EUARENAS – Cities as Arenas of Political Innovation in the Strengthening of Deliberative and Participatory Democracy
Title
EUARENAS – Cities as Arenas of Political Innovation in the Strengthening of Deliberative and Participatory Democracy
Founder
European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme
Objectives
1. Better understand challenges to democratic cultures and the economic, political and cultural factors influencing local responses to these challenges.
2. Investigate the ways in which innovative and experimental governance practices emerge as well as the main actors, actor groups and strategies involved.
3. Assess the potentials of different participatory mechanisms as models for renewing and improving the European public sphere through more open and inclusive decision-making processes.
4. Assess and facilitate through design thinking and collaborative methods learning processes involved in developing experimental governance that bridges democratic deficits and governance gaps.
5. Understand study how local-level democratic innovation addresses power asymmetries and the needs of more vulnerable groups as here we fine a major source of disaffection with mainstream politics and the democratic system.
6. Assess the contributions of locally-based procedural and distributive justice to strengthening participatory and inclusive governance (for example, the added value of solutions such as housing, social care, social justice, social diversity, climate change promoted by participatory/deliberative means).
7. Contribute to new conceptual and comparative frameworks of participative- deliberative democracy that focus on the role of locale and place as vital socio-spatial settings for citizen participation and activism.
8. Develop as part of in-depth case studies qualitative indicators of governance impacts and institutional change and elaborate methods and tools for transferring governance innovation practices.
9. Elaborate policy options for strengthening inclusive governance and for bridging discrepancies and trade-offs between participative and deliberative governance modes.
Timeframe
2021-2024
Partners
• Itä-Suomen Yliopisto (UEF)
• SWPS Uniwersytet Humanistycznospołeczny
• Luiss
• Eutropian
• PVM
• City of Reggio Emilia
• City of Gdańsk
• Development Centre Voru County
Engaged persons
• prof. Iwona Sagan
• dr Maja Grabkowska
• dr Klaudia Nowicka
• mgr Monika Wielgórska