Europe in a changing world – inclusive, innovative and reflective societies –
Governance – 01 – 2019: Trust in governance
Coordination : Simone VISCIOLA, laboratoire BABEL
Project proposal
ReC-Rebuilding Confidence. From the politics of
distrust to a democracy of trust
Leading organization: Università degli Studi di Macerata (UNIMC), Italy
Partners: Università degli Studi di Macerata (UNIMC), IT; Istituto
Luigi Sturzo (ILS), Roma, IT;
Università degli studi di Messina (UNIME), IT;
Università degli studi Guglielmo Marconi (USGM), IT; Panteion University (PAN), EL; Institute for Public Affairs (IPA), PL; Loughbrough University (LBORO), UK; Institute for Democracy (IDSCS), MK;
University
of Ljubljana (UL), SI;
University of
Toulon (UTLN), FR; The Nottingham Trent University (TNTU), UK; University of Oradea (UNORA), RO.
Objectives
The overall objective of ReC Project is to cope with the problem of
distrust in democracy by means of innovative methodology: based on an
articulated and complete theoretical approach, an empirical and experimental
phase will be developed with innovative methods and will lead to the development
of new tools to encourage participative decision making, and, finally, to
restore confidence in democratic institutions both at national and UE levels.
ReC Project has the following three specific objectives:
– 1) highlight main factors related to distrust in governance and
investing their possible relationships in crucial areas such as: a) the
perception of democratic powers: confidence in institutions, trust in
representatives; b) the crisis of responsiveness; c) the dangerous integration of
distrust’s factors in the representative system, also considering Brexit
experience; d) the increasing request for “identity protection” of rights; e) the role of communication (in
particular, social media) towards mutual mistrust and lack of legitimacy between
European and national stakeholder; f) the growing « populist attitude »
of European voters; g) the potential conflict between representative
institutions and direct democracy; h) representation and perceptions of
democracy, also in comparative perspective outside EU. – 2) develop useful criteria and measurable
indicators of increasing distrust, and verify whether and under what conditions
the trust is affected by acquiring knowledge and political education, through
experimentation and applied research targeting different groups of citizens,
and using both experienced and innovative tools (expert interactive seminars,
workshops, questionnaires, digital storytelling, serious game, snowballing
surveys); – 3) and finally offer a set of policy proposals to restore and
increase trust in governance both within the Member States and EU, and develop
new technological tools to promote a participative decision making based on a
closer connection between citizens and institutions both at national and
European level.
Area Coordinator: Université de Toulon, France (UTLN)
Head of unit:
Simone
Visciola (Associate Professor, Contemporary History)
Unit research
members:
- Gilles Leydier (Director of the BABEL EA 2649 Research laboratory, Full Professor, Political History and Politics)
- Marie Gayte (Associate Professor, United States History)
- Loredana Ruccella (Associate Professor, Political Linguistics Studies)
- Alessandro Leiduan (Associate Professor, Semiotics Studies)
Representations and perceptions of democracy, also in comparative
perspective outside UE
Research questions: Is it possible to discover and to understand
similarities and differences among EU countries and between European experience
and non-EU democratic countries in which confidence in institutions and trust
in representatives are particularly stressed by the perception of democracy?
UTLN-FR will coordinate the study about the effects of the traditional
political parties’ crisis, identifying the « presence » – and possibly
the “persistence”
– of the memories connected to their respective
political cultures. The goal is to estimate the weight that they exercised, at
the turn from the 20th to the 21th century, with regard to the changing
political framework as well as the development of the enlargement process and
the legitimation of the European construction.
Through a comparative analysis, the reasons of the « fatigue »
of liberal democracy in the framework of European integration will be
investigated. Furthermore, the research aims at reconstructing the historical
origins of Europe’s malaise; origins deriving from a crisis of the solidarity
that united –
in spite of their differences – the democratic political cultures (right and left)
after the end of World War II and « stabilized » them in the context of
the Cold War.
Besides, a significant part of the research will be dedicated to the
US-European relationship. The following topics will be analysed: 1) the
evolution of the relationship between the US and Europe in the European construction
process from 1989 till today. This is a central issue for understanding the
origins of the European integration project, from its birth out of the “Soviet orbit”, closely linked to the US foreign policy after World War II, to the
creation of the single currency and the present day. 2) what factors of
American policy had an impact on the decisions of the EU both from an economic
and military point of view; 3) their representations (historical, literary,
cinematographic, musical, cultural in general) of these factors meant to
measure how they had imprinted themselves into the crisis of confidence in the
EU.
Another topic of research, still regarding the American case, will be
the policy that unites the nationalist-populist parties and movements currently
gaining ground in the US, but also in Italy and France and more generally in
all Western democracies; a policy, which is based on the protection of identity
as a cultural and national bond . The « visions » of these parties and
movements, as expressed in their political communication, also have a strong
reference to the religious tradition, which serves as a lever of mobilization
for the protection of the culture of the citizens from cosmopolitanism,
globalization, migratory waves and Islamic fundamentalism. Indeed, the
political appeal to the religious legacy has become an anchor to preserve the
identity values, the decline of which has become an opportunity to penetrate
those political paradigms which aim at eradicating the differences and wiping
away the problems. In this sense, special attention will be paid to the group
of neo-conservative Christians in the US, with the scope of identifying
possible analogies with European movements and parties.
Finally, in the context of the crisis of liberal democracies, of which
those attentive to the evolution of contemporary events are increasingly
speaking, the last questions to ask is the following: through what
historical-social and political plots are the current political events
connected to the role and the responsibilities of journalistic communication,
traditional media, the Net and social media? Through a sociological analysis,
the research will follow an « ethnographic » methodology to investigate
the health status of journalism and new media; not so much from an economic,
« diffusional » or technological perspective, but rather from an
epistemological point of view, focusing on knowledge and « contents ».
This approach centers on the dissemination of ideas and on the formalization of
those very values and visions of the world that the world of information offers
to its audience.
