Social norms in general, and norms of cooperation in particular, are the cement of all human societies. For the difficult problems of the maintenance and enforcement of social norms and of cooperation, humans have developed surprisingly complex solutions. Reputation mechanisms and gossip are certainly among the compound informal solutions. According to common wisdom, gossip channels mainly negative and often fictitious information. If it is so, how can dishonest gossip and the resulting biased reputations legitimize social order and promote cooperation? This is the main puzzle we tackle in the proposed project exploiting a wide scale of instruments. We use analytical modeling and agent-based simulation to derive hypotheses. We test simple hypotheses in small group experiments. We develop new methodological tools to appropriately analyze the triadic nature of gossip embedded in network flows of information. We utilize dynamic network datasets from primary and secondary school classes, and we gather qualitative and quantitative information from organizations to test conditional hypotheses about the role that gossip plays in reputation and cooperation in different developmental and social contexts of life. In addition, we apply new communication technologies currently under development to explore the hidden world of gossip and the dynamics of reputations in dormitories and organizations. With the insights gained, we can overcome common stereotypes about gossip and highlight how gossip is related to credible reputational signals, cooperation, and social order. Expected results will help us to outline the conditions that can promote cooperativeness in work groups, and they will help to construct successful prevention strategies of social exclusion and other potentially harmful consequences of the evil tongue.

The focus of REDIRECT is to study the current transformation of democratic polities in Europe, to realise whether and how their centres of gravity are shifting, and to improve our understanding of the “representative disconnect” – a multidimensional phenomenon of regression of the demos-kratos linkage involving institutional, behavioral and affective components. REDIRECT moves from the idea to study representative democracy in a comprehensive manner, connecting several relevant dimensions of analysis, in order to extract sustainable ideas and viable instruments to cope with the current problems of “democracy in flux”. These, in turn, will allow a parsimonious formulation of remedies, to be activated both at the institutional level (i.e. assuring a future to crucial “mediating bodies” of representatives democracy like parties, leaders, parliamentary institutions), and at the level of civil society. In parallel to a critical review of the theoretical reflection on representative democracy, an interdisciplinary and multi-level approach to several empirical dimensions of the phenomenon of representative disconnect will be offered, focusing on several topics: the crisis of representation, trust in institutions and political representatives, political personalization, political individualism, mass-élite congruence, social and media discontent. The long-term outcomes expected from the project mark the passage from the diagnosis to the strategies for rectification. Indeed, REDIRECT aims at provides a number of pragmatical recommendations to rearrange the demos-kratos relationship along a two-way street of intervention: the top-down way of institutional reforms (i.e., legislative and procedural innovation to ensure transparency and full information to citizens) and the bottom-up way of a stronger liaison between citizens and mediating bodies (i.e., remobilizing citizens via digitalization, diffusion of share values of social sustainability and civic education).

UNTWIST aims to promote gender equality as a core value of the EU, defending it from the emerging threat that the oppositional gender rhetoric from extreme populist parties represents. By developing policy recommendations that uphold gender equality as both a value and a way of life, our project will contribute to shaping the global future, thus fulfilling relevant objectives in the EU’s political agenda for the period 2019–2024. By understanding if extreme populist parties are acting as niche parties, substantively representing (but also twisting) the needs and demands of citizens “at the margins”, who feel abandoned or disempowered by current mainstream feminist discourses and policies, it will co-create alternative ways of addressing those citizens. Thus, developing, and implementing new policies that can counter gender-equality-repressive strategies and the policies of extreme populist parties. Representative democracies will consequently be reinvigorated, and the citizenship empowered, by a better safeguarding of gender equality. UNTWIST’s main working strategy toward that end will consist of empowering (non-radical/populist) parties in Europe to improve their representation of the gender-based interests of the citizenry through the definition, enhancement and transfer of a policy recommendation handbook with evidence-based policy recommendations that: 1) help mainstream parties improve their substantive representation of sex- and gender-based needs and demands in ways that diminish the appeal of extreme populist messages (untwisting oppositional gender messages, particularly from right-wing populism); and 2) contributes to the widening horizon of gender expectations and overcomes current “gender fatigue” among citizens. The improvement in substantive democratic representation by these parties will decrease citizens' interest in the anti-feminist messages of radical or populist parties.

Liberal democracy is struggling with the challenge of citizens’ indifference and detachment from politics, while anti-system politicians are overemotionalising policy issues which furthers polarisation in society. The normative stance of MORES is that both under- and overemotionalisation of politics should be avoided. The former leads to the affective disconnect of citizens from politics, while the latter spurs tribal politics and hampers deliberation – both extremes threaten democracy. MORES argues that moral emotions and moralised political identities – a conceptual innovation of the project – have a practical value in dealing with the challenges of affective politics. Moral emotions are linked to the interests or welfare of society or at least of persons other than the subject itself. They can unite people towards common causes or split them along moralised political identities. MORES applies a horizontally wide research logic to build a normative-analytical framework to inform democratic decision-making on how moral emotions should interact with values, policies and political practices. MORES will create state-of-the-art methods and generate new empirical data on (1) the type of moral emotions triggered by political actions and phenomena such as campaigns, leadership styles and illiberal politics; (2) the role of moral emotions in forging moralised political identities; (3) the effect of moral emotions on political behaviour such as policy support and civic activism; and (4) the contextual social phenomena, including digital universes, of the moral emotions-politics nexus. Through research engagement with key stakeholders, MORES will create several innovative tools including a method for policymakers to measure the emotional valence of policies, games to strengthen citizens’ political-emotional resilience both in real-life and metaverses, and policy ideas to embed citizens’ moral-emotional needs in policymaking towards bolstering trust in democratic governance.

The EU is facing long-term structural challenges compounded by the recent economic crisis. More and better jobs are needed to lower unemployment, raise the employment participation rates of female, older, migrant, low-skilled and young workers and thus tackle social exclusion and inequality. The EU’s growth strategy, Europe 2020, wants smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, with innovation and job quality as flagship initiatives. Innovation and job quality are however currently treated separately but ought to be better integrated in policy and workplace practice. Research that can lever this to mutually boost innovation and job quality is needed. QuInnE contributes to the EU growth strategy of boosting innovation, job quality and employment by exploring the mutually reinforcing relationship between innovation and job quality and identifying mechanisms that can be accelerated to deliver both more and better jobs, which in turn help tackle social exclusion and inequality. QuInnE creates a new analytical framework of for understanding the relationship between innovation and job quality and that relationship’s impact on employment. This framework is then used to statistically analyse existing datasets to create a typology of innovation-job quality dynamics by industry and country. The analysis is then extended to assess how different types of relationships create jobs, and provide jobs that are accessible and sustainable for groups of workers currently struggling in the labour market, and reduce social inequalities by age, class and gender. QuInnE then explores how the innovation-job quality dynamic creates more and better jobs at firm level. There are three main outcomes: new scientific understanding of the innovation-job quality-employment dynamic; new diagnostic and developmental tools to help monitor and measure this dynamic at national level and improve that dynamic in firms and workplaces; evidence-based advice on developing policy to boost EU growth.