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 governance. 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-born 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:
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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 governance.
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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
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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 learned 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 journey, 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
As part of the kick-off, project partner ICONS led a workshop to develop a communication strategy for ScaleDem. The workshop involved all the project’s experts with the aim of ensuring that the project delivers meaningful impact for its stakeholders, including policymakers and practitioners.
'ScaleDem's uniqueness lies in translating science into practice. At ICONS, we position ourselves at this crucial crossroad, facilitating this mediation and ensuring that EU-funded democratic innovations and project results reach their targets and are effectively utilized, thus maximizing their impact. By bridging the gap between research and practice, we will provide policymakers and practitioners with tools to drive change.’ said Jelena Lazic, project management officer at ICONS.
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, including ICONS'. The project hashtag is #ScaleDem.
CONTACTS
Project coordinator:
Camille Dobler, Head of Research at Missions Publiques: camille.dobler@missionspubliques.com
Communication:
Jelena Lazic, Project Management Officer, ICONS: jelena.lazic@icons.it
Sara Lazzarin, Communication Officer, ICONS: sara.lazzarin@icons.it