Description: The turn to illiberalism represents a serious threat to the future development of the European community. The SOS4democracy Horizon Europe project brings together research and higher-education institutions, civil society associations, and a news media organization to develop a training program for improving research on the recent turn to authoritarian systems in Europe and beyond.
The project pursues three main objectives:
- To develop a training-through-research program to equip researchers, journalists, and civil society activists with the conceptual and methodological tools needed to explore illiberal regimes.
- To ensure the transfer of know-how between academic and non-academic organizations involved in pro-democracy struggles.
- To improve the overall research & innovation capacity of all participating organizations.
Our training-through-research plan will provide a detailed mapping of groups labelled by illiberal governments as “internal enemies” and examine the methods used to suppress them. The training program will focus on two categories of “internal enemies”:
Individuals and organizations perceived by illiberal groups as political opponents (e.g., political opposition leaders, trade unions, university teachers) and
Groups perceived as incompatible with illiberal “values” (e.g., migrants, the LGBTIQ+ community, members of religious minorities, members of ethnic minorities, women seeking abortion).
Furthermore, we will provide training for exploring how illiberal governments use surveillance to suppress their opponents. The training program will focus on the following areas:
- How to examine surveillance laws and directives that provide government officials with expanded authorities to conduct blanket collection of metadata and communications content;
- How to examine surveillance laws and directives that provide government officials with expanded authorities to conduct blanket collection of metadata and communications content;
- How to examine surveillance measures that enable government officials to monitor and track individuals perceived as threats to illiberal governments;
- How to explore the use of mass surveillance techniques by illiberal governments to collect data on large swaths of the population to identify dissenters and prevent political protests.
Promotors: Lucas Melgaço
Researchers: Lior Volinz
Partners: Institute of Criminology (Slovenia, coordinating partner), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), Roma Tre University (Italy), Delo, media house (Slovenia), Libera – Associations, names, and numbers against mafias (Italy), IstanPol – Institute for political science studies in Istanbul (Turkey), Boğaziçi University (Turkey), Özyeğin University (Turkey), Association of Citizens Why not? (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and University of Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
Funding: Horizon Europe
Duration: September 2023 – August 2027
Website: https://www.sos4democracy.eu/