An EU-funded project – ScaleDem – has been launched to support the scaling of the most effective solutions to improve democracy.
Launched on 5 December,the ScaleDem project will promote the adoption and scaling of democratic innovations as a way towards greater inclusive and participatory goveance. Leading experts,researchers and practitioners will together develop tools such as roadmaps and a Compass for Scaling Democratic Innovations,to support the uptake of battle-tested solutions by policy makers and practitioners.
Building a Scaling Infrastructure
Over the past decade,researchers,practitioners,civil society organisations,and public authorities have been engaged in over 300 transnational projects to design,test,and refine new ways of making collective decisions with citizens. These efforts,supported by groundbreaking initiatives like Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe,have mainstreamed citizen science,public engagement,and participatory pilots. Yet,too few are being exploited to their full potential.
ScaleDem is the missing link: it does not aim to replicate those solutions,let alone to start from scratch,but to unlock the full potential of R&I-bo democratic innovations,moving beyond the “laboratory” of R&I projects to help them create impact in the real world.
The project’s scaling infrastructure is built on three core pillars:
- Knowledge Consolidation: Formulating a Theory of Scaling based on insights from past projects and research to systematically explore and support the scalability of R&I-based democratic innovations. This pillar not only builds a solid foundation for ScaleDem scaling infrastructure,but it also paves the way for future research and policy initiatives on innovative democratic goveance.
- Knowledge Translation: Bridging theory,practice and policy actions through a Translation Hub,involving a large community of end users to empirically test the replicability of a limited set of solutions from earlier R&I projects. This pillar creates safe spaces for critical reflection on research results and for “reversing the gaze” in research on democratic innovations by integrating the knowledge from the ‘Global South’ in the definition of research and translation needs
- Knowledge Uptake: Extending impact through on-the-ground twinning and pilot programmes,strategic partnerships to boost capacity-building and dissemination actions to ensure solutions are scalable and sustainable across diverse contexts. This pillar creates an iterative feedback loop where lessons leaed from implementation are fed back into the Theory of Scaling and the Translation Hub.
At the project’s launch,project coordinator Camille Dobler from Missions Publiques stated:
‘While it might feel like the start of a 42-months jouey,ScaleDem is more than a time-bound project: it is the exploitation channel of the work accomplished by many of our peers. European Research programmes have been frontrunners in supporting the development of new innovative solutions to renew democracy,with hundreds of solutions already available. Now imagine if you add also to this rich catalogue all the tools developed outside the EU. We have gold at our disposal: it is the responsibility of ScaleDem to test whether these solutions work in practice across different contexts,and to support their uptake outside the ‘laboratory’ of R&I projects if they do!’
Planning for impact
DRI is a key player in the ScaleDem consortium,leveraging its expertise in democracy support worldwide and its unique position to coordinate synergies between ScaleDem and Nets4Dem. The latter is another Europe Horizon project fostering democratic innovation and participation that was launched over a year ago and is being coordinated by DRI.
ScaleDem builds directly on the groundwork laid by Nets4Dem,particularly when it comes to conducting research,compiling and developing resources and tools,and building capacities of policymakers and civil society. DRI facilitates this collaboration to maximise the impact of both initiatives in advancing democratic innovation across Europe.
Project’s social media to open soon
The ScaleDem project’s social media channels will open at the end of January 2025 and they will be announced on the partners’ websites. The project hashtag is #ScaleDem.
ScaleDem consortium:
- Missions Publiques (MP) – France
- European University Institute (EUI) – Italy
- Dublin City University (DCU) – Ireland
- Research Institute for Sustainability – Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam (RIFS-GFZ) – Germany
- ifok GmbH (IFOK) – Germany
- European Capital of Democracy (ECoD) – Austria
- Democracy X (//Danish Board of Technology Foundation) – Denmark
- Nexus Institut (NEXUS) – Germany
- Fondazione ICONS – Italy
- GLOBSEC – Slovakia
- Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) – Belgium
- Democracy Reporting Inteational (DRI) – Germany
- Extituto de Política Abierta (EX) – Colombia