NET-ROL: ‘Networks and the Rule of Law: Uncovering Socio-Economic Outcomes’ is an innovative, multi-disciplinary collaborative research project of institutions from 8 countries (Austria, Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Poland) and scholars from different disciplines and sub-disciplines (economics, law, political science, network science). NET-ROL develops a conceptual framework theorizing the positive or negative role of networks impacting rule of law and socio-economic outcomes. It generates large-scale, historical and contemporary datasets relevant to the study of rule of law: on values and social norms, legislation, public spending and personal connections, judicial governance and decision-making. The approach to rule of law emphasizes the role of citizens, exploring networked coordination as a mechanism to halt weakening of rule of law. Building on EU’s definition of rule of law, NET-ROL analyzes networks in law-making, executive decision-making and the judiciary. For the judiciary, NET-ROL maps the interaction of rule of law and concentration of powers, analyzing the effect on formal and informal judicial and prosecutorial independence. Using state-of-the-art data techniques such as causal machine learning and multi-layer network analysis, the project generates original knowledge on causes of rule of law weakening and the impact on socio-economic outcomes such as growth, inequality, and trust. The project’s innovative character stems from: · The broad and multi-disciplinary perspective on rule of law. · The integration of different approaches studying the impact of networks on public goods. · The gathering and analysis of new, actionable datasets. · The use of innovative data science, econometric, network and text analysis techniques. · The exploration of the conditions under which citizens defend the rule of law. · The design of interventions supporting rule of law based on experimental data and input from stakeholders.

The process by which humans formulate increasingly complex internal representations from sensory stimuli based on their available knowledge has been investigated traditionally by a somewhat disconnected set of approaches under various labels such as “feature detection”, “grouping”, “figure-ground segregation”, “chunking”, “categorization” and “learning”. We explore the idea that there might exist some general unconscious mechanisms of this pattern formation process that work similarly and repeatedly across different levels of complexity from basic segmentation to complex chunking-based learning and across different modalities. such as vision (typically viewed with spatial processing) and audition (associated with temporal processing). We will follow 4 principles in our work to test this. First, we will focus a) on the auditory and visual modalities, b) with space and time as the two dependent dimensions of comparison, and c) we will test the two endpoints of the complexity scale: at one end, pure tones in audition and single squares in vision easily treated by instantaneous perceptual biases and at the other end, complex time- and space-varying patterns requiring learning. Second, we will perform the equivalent version of each experiment in both modalities to check the generality of the mechanisms that establish the representations of the input. Third, we will use the same testing method across experiments, measuring behavioral sensitivity induced by the resulting representation to quantify the representation’s structure and its EEG correlates. Fourth, we will interpret our results by building a new hypothesis about humans’ internal representation into a Hierarchical Bayesian Model so that we can derive further individual- and population-specific predictions to inspire subsequent empirical work. Our integrated approach will contribute to a deeper understanding of the general principles of representation forming and its malfunctioning in special populations.

This research project aims to study the entanglements and discrepancies between indigenous understandings of history and colonial narratives created by missionary intervention amongst the Shuar people of lowland Ecuador. It will examine how history, indigenous memory, and cultural transmission have been developed and produced in the context of missionisation and colonial pressure. It aims to understand how colonial history still impacts indigenous politics today, shaping current indigenous engagements with large-scale resource extraction and allowing extractive capital to endure and perpetuate over time. To achieve these objectives, this research reviews the historical archives available in the region from the Salesian and Franciscan missions since the late 19th century, will collect and archive film footage of testimonial memories from indigenous participants on their complex relationship with the missionary endeavours and boarding schools, and will map how missionary presence shaped indigenous land. The use of these three different methodologies will be combined to provide a clear ethnographic study that aims to understand and describe the long-term effects of colonial entanglements on people’s attitudes, thinking, and current political developments. Overall, this research project is concerned with colonial residues and proposes to look at land demarcation, history, and cultural transmission to understand not only the impacts of colonialism in its tangible political ubiquity but also in its pervasive and intangible influence over concepts that help people define their worldview.

REAL DEAL will stimulate a pan-European debate to reshape citizens? and stakeholders? active participation through deliberative processes around the European Green Deal. It brings together researchers and practitioners of deliberative democracy from a wide range of disciplines including environmental rights and the law of public participation, ethics and responsible innovation, gender studies and ecofeminism, psychology, geography, urban planning and sustainability studies. It includes the EU?s largest civil society networks advocating on the environment, climate, sustainable development, local democracy and the European movement. It teams up with youth climate, social justice and women?s organisations, SMEs, universities and research institutes, mobilising networks with thousands of CSOs, uniting millions of citizens and activating contacts to thousands of policymakers. In a large co-creation exercise, REAL DEAL will develop, test and validate innovative tools and formats to propel deliberative democracy to the next level. It will tests its innovations at citizens assemblies for the transition in at least 13 countries. We will scrutinise pan-European formats ranging from digital deliberation through our online platform www.CitizensGreenDeal.eu to in-person processes such as an Assembly for a Gender-Just Green Deal and a pan-European Youth Climate Assembly. REAL DEAL will co-create a comprehensive protocol for meaningful citizens? participation and deliberation to work towards the objectives of the EGD. It will validate recommendations on how to design such processes and how they can be applied by European institutions, Member States and civil society alike. Gender equality will be embedded into the project?s DNA. It pays specific attention to the leave-no-one-behind principle, fostering the engagement of disenfranchised groups that are disproportionally burdened by environmental damage. REAL DEAL will develop a new model of environmental citizenship across Europe.

Global challenges require global policy solutions. The Global Programme to Prevent Son Preference and Gender-biased Sex Selection (2017-2019) and the Joint Programme on the Abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (2018-2021), both co-funded by the European Union (EU) and carried out by the United Nations (UN), are representative of a range of new initiatives that seek to share knowledge and enact policy change across different jurisdictions. Despite the promise of such global programmes, however, the challenges involved in working across different cultures and policy regimes may prevent them from fully achieving their goals. Very little is known about how knowledge is transferred through these programmes and how it translates into concrete policy. GlobalKnoT assesses knowledge transfer in the Global Programmes on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) and Gender-biased Sex Selection (GBSS) to inform academics, practitioners and the public about their functioning and efficacy in providing solutions to global public challenges. By applying the Actor-Network Theory to global policy studies and drawing from policy files, participant observation during international conferences, and expert interviews with UN, WHO and EU officials and policy makers, this project provides a detailed map of the actors and networks involved in global policy. It informs us how knowledge diffusion can be optimized to accelerate change towards eliminating two pervasive forms of gender discrimination and advance the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.