Ny forskning om Nordiske civilsamfund under COVID-19

Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen, der er tilknyttet CBS Center for Civil Society Studies, har modtaget 288.136 DKK fra The Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) (https://www.aka.fi/en/nos-hs/) til en række workshops i 2021-2022 omhandlende følgende projekt: Emergency Politics in Nordic Democracies: The Civil Society Perspective

Brief Project Summary

The Nordics are known for their civil societies, which have anchored democratic principles in local participatory practices. The Nordics did not develop strong measures of militant democracy after WW2 (strong constitutional courts, higher electoral thresholds etc.) due to its flourishing civil society. This project asks how this distinct Nordic, civil society approach to emergency politics can cope with the present COVID-19 crisis. As the Nordic states interfere with citizens’ liberty to an unprecedented degree, the project asks how civil society can cope with a crisis, which primary solution is social isolation, hereby constraining citizens’ associative capabilities? If the crisis demonstrates the potential of state power, how can civil society defend political freedoms during and after such crisis? The project’s originality stems from its urgent timeliness, as it is important to understand the different emergency responses across the Nordics and their conditions of possibility. Moreover, it is crucial for researchers, policymakers and citizens to discuss the boundaries of state power during emergencies and new forms of organization and solidarity that emerge during crises such as COVID-19.

www.civilsamfundet.dk shall be updated as workshops will be organized and research published.

For more information, write to the project’s principal investigator Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen at bap.mpp@cbs.dk