Rising populism and polarization, coupled with declining democratic legitimacy, all point toward a crisis in European democracies. This crisis has a regional dimension: a political and perhaps cultural divide between rural and urban areas. The project examines whether and how urban-rural residency is related to divides in legitimacy beliefs, social identities, perceptions of injustice and threat, political and social attitudes and political behavior of European citizens. It explores “Democratic governance in a turbulent age” from different thematic angles. First, it deals with shifting identities and their consequences for democratic governance and political representation (theme 4). Stable cleavages only emerge when struggles for identity are accompanied by perceptions of social inequality and unfair resource distribution (theme 1). Second, it examines the role played by globalization: increasing rural-urban economic divides create social status threats which exacerbate rural-urban political divides (theme 2). The project will combine a broad comparative study of all European countries with an in-depth analysis of five established European democracies. The project will result in the provision of significant new evidence on rural-urban disparities in European politics, which will allow us to examine the consequences of – and cures for – the current crisis of democracy, thereby engaging both academic and policymaking audiences. The coordination of the project, setting of the agenda, and the timely delivery of work packages will be the responsibility of the Frankfurt team. In particular, the project will be coordinated by holding six internal workshops and using a shared cloud server.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reopened debates on the end of the Cold War, the 1989 transformations of socialist regimes, and the European Union’s eastern enlargement. ‘The Market Next Door’ revisits these debates by investigating the involvement of Western European Multinational Corporations in Central Europe between 1969 and 1993. Based on research in multiple public and corporate archives, the project sheds light on the contribution of business actors to the making of Europe as we know it today.

One of the many exceptional aspects of the global financial crisis of 2008 was the prominence policy-makers and commentators gave to the importance of history in helping to determine responses to the crisis. Ben Bernanke, the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve System famously reached for his copy of Friedman and Schwartzs seminal volume on the 1930s depression to seek inspiration (Friedman and Schwartz, 1963). Comparisons with the great depression of the 1930s feature prominently in commentaries on the depth and spread of the global financial crisis and reveal the extent to which policy-makers seek to learn from the past (Calomiris and Haber 2014; Eichengreen 2015). But how relevant is the past as a guide to the present, or even the future, and how is it used when policymakers, bankers and the public are faced with difficult economic challenges? There is a growing literature on how the construction of heritage and nostalgia have been used to serve particular social and political interests (Waterton and Watson, 2015) but most economic historians seek lessons from history rather than examining how the past is constructed and used. Rather than following this path, UPIER will take an original approach by using archival evidence to focus on how and when participants in markets (bankers, policymakers, investors, regulators) actually construct an idea of the past and how they use that construction to guide their reactions to the challenges they face.

Rising populism and polarization, coupled with declining democratic legitimacy, all point toward a crisis in European democracies. This crisis has a regional dimension: a political and perhaps cultural divide between rural and urban areas. The project examines whether and how urban-rural residency is related to divides in legitimacy beliefs, social identities, perceptions of injustice and threat, political and social attitudes and political behavior of European citizens. It explores “Democratic governance in a turbulent age” from different thematic angles. First, it deals with shifting identities and their consequences for democratic governance and political representation (theme 4). Stable cleavages only emerge when struggles for identity are accompanied by perceptions of social inequality and unfair resource distribution (theme 1). Second, it examines the role played by globalization: increasing rural-urban economic divides create social status threats which exacerbate rural-urban political divides (theme 2). The project will combine a broad comparative study of all European countries with an in-depth analysis of five established European democracies. The project will result in the provision of significant new evidence on rural-urban disparities in European politics, which will allow us to examine the consequences of – and cures for – the current crisis of democracy, thereby engaging both academic and policymaking audiences. The coordination of the project, setting of the agenda, and the timely delivery of work packages will be the responsibility of the Frankfurt team. In particular, the project will be coordinated by holding six internal workshops and using a shared cloud server.

Bringing together an international and multi-disciplinary team of researchers, this project investigates potential inequalities experienced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) people at three ‘transition’ points in life highlighted in the call for application themes: school to work transitions; employment progression in mid-life; and the transition into retirement and its implications for end of life. The key objective is to provide cross-cultural evidence, for the first time ever, concerning life course inequalities experienced by LGBTQ people, comparing and contrasting these across four European countries with different yet interrelated social, historical, economic and political backgrounds: England, Scotland, Portugal and Germany. Additionally, the project examines how inequalities related to gender identity and/or sexuality vary and intersect with others, such as social class, ethnicity, citizenship status, health status, dis/ability, religion and geographical location across the life course. Work-packages, led by research team members will be conducted in each of the four countries to gather data from existing national and international surveys, new qualitative research and the critical examination of relevant legal, policy, organisational and practitioner documents. The accumulated data will be integrated into social simulation models, which will be used to inform theoretical development in relation to the LGBTQ intersectional life course and impact in terms of indicating future policy and research agendas. The findings will be disseminated to other academics and other relevant stakeholders (e.g. organisations/service providers) through reports, social media, presentations and knowledge exchange activities in each applicant country.