Protest and Democratic Quality

ProDem is an interdisciplinary project funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung. It aims to comparatively assess the medium- and long-term effects of the triple interaction between citizens, social movements and movement parties on European countries. We want to explain how social movements and movement parties together with a realignment of citizens’ values and attitudes have affected democratic quality in Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and the UK. We approach democratic quality from a citizens’ perspective as the acquisition of political, civil, and social citizenship rights through democratic institutions and processes.

The project develops new, timely insights by combining concepts from social movement studies, political behaviour and party politics, political culture, critical theory, media studies and policy analysis. It uses an original cross-national multi-method research design bridging qualitative and quantitative approaches with computational, set-theoretic and critical methods to map contextual conditions, cross-national, cross-issue and social network patterns that can enhance democratic quality. ProDem generates and disseminates policy recommendations that can inform public deliberations and propose evidence-based institutional responses to the socio-economic, cultural and ultimately democratic political integration of citizens, social movements and movement parties.