Discussions between the REDEM consortium, represented by Valeria Ottonelli and Corrado Fumagalli, and the Fondazione Feltrinelli have lead to a plan by the two organisationsto to initiate future joint activities. The collaboration with the Feltrinelli Foundation will offer the REDEM project another opportunity to extend its activities networks outside the academia.The plan opens up a great opportunity to organize events and edit publications that can reach a wide public. Included in the plan are the organisation of a workshop with researchers, local politicians and journalists, and a cycle of talks. Also part of the plan is the editing of an open access ebook in Italian, featuring contributions by leading Italian experts in philosophy, sociology, and political science.
NEWS
- June 2020
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The Centre for Political Science Research of Sciences Po (CEVIPOF) based in Paris is recruiting for a 17 months part-time (75%) post-doctoral position. The position is based at Sciences Po / CEVIPOF in Paris and is expected to start on September 1, 2020. The postdoc will work with REDEM’s coordinator, Annabelle Lever, a political philosopher, helping to develop the voter-centred perspective on democratic elections of REDEM. The output will be used to create classroom and interactive web-based educational materials for the general public. While the postdoc will mainly be involved in developing the voter-centred perspective on elections, s/he will also be involved in the preliminary construction of the teaching materials and, depending on expertise and interests, may also be involved in other aspects of the project. Demonstrated experience of postgraduate research and publications is a prerequisite for this position, as are the ability to work with others and to organise and support joint research and events. For a full description of the job requirements and of the application procedure please visit the job posting on the Euraxess site.
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The Cambridge - Sciences Po Collaborative Research Grants Scheme (CamPo) has announced today a funding award to Jude Brown, Director of Cambridge University's Centre of Gender Studies, and to Annabelle Lever from the Ecole Doctorale at Sciences Po and CEVIPOF for their project Private Interest, Public Interests and Citizen Participation: Contemporary Democratic Challenges. The funding is intended to allow the organisation of two workshops, one at each location, with a group of select practitioners from judiciaries, public bodies, lobby groups and civil society. The purpose of the meetings is to look beyond the image of democracy as universal suffrage into the relationship between democratic principles and lay participation in decision-making. The exploratory effort will complement the REDEM attention to the challenges of reviving electoral democracy and representative legislative institutions, as it focuses on the challenges of representative government in executive, legislative and administrative matters.
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The REDEM workshop on Voter Centric Perspectives on Electoral Democracy - Empirical and Normative Challenges was scheduled to be held at the University of Leiden on July 9-10, 2020. As a result of the current travel and meeting constraints, the REDEM consortium is making preparations to organise the workshop entirely on-line, on the same dates, in a presentation, interaction and debate setting as close as possible to a normal workshop environment. We will soon post the programme on the workshop page. In addition to speakers and panelists, attendance will also be open to participants who are not presenting papers. Please check back soon for more details.
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Andrei Poama delivered a public talk based on joint research with Alexandru Volacu in the Filosofisch Café series organised by Utrecht University. The presentation explored recent arguments for disenfranchising older citizens which were increasingly circulated in public after the 2016 Brexit referendum and the election of US president Donald Trump. The talk analysed various disenfranchisement policies that are being defended on democratic grounds – targeted political capacity tests, disenfranchisement lotteries or age-weighted voting, and concluded that there are good moral and practical reasons not to introduce such policies. A discussion with citizens of Utrecht (both old and young) and students and academics from different Dutch universities followed the presentation. The event allowed for a broader conversation about the ethics of elections and the aims of the REDEM project related to this topic.
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On February 12 Élise Rouméas from Sciences Po Paris represented the REDEM project at the Anti-Politics: Anatomy of Public Anger workshop organised by the Anti-Politics Specialist Group of the UK Political Science Association at the London School of Economics. The workshop addressed the phenomenon of “anti-politics” - the multilayered reaction against traditional representative democracy, its symptoms, causes, and its impact on democracy. Discussions centred around themes overlapping with REDEM’s research agenda, including voters’ alienation and distrust towards government, but also new forms of political campaigning, such as micro-targeting using big data. The workshop also provided opportunities for exploring collaboration avenues with relevant research groups, such as the TrustGov project and the Anti-Politics Specialist Group itself.
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On February 5-6 the Center of Political Research of Sciences Po (CEVIPOF) hosted the inaugural workshop of the REDEM project. The workshop was attended by 40 political scientists who presented their work on the latest social scientific and philosophical research on political abstention and alienation, populism, political parties, referenda and social inequality and their relevance to debates about electoral ethics, democratic legitimacy and the challenges posed by new technologies for political transparency, inclusion and accountability. The workshop attracted early interest for potential collaborations from organisations involved in overlapping activities such as ProDemos (The Netherlands). Attendees included representatives of the European Commission and of the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation.
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Annabelle Lever, Marcus Carlsen Häggrot and Andrei Poama presented their research in the panel Electoral Ethics: Theory and Practice organised as part of the 2020 Association for Political Thought conference at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. The panel featured papers on the normative criteria for determining electoral constituencies, on the type of moral duties and moral dilemmas involved in voting practices, and on the ethics of ageing and voting. The conference offered the opportunity to introduce the REDEM project to prominent political theorists and philosophers from around Europe, and to explore project dissemination possibilities via collaborations with academic and non-academic publishing houses represented at this event.
- Jan 2020