The CIVICA Research project aims at endowing CIVICA - the European University of Social Sciences in order to  implement an ambitious and innovative research strategy. It received €2m funding from the EUprogramme Horizon 2020 to enable researchers to conduct joint scientific activities.
A major CIVICA Research added-value is to pool various european approaches on world-wide majors challenges, concerning Europe with particular acuity: Europe Revisited; Democracy in the 21st Century; Societies in Transition and Crises of Earth; Data-Driven Technologies for Social Sciences.
Pursuing this objective, CIVICA's Research first call  invited faculty and postdoctoral researchers to team up for collaborative research projects.
Most of the eleven projects selected for funding bring together three CIVICA partners, with the biggest project involving six partners. Five projects gather faculty and researchers from Sciences Po, two projects being led or co-led by Sciences Po.

Project's presentation

Projects led by Sciences Po

Democracy and Its Discontents. A Historical Examination of the Current Predicament of Democracy

There is a broad consensus that modern democracies are facing today major difficulties if not a profound crisis. Existing studies identify some of its key drivers and manifestations : the link between inequality and the contestation of democracy; the roots and nature of the current populist and anti-systemic challenges; the redefinition of national identities and the loosening of the ethnic and linguistic homogeneity of many nation-states; the interdependence between democratic nation-states and the global context. The project considers that such studies must be complemented by a thorough historical investigation capable of defining a genealogy of the current democratic malaise, identifying historical antecedents to be compared, to this latest predicament of democracy. All the major history departments and centers of CIVICA will be involved in this investigation : The Sciences Po's Centre for History – as leader, European University Institute, Bocconi University, Central European University, London School of Economics.

Project investigator : Mario Del Pero, Full Professor, Center for History

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European Polarisation Observatory: Measuring Positions of Users, Medias, Polarisation, and the Role of Algorithms and artificial intelligence Systems

Traditionally, people’s opinions on different issues of the public debate have been studied through polls and surveys. But recent advancements in network scaling methods have shown that digital behavioral traces - typically following/follower networks - in social media platforms can be used to mine opinions at a massive scale. This project seeks to develop a proof of concept for a European Polarisation Observatory of ideologies and attitudes towards crucial issues of public debate; e.g., taxation, immigration, European integration, perception of elites. The project would measure polarisation on these s issues, and investigate the role of algorithmic recommendations on user access to ideologically news. The results of the study will be implemented in research cutting across several disciplines: media studies, online social movements, and the analysis of the structure of party systems in European countries, among others. The project will specifically aim at two kinds of applications : first, to provide systematic measurements across Europe of the intensity of polarisation on different issues (e.g., left-right economics, or attitudes towards people and elites) in various online settings. Second, to tackle the question of the role of artificial intelligence in shaping European socio-political systems through algorithmic recommendation and its possible biases. Overall, this project aims to serve further developing an interdisciplinary European network of research in the computational social sciences. Sciences Po médialab and Central European University co-lead this research. London School of Economics, and Bocconi University take part in this project.

Projects investigators : Jean-Philippe Cointet, Associate Professor & Pedro Ramaciotti Morales, post-doc, médialab

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Projects with Sciences Po's participation

Contesting the Court: Examining Judicial Politics in the European Union

While long considered an important actor in European integration, the Court of Justice’s role in European Union politics is increasingly contested. This contestation comes from both sides, with national Courts and scholars deriding ‘activist’ rulings in particular areas while simultaneously complaining of a failure to proactively defend European legal values in others. This project aims to revisit the debate over judicial politics in the EU by examining the causes and outcomes of increasing contestation of the EU judiciary. It intends to examine factors that lead to controversy and their political, scholarly and substantive outcomes of contestation for the European constitutional order. In doing so, the project seeks to examine the constitutional resilience of the EU political order and the role of the judicial branch in safeguarding its basic principles. This research is co-led by European University InstituteI and Hertie School. Sciences Po Law School's Research Centre, Central European University, Bocconi University, and London School of Economics are part of this research.

Attitudes to Inequalities: Perceptions, Judgments, Justifications

The researchers involved in this project plan to run a set of studies that shall contribute to the psychology of inequality and its social and cultural expressions. What are people's perception of inequalities? How unequal do people think their societies are? What are the most salient issues that make a society unequal in people's views? What forms of inequality (if any) are considered more acceptable? Why do some narratives justifying inequalities appear successful? Are there quantifiable cultural variables that have predictive power over perceptions and moral evaluations of inequality? This project thus addresses a fundamental topic in ‘cognition and culture’--attitudes to inequalities and will especially focus on the European context. The topic is of great relevance to analyses of democratic processes, inequalities being identified as a greatest challenge for 21st century. Central European University, leads this research. Sciences Po's Center for Political Science and Department of Economics, London School of Economics, and the Romanian National University of Political Studies and Public Administration are part of the project.

When the Law is Silent: Hate Crime Prosecution and Implicit Bias in Law Enforcement Agencies

This project aims to investigate the prosecution of hate crimes in Romania, Bulgaria and Germany, with a specific focus on antisemitism, by looking into intrinsic motivations among the police and the judiciary. The core objectives of this research are to identify patterns of implicit bias among police officers, judges and prosecutors and their role in how individual files are legally instrumented, and examine the wider individual, institutional and societal markers that can account for bias and prejudice among law enforcement agencies and personnel. It will also seek to situate patterns of implicit bias into the wider matrix of the political order in Romania, Bulgaria and Germany, and formulate preliminary hypotheses for other European countries. This objective will situate the research into the wider agenda of democratic backsliding literature and issues of social hierarchy, violence and oppression. A final goal is to propose a set of recommendations on improving the legislation addressing antisemitism as well as raising awareness of this issue among policy-makers and law enforcing agencies. Led by the Romanian National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, the Sciences Po's Center for International Studies and the Central European University  are part of this research.