Cross-hub Collaboration Projects: These Are the Winning Proposals

We have called on our Fellows, Conveners and Experts to develop initiatives to foster collaboration across the four hubs and across the four key themes of the Global Forum on Democracy & Development project. Whether a workshop, a conference or any other type of activity, the goal was to advance lasting forms of research and/or teaching cooperation between stakeholders.

We have received many compelling proposals and carefully selected those that best align with the overarching objectives of the project.

Here are the winning project proposals:

Learning Opposition Strategies to Counter Democracies through Comparative Case Studies

The goal of this project is to gather systematic and comparative knowledge on (1) opposition strategies in different countries experiencing democratic backsliding and (2) which factors explain why opposition actors use different strategies, based on a shared theoretical-conceptual framework. It involves six case studies: Ecuador, Hungary, Mauritius, Mexico, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. It involves participants from 3 hubs: Prof. Murat Somer, Budapest Hub (Principal applicant), Dr. Hamza Delbar  (Cape Town Hub), Dr. G.I. (Colombo Hub), Prof. Aldo F. Ponce (Cape Town Hub), Dr. Didem Seyis (Budapest Hub).

Ecological Commons and Democratic Futures & Green Industrial Policies and Political Mobilizations in Resource-Rich Countries

These two projects were found to be complementary and therefore participants were asked to collaborate on linking their initiatives. These projects will establish an Ecological Transitions and Democratic Futures working group. A conference will be organized in Bogota to examine the interplay of green industrial policies and political mobilizations in the Global South. A second conference will be organized in Cape Town in May 2025 and negotiate an edited volume with Routledge entitled “The Politics of the Possible: Ecological Transitions and Democratic Futures”. Project participants are: Pedro Alarcón (Cape Town), Olivia Arigho Stiles (Bogotá), Alex Dyzenhaus (Cape Town), Rocío Fernández Ugalde (Bogotá), Pooja Kalita (Colombo), Elena Pérez-Lagüela (Cape Town), and Sarah Thompson (Colombo) and Kathy Hochstetler (Advisory Board).

Global Frames of the Far Right: A Comparative Analysis Using AI and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

This project will analyze and compare framing strategies of far-right movements globally, combining regional insights and AI computational tools for a nuanced understanding of their narratives and their dissemination across traditional and social media. The project participants are Cláudia Araújo (Bogota Hub), Didem Seyis (Budapest), and Erdem Yörük (Colombo).

Intellectuals and Radical Political Mobilization

This project will examine how do intellectuals partake in informing radical political mobilization against the constituted order. The focus is on intellectuals’ connection to the socio-political mobilization that followed in the wake of their work and on the intellectuals themselves at the helm of such episodes of contention. This question will be treated from a global perspective to analyze contemporary intellectuals operating in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, North and South America. Project participants are: Francesco Cavatorta (co-convener in Bogota), Massimo Ramaioli (Bogota), Shafi Mohamed Mostofa and Jean Thomas Martelli (joint paper), South Asia (Budapest). Illan Nam (Cape Town), Prof. DB Subedi Asia Queensland University (travelling to Budapest),  Dr. Mark Aron Eber, Europe, (Eotvos Lorand University, travelling to Budapest), Dr. Joshua Lupo, North America, (Notre Dame University, travelling to Bogota), Prof. Fernando Marcelo de la Cuadra Arancibia, Latin America, (Universidad Catolica del Maule – Chile, travelling to Bogota), Prof. Lassane Ouedraogo, Africa Institute Universitaire de la Technologie in Benin (travelling to Budapest). The project participants will organize a connected workshop held physically in Bogota and Budapest in April 2025 and they will submit a proposal for a Special Issue in the Journal of Political Ideologies, a top-tier journal (5-Year Impact factor 1.6).

Bridging Barriers: AI-Driven Research on Populism, Authoritarianism, and Far-Right Frames Across Global Contexts

This project brings together researchers from three GFDD hubs 1) to establish interdisciplinary collaborations among scholars using Artificial Intelligence (AI), more specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), to analyze and compare authoritarian, far-right and populist global frames; 2) to make LLMs accessible to a diverse scholarly community to support the contribution of Global South researchers to knowledge production. LLMs are opening up exciting new possibilities for social scientists studying democratic backsliding which can be fostered by interdisciplinary and multi-methods approaches. In this context, Global South scholars’ potential contribution to the current academic debates by applying these technologies remains insufficient due to limited resources, inadequate infrastructures, and lack of opportunities for knowledge exchange with scholars from other regions. By fostering cross-hub and
interdisciplinary academic collaboration, promoting ethical practices, and making LLMs more accessible and inclusive, this project aims to increase the impact of advanced AI-driven techniques for frame detection and to empower scholars in underrepresented contexts. Participants: Cláudia Araújo, Co-Lead (Bogota hub), Francesca Chiarvesio, Co-Lead (Colombo hub), G.I. (Colombo hub), Didem Seyis (Budapest hub), Eduardo Tamaki (Budapest hub), Gustavo Venturelli (Budapest hub), Lisa Zanotti (Budapest hub)