Project Description 18 Pages.pdf

IntUne Project Description

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IntUne Papers Integrated and United: A quest for Citizenship in an ‘ever closer Europe’ CIT3-CT-2005-513421

http://www.intune.it/article/papers

Date of publication: 10th February 2006

IntUne Project Description ***

The IntUne project is coordinated by the University of Siena: Information concerning Intune Papers is available from: Centre for the Study of Political Change (CIRCaP) Dipartimento Scienze Storiche, Giuridiche, Politiche e Sociali 53 100 Via Mattioli,10. Siena. [email protected]

Each IntUne paper and its format and content (texts, images, data etc.) are protected by legislation on Intellectual Property, and may not be used, reproduced, distributed, modified, public ally disclosed, conveyed or transformed in any other way without the explicit permission of the Author(s). The common scientific citation is exempted from these property

rights.

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Project description

The major aim of this research is to study the changes in the scope, nature and characteristics of citizenship presently underway as an effect of the process of deepening and enlargement of the European Union. It will focus on how integration and decentralization processes, at both the national and European level, are affecting three major dimensions of citizenship: identity, representation, and practice of good governance. Now that the EU is facing an important number of challenges, and given that its legitimacy and democratic capacities are questioned, it is important to address the issue of if and how is EU citizenship emerging. From this primary question stem three further sets of questions that will be the building-blocks of this research: (1) How does a particular kind of political structuring shapes citizenship? In a complex system, how do different identities coexist? (2) What sense of obligation is the EU citizenship developing? How do coexisting identities affect the relationship between elites and mass? (3) What are the citizens expecting from the EU as a level of government? To answer these questions, we will address the problems of citizenship under the threefold approach of identity, representation and evaluation of government performance, by looking at the dynamics between elites and public opinion, whose interactions traditionally nurture the dynamics of collective political identity, political legitimacy and representation, and standards of performance. A number of benefits and impact can be foreseen in this project. (1) A contribution to both, the empirical testing of existing theories of integration and citizenship, and the development and improvement of those theories. (2) The raising of academic and scientific standards within the European Research Area to a highly competitive level. (3) The furthering and deepening of integration between research institutions and disciplines within and between countries. (4) An equalising of level of knowledge between current EU Member States and candidate countries, through the training of younger fellows. (5) The dissemination of scientific findings to policymakers, key-actors and the general public, which means the production of usable knowledge. (6) Increasing contacts between decision-makers and the general public through the demonstration activities. (7) A proposition of ways in which the process of further mobilization of public opinion can be achieved. Project objectives The major aim of our research project is to study the changes in the scope, nature and characteristics of citizenship that result from the process of the deepening and enlargement of the European Union. Our research will focus on how integration and disintegration processes at both the national and European level affect three major dimensions of citizenship: identity, representation and scope and standards of good governance. These three dimensions of citizenship (Benhabib 2002) derive from three normative principles of democratic government, which ground the legitimacy and democratic quality of government, at any level. We will address the problems of citizenship under the threefold approach of identity, representation and standards of good governance, by looking at the interactions between elites and public opinion, that traditionally nurture the dynamics of collective political identity, political legitimacy and representation, and standards of performance. In other words, we see the process of EU building not as an either-or choice between those who claim for the Europeanization of the domestic or those who claim for the domestication of Europe, but as a recursive relationship. Accordingly, there are in our project two dynamics we want to explore as 3

related to citizenship: the relationship between mass and elites and the relationship between European and domestic dimensions of political life. Our project will benefit of the growing body of knowledge already acquired in the study of these issues in the 5th Framework Programme and it will establish systematic linkages with similar project approved under the 6th Framework Programme. As to the knowledge previously acquired, particularly relevant are the studies conducted under the EUROPUB.COM, EURONAT, YOUTH and EUROPEAN IDENTITY, EUROPUB, CICGOV, CIDEL and IDNET projects. Moreover, in our demonstration and dissemination activities we can also avail ourselves of the experience of the EGG and PUBACC projects in increasing civic competence and political responsiveness in Europe. Through its underpinning of strategic objectives in terms of research, education, policy-making and integration, this project will contribute to the emergence of a knowledge-based society. 1. Research goals Substantive objectives. The major aims are (1) to provide an important set of baseline measures to assessing the extent to which ‘European’ citizenship has developed since the beginning of the 21st century. (2) To raise standards that will be a reference for new and coming research. The project as it is envisioned will significantly contribute to both, the empirical testing of existing theories of integration and citizenship in its threefold dimensions, identity, representation and governance, and the development and improvement of those theories. Methodological objectives. To contribute to raise the standards of current research to a highly competitive level. Due to the high quality of the scholars involved and the scope of the project that is here proposed, it will represent a significant advancement in terms of data collection and the methods used for analyzing it. Data collection objectives. Through the combined use of existing and new data, the changes related to each enlargement will be investigated. In those processes, key-actors and outcomes will then be identified. Because the time dimension will be central to the project, comparisons will be systematically undertaken between past, present and likely future, which will give to the findings a significant forecasting capacity. 2. Educational goals Geographical and disciplinary integration. The geographical and disciplinary integrating capacity of the project, with over 30 institutions from both Eastern and Western Europe, and with a join effort of people coming from political science, sociology, law, economy, media studies, linguistics, psychology represent a clear step forward in the strengthening of the European Research Area in the social sciences and humanities. The integrating effort will not only touch upon the national and the European levels. Because the EU is politically defined as a multilevel system of governance, efforts of cooperation and coordination of research activities will be made between local, regional, national and European levels. Training of young fellows. The European research capacities will be mobilised at both, the level of well-established scholars, and that of younger fellows through the implementation of training programs. 3. Policy-making goals Understanding of what is to be legitimized in the EU and how. Acts of government need to be legitimized at their respective level of governance, consequently EU government needs to find its legitimacy sources at the EU level. Production of usable knowledge for policy-makers, key-actors and the general public. The periodical digests that the project will publish for policy makers and stakeholders, and more broad

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audiences in general, will help in disseminating the main results and findings and could be a supporting tool during the decision-making process. Standards of good governance. Existing policy instruments for participatory governance will be applied – such as deliberative polling, citizen juries, consensus conferences – in order to provide empirical evidence on the relationship existing between participatory governance, enhanced policy outcomes, and an overall improvement of the democratic functioning of the EU system. 4. Integration and Impact goals Geographical and disciplinary integration. A strengthening of the relatively weak links existing between practitioners and academics will also be provided through the network planned activities. In this regard, the project will already involve stakeholders in the implementation process. Increasing contacts between decision-makers and the general public. The scope of the foreseeing benefits of this project goes beyond the pure academic aspects. Through the demonstration activities we intend to understand and forecast on the real possibilities for creating a European public space. The dissemination activities will contribute to triggering the relationships between the EU citizens, and also between those citizens and the EU institutions. Mobilising public opinion. Suggesting ways in which the process of further mobilization of public opinion can be achieved.

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Relevance to the objectives of the Programme Six main reasons make the empirical study of the evolution of citizenship in Europe both an appropriate and relevant topic for research and a useful tool for practitioners. •

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First, more attention has been given to the dynamics of integration and the effects of integration on domestic policy than to the consequences of European integration for citizenship and its dimensions of collective identity, political membership and standards of governance. The dynamics of integration, however, pose a series of challenges to citizenship and its meaning, practice and scope. Europeanization is not only an economic and institutional process, but it involves also the citizens of Europe, their different modes of national identity, their different political culture, their feeling of trust and efficacy for their national and supranational polities. In other terms, it is necessary to conceive Europeanization as a process affecting European countries in different ways. Second, the European Union is increasingly understood as a multi-level system of governance which includes regional, national and EU levels of government (e.g. Hooghe and Marks 2001). Acts of government need to be legitimized at their respective level of governance, that is to say, regional government needs to be legitimized at the regional level, national government at the national level, and EU government at the level of the European Union. Electoral authorization, while not being the only mechanism, is the central and ultimately indispensable mechanism of legitimizing government. Political representation, at each of these levels, is still seen as the crucial conduit through which demands are put forward to the political systems and legitimacy is granted. Third, the EU is a paradigmatic case in which the circuit of traditional representation (based on representative institutions such as the European Parliament, the Council, and the Committee of the Regions) is overshadowed by functional policy-making structures (see also Richardson 1996). How to reconciliate functional and political representation and what impact they both have on citizenship, as it is traditionally conceived, is not yet clear. And it is also not clear enough what this implies for the legitimacy of both national and European political institutions. Fourth, the major steps in integration have been the product of predominantly elitist politics so far at least. Since the early days of the founding fathers of the Treaty of Rome, European integration has been brought forward by dint of political and technical elites. Even the considerable potential of the European Convention in terms of mobilization of citizens and society has not been fulfilled (Lucarelli and Radaelli 2004). Compared to its member states, the EU strikes all observers for the opportunities it provides to elites. Technical elites – the subject of this segment of the project – find a favourable environment when they operate in the EU policy process. However, it is by now clear that such a process of elite-driven hauling has reached its zenith. No area of the world reflects better than Europe the double, and contradictory, pressures of integration and disintegration processes both within and among states, so characteristics of the present times (Benhabib 2002), than Europe. Both global processes at the international level and sub-national cleavages in the European state system point to the need and opportunity to actively include citizens in the process of “Europebuilding.” To point to ways through which this process of further mobilization at the public opinion level can develop is among the main tasks of our project. Fifth, detailed and systematic descriptions and analyses of the way in which European elites and mass publics think about national and European citizenship, with their complementarities, ambiguities and inconsistencies, will be provided as a result of this research. We believe that this work will therefore represent an important set of baseline measures for future generations of scholars interested in assessing the extent to which ‘European’ citizenship has developed since

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the beginning of the 21st century, and be a reference tool for policy-makers and civil society organizations. Sixth, encountering the expectations that practitioners might have, we will produce usable knowledge by exploring the ‘scope conditions’ under which participatory governance produces better policies (understood as ‘output’). There is considerable research on participatory governance. However, we still do not know under which conditions participation delivers better policies. Put differently, empirical research shows that participatory governance as ‘input’ is not systematically correlated with policy development ‘as output’. Despite the fact that one can always defend participation in the input stage of the policy process on normative grounds, we believe that utility arguments in terms of outputs could significantly support its use. In this sense, existing policy instruments for participatory governance will be applied – such as deliberative polling, citizen juries, consensus conferences – in order to provide empirical evidence about the relationship existing between participatory governance, enhanced policy outcomes, an overall improvement of the democratic functioning of the EU system and the creation and enlargement of an “European public sphere.”.

Potential Impact This project, being by essence comparative, will significantly contribute to raise the standards of current research to a highly competitive level. Due to both, the high quality of the scholars involved and the scope of the project that is here proposed, it will represent a substantive advancement in terms of data collection and the methods used for analyzing it. There is always a trade-off to be made between the amount allocated to research and use of existing and secondary data on the one side, and the collection of new and probably more relevant data on the other. The decision is not easy, but in this project the balance bent on the data side. The rationale for that is simply that the scholars involved believe that a more fine-grained study of complex phenomena such as that of citizenship was needed, and existing data were not satisfactory enough in capturing it. Through the combined use of existing and new data, the changes related to each enlargement will be investigated. In those processes, key-actors and outcomes will then be identified. Because the time dimension will be central to the project, comparisons will be systematically undertaken between past, present and likely future, which will give to the findings a significant forecasting capacity. The project as it is envisioned will significantly contribute to both, the empirical testing of existing theories of integration and citizenship in its threefold dimensions, identity, representation and governance, and the development and improvement of those theories. The geographical and disciplinary integrating capacity of the project, with 32 institutions from both Eastern and Western Europe, and with a joint effort of people coming from political science, sociology, law, economy, media studies, linguistics and psychology represent a clear step forward in the strengthening of the European Research Area in the social sciences and humanities. In that sense, exchanges of best practices and information will be a main operating tool, together with systematic assessment and evaluation procedures of both, research performance and training. The integrating effort will not only touch upon the national and the European levels. Because the EU is politically defined as a multilevel system of governance, efforts of cooperation and coordination of research activities will be made between local, regional, national and European levels. The European research capacities will be mobilized at both, the level of well-established scholars, and that of younger fellows through the implementation of training programs. Another strength of the project is that it integrates not only institutions but also individuals as participants. This means that the real scope of this project cannot be exclusively measured through the already significant amount of institutions this project takes in. This is particularly important 7

given the foreseeing impact it can have in integrating the major national level research programmes and activities in all the dimensions addressed in the project. Not only that, but the prospects for integrating scholars as individuals throughout the whole duration of the project leaves the door open for taking in those people from within and outside the EU, and especially from Candidate Countries, who may wish and be able to join during the implementation period. Therein, this projectwill impact a large part of the European research space. A strengthening of the relatively weak links existing between practitioners and academics will also be provided through the network planned activities. In this regard, a very important issue is that the project will involve stakeholders in the implementation process. It is envisaged that stakeholders will be part of the structure of coordination, and will therefore be invited to the general meetings. They could not only benefit from the information then disseminated, but they will be in a privileged position to assess the progressive performances of the project. All in all, we believe this project has a potential capacity to involve not only scientific audiences, but also policy-makers and other key actors and, last but not least, the general public. Along these lines, it will also contribute to increase contacts between the two former – practitioners and academics, and civil society. The scope of the foreseen benefits of this project goes beyond the pure academic aspects. Through the demonstration activities we intend to understand and forecast on the real possibilities for creating a European public space. The dissemination activities will contribute to triggering the relationships between the EU citizens, and also between those citizens and the EU institutions. The periodical digests that the project will publish for policy makers and stakeholders, and more broad audiences in general, will help in disseminating the main results and findings and could be a supporting tool during the decision-making process. The latter is a particularly important feature given that it will quickly integrate research into the policy-making as an interplay between different actors involved. The relevance of the project is based on the actuality of the issues is tackling. For that reason it will certainly contribute and respond quickly to issues arising in policy agendas. All the former are good reasons to believe that this project, if supported by the EU, will significantly contribute to the emergence of a knowledge-based society. Contributions to standards Our project can contribute to set standards in at least three directions. First, the project’ results, namely the mass, elite and experts surveys and the media analysis will set the standard for future scientific research on these topics. In this connection the project intends to contribute to: • Theory development. The research will offer a theoretical dynamic picture of the characteristics and dimensions of citizenship in a unique period of European history. The combination of increasing vertical integration, enlargement and new external challenges coming from globalization, transatlantic relations and new forms of threat pose multidimensional challenges to the conception of citizenship. • Empirical research. The project will map a detailed description of the main conceptions of identity and their multiple interconnections among set of actors crucial to the process of construction of an European identity, namely, elite, citizens and mass media. • Research methodology. The project stresses as much comparability with previous studies as innovation in both design and wording of the questions. In this connection, the active participation of EOS-Gallup will also allow us to spill directly over methodological innovations in the field of survey research (such as experimental conditions in survey, innovative ways of asking questions, etc.).

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Second, the project intends to contribute to set innovative standards of responsiveness of political institutions, making possible to spread practice of active involvement of citizens in local and Europe-wide political activities; to facilitate communications channels among experts, politicians and citizens on highly complex and technical issues whose consequences affect them all and finally to set standards of evaluation of media performance in connection with the construction of a common European identity. Third, given the highly diversified set of participants and their scientific backgrounds, the project might set a standard in terms of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work that can be useful for further work in this or other fields in which too narrowly defined approaches are unable to grasp the entire dimension of the problem at hand. Contribution to policy developments Understanding of what is to be legitimized in the EU and how. Acts of government need to be legitimized at their respective level of governance, consequently EU government needs to find its legitimacy sources at the EU level. Production of usable knowledge for policy-makers, key-actors and the general public. The periodical digests that the project will publish for policy makers and stakeholders, and more broad audiences in general, will help in disseminating the main results and findings and could be a supporting tool during the decision-making process. Standards of good governance. Existing policy instruments for participatory governance will be applied – such as citizen juries, consensus conferences – in order to provide empirical evidence on the relationship existing between participatory governance, enhanced policy outcomes, and an overall improvement of the democratic functioning of the EU system. Research, technological development and innovation activities The project is organized around eight groups of activities. Four of these areas deal with the scientific dimension, and they analyze problems of identity, representation and scope of governance at four different level of analysis: elites, experts, mass media and citizens. The other four areas of activity are conceived as support and spill over of the research results, as follows: Dissemination, Demonstration and Training. Of course these two dimensions – scientific research on the one hand and dissemination, demonstration and training on the other side – cross-cut one another. The idea is that scientific results will find applications, in all or in part, in dissemination, demonstration and training activities. More specifically, we see the relationships between these two areas of activity as follows: for each level, and with slight differences related to the specific content of each level of analysis, the research will proceed in three stages: • a conceptual and theoretical analysis, then followed by • empirical research aimed at testing the main hypotheses and then by • dissemination and demonstration activities intended to gauge the feasibility and implications of some of the hypotheses tested in the scientific section. Training activities will be conducted at each stage, to fulfill different needs. On the one hand, to train young scholars and graduate students in the areas of the research project and on the other hand to immediately utilize some of the results and experiences stemming from the research for training of politicians and experts. The following figure represents the above description: 9

Figure 1. Outline Implementation Plan

The managements structure is expressly conceived in a way to support both kinds of activity according to principle of sound accounting, transparency and efficiency Here is a more detailed description of the scientific design, distinguishing between conceptual and theoretical analysis and data gatherings and analyses. • Conceptual and Theoretical analysis - Review the conceptual and theoretical literature on identities, representation and scope of governance, to summarize the existing theoretical and empirical literature and to build new measures at individual level and a research design able to capture the complexities of identity formation and political representation. The experience of previous FP projects will be particularly relevant here. We have in mind the IDNET project results on the impact of Europeanization on collective identities in particular. - Integration of the three strands of research aimed at providing: - A theoretical basis for understanding the way in which European elite and mass publics think about national and European citizenship. - An assessment of notions of citizenship, and of the possible past linkages between elite and mass conceptions of citizenship. - A development of models of elite perceptions in order to assess how far the citizenship conceptions of political elite in different countries are constrained or informed by the views of their respective national mass publics. - Secondary analysis of mass survey data and elite data •

Data gathering and analysis

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The data collected will be of two main kinds: attitudinal and behavioral data at the individual level and documentary data. - Attitudinal data: - Elite: Two waves of elite survey. The first wave in the year 2 and the second in the year 4 of the project (see list of countries below). - Citizens: Two waves of mass surveys. The first wave in year 2 and the second in the year 4 of the project. (see list of countries below). - Experts Semi-Structured Interviews with Members of Epistemic Communities

Countries involved in the mass, elite and media data collection France Italy Britain Poland Spain

MASS

Belgium Germany Portugal Denmark Greece Hungary Bulgaria Serbia/Montenegro (?) Slovenia Slovakia Estonia

France Italy Britain Poland Spain

ELITE

Belgium Germany Portugal Denmark Austria Greece Hungary Bulgaria Serbia/Montenegro Lithuania

MEDIA

France Italy Britain Poland Spain (if external resources can be raised)

Czech Republic Slovakia Estonia

- Documentary data: - Collection of official documents and government records - Collection of Primary Documentation in the Selected Policy Areas - Data collection and coding of TV and Newspapers media in the periodo of mass and elite surveys. In order to insure comparability and to exploit the opportunity of studying elite-mass interactions in a time-dynamic perspective, the mass and elite surveys and the media data collection will be held in roughly the same period. This is the time schedule (among parentheses the counter starting from Month 1: September 2005 (M1), the expected starting date of the project): Elites: 1st wave: Jan-May 2007 (M17 to M21) 2nd wave: Oct 2008-Feb 2009 (M38 to M42) Experts: Jan-March 2007 (M17 to M19)

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Mass: 1st wave: March 2007 (M19) 2nd wave: Jan-Feb 2009 (M41 to M42) Media: 1st wave: Jan-March 2007 (M17 to M19) 2nd wave: Dec 2008-Feb 2009 (M40 to M42) Two meetings are scheduled in this period: - 1st meeting January 2006 (M5-M6) (January-February 2006) - 2nd meeting July (M11) or Sept 2006 (M13) Given the aims of our research project and the importance of addressing the issue of if and how EU citizenship is emerging and what effects it might have on national citizenship, we intend to undertake the following steps: • •

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An analysis, based on the secondary data sources that are currently available for assessing notions of citizenship, of the possible past linkages between elite and mass conceptions of citizenship. A detailed and systematic description of the way in which European elites and mass publics think about national and European citizenship. The description would provide an important set of baseline measures for assessing the extent to which ‘European’ citizenship has developed since the beginning of the 21st century. A descriptive analysis of the complementarities, ambiguities and inconsistencies in elite and mass perceptions of citizenship across the EU. This description would also provide a set of baseline measures for future research. A systematic multi-level analysis of the individual-level sources of both elite and mass conceptions of citizenship across a sample of selected EU countries. Analysis of mass survey data would reveal the extent to which popular conceptions of European identity were determined, inter alia, by personal characteristics such as ethnicity, gender, region and education; by different configurations of national identity; by patterns of media consumption and foreign travel; by patterns of integration in cross-border networks of social communication and exchange; by perceptions of the performance of EU institutions; and by ‘filtering cues’ such as partisan identification. Aggregate responses from directly comparable elite surveys could be included in the mass-level models thus devised in order to assess the extent to which the citizenship conceptions of national elites affect (or fail to affect) mass perceptions. Analogous models of elite perceptions will be developed with aggregate mass-level responses being used in order to assess how far the citizenship conceptions of political elites in different countries are constrained or informed by the views of their respective national mass publics. A discourse analysis of how mass media (TV and newspapers) construct the problems of identity, representation and scope and governance, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods.

To integrate basic and policy-research the project will use two main instruments: Citizens’ juries and Deliberative polling. Below a brief description of the activites will be carried out in the project. 1) Citizens’ juries on two policy sectors Using an analytical framework drawn from deliberative-interactive policy analysis, we will organise two citizens juries on two policy areas. The juries will be carried out in the second and third year of the project, at the same time and in the same place of the Deliberative Polling, to maximize leverage and depth of analysis. The idea is to select areas that can maximise the interaction among the different segments of the project. The work will be implemented in the following steps: 12

• Identification of the two policy areas and the team in charge of the implementation of this WP • Selection of specific topics for the construction of citizens juries • Definition of a protocol for the juries • Realization of two juries • Analysis of the results and their implications for the whole project Among the major deliverables we expect from this experience are: (a) a protocol on citizen’s juries; (b) two reports on the juries; (c) a final report on the implications for the whole project and on the Citizens’ perceptions of policy-problem, and (d) an article on interactive policy-making and socially robust peer-review/validation of science. 2) Deliberative polling Citizenship involves active participation, political identification and the perception of political institutions’ responsiveness to citizens’ demands. In this connection, we plan to carry out two deliberative polling experiences at the local level. The two experiences of local deliberative polling will be carried out in the second and in the third year of our project. These two experiences will be carried out in two medium-size towns in a Southern and a Northern European country – tentatively one in Hungary and the other in Italy – in order to explore in a capsule the problems and implication of Citizens’ active involvement in political discussion and deliberation. Each deliberative polling experience at the local level will proceed as follows: - Active involvement of the public services and the local representative institutions in examining their views of how citizens perceive public services and performances; - Selection of a representative sample of approx. 500 inhabitants to be invited to take part in a deliberative polling experience of two days in the City Hall; - Organization of the deliberative polling experience, selecting a set of policy issues (related to the major area of activities of our project), around which organize the discussion. We expect to produce a local community deliberative polling protocol, to be suggested as an instrument to implement similar experiences in other localities; a detailed report analyzing the data emerging from the experience; a video (and DVD) of the experience to be used for dissemination activities. These two experiences are also seen as a preliminary step toward the implementation of a Europewide deliberative polling aimed at experiencing the problems involved in the creation of a “European public sphere” and studying it in a quasi-experimental context. This Europe-wide polling will be the object of a specific request to private financial institutions in the next months. The major areas to be explored during the deliberative polling experience will be: local services and satisfaction for the ways they are performed, the possibility of increasing the public space of discussion through active involvement of the population; of assessing the impact of different ways of framing and discussing alternative policy options; the impact of deliberation on the sense of political identity. The deliberative polling experience will be built in three steps: (a) questionnaire to be filled at the beginning of the experience; (b) deliberation activities in working groups and assembly; (c) questionnaire to be filled at the end of the experience. Demonstration activities 13

Web-site The research project will build a Web site from the very beginning of the project (in the meanwhile. we have assured the WWW.INTUNE.IT website rights). The Web site will have two major purposes and it will be organized accordingly. The first purpose will be to facilitate communications among the researchers participating in the project. To this purpose we will make a intranet space reserved to the scholars and practitioners working on the project (accessible via passwords) in which background materials, data, analysis will be available to all researchers working in the project. We will also build up the possibility of holding web-cam computer conference among subgroups of the project on a regular base. The second purpose is to build an internet web site to make the work-in-progress results available to the wider scientific community, to policy-makers and concerned citizens. This means that the web site will be designed in order to be simple to manage and effective in presenting the results. We see this as a crucial element in the dissemination of informations related to the project. To maximize exchanges with other projects working on this same line of activity we are participating in the project proposal for a “Joint Internet Portal on EU Governance” (the tentative title is “Creating and Developing a Joint Internet Portal on Citizenship, Participation and Governance (suggested acronym: CIPARGOV)” aimed at bundling together available resources on EU governance crossover different projects fitting under a wider thematic topic of interest, in this case EU Governance. Instead of just establishing a loosely linked network of individual project homepages, we seek to establish a central thematic portal (i.e. www.eu-governance.org) which aggregates common features of the projects, adds new value for the user and serves as a central entry point to which relevant resources are linked to. Digital Data Library In the development of an INTUNE website attention will be given to the rapid and effective distribution of available data. Some of these datasets are the results of primary empirical work of members of the INTUNE Project, others have been collected over many years of research in core areas of interest to the project. Originating from a variety of sources and in many cases from the early stages of empirical data collection, many of these datasets need extensive data cleaning efforts to be useable, on top of the usual work of preparation of data for analysis. The project is expected to generate a valuable collection of data of interest to a vast set to students and scholars. For this purpose, the project will strive to offer a coherent structure in data description and an easily accessible distribution platform to ease awareness of and access to this important resource for teaching and research. The Digital Data Library section aims to develop an archive of data and data documentation, and to make the empirical studies produced by the project more visible and more accessible both internally and externally on a web based publication platform. At the same time it will support training by making datasets easily available to researchers and students commited to the project while improving the available working infrastructure. This effort will require the following work steps: 1. develop a coherent set of metadata describing the datasets 2. develop and apply a subject oriented coding scheme 3. collect, systematize and digitize descriptive materials about the field work 4. create and implement a feasible technical solution for storage and retrieval of the metadata 5. create physical collection in the library 6. continue efforts to clean and prepare datasets for statistical analysis 7. build the distribution website 8. website as access point for data or data requests 9. website as publication medium 10. continuity guide Training activities 14

We see two major goals as related to the training activities. One component of training activities is devoted to the training and socialization of young scholars to work on complex interdisciplinary projects with a theoretical and empirical dimensions. Attention will be given to offer the results and expertise of the project not only to young scholars internal to the project but also to external students, through the Winter Schools. A second component is related to the training of experts and politicians to discuss and analyze complex political and policy problems with the help of inputs from the scientific community. Training of young scholars related to the project The goal is to set up two winter school expressly devoted to train young graduate students and practitioners around the issues dealt with in the project. The Winter schools will be held in the first and third year of the project, respectively in Leuven and Barcelona. The Schools will present an interdisciplinary view of the linkages between political identity problems, representation and scope of governance, using the expertise of the research teams in sociology, political science, media discourse analysis, policy analysis and political psychology. The two Winter schools will carefully blend a thorough overview of the state-of-the-art research results in the fields of citizenship studies, with the presentation of the main theoretical results expected and produced by the present research project. The schools will be open to students and young scholars on a competitive basis. The idea is to socialize and motivate young researchers to work together in an interdisciplinary environment, paying attention to both the theoretical and empirical dimensions of the work in these fields. The most motivated and skilled will be also used during the project to carry out research activities for the teams involved in the project. The Winter schools will be built around three main activities: (a) presentation and discussion of the state-of-the-art in the fields of citizenship studies, at both the mass and elite level; (b) introduction to the methodological problems of interdisciplinary research in these fields, stressing the need for both the use of quantitative and qualitative methods; (c) the presentation of the policy relevance of the theoretical and empirical problems dealt with in the project organizing meetings with policymakers, experts, politicians and people from the media. These activities will be supported by visual aids, most of them will then be made available on internet using the special web page set up by the project. The major deliverables expected from this experiences are: Curricula and teaching materials for the classes; Web-page materials to be made available publicly; report of the experience of the Winter school. Specialized training with experts and politicians The purpose is to socialize experts and politicians to interact in discussing and addressing problems that arise from the challenge posed by the building of a new European identity and to supply the intellectual instruments for addressing this problems. The major task is showing the scope conditions under which the interaction between technical elites, citizens, and political elites achieves the properties of good governance outlined in the White Paper on Governance (in terms of transparency, accountability, openness, access, participation, and effectiveness). The training program will be built having in mind three logics of action: the logic of interaction that shows how technical elites interact, what are the informal and formal rules in communities of experts, and how their discourse is coordinated-formulated; the logic of meaning that analyzes the cognitive and normative frames of reference used by experts, with reference to principles, values, beliefs, and ideas about identity, representation, and scope and criteria of good governance and finally the logic 15

of communication that shows how experts communicate with political elites and public opinion via mechanisms of reporting, advice, participation in the public debate, ex-post evaluation of the activities performed by regulatory agencies and technical committees. The task for the research team is to construct a session in which it is possible to address in an interactive and active way the major problems politicians and experts face when they have to deal with problem that have a wide social impact and on which public opinion is extremely sensitive. For this purpose, we will bring together in Brussels MPs from different parliament of the Union and experts in each of the policy sectors chosen from the project to discuss in a very interactive setting the problems of old and new identities. To increase direct and informal exchanges there could be two or three partial fora. During the fora the results of the elite and mass surveys will be presented to the participants and will be discussed by them. The fora should be organized with the help of the national parliaments and the European parliament. The session will have the purpose of assessing how economic elites perceive the new Community and its identity, how they re-conceptualize their political space of reference from a past situation where the nation-state was the dominant frame to the new one where especially after Maastricht a large supra-national space has gained a crucial influence on economic activities and their regulation. The major deliverables expected from this experiences are: teaching Curricula for the training activities; questionnaire designed to tap the major source of attitude and belief changes among politicians, technical elites and experts; report of the activities carried out during the specialized training sessions. Raising public participation and awareness The project is aiming at translating the major results of the research in demonstration activities that show the policy relevance of the main scientific results. Two activities are envisaged for this purpose: Citizens’ juries on two policy sectors The main goals we intend to achieve through the experience of the Citizens juries are: (a) to experiment with methodologies of interactive policy analysis; (b) to address issues of democratisation of expertise and participation in technical policy areas from a pragmatic perspective; (c) to show how policy deliberation can be delivered in a democratic context and to address deliberative policy-making as civic discovery; (d) to demonstrate how approached to socially-robust validation of science perform in real-life settings; (e) to assess the impact of new methodologies informed by argumentative policy-analysis in terms of identities. Deliberative polling The local deliberative polling experiences have the following goals: analyzing better ways of perceiving, assessing and taking into account citizens demands related to public services; explore new forms of political participation at the local government level; explore the implication that local political identity has for political participation and satisfaction for the way the local community works; offer an instrument for gauging public needs and demands that in the future might be of use for local community, towns and cities. We now spell out in greater details the implementation process we intend to pursue.

Management activities 16

Management activities will be run from the University of Siena that is the coordinating institution of the project. The coordinator, Prof. Maurizio Cotta is the head of the Center for the Study of Political Change (CIRCAP) of the Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Giuridiche, Politiche e Sociali of the Università di Siena. The Center has a staff of 6 professors and researchers plus the administrative staff. The University of Siena (and the Office of Research, managed by Dr. Massimo Ferri) is well experienced in managing international projects. The University of Siena has already managed more than 150 projects within the previous 5th Framework Program. To manage the project according to sound financial and organizational criteria, insuring the participation of all parts involved we devised a management structure flexible enough to be able to: - provide contingency planning for unforeseen events; - make sure that opportunities for dissemination and engagement with actors beyond the project are exploited at an early stage; - insure a truly interdisciplinary work of different research teams; - manage the finances together with the responsible partner that will have an overseeing capacity. The management will be endowed with the following responsibilities: (a) Provide the guiding-lines that contribute to the overall coherence and well-functioning of the project. (b) Coordinate the general activities across research-areas and countries. (c) The monitoring of the working progresses. The Project Secretariat will run the project together with a Steering Committee for the administrative part and a scientific committee for the scientific part. The project Secretariat is composed by the project coordinator, Prof Maurizio Cotta, the deputy Project coordinator, Prof Pierangelo Isernia, the Project Manager, Dr Nicolò Conti, and a full time secretary for the administrative part. Part of the work will be within the project itself, e.g., by ensuring that complementary disciplines represented in the project team provide real value-added, that the time planning is respected, and that contingency plans are available throughout the project. But managing a project like this also means to insure a liaison with the Commission and actors that go beyond the project itself, in particular the stakeholders. As to the budgetary decisions, the management will be carried out according to the following general rules: - When important budgetary decisions are to be taken, the coordinator will do it together with the Steering Committee. - The coordinator will ensure the compliance of each participant with the contract. - Furthering and deepening the research area in the field of social sciences and humanities, through strengthening the links between current participants and prospecting contacts with new partners (be it as institutions or as individuals). To increase the transparency of the administrative procedures and the rapid location of areas of possible problems regular meetings of the steering committee will be held, an annual Progress Report reporting accounting decisions and the budget statement will be done and several informations will be located in the intranet Web Page. In connection with the activities of the Consortium a strategic decision has been taken, and it is reflected in the budget of allocating the money for the general meetings, the meetings of the 17

research areas and of the level of activities’ groups in the University of Siena in order to: (a) speed up the process of services delivering; (b) insure a sound accountability of the financial sums spent on this purpose and (c) increase the transparency of the entire process, without encumbering the single participating institutions of several administrative duties not related to the goals of the project for minimum amounts of money. Gender Action Plan Following the Commission guidelines on gender and research, this project will articulate its action around the following dimensions: (1) Women’s participation in research will be horizontally and vertically encouraged, that is to say both as scientists and within the evaluation, consultation and implementation processes, (2) Research will address women’s needs, as much as men’s needs. The gender impacts of the research carried out within this project will be shown. (3) As stated in the research proposal, research will be carried out to contribute to an enhanced understanding of gender issues. To ensure gender equality equal consideration will be given to the life patterns, needs and interests of both women and men. Gender mainstreaming thus includes also changing the working culture. In concrete terms, this proposal is expected to contribute to promote gender equality through the following means: (a) Application of a gender mainstreaming logic in all the relevant steps the project will undertake. An examination of the implications that the decisions taken in the project represent for both, women and men, will systematically be performed. (b) When relevant, assessment and monitoring of gender disparities will be made on a regular basis, both, within the project and in society. (c) When unbalances are observed in the numerical composition of working groups, boards and decisions-making bodies, the participation of women will be encouraged in the recruitment process. (d) In terms of policy-making, advice will be given so as to improve the current unbalanced situation. (e) Following the mainstreaming approach, the general dissemination activities will help in raising awareness about the need to increase gender equality. (f) The surveys and the analysis carried out through the project will include gender issues. (g) Gender-sensitive attitudes will also be promoted at three levels: (1) the strategic level; (2) within the research staff. (h) Gender expertise will also be consulted when relevant. One of the key-objectives of this project is to contribute to the strengthening of the European Research Area. The partners are aware that this project – if financed – will have a structuring effect on scientific research, not only in Europe (both in current Members and candidate countries), but also on third countries through its international contacts. All partners realizing the visibility this project will have, they all agree on the importance of promoting gender equality within the frame of the project.

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