepwise process that is inherently dynamic. Different types of transcription factors are continuously interacting off and onto DNA, ""searching"" for appropriate interactions - each bringing different functions into play. The rates with which these factors interact with chromatin, their association and dissociation rates, dictate the outcome of ""steady-state"", developmental and rapidly responsive regulatory programs. Given the central role of transcription factors in biology and disease, it is remarkable that we know next to nothing about the dynamics of transcription factor-chromatin interactions.
The objective of DynaMech is to implement technologies that will allow us to measure transcription factor binding dynamics (on- and off-rates) genome-wide, at binding site resolution. This will be applied to gain a systematic understanding of how these dynamics effect the function of transcription factors. Analyses will encompass components of the RNA polymerase II pre-initiation complex in yeast, as well as a comprehensive set of gene-specific transcription factors. For each of these factors we will determine the on- and off-rates genome-wide as well as the degree to which the mRNA synthesis rates from all promoters are dependent on the factor. This data will all be analysed in the context of nucleosome binding dynamics to understand the general principles of how chromatin-transcripton factor binding dynamics shape regulatory mechanisms. Through modelling promoter output and by additional perturbations, these principles will be explored to understand which properties of regulatory DNA determine differential transcription factor dynamics thereby causing differential promoter behaviour.
We are as yet far from predicting regulatory outcome from regulatory sequence. The long-term aim of this work is to bring this closer, by bringing into play the almost completely unexplored aspect of transcription factor-chromatin interaction dynamics.
"
Summary
"Transcription is a stepwise process that is inherently dynamic. Different types of transcription factors are continuously interacting off and onto DNA, ""searching"" for appropriate interactions - each bringing different functions into play. The rates with which these factors interact with chromatin, their association and dissociation rates, dictate the outcome of ""steady-state"", developmental and rapidly responsive regulatory programs. Given the central role of transcription factors in biology and disease, it is remarkable that we know next to nothing about the dynamics of transcription factor-chromatin interactions.
The objective of DynaMech is to implement technologies that will allow us to measure transcription factor binding dynamics (on- and off-rates) genome-wide, at binding site resolution. This will be applied to gain a systematic understanding of how these dynamics effect the function of transcription factors. Analyses will encompass components of the RNA polymerase II pre-initiation complex in yeast, as well as a comprehensive set of gene-specific transcription factors. For each of these factors we will determine the on- and off-rates genome-wide as well as the degree to which the mRNA synthesis rates from all promoters are dependent on the factor. This data will all be analysed in the context of nucleosome binding dynamics to understand the general principles of how chromatin-transcripton factor binding dynamics shape regulatory mechanisms. Through modelling promoter output and by additional perturbations, these principles will be explored to understand which properties of regulatory DNA determine differential transcription factor dynamics thereby causing differential promoter behaviour.
We are as yet far from predicting regulatory outcome from regulatory sequence. The long-term aim of this work is to bring this closer, by bringing into play the almost completely unexplored aspect of transcription factor-chromatin interaction dynamics.
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Max ERC Funding
2 132 500 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-02-01, End date: 2021-01-31
