The Scuola Normale Superiore (Italy) invites applications from doctoral students for the 2025 Ph.D. School on Democratic Backsliding and Political Conflict. The PhD School will be held at the Palazzone di Cortona, one of the sites of the Scuola Normale Superiore, in the small town of Cortona in southern Tuscany, Italy and at the European University Institute (planeary session only). The school will take place from September 27-30 2025. The Phd School will offer an invaluable opportunity for young scholars to explore the complexities and challenges of democratic erosion across different regions (and their resistance) from a variety of disciplinary and methodological perspectives. Studies of political participation and mobilisation are increasingly focusing on democratic regression and the political actors (far right political parties, reactionary social movement organizations, ‘movement-parties’, etc.) who act as ‘entrepreneurs’ of it. The same is true of public opinion, electoral and party politics studies, which increasingly focus on the norms, values, opinions, attitudes that might embed it and the mechanisms of regressive orientations of society and collective political actors and policy makers. This also poses important methodological challenges that go beyond the analytical ones, in terms of reflecting on the research methods that are better suited to capturing these current trends in the European and global spheres. The Internet and social media are also part of the story, including various processes they mediate.
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