Context
There is a widely recognised global crisis in politics. Once thought to be a natural progression and “end of history” democracy has been in decline worldwide for more than 15 years, not just the hardening of authoritarian states but also in countries once seen as bastions of human rights and political freedoms. Numerous democracies have elected authoritarian populist leaders who promote values that threaten the norms of liberal democracy. Indeed, a majority of democracies that failed in recent years were brought down by democratically elected leaders. Authoritarian states, such as Russian and China, are publicising these failures and expanding their global influence through international media and soft power initiatives.
In democracies, this decline is underpinned by changing political values and behaviours among citizens and declining trust in political institutions, part of a wider decline in civic culture and crisis in citizenship. For over a decade, a combination of rising economic inequality, cultural and social change, and a slew of shocks and crises have propelled populist movements that promise to recapture politics for the people. However, how they define the people tends to be nativist and exclusionary and they often reject established processes for good governance and the oversight of power. This has led to rising polarisation and, in many cases, rising violence, that has particularly targeted vulnerable minorities.
Many see these changes as inextricably linked with digital technologies and changes in where and how people get information about politics, as well as who produces this information and for what end. The economic model of the digital spaces in which political and social life is increasingly enacted is based on the collection and extrapolation of user data for the purposes of selling targeted advertising (rather than to support democracies). The algorithms underpinning social media favor extreme, emotive, and divisive content, because this is what generates engagement. Domestic and international politics has profoundly changed in the digital age; worldwide democracies and their supporters are seeing explanations, answers and, above all, guidance.
The Project
The Path to Power is a project of the Digital Technology, Governance and Policy research group at the Hasso Plattner Institute of the University of Potsdam. The project is led by Prof. Dr Gillian Bolsover and funded by the German Development Corporation (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)). The project studies how politics and society has changed in the digital age, with a global focus and the intention to translate academic research findings into governance, corporate, organisation and political practice.
2024 is an extraordinary year for democracy; more voters ever in history will head to the polls, with elections held in 64 countries plus the EU accounting for almost half of the world’s population. Phase One of the research project, which runs from 2024 to 2026, utilises this unprecedented opportunity to develop a global picture of democracy worldwide through studies of elections in a variety of contexts, including in-depth case studies of elections in India, Mexico, South Africa, the USA and UK and a myriad of smaller case studies including Moldova, Taiwan, Zambia, and France.
Across these case studies, our research foci include:
The Team
The team is led by Prof. Dr Gillian Bolsover and it includes a research team, administrative and communications team. The main research team is composed of three post-docs, whereby each post-doc has a specific country or regional expertise that they are expected to contribute to across the project’s outputs. These research public facing outputs are then disseminated across all the project’s platforms and social media channels.
Contact
Email: pathtopower@hpi.de
Website:pathtopower.global
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