Big Ideas for Democracy

Democratic Innovations Beyond Established Democracies: Challenges and Developments in Europe Democratic innovations, especially the direct and deliberative practices, gained momentum around the world in the last three decades. They slowly moved from experiments or isolated instances to routine tools in national and subnational governance. Their causes, functioning and consequences have received extensive attention in established […]

Register here Informational Autocracies and State-Sponsored Disinformation - On the Possibilities and Limits of Institutionalized Brainwashing Abstract In today’s information landscape, the rise of “spin dictatorships” or informational autocracies shows how state actors, economic elites, and digital platforms cooperate to sustain mass persuasion. Instead of relying mainly on repression, these regimes manage information, engineer public […]

Register here The international norm of Gender-Sensitive Parliaments: Navigating Inequality and Inclusion in Democracies under Pressure Bio Petra Ahrens is Academy of Finland Research Fellow at Tampere University, Finland. Her research focuses on gender policies and politics in the European Union and its institutions, gender equality in Germany, gender-sensitive parliaments, and transnational civil society. Alongside […]