Research agenda

TRUEDEM addresses the mismatch between the increasing public distrust in politicians, cynicism about the institutions of national governance institutions, disillusioned with democratic processes and related to this concerns over potential consequences for the perceptions of legitimacy and stability of political regime, quality of democracy, state of political culture on one side, and insufficient capacity of the existing theories, policies and methodologies to address these issues.

Discussion and discourses about political trust are often biased towards interpreting political trust only in categories of positive resource of public development. TRUEDEM stresses the need to revise the outdated theoretical approach to embrace and disentangle multi-facet nature of trust examining those types of political trust which are congruent with and strengthen representative democracies.

TRUEDEM will create a robust and comprehensive knowledge base on long-term dynamics and predictors in trust in political institutions of representative democracy (parties, executives, parliaments, judiciary etc.) in the EU.

TRUEDEM examines the role of new patterns of electoral behaviour, including electoral volatility and decreased voting turnout trends, and the implications of the emergence of new social movements and parties for the representativity and legitimacy in European democracies. The project assesses the impact of the erosion of old and emergence of new political cleavages, radicalisation of political attitudes and increased political polarization for the inclusiveness and responsiveness in European democracies.

TRUEDEM examines the consequences of the corona health crisis, the ongoing war in Europe and migration, low economic growth and rising inflation as the new socioeconomic and security challenges which destabilize political institutions in Europe and which implication for political trust have not been addressed fully yet.

TRUEDEM seeks to identify strategies to address the demands and needs of citizens expressed via both electoral and non-electoral forms of political participation as a mean to enhance active engagement and inclusion and thus booster inclusive and responsive decision-making and governance in Europe. TRUEDEM will distinguish clusters of social, economic, political, religious, moral, and other values that can hinder or foster pro-democratic values and attitudes and thus contribute to the barriers and opportunities to re-invigorating and enhancing representative democratic systems.

TRUEDEM’s aim is to develop a comprehensive and transparent toolbox of policy interventions including recommendations, toolkits and methodologies for enhancing trust in political institutions, boosting transparency, representativeness and inclusiveness of representative systems. TRUEDEM will also elaborate a multi-level policy action plan for a set of short-, mid- and long-term policy interventions at the local, national, regional and EU levels based on the assessment of their overall efficiency and correspondence to the national cultural and political context.

TRUEDEM targets to expand the CSO’s engagement into campaigns to maintain or restore trust in agencies of national and European governance through exploitation of the new knowledge base and toolkit. TRUEDEM aims to raise awareness and engagement of citizens concerned with the health of liberal democracies and trustworthiness of political leaders and institutions in Europe. 

TRUEDEM intends to improve civic education and increase knowledge on trust, institutions, and democracy of students through utilization of new education resources. TRUEDEM aspires to increase the efficiency of media political communications in engendering perceptions of trustworthiness through advancing the understanding of the role of information environment for trust-building.