The problems that established democracies face have been thoroughly documented. The current EDGE program, focusing on evaluating democratic governance, has significantly contributed to this analysis. The new program is focused on enhancing democratic governance. It builds from previous diagnoses and moves towards exploring solutions. These can be of various kinds, according to the different problems democracies face. First, addressing the climate and broader environmental crises demands new kinds of governance (WP1). Second, the relationship of citizens to their political representatives needs to be strengthened, which also requires innovations (WP2). Third, the principles of equality and non-discrimination that European democracies uphold must be much more thoroughly implemented. How this may be achieved is the task of WP3.
Importantly, the three WPs do not work independently of each other, because enhancing democratic governance cannot be accomplished by looking at issues individually. The separation between WPs is analytical, to help in-depth focus on complementary aspects. The point though is to put them all together, and we will do this in two different substantive ways. First, all three WPs focus on democratic innovations, although each with their specific focus on environmental, representative, and equality aspects. Hence, the overarching innovations that our program will propose will be integrated. Second, emotions have recently been identified as key in understanding today’s politics. The current challenges to democracy give rise to new kinds of emotions. Environmental, representative, and equality crises feed on already existing fears and anxieties, but also give rise to new emotions, and hopes. We will therefore also use the issue of political emotion to tie our research together, so that solutions to our multiple crises start taking such emotions into account.
