BackPLEDGE. Politics of Grievance and Democratic Governance
Objectives
1. To generate knowledge on the emotional determinants and outputs of anti/pro-democratic grievance politics.
To explain when citizens and groups engage in anti-democratic grievance politics by identifying the mechanism(s) that account for the dynamic interrelations of their emotions, values, identities, beliefs, and political practices, and develop empirically tested theory on how to convert anti-democratic grievance politics into prodemocratic political engagement.
To advance knowledge by introducing novel concepts and empirical methodologies to appropriately tap on these mechanisms, and their inputs/outputs.
To study real and virtual environments to examine their influence on the emotional economy of grievance politics, accountability, transparency and democratic values.
2. To generate practical understanding of how the emotional economy of grievance politics impacts policymaking.
To identify the key challenges policymakers face in dealing with the emotional economy of grievance politics focusing on gaps in communication and decision-making practices between different policy actors and the public.
To identify successful strategies that policy actors have been adopting to address the emotional economy of grievance politics across different crises.
3. To bring together theory and practice and generate tools promoting effective policymaking and communication which can enhance emotionally intelligent and responsive democratic governance.
To improve policymakers’ understanding and capacity to engage effectively with the emotional economy of anti/pro-democratic grievance politics at different levels of governance.
To identify effective communication practices on how to address grievances through governance practices and processes with the aim to enhance trust among policymakers and the public.
To empower policymakers and civil society actors to convert anti-democratic expressions of grievances to pro-democratic expressions through appropriate governance practices and processes.
To recommend practices and processes for building a democratic infrastructure that is more sensitive to emotional politics and policymaking.
Lead researcher:
Institute:
The Centre for Social Sciences
Supporter:
European Union, Horizon Europe Program
Period:
01.01.2024.–31.12.2026.