Social sciences for democracy: A training program for improving research on illiberal systems and finding ways to build more robust democracies

The turn to illiberalism, often combined with anti-European rhetoric, represents a serious threat to the European Union. With most of the research focused on Poland and Hungary, the emergence of illiberal trends in other countries, including Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turkey, and Italy, has often been neglected. To fill this gap, the SOS4democracy project aims to create an alliance of research and higher-education institutions, civil society associations, and a private news media organization to develop effective training programs for enhancing research on the recent turn to authoritarian systems in South-Eastern Europe. In line with the working program, the project will pursue three major objectives. Firstly, the project will strengthen cooperation and improve research and innovation ecosystems in academic and non-academic organizations by developing a training-through-research program to equip researchers, journalists, and civil society activists with the conceptual and methodological tools needed to explore the impact of illiberal measures in the participating countries. The training-through-research program will be carried out during secondments involving 31 staff members. Secondly, to ensure the transfer of know-how between the academic and non-academic sectors, the project will develop the following training programs: the academic sector will provide training on advanced research methods and practical skills, the news media organization will provide media training, while non-governmental organizations will provide training on civic monitoring mechanisms, public advocacy, and the use of new technology in civil society organizing. The extensive transfer of know how will be carried out on secondments, in-person networking events, and webinars. Thirdly, to improve the overall R&I capacity of all participating organizations, the project will organize a training program on research management, knowledge brokering, data stewardship, and knowledge transfer.