SHAPEDEM-EU

SHAPEDEM-EU is an EU-funded project that aims to rethink, reshape & review EU democracy support policies in its Eastern and Southern Neighbourhoods. The 12 consortium partners are academic, think tank & civil society institutions from Europe and its Neighbourhoods.    The project has 3 main research objectives:    🔴 Conceptualise democracy & democracy support as social practices.  🟠 Analyse democracy support & contestation practices in the Neighbourhoods.  🔵 Develop policy recommendations to encourage a more effective EU democracy support toolkit.    The country case studies selected are:    🧭 Eastern Neighbourhood: Armenia, Georgia and Ukraine.  🧭 Southern Neighbourhood: Lebanon, Palestine and Tunisia.    Learn more about the project ⤵️    https://shapedem-eu.eu    #Democracy #DemocracySupport  #horizon2020

How do digital transformations impact democracies and democracy support? Get insights from our experts Anna Osypchuk, Ph.D., Anton Suslov and Yaroslava Shaporda from School for Policy Analysis NaUKMA as they evaluate EU digital technology policies. 👉 https://lnkd.in/evtxfpFz

📢 | The latest episode of our podcast, Democracy Support Dialogues, is out. Kristina Pitalskaya and Zouhour Ouamara discuss the nature and role of civil society in the EU's Eastern and Southern Neighbourhoods. 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/eAPawTXP

Three of our consortium partners, School for Policy Analysis NaUKMA , Justus Liebig University Giessen and Jagiellonian University, organised a joint panel at the 12th Biennial Conference of the SGEU. Our partners discussed a number of topics related to the EU's policies in its neighbourhoods. 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/etNcVkFz

'The efforts of the European Union (EU) to promote democracy abroad have come under increasing pressure, especially in the countries of its Eastern and Southern Neighbourhoods. Even prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the Israel-Hamas War in 2023, liberal democracies were contested as a political model for governance. Against this background, this article proposes a new analytical concept and introduces a novel approach to improve democracy support rethought in the form of a Democracy Learning Loop. This article presents the current challenges of democracy support policies and advances fundamental ideas for how the EU can overcome such points of contention'. For German speakers/readers: New Article just out entitled: 'Ein neuer Ansatz der EU-Demokratieförderung für die EUNachbarschaftspolitik: Ambitionen, Konzepte, Lernkurven' (A New Approach to EU Democracy Promotion in its Neighborhood Policy: Ambitions, Concepts, Learning Curves) in the (German) journal Integration, Volume 47, Issue Number 2, pp. https://lnkd.in/d9vpXc2E pp. 120-136: https://lnkd.in/df3iZizx With Andrea Gawrich Fabian Schöppner and Christian Achrainer in the context of our SHAPEDEM-EU Horizon Europe project. Justus Liebig University Giessen Roskilde University European Commission European Parliament Council of the European Union UACES (University Association for Contemporary European Studies) PRIF Peace Research Institute Frankfurt Irene Weipert-Fenner Jonas Wolff Thomas Demmelhuber Tobias Schumacher Berghof Foundation REDEMOS Horizon Europe Project

📢 | The latest episode of our podcast, Democracy Support Dialogues, is out. Jan Grzymski and Fabian Schöppner examine the impact of EU member states' policies on overall EU democracy support. 👉🏼 https://lnkd.in/eAPawTXP

📢 | How do geopolitical events shape EU's democracy support practices in its Eastern and Southern neighbourhoods?   Maria Luisa Fantappiè and Nona Mikhelidze from IAI - Istituto Affari Internazionali unpack this question in this new episode of our podcast, Democracy Support Dialogues.   Listen here 👉 https://lnkd.in/eAPawTXP

Why does the EU struggle to learn from ineffective attempts to support democratisation in the Arab world? Christian Achrainer and Michelle Pace from Roskilde University analyse this issue in their latest publication👇 https://lnkd.in/evtxfpFz

In this piece, which was just published (open access) by JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, the wonderful Michelle Pace and I address the puzzle of why the European Union struggles to learn from ineffective attempts to support democratization in the Arab world but instead continuously (re-)produces democracy support malpractices. To better understand this phenomenon, we conceptualize EU democracy support as practices performed by a community of insiders who act within a complex constellation of communities of practice. The manuscript was drafted in the context of the Horizon Europe project SHAPEDEM-EU which sets out to rethink, reshape and review the EU’s democracy support policies in its Neighbourhood countries. Thanks to everyone who has helped us develop this idea further! https://lnkd.in/dC-HKbVc

*** Why does the European Union struggle to learn from ineffective attempts to support democratization in the Arab world? *** Why does it instead continuously (re-)produce democracy support malpractices? *** To better understand this phenomenon, Christian Achrainer and I draw from practice theory and conceptualize EU democracy support as practices performed by a community of insiders who act within a complex constellation of communities of practice. *** Due to the way in which communities function, decision-makers do not critically reflect on the background knowledge on which they base their practices and thus do not learn how to improve them. *** Our constellation model offers a unique take on non-learning within the EU and in (policy-making) groups more generally. *** We illustrate the proposed conceptual framework through an empirical analysis of EU democracy support in Egypt, showing that the EU performs practices similar to those before the 2011 Revolution due to its inability to learn. *** Open Access Article entitled: Non-learning Within a Constellation of Communities of Practice: The Case of the EU and Its Democracy Support in the Arab World Available at: https://lnkd.in/d_cy3ccu Thanks to our Horizon Europe project SHAPEDEM-EU consortium partners who provided valuable comments on earlier drafts as well as Oriol Farres for designing the figure included in the article. We are very grateful to the JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies editorial team and especially the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions which helped us improve the original submitted manuscript. EURICE – European Research and Project Office GmbH Andrea Gawrich CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs) IAI - Istituto Affari Internazionali American University of Beirut Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs European Commission European Parliament European Parliamentary Research Service Roskilde University University of Malta PRIF Peace Research Institute Frankfurt UACES (University Association for Contemporary European Studies) European Institute of the Mediterranean Chatham House Carnegie Europe Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at Lund University University of Warwick Justus Liebig University Giessen Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum LE CENTRE AL KAWAKIBI POUR LA TRANSITION DEMOCRATIQUE Jagiellonian University National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy Anna Khakee REDEMOS Horizon Europe Project Ilona von Bethlenfalvy Nur Abdelkhaliq Zamora Elena Gapova Andrey Makarychev Lorenzo K. Asef Bayat larbi Sadiki Berghof Foundation Shahram Akbarzadeh Berghof Foundation REDEMOS Horizon Europe Project