The Scuola Normale Superiore (Italy) invites applications from doctoral students for the 2025 Ph.D. School on Democratic Backsliding and Political Conflict. The PhD School will be held at the Palazzone di Cortona, one of the sites of the Scuola Normale Superiore, in the small town of Cortona in southern Tuscany, Italy and at the European University Institute (planeary session only). The school will take place from September 27-30 2025.
Deadline for applications: 30 July 2025, 5 PM CEST (UTC+2)
Description
The Phd School will offer an invaluable opportunity for young scholars to explore the complexities and challenges of democratic erosion across different regions (and their resistance) from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Studies of political participation and mobilisation are increasingly focusing on democratic regression and the political actors (far right political parties, reactionary social movement organizations, ‘movement-parties’, etc.) who act as ‘entrepreneurs’ of it. The same is true of public opinion, electoral and party politics studies, which increasingly focus on the norms, values, opinions, attitudes that might embed it and the mechanisms of regressive orientations of society and collective political actors and policy makers. This also poses important methodological challenges that go beyond the analytical ones, in terms of reflecting on the research methods that are better suited to capturing these current trends in the European and global spheres. The Internet and social media are also part of the story, including various processes they mediate.
To explore the contextual, meso-organisational and micro-level attitudinal and value characteristics that accompany and sustain democratic backsliding in online campaigning, contentious politics, political participation and elections, this PhD school will focus on several key themes and methods: social movements and collective actors, identities and networks on the regressive side; the intersection of media and democratic backsliding, focusing on how the erosion of press freedoms plays a crucial role in undermining democratic institutions; comparative analyses of Eastern European democracies, including the role of civil society and grassroots movements in resisting democratic decline; how political elites and state institutions may contribute to or combat backsliding; the impact of European Union policies on democratic resilience, examining how EU membership can both support and constrain democratic reforms in member states, as well as the emergence of new arenas of democratic backsliding, such as legal mobilisations against the rule of law. Together, their diverse perspectives will provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the multifaceted dynamics of democratic backsliding, offering both theoretical frameworks and practical approaches for addressing these issues. This Phd School will engage participants from a variety of academic disciplines, ensuring a multidisciplinary approach to understanding democratic erosion. It welcomes papers on geographical areas and actors that are underrepresented in current research and media coverage.
More deatils HERE.
