DEMOS – Democracy in Europe and the Mobilization of Society

INTRO TO DEMOS:

This project focused upon forms of participatory democracy elaborated ‘from below’ and implemented both in the internal organization of social movements and in experiments with deliberative decision-making. In particular, the project analyzed the issue of active democracy emerging in the theories and practices of movements demanding a ‘globalization from below’.

Social movements criticize the fundamentals of conventional practices of politics, and experiment with new models of democracy both in their internal structure and in the ways in which they interact with political institutions. Of particular interest for the project were the conceptions and practices of democracy developed in the global movement/s mobilizing transnationally and demanding social justice and participatory democracy.
The ensuing debate about democracy is particularly relevant both for the development of civil society, and for the legitimization of political institutions at local, national and supranational levels. Our research – focusing on six European countries (France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and Switzerland), as well as the EU itself – embraced an analysis of documents pertaining to both movements and public institutions, websites, semi-structured interviews with Non-Governmental Organizations and public administrators, surveys of movement activists, participant observation of movement groups and experiences of participatory decision-making.

FUNDING:

A project funded by the European Commission, Directorate General for Research.

6th Framework Programme (FP 6) Priority 7, Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge Based Society

http://www.cordis.lu/citizens (contract no. CIT2-CT2004-506026)

and (for the Swiss case) Federal Office for Education and Science, Switzerland

http://www.bbw.admin.ch (contract no. 03.0482).

CONSORTIUM INFORMATION:

Project Coordinator: Prof. Donatella Della Porta (European University Institute, Florence)

• European University Institute (Donatella Della Porta)
• University of Kent at Canterbury (Christopher Rootes)
• Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (Dieter Rucht)
• Università di Urbino (Mario Pianta)
• Université de Paris I – Sorbonne (Isabelle Sommier)
• Instituto de Estudios Sociales de Andalucía (Manuel Jiménez)
• Université de Genève (Marco Giugni)

SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL COVERAGE OF THE PROJECT:

France | Italy | Germany | Spain | Switzerland | United Kingdom | The transnational level

1 Sep 2004 – 31 Aug 2008 (the time-frame changes according to different WPs).

RESEARCH TECNIQUES:

Website Analysis | Content Analysis | Semi-structured Interviews | Survey | Participant Observation

OBSERVATIONAL UNITS:

• Websites of selected social movement organizations (SMOs) (WP2);
• Formal documents (i.e. constitutions or mission statements) produced by SMOs (WP3);
• Representatives of the sampled SMOs (WP4);
• Participants in the Athens European Social Forum (May 4-7, 2006);
• “Critical discourse moments” in meetings and activities of SMOs.

RESEARCH INSTRUMENTS (PDF FILES):

• Work Package 2 (Searching the Net) – Codebook for the analysis of websites of SMOs
  
• Work Package 3 (Visions of Democracy) – Codebook for the analysis of the organizational ideology of SMOs
• Work Package 4 (Organizational Networks) – Short questionnaire for the survey of the ‘real’ behaviour of SMOs
• Work Package 5 (Global Activists) – Questionnaire for a survey of participants in the European Social Forum of Athens
• Work Package 6 (Practices of Deliberative Democracy):
  • “General group description/portrait” – organized according to a list of items useful to provide a general description of the group under study
  • “Session reports” – used to describe the character, content and course of every meeting. The reports draw a more general picture of the group meetings and allow putting a controversy into context
  • “Controversy protocols” – used to register participation, symmetry/asymmetry, the kind of power used in a controversy and a range of other variables for moments of controversy only
  • “Codebook” – explains the use of session reports and discourse protocol

DELIVERABLES (PDF FILES):

• WP1 – The Global Justice Movement/s in Europe (edited by D. della Porta & H. Reiter)
• WP2 – Searching the Net (edited by D. della Porta & L. Mosca)
• WP3 – Organizational Ideology and Visions of Democracy (edited by D. della Porta & H. Reiter)
• WP4 – Organizational Networks. Organizational Structures and Practices of Democracy in the Global Justice Movement (edited by D. della Porta & L. Mosca)
• WP5 – Global Activists. 
Conceptions and Practices of Democracy in the European Social Forums (edited by D. della Porta & M. Andretta)
• WP6 – Microanalysis of Practices of Deliberative Democracy (edited by D. della Porta & D. Rucht)
• WP7 – Executive Summary (edited by D. della Porta & H. Reiter)
• Final report (edited by D. della Porta & H. Reiter)

AVAILABLE DATASETS:

• WP2 – analysis of websites of selected social movement organizations (SMOs)
• WP3 – content analysis of formal documents (i.e. constitutions or mission statements) produced by SMOs
• WP4 – semi-structured interviews with representatives of the sampled SMOs
• WP5 – survey of participants in the Athens European Social Forum
• WP6 – standardized observation of controversies in a sub-sample of SMOs

MAIN PUBLICATIONS:

della Porta (ed.), 2006, The Global Justice Movement: Cross-national and Transnational Perspectives, Boulder, Paradigm

della Porta (ed.), 2009, Democracy in Social Movements, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan

della Porta (ed.), 2009, Another Europe: Conceptions and Practices of Democracy in the European Social Forums, London-New York, Routledge

della Porta and D. Rucht (eds.), 2013, Meeting Democracy. Power and Deliberation in Global Justice Movements, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press