Project acronym BACKLASH
Project Climate Backlash: Contentious Reactions to Policy Action
Researcher (PI) James Patterson
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Country Netherlands
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Growing calls for ambitious climate change action are challenging for governance because such action can trigger backlash. Why do societies sometimes accept costly public good action, but at other times push back suddenly and reject it? Abrupt and impactful reactions to climate policy actions are increasingly witnessed: Climate Backlash. Examples include the Yellow Vests in France, and acrimonious policy rollbacks in Canada and Australia. Climate change governance theory is, so far, unable to account for such dynamics, which undermines prospects for ambitious climate action. The challenge of BACKLASH is to empirically study, and ultimately to theorise, this type of contentious reaction to policy action. The aim of BACKLASH is to explain why, how, and under which conditions climate backlash emerges in advanced industrial democracies. BACKLASH will: 1) Identify the configurational drivers of climate backlash across varying national contexts, 2) Determine the mechanisms and processes by which climate backlash occurs within specific national contexts, 3) Establish whether and how climate backlash diffuses within and between countries, and 4) Explain the forms (i.e. institutionalised, non-institutionalised) and variation of climate backlash across contexts. To accomplish this, BACKLASH will conduct a two-level study of 36 OECD countries, and 4 in-depth national cases of climate policy, namely Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom. BACKLASH is ground-breaking in: 1) pioneering an original interdisciplinary lens for studying climate backlash, 2) advancing an ambitious mixed-methods research design, and applying and testing new innovations in cross-case analysis, and 3) tackling a new combination of challenging empirical circumstances confronting the field of climate governance with profound implications for policy-society dynamics. This will open up new frontiers for the interdisciplinary study of backlash to policy in addressing contentious collective problems.
Summary
Growing calls for ambitious climate change action are challenging for governance because such action can trigger backlash. Why do societies sometimes accept costly public good action, but at other times push back suddenly and reject it? Abrupt and impactful reactions to climate policy actions are increasingly witnessed: Climate Backlash. Examples include the Yellow Vests in France, and acrimonious policy rollbacks in Canada and Australia. Climate change governance theory is, so far, unable to account for such dynamics, which undermines prospects for ambitious climate action. The challenge of BACKLASH is to empirically study, and ultimately to theorise, this type of contentious reaction to policy action. The aim of BACKLASH is to explain why, how, and under which conditions climate backlash emerges in advanced industrial democracies. BACKLASH will: 1) Identify the configurational drivers of climate backlash across varying national contexts, 2) Determine the mechanisms and processes by which climate backlash occurs within specific national contexts, 3) Establish whether and how climate backlash diffuses within and between countries, and 4) Explain the forms (i.e. institutionalised, non-institutionalised) and variation of climate backlash across contexts. To accomplish this, BACKLASH will conduct a two-level study of 36 OECD countries, and 4 in-depth national cases of climate policy, namely Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom. BACKLASH is ground-breaking in: 1) pioneering an original interdisciplinary lens for studying climate backlash, 2) advancing an ambitious mixed-methods research design, and applying and testing new innovations in cross-case analysis, and 3) tackling a new combination of challenging empirical circumstances confronting the field of climate governance with profound implications for policy-society dynamics. This will open up new frontiers for the interdisciplinary study of backlash to policy in addressing contentious collective problems.
Max ERC Funding
1 491 458 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym CitizenGap
Project Legal Identity for All?
Researcher (PI) Imke HARBERS
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Country Netherlands
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Although we often think of undocumented persons as migrants or non-citizens, about one in seven people across the globe lack documents such as birth certificates, ID cards or passports to prove their legal identity, and thus their status as citizens in their own country. This gap between citizens with and without state-recognized documents is just as consequential as the distinction between citizens and non-citizens.
Existing approaches portray the citizenship gap – the difference between legal status and the ability of citizens to document their claim to this status – as the apolitical by-product of deficiencies in governance. The proposed research project – CitizenGap – aims to change how scholars and policy-makers think about achieving one of the key targets of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals “By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” by developing a novel political understanding.
The project establishes the citizenship gap as a field of social scientific research, and pursues two main questions: (1) How and why do states invest in civil registration? (2) How and why do citizens decide to obtain documents? To understand why millions of citizens are undocumented, it is crucial to remember that citizenship is not only a legal status, but first and foremost a political relationship between states and the populations they govern. CitizenGap advances a strategic theory that seriously considers the incentives of states and citizens in the politics of civil registration. Empirically, the project contributes a comprehensive, cross-national measure that captures the number and characteristics of undocumented citizens, including those at risk of having their citizenship status questioned. The project analyzes the origins and nature of the citizenship gap in India and Mexico with a mixed methods design, combining demographic and spatial (GIS) datasets with fieldwork, archival sources, interviews and focus groups
Summary
Although we often think of undocumented persons as migrants or non-citizens, about one in seven people across the globe lack documents such as birth certificates, ID cards or passports to prove their legal identity, and thus their status as citizens in their own country. This gap between citizens with and without state-recognized documents is just as consequential as the distinction between citizens and non-citizens.
Existing approaches portray the citizenship gap – the difference between legal status and the ability of citizens to document their claim to this status – as the apolitical by-product of deficiencies in governance. The proposed research project – CitizenGap – aims to change how scholars and policy-makers think about achieving one of the key targets of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals “By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” by developing a novel political understanding.
The project establishes the citizenship gap as a field of social scientific research, and pursues two main questions: (1) How and why do states invest in civil registration? (2) How and why do citizens decide to obtain documents? To understand why millions of citizens are undocumented, it is crucial to remember that citizenship is not only a legal status, but first and foremost a political relationship between states and the populations they govern. CitizenGap advances a strategic theory that seriously considers the incentives of states and citizens in the politics of civil registration. Empirically, the project contributes a comprehensive, cross-national measure that captures the number and characteristics of undocumented citizens, including those at risk of having their citizenship status questioned. The project analyzes the origins and nature of the citizenship gap in India and Mexico with a mixed methods design, combining demographic and spatial (GIS) datasets with fieldwork, archival sources, interviews and focus groups
Max ERC Funding
1 499 996 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-06-01, End date: 2026-05-31
Project acronym CoChina
Project Collaborative Planning in China: Authoritarian Institutions, New Media, Power Relations, and Public Spheres
Researcher (PI) Yanliu LIN
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Country Netherlands
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Collaborative planning has become an effective means to address conflicts of interest in urban renewal and environmental management in China. However, the egalitarian principles that ground collaborative planning theory call into question its validity in China. The theory emphasizes consensus building in which various stakeholders come together for dialogue to address controversial issues. It rests on three assumptions: democratic institutions, neutral power and communicative rationality. These assumptions, which are often debated in the Western context, should clearly be questioned in the Chinese context, due to authoritarian institutions and the challenging nature of power relations. Therefore, the aim of my project is to examine the practices of collaborative planning in China and identify the challenges to the assumptions of the theory. I will develop three novel tracks for examination and reconceptualization. The first will analyze how Chinese political and planning systems, social capital and culture affect the interactive processes. The second will apply network theory and social network analysis to analyze various types of power relations between government, planners, civil society and citizens. The third will identify various forms of online public spheres and how they interact with offline public spheres to affect communicative and agonistic approaches to collaborative planning. The research will employ an innovative mixed methods approach combining critical discourse analysis, data mining, computer-assisted content analysis, and social network analysis to research a wide range of case studies.
My project will lead to a new understanding of collaborative planning in China, and a reconceptualization of the collaborative planning theory to make it suitable for authoritarian contexts.
Summary
Collaborative planning has become an effective means to address conflicts of interest in urban renewal and environmental management in China. However, the egalitarian principles that ground collaborative planning theory call into question its validity in China. The theory emphasizes consensus building in which various stakeholders come together for dialogue to address controversial issues. It rests on three assumptions: democratic institutions, neutral power and communicative rationality. These assumptions, which are often debated in the Western context, should clearly be questioned in the Chinese context, due to authoritarian institutions and the challenging nature of power relations. Therefore, the aim of my project is to examine the practices of collaborative planning in China and identify the challenges to the assumptions of the theory. I will develop three novel tracks for examination and reconceptualization. The first will analyze how Chinese political and planning systems, social capital and culture affect the interactive processes. The second will apply network theory and social network analysis to analyze various types of power relations between government, planners, civil society and citizens. The third will identify various forms of online public spheres and how they interact with offline public spheres to affect communicative and agonistic approaches to collaborative planning. The research will employ an innovative mixed methods approach combining critical discourse analysis, data mining, computer-assisted content analysis, and social network analysis to research a wide range of case studies.
My project will lead to a new understanding of collaborative planning in China, and a reconceptualization of the collaborative planning theory to make it suitable for authoritarian contexts.
Max ERC Funding
1 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym COMPASS
Project Is environmental justice necessary for human well-being? Comparative analysis of certification schemes, inclusive business, and solidarity economy strategies
Researcher (PI) Christoph Oberlack
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAET BERN
Country Switzerland
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Unprecedented concentration in agri-food value chains is reinforcing global inequality. Waves of land grabbing threaten the livelihoods of millions. Reshaping the effects of agricultural investment, land use, and trade on human well-being is thus an urgent challenge. Certification schemes (CS) such as “Fairtrade” have become a common strategy to meet this challenge. However, accumulating evidence shows that many CS have limited effects on well-being. Inclusive business (IB) and solidarity economy (SE) strategies are emerging alternatives. Inclusiveness and solidarity are widely believed to enhance well-being, but evidence and theories disprove this common belief. Environmental justice may be a necessary condition to understand and reshape the effects of CS, IB, and SE on well-being. However, lack of reliable data and comparative analyses limits understanding of these links. COMPASS will tackle these challenges. This project aims to demonstrate how environmental justice influences the effects of CS, IB, and SE strategies on human well-being. COMPASS is organized in four work packages (WPs) and focuses on the cocoa and coffee sectors of Peru and Switzerland. WP1 surveys organizations (n=120) to compare their instruments used in CS, IB, and SE strategies. WP2 surveys households (n=840) and uses set-theoretic and process-tracing methodology to explain the effects of CS, IB, and SE on well-being. WP3 identifies the rules that organizations (n=18) create to regulate land use, investment and trade, assesses their environmental justice, and explains how they influence well-being. WP4 generates context-sensitive generalizations of these effects, and it tests and advances pertinent theories. COMPASS breaks new ground by systematically comparing CS, IB, and SE strategies and their effects on human well-being. It develops a new strand of environmental justice research on private-sector strategies and it tests the transformative potential of environmental justice.
Summary
Unprecedented concentration in agri-food value chains is reinforcing global inequality. Waves of land grabbing threaten the livelihoods of millions. Reshaping the effects of agricultural investment, land use, and trade on human well-being is thus an urgent challenge. Certification schemes (CS) such as “Fairtrade” have become a common strategy to meet this challenge. However, accumulating evidence shows that many CS have limited effects on well-being. Inclusive business (IB) and solidarity economy (SE) strategies are emerging alternatives. Inclusiveness and solidarity are widely believed to enhance well-being, but evidence and theories disprove this common belief. Environmental justice may be a necessary condition to understand and reshape the effects of CS, IB, and SE on well-being. However, lack of reliable data and comparative analyses limits understanding of these links. COMPASS will tackle these challenges. This project aims to demonstrate how environmental justice influences the effects of CS, IB, and SE strategies on human well-being. COMPASS is organized in four work packages (WPs) and focuses on the cocoa and coffee sectors of Peru and Switzerland. WP1 surveys organizations (n=120) to compare their instruments used in CS, IB, and SE strategies. WP2 surveys households (n=840) and uses set-theoretic and process-tracing methodology to explain the effects of CS, IB, and SE on well-being. WP3 identifies the rules that organizations (n=18) create to regulate land use, investment and trade, assesses their environmental justice, and explains how they influence well-being. WP4 generates context-sensitive generalizations of these effects, and it tests and advances pertinent theories. COMPASS breaks new ground by systematically comparing CS, IB, and SE strategies and their effects on human well-being. It develops a new strand of environmental justice research on private-sector strategies and it tests the transformative potential of environmental justice.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 250 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-03-01, End date: 2026-02-28
Project acronym CURIAE VIRIDES
Project How the third wave of global judicial (and social) activism is filling ecological governance gaps and challenging the liability-remedy paradigm.
Researcher (PI) Claudia Liliana Lizarazo Rodriguez
Host Institution (HI) VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL
Country Belgium
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary This project conceptualises the worldwide progressive transformation of human rights litigation into more ecocentric litigation and the emerging but important role of (activist) courts in addressing ecological governance gaps. In addition, it will inquire how this greening of social litigation challenges the legal concept of attribution of liability in transnational lawsuits and influences access to effective remedy for victims of transnational ecological harms. The main hypothesis is that ecocentric lawsuits mostly seek to nudge the choice architects of ecological governance, i.e. policymakers and global value chain (GVCs) coordinating firms, to implement effective actions for the sustainability of ecosystems while not necessarily seeking concrete remedies for victims. Although the effectiveness of this activism could be questioned by considering that only a minority of transnational ecological conflicts become lawsuits, ecocentric case law has nevertheless the ability to nudge ecologically responsible behaviour of policymakers and firms. The project will inquire how this instrumentalist use of the judiciary may hide the necessary debate on the quality of ecocentric case law as courts lack technical knowledge on ecological and economic issues and on the type of remedies actual or potential victims (e.g. future generations) can obtain from ecocentric judgments. The combination of systematic (quantitative and qualitative) empirical analysis of global data should lead to a high gain project that sheds light on the transformation of social claims, on the synergies among social and judicial activism and soft law production and implementation, on the institutional quality of courts to understand global ecological and economic conflicts, on the patterns of innovative ecocentric case law, on whether triggering courts contributes to filling ecological governance gaps, and on whether this has (or not) a waterfall effect on access to remedy for victims of ecological harm.
Summary
This project conceptualises the worldwide progressive transformation of human rights litigation into more ecocentric litigation and the emerging but important role of (activist) courts in addressing ecological governance gaps. In addition, it will inquire how this greening of social litigation challenges the legal concept of attribution of liability in transnational lawsuits and influences access to effective remedy for victims of transnational ecological harms. The main hypothesis is that ecocentric lawsuits mostly seek to nudge the choice architects of ecological governance, i.e. policymakers and global value chain (GVCs) coordinating firms, to implement effective actions for the sustainability of ecosystems while not necessarily seeking concrete remedies for victims. Although the effectiveness of this activism could be questioned by considering that only a minority of transnational ecological conflicts become lawsuits, ecocentric case law has nevertheless the ability to nudge ecologically responsible behaviour of policymakers and firms. The project will inquire how this instrumentalist use of the judiciary may hide the necessary debate on the quality of ecocentric case law as courts lack technical knowledge on ecological and economic issues and on the type of remedies actual or potential victims (e.g. future generations) can obtain from ecocentric judgments. The combination of systematic (quantitative and qualitative) empirical analysis of global data should lead to a high gain project that sheds light on the transformation of social claims, on the synergies among social and judicial activism and soft law production and implementation, on the institutional quality of courts to understand global ecological and economic conflicts, on the patterns of innovative ecocentric case law, on whether triggering courts contributes to filling ecological governance gaps, and on whether this has (or not) a waterfall effect on access to remedy for victims of ecological harm.
Max ERC Funding
1 336 875 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
Project acronym DANGER
Project Democracy, Anger & Elite Responses
Researcher (PI) Nils-Christian Bormann
Host Institution (HI) Private Universitaet Witten/Herdecke gGmbH
Country Germany
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary This project is about the elite coalition strategies that will avoid democratic failure and deconsolidation – the loss of legitimacy among its elites and citizens. It will answer the question of which government coalitions help to avoid democratic deconsolidation, and ultimately democratic breakdown. It will do so by investigating the fate of democracies in interwar Europe, the best available comparison cases for contemporary democracies, and derive precise recommendations for policy-makers today.
Presently, democracy is under threat around the world. Citizens disenchanted by economic inequality and migration are losing faith in democratic regimes. Populist parties and extremists at both ends of the political spectrum threaten democratic actors, institutions, and norms throughout the Western world.
Yet few if any democracies today have failed outright, and this project adopts a historical-comparative approach and investigates the fate of 24 interwar democracies in Europe. The project makes five central contributions that move it beyond the current state of the art in political science.
First, it innovates conceptually by investigating democratic deconsolidation, the loss of legitimacy among democracy’s elites and citizens, and democratic survival. Second, it innovates theoretically by developing a theory of strategic interdependencies between prodemocracy and antidemocracy political actors against the backdrop of citizen anger. Third, it innovates empirically by collecting new data on government coalitions and elite power grabs as well as citizen protests and political violence events. Fourth, it innovates methodologically by combining the strengths of quantitative, qualitative, and causal inference methods to investigate the effect of coalition governments with and without antidemocracy elites on democratic deconsolidation. Fifth, it innovates in terms of impact by matching historical to contemporary cases to derive lessons for today’s decision-makers.
Summary
This project is about the elite coalition strategies that will avoid democratic failure and deconsolidation – the loss of legitimacy among its elites and citizens. It will answer the question of which government coalitions help to avoid democratic deconsolidation, and ultimately democratic breakdown. It will do so by investigating the fate of democracies in interwar Europe, the best available comparison cases for contemporary democracies, and derive precise recommendations for policy-makers today.
Presently, democracy is under threat around the world. Citizens disenchanted by economic inequality and migration are losing faith in democratic regimes. Populist parties and extremists at both ends of the political spectrum threaten democratic actors, institutions, and norms throughout the Western world.
Yet few if any democracies today have failed outright, and this project adopts a historical-comparative approach and investigates the fate of 24 interwar democracies in Europe. The project makes five central contributions that move it beyond the current state of the art in political science.
First, it innovates conceptually by investigating democratic deconsolidation, the loss of legitimacy among democracy’s elites and citizens, and democratic survival. Second, it innovates theoretically by developing a theory of strategic interdependencies between prodemocracy and antidemocracy political actors against the backdrop of citizen anger. Third, it innovates empirically by collecting new data on government coalitions and elite power grabs as well as citizen protests and political violence events. Fourth, it innovates methodologically by combining the strengths of quantitative, qualitative, and causal inference methods to investigate the effect of coalition governments with and without antidemocracy elites on democratic deconsolidation. Fifth, it innovates in terms of impact by matching historical to contemporary cases to derive lessons for today’s decision-makers.
Max ERC Funding
1 498 932 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym DEPART
Project The ‘de-party-politicization’ of Europe’s political elites. How the rise of technocrats and political outsiders transforms representative democracy.
Researcher (PI) Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT WIEN
Country Austria
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary How do people reach the highest echelons of politics? Traditionally, the answer has been through political parties. Yet recently, more and more politicians in Europe take office with little or no party socialization. Technocrats and political outsiders have assumed power across Europe. Even established parties appoint ever more nonpartisans as ministers. Yet we still know nothing about how this ‘de-party-politicization’ of our political elites affects – or even damages – representative democracy.
To address this gap, DEPART’s theoretical innovation is to re-conceptualize the idea of ‘party control of government’. Existing work views party control as established once parties appoint individuals to office. DEPART abandons this formalistic perspective and conceives of party control as a function of the socialization of political elites into parties. The weaker this socialization, the weaker the linkage that parties provide between voters and governments.
Empirically, DEPART breaks new ground by developing the first biography-based measures of party control, using the most comprehensive and most granular analysis of political careers in Europe to date (~10,000 ministers, 30 countries, 1945–2020). It also employs survey experiments to study voter responses to de-party-politicization.
With these unique data, DEPART addresses two hitherto overlooked questions. First, does de-party-politicization diminish the influence of the party composition of governments on policy outcomes? This would undermine the ability of voters to affect policy through their electoral choice. Second, do weak (or absent) partisan ties among political elites reduce the ability of voters to correctly assign blame for bad government performance? This would increase the chance that parties pay no electoral price for corruption, scandals and mismanagement.
Summary
How do people reach the highest echelons of politics? Traditionally, the answer has been through political parties. Yet recently, more and more politicians in Europe take office with little or no party socialization. Technocrats and political outsiders have assumed power across Europe. Even established parties appoint ever more nonpartisans as ministers. Yet we still know nothing about how this ‘de-party-politicization’ of our political elites affects – or even damages – representative democracy.
To address this gap, DEPART’s theoretical innovation is to re-conceptualize the idea of ‘party control of government’. Existing work views party control as established once parties appoint individuals to office. DEPART abandons this formalistic perspective and conceives of party control as a function of the socialization of political elites into parties. The weaker this socialization, the weaker the linkage that parties provide between voters and governments.
Empirically, DEPART breaks new ground by developing the first biography-based measures of party control, using the most comprehensive and most granular analysis of political careers in Europe to date (~10,000 ministers, 30 countries, 1945–2020). It also employs survey experiments to study voter responses to de-party-politicization.
With these unique data, DEPART addresses two hitherto overlooked questions. First, does de-party-politicization diminish the influence of the party composition of governments on policy outcomes? This would undermine the ability of voters to affect policy through their electoral choice. Second, do weak (or absent) partisan ties among political elites reduce the ability of voters to correctly assign blame for bad government performance? This would increase the chance that parties pay no electoral price for corruption, scandals and mismanagement.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 856 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-03-01, End date: 2026-02-28
Project acronym DeVOTE
Project The meanings of ‘voting’ for ordinary citizens, their causes and consequences
Researcher (PI) Carolina Plescia
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT WIEN
Country Austria
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary On Election Day, citizens are usually asked to vote by placing a mark besides one party and/or candidate on a ballot paper. What meanings do citizens attribute to that mark? Frequently it is assumed that citizens share the view that the mark is substantively meaningful. Yet high rates of abstention, rejection of politics as usual, distrust in election administration and integrity, and democratic backsliding now challenge this assumption. This project aims not only to provide first-time evidence on what ‘voting’ means for ordinary citizens, but also to examine variation in such meanings between individuals and across types of democracies; study how elections create and modify these meanings; and investigate their attitudinal and behavioural consequences. ‘Meaning’, in this project, refers to both the significance of voting for citizens as well as what is meant by voting for citizens, which may encompass citizen definitions or understandings of voting and/or the motivations they have for voting or not. Looking at what voting means for citizens in a variety of countries promises to provide a ground-breaking understanding of citizen-conceptualizations of representation and the psychology of voting that can challenge conventional wisdom about participation and voting as well as lead to practical implications for how elections are run and administered. In addition, the project agenda will result in an observatory devised for systematic data collection on the meanings of elections on Election Day. In the long run, this will provide a resource containing information about the political meanings given to elections by citizens themselves and can be used as a basis to refine and challenge the constructed interpretations commonly assigned to elections by the media and politicians. Citizen views are gathered via a novel approach based on a citizen-science website and inductive reasoning combined with panel data, vignette experiments and topic modelling to test causal mechanisms.
Summary
On Election Day, citizens are usually asked to vote by placing a mark besides one party and/or candidate on a ballot paper. What meanings do citizens attribute to that mark? Frequently it is assumed that citizens share the view that the mark is substantively meaningful. Yet high rates of abstention, rejection of politics as usual, distrust in election administration and integrity, and democratic backsliding now challenge this assumption. This project aims not only to provide first-time evidence on what ‘voting’ means for ordinary citizens, but also to examine variation in such meanings between individuals and across types of democracies; study how elections create and modify these meanings; and investigate their attitudinal and behavioural consequences. ‘Meaning’, in this project, refers to both the significance of voting for citizens as well as what is meant by voting for citizens, which may encompass citizen definitions or understandings of voting and/or the motivations they have for voting or not. Looking at what voting means for citizens in a variety of countries promises to provide a ground-breaking understanding of citizen-conceptualizations of representation and the psychology of voting that can challenge conventional wisdom about participation and voting as well as lead to practical implications for how elections are run and administered. In addition, the project agenda will result in an observatory devised for systematic data collection on the meanings of elections on Election Day. In the long run, this will provide a resource containing information about the political meanings given to elections by citizens themselves and can be used as a basis to refine and challenge the constructed interpretations commonly assigned to elections by the media and politicians. Citizen views are gathered via a novel approach based on a citizen-science website and inductive reasoning combined with panel data, vignette experiments and topic modelling to test causal mechanisms.
Max ERC Funding
1 498 767 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
Project acronym EmergentCommunity
Project Coexistence and conflict in the age of complexity: An interdisciplinary study of community dynamics
Researcher (PI) Eeva PUUMALA
Host Institution (HI) TAMPEREEN KORKEAKOULUSAATIO SR
Country Finland
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Polarization and inequality amongst citizens are on the rise across Europe. In a context of multiple, and intersecting forms of diversity, peaceful coexistence has been increasingly placed under sustained pressure. Crucially, the urgency of finding sustainable solutions to these developments is constrained by a lack of conceptual and theoretical nuance that inhibits critical thinking about emergent constellations of social and political life. This project explores how affective orientations and everyday practices of peace and conflict intertwine and influence societies. In this respect, the study adopts an interdisciplinary research design that uses multi-sited ethnography, immersive virtual technologies, and psycho-physiological measuring to provide cutting-edge insight into community dynamics. The study will provide new grounded knowledge on how societies hold together whilst social and political positions within and between communities multiply. Using complexity as an analytical angle, the project considers the relations, tensions, and forms of collaboration that unfold in the course of everyday life in nine urban neighbourhoods in Finland, Sweden and France. The three countries share a mix of similarities and differences through which the variations in community dynamics and their societal consequences can be identified. Through the adopted interdisciplinary approach, the project will generate beyond state-of-the-art insight into how community dynamic in contemporary societies develops. It will use this knowledge to rethink the notion of community. In the final stage of the project, the empirical, methodological and conceptual insights will be combined to feed into the process of building a theory of emergent communities through which changes to the form of social and political life can be understood. The project will have a high societal impact by providing policymakers and politicians with knowledge on how social sustainability and inclusion can be promoted.
Summary
Polarization and inequality amongst citizens are on the rise across Europe. In a context of multiple, and intersecting forms of diversity, peaceful coexistence has been increasingly placed under sustained pressure. Crucially, the urgency of finding sustainable solutions to these developments is constrained by a lack of conceptual and theoretical nuance that inhibits critical thinking about emergent constellations of social and political life. This project explores how affective orientations and everyday practices of peace and conflict intertwine and influence societies. In this respect, the study adopts an interdisciplinary research design that uses multi-sited ethnography, immersive virtual technologies, and psycho-physiological measuring to provide cutting-edge insight into community dynamics. The study will provide new grounded knowledge on how societies hold together whilst social and political positions within and between communities multiply. Using complexity as an analytical angle, the project considers the relations, tensions, and forms of collaboration that unfold in the course of everyday life in nine urban neighbourhoods in Finland, Sweden and France. The three countries share a mix of similarities and differences through which the variations in community dynamics and their societal consequences can be identified. Through the adopted interdisciplinary approach, the project will generate beyond state-of-the-art insight into how community dynamic in contemporary societies develops. It will use this knowledge to rethink the notion of community. In the final stage of the project, the empirical, methodological and conceptual insights will be combined to feed into the process of building a theory of emergent communities through which changes to the form of social and political life can be understood. The project will have a high societal impact by providing policymakers and politicians with knowledge on how social sustainability and inclusion can be promoted.
Max ERC Funding
1 814 886 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
Project acronym EUDAIMONIA
Project National institutional autonomy within the EU legal order: uncovering and addressing its distinctive appearances, origins and impact on Member States' administrations
Researcher (PI) Pieter Van Cleynenbreugel
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITE DE LIEGE
Country Belgium
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Despite significant advancements in European integration, the institutional design and organisation of administrative structures implementing and enforcing EU law had traditionally remained the responsibility of EU Member States. Over the past decade, however, EU legislation has increasingly come to impose more organisational requirements on those Member States’ administrative structures. That evolution is most remarkable as EU law has long recognised the existence of a principle of national institutional/administrative autonomy. That principle is to guarantee Member States’ freedom to designate and structure the administrative bodies responsible for the application and enforcement of EU rules.
How far does the EU’s more extensive involvement in Member States’ administrative design decisions actually reach and can one find parallels between different fields of regulation? If so or if not, what are the implications for our understanding of institutional autonomy as a principle of EU (administrative) law? So far, legal scholarship, including the PI’s previous work on EU market supervision, has paid only scarce attention to those important questions.
The principal objective of this project will be to analyse the scope of Member States’ administrative autonomy and to uncover, explain and conceptualise the limits that are imposed on it by EU law. To do so, it will first of all map and compare EU law’s influence over Member States’ administrative designs across 18 domains of regulation influenced by the EU. Since the traditional legal scholarship toolkit insufficiently allows to grasp the different factors having given rise to Member States’ administrative design decisions, the project will subsequently rely on actor-network theory (ANT) to uncover those factors. Using that particular research methodology, new and more extensive data obtained through in-depth case studies and questionnaires will allow to formulate theoretical modifications and policy recommendations.
Summary
Despite significant advancements in European integration, the institutional design and organisation of administrative structures implementing and enforcing EU law had traditionally remained the responsibility of EU Member States. Over the past decade, however, EU legislation has increasingly come to impose more organisational requirements on those Member States’ administrative structures. That evolution is most remarkable as EU law has long recognised the existence of a principle of national institutional/administrative autonomy. That principle is to guarantee Member States’ freedom to designate and structure the administrative bodies responsible for the application and enforcement of EU rules.
How far does the EU’s more extensive involvement in Member States’ administrative design decisions actually reach and can one find parallels between different fields of regulation? If so or if not, what are the implications for our understanding of institutional autonomy as a principle of EU (administrative) law? So far, legal scholarship, including the PI’s previous work on EU market supervision, has paid only scarce attention to those important questions.
The principal objective of this project will be to analyse the scope of Member States’ administrative autonomy and to uncover, explain and conceptualise the limits that are imposed on it by EU law. To do so, it will first of all map and compare EU law’s influence over Member States’ administrative designs across 18 domains of regulation influenced by the EU. Since the traditional legal scholarship toolkit insufficiently allows to grasp the different factors having given rise to Member States’ administrative design decisions, the project will subsequently rely on actor-network theory (ANT) to uncover those factors. Using that particular research methodology, new and more extensive data obtained through in-depth case studies and questionnaires will allow to formulate theoretical modifications and policy recommendations.
Max ERC Funding
1 497 687 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-09-01, End date: 2026-08-31
