Work Package 4
WP4 will incorporate the findings of Work Packages 1-3 into a theory of democratic backsliding and connect its causes, effects and solutions by co-producing a best-practice “Democratisation through Education Manual (DTEM)” with our partners that will outline the most effective online civic education programmes to foster a democratic political culture to prevent democratic backsliding, in both new and old democracies. The policy-relevant results of DEMED will be disseminated in a 2-day workshop, hosted by Democracy International in Washington, DC. In total we expect 30-40 leading academic and nonacademic experts in the field of civic education to attend the workshop. The goal of the workshop is to discuss the consequences of the research and their implications for practical work in this field. We will spend the last few months of the project to further disseminate the research and DTEM, e.g. by capacity building workshops hosted by other governmental and non-governmental organisations.
The work will be disseminated in a series of academic as well as major policy-relevant outputs. This uses innovative methods of synthesising findings across different types of newly created datasets, qualitative observations, and experimental findings. This iterative process will also build capacity among the non-academic partners for the more complex synthesis of findings. This work will be led by the research team, who will analyse key findings from each work package, focusing on triangulation and complementarity across the evidence types. Such an approach will advance calls for increased relevance of social science to policy, and will ensure timeliness and impact of the project.