START YEAR 2011

END YEAR 2016

RESEARCH PLAN

The ERC Advanced Grant Project Mobilizing for Democracy addresses social movements participation in democratization processes, from transition to the deepening of democracy.

The research is directed by Donatella della Porta.

THEORETICAL MODEL

As planned the first months of the research project have been devoted to a better refinement of the theoretical model presented in the proposal, to the conceptualization as well as to the selection of the sources and the specification of the instruments for the empirical research. The results of this theoretical work helped me in conceptualizing the phenomena to investigate as eventful democratization as well as democratic deepening and locating them within the social science literature on democratic transitions and democratic quality. The results of this part of the work are reported in a Donatella della Porta, Can Democracy be Saved?, Polity Press, 2013 as well as in some entries I have written for the Blackwell Encyclopedia on Social and Political Movements, David Snow, Bert Klandermans, Donatella della Porta, and Doug McAdam (Blackwell, 2013). Issues of deepening democracy are also addressed in the volume Meeting Democracy, edited by Donatella della Porta and Dieter Rucht (Cambridge University Press 2013) as well as in several articles.

The project is articulated into six main research strands:

• Social Movements in Democratic Transitions: Comparing 1989 and 2011
• Failed Democratization: Why Movements for Democracy Failed
• Where Did the Revolution go? Social Movements in Democratic Consolidation
• Social Movements and the Deepening of Democracy
• The Charlie Hebdo Debate: Critical Junctures and Deliberation in the Public Sphere
• Collective Action and the Refugee Crisis

FUNDING

European Research Council (ERC) Grant [269136]

FILES

MobilizingForDemocracy