Activities
Workshops and Conferences - Data Collection - Website go to website
More about the programme
Contemporary democracies such as those of the European Union have been suffering increasingly from declining involvement by their citizens in the political process, and a general weakening of the bonds that hold society together. There is a growing consensus that a revival of civic engagement and citizenship can compensate for this apparent loss of community, and can reinvigorate our democracies.
There is no clear idea though what steps governments and local communities can take to increase social activity, and no firm understanding of the impact this would have on democratic processes. Most of the research undertaken so far has been theoretical, and most of the empirical (i.e. practical) work has been restricted to individual countries and specific fields of study. This Network aims to broaden the empirical base of study and expand on existing national programmes. The aim is to develop a comprehensive Europe wide research framework, which would allow complex relationships between social and political involvement, and citizenship, to be tested. Only then will it be possible to answer the fundamental question of whether, and if so to what extent, modes of social involvement can really contribute to improvements in contemporary democracy, both qualitatively and quantitatively.
Smaller scale national studies already performed do provide some evidence that various levels of social involvement do have a vital role to play in the overall democratic process. Such studies tend to confirm theories that active involvement in schools, work places, and the health system might make a crucial contribution to democracy.
Indeed the truth of such theories seems intuitively obvious, but while there is ample reason to assume that there is a link between the social and the political, or between the "big" and "small", little is known about the extent of the various relationships, and the differences between them.
Therefore an important starting point for the Network is a comparative design that allows the relative contributions of different social relationships to be assessed, taking into account the varying national and local customs, cultures and institutions.
Yet it was clear that the ESF Network could not create a sufficiently comprehensive structure from the top down, and would have to exploit existing national projects, combining them into a coherent European wide approach.
A number of suitable national projects are already underway, for example in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. These are all studies of citizenship and democracy, but covering a wide variety of topics tuned to national and local needs and cultures. In some other countries, similar studies are either planned, or have recently been completed.
By exploiting these studies in a bottom up approach, the ESF is best placed to achieve its objectives, in particular the first two in the
- to enable scholars from different countries to exchange the results of their national studies;
- to co-ordinate and integrate existing national research projects;
- to perform cross-national and longitudinal research in order to evaluate opportunities for improving democratic decision making procedures and the development of new types of citizenship in Europe;
- to stimulate this type of research in European countries that have not conducted it so far;
- to communicate the results of this research directly with other relevant groups, especially scholars working in more theoretically oriented areas;
- to develop a model to be included in a European Social Survey;
- to provide opportunities for young scholars to participate in international comparative research.
To achieve these objectives, the ESF has established a programme lasting 2-3 years, based around four scientific meetings. The starting point is a core questionnaire designed so as to make best use of available studies and to be used in nation-wide representative surveys. In addition, organisational studies are developed in order to obtain information about the conditions for social activities directly. Then a potential source of new data is the forthcoming European Social Survey, which has been approached by the ESF with a view to including a module on social capital and citizenship.
Other activities include invitations to scholars in countries that have not so far conducted studies; publication of results of comparative analyses; and the four international meetings between January 2000 and December 2002.
This Network was approved by the ESF Executive Council in November 1999 for a three-year period
