Building a UNified Theory for the development of Institutions for Collective Action across Europe  in the past millennium (UNICA)

Involved: Prof. dr. Tine De Moor

The new bottom-up and self-governing institutions for the provisioning of energy, food, care and many other goods and services that are currently increasingly being set up by citizens have many similarities in institutional design with guilds, commons, cooperatives and other institutions that have been developed in Europe’s history. UNICA aims at building a unified theory that explains the factors behind the development and spread of institutions for collective action (ICAs) across Europe over the past millennium, and that identifies which elements have contributed to the claim they would be more resilient than top-down, share-holder types of organisations. Hereby a novel conceptual framework for the historical study of various types of institutions for collective action (ICAs) will be applied in order to capture the dynamic interaction between membership, institutional features and resources of ICAs. The project will allow us to connect micro-changes to macro-results, and to reflect on the potential outcomes of the current new wave of institutions for collective action.

Scentiss

Involved: Prof. dr. Tine De Moor, Energie Samen, Municipality of Amsterdam

Social and community-driven entrepreneurs (SCEs) identify neglected societal problems and provide innovative solutions. But SCEs struggle with scaling up their initiatives to achieve their full potential. Multiple stakeholders add to complexity and dominant actors present barriers for scaling. This is where Scentiss comes in. The Scentiss research project puts together a unique multidisciplinary consortium of academic researchers, SCEs and stakeholders to tackle these challenges. Our overall goal is to develop new knowledge that boosts scaling up of social entrepreneurship and its innovative solutions, based on collaborative learning processes and novel tools. The Scentiss project has five main goals:

1. Studying in which way the entrepreneurial ecosystem for SCEs that focus of energy and local healthcare transitions, may facilitate or hinder the flourishing and scaling of such entrepreneurship, as well as the ways in which this ecosystem and the broader context are influenced by entrepreneurs and stakeholders to become more facilitative.
2. Introducing a new, ready-to-use and open-access, digital tool for impact management and measurement. The tool can be used by SCEs, policymakers, financers and others to monitor and steer progress on intended impact.
3. Systematically build a participatory learning approach which helps SCE’s to flourish and scale through improvements to their ecosystem.
4. Examine which innovative organizational, financial and business models help SCEs flourish and scale. It will specifically focus on multipurpose SCEs.
5. Culminating the learnings of the project in an intensive learning track for professionals (policymakers, project managers) who aim to facilitate transitions by adopting SCE mechanisms.

The full consortium can be viewed here.

Impact Explorer

Involved: Prof. dr. Tine de Moor

Due to the work for the UNICA project (see above), the importance of network strategies for the current waves of citizen collectives and other institutions for collective actions became apparent. To mitigate this, NWO has granted prof. dr. Tine De Moor an Impact Explorer Grant, with which we can put a knowledge broker to work through CollectieveKracht. This knowledge broker will identify knowledge that is potentially relevant to the movement. The knowledge broker will talk with the individual citizens collectives and talk to them about their data. During this conversation, the knowledge broker can actively gather insights about how the collectives gather and use data.

By stimulating and helping citizens collectives with collecting, storing and sharing data the knowledge broker can help future research to access more data to create a better image of citizens collectives.

Co-Lab

Involved: Dr. Darinka Czischke

The “Mapping social innovation and collaboration in housing – Co-Lab Mapping” is a project developed in collaboration with Urbamonde, and with the support of the Dutch architecture firm Inbo. The principal investigator of this project is Dr. Darinka Czischke.

Many umbrella organisations collect data on some forms of collaborative housing at regional and national levels; however, data are scattered and there is a lack of standard definitions and previous research was mainly based on qualitative case studies. This prevents a comparative understanding of the challenges and opportunities that these housing forms offer. Furthermore, comparative data are needed to facilitate mutual learning and communication amongst users across countries and regions.

Building on the conceptualisation of collaborative housing proposed by Lang, Carriou & Czischke (2020), this project is a first scientific step to provide a validated arrangement of different collaborative housing forms in Europe. It also starts completing data on collaborative housing provided by national umbrella organisations, according to a set of pre-established filters. This project aims to create the basis that helps compare and analyse the most distinct characteristics of collaborative housing, and so bring current scientific and applied debates further. The project focuses on nine countries where collaborative housing forms are well established and represented by national umbrella organisations; namely: Belgium, Denmark, England and Wales, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

Opportunities for transformative change in the care sector

Involved: Prof. dr. Tine De Moor

In order to guarantee quality and accessibility, care must be sustainable in terms of financial means, personnel, and public support. However, these three dimensions of sustainability are under increasing pressure due to a number of developments. To mitigate the care gap, transformative change that fundamentally shifts current behavioural, economic, social, cultural, institutional, and technological trajectories is necessary. So far, many governmental and care institutions are struggling to bring about the needed transformative change. At the same time, there are an increasing number of examples of citizen collectives and institutions for collective action (ICAs) spread throughout the Netherlands focusing on (health)care services. However, no extensive research has been done to this day. Supervised by prof.dr. T. De Moor, health scientist Eveline Castelijns, with 15 years of experience at the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports and the healthcare team at Berenschot consultancy, is conducting a part-time PhD project to explore the potential of these ICAs to guide or accelerate transformative change in the Dutch care ecosystem. 

Climate Advocacy

Involved: Dr. Lise Jans and Prof. dr. Ina Horlings

This PhD project in Climate Advocacy aims to provide more insight into the motives and methods of ‘climate advocates’. Citizens are increasingly involved in climate adaptation. Community-based adaptation initiatives are critical in building collective resilience against climate-related risks. But while the success of (climate-related) institutions for collective action (ICAs) is often largely dependent on the actions and efforts of motivated individuals, little is known about their motives and what makes them (un)successful. This project aims to understand how climate advocates contribute to community-based climate adaptation and which psychological, socio-spatial and institutional conditions enhance their ability to mobilise fellow community members and realise change. The project provides insights into the personal dimension of transformation, such as people’s mindsets, motivations, values and worldviews. While the personal dimension is essential to allow ‘change from the inside out’, it remains under-explored.

UrbanAIR

Involved: Dr. Amineh Ghorbani

The UrbanAIR project is a project around building a digital twin of urban areas to support decision-makers in designing urban areas that can cope with the changing climate, focusing on heat stress and air pollution. The digital twin area includes three different areas, a climate model, an agent-based model to simulate the behaviour of individual citizens, and the human and natural criteria in urban-based decision-making.

Especially the agent-based modelling for citizens' behaviour is an interesting tool full of broader potential when applied to citizens collectives. By being able to simulate behaviour, researchers can place citizens collectives in an agent-based model to simulate decision-making processes, developments and interactions in different contexts. This allows for a better understanding of the development and dynamics of citizens collectives in various fields and contexts throughout their lifecycle.

For more information on the project see: Designing a decision-support tool for climate adaptive urban planning (tudelft.nl)

LEARNS

Involved: Dr. Amineh Ghorbani

The LEARNS project aims to facilitate the identification and analysis of institutional discrepancies in climate adaptation policies and plans for better design of institutions. The project will develop Large Language Models to conduct institutional analysis of policy documents.

By making use of Large Language Models, patterns can be identified and correlations influencing governance and self-organisation within citizens collectives can be found over time. In combination with the agent-based modelling described above (see UrbanAIR project), a model could potentially recommend design principles to citizens collectives, based on specific characteristics of these collectives.

Speak Up

Involved: Dr. Lise Jans

Speak Up is a project spanning over 12 partners in 6 different countries on effective citizen community engagement participation. The project will develop multiple new frameworks and models for citizen engagement and participation. This will give governments better ways of engaging with citizens, as well as give citizens better ways to engage with their governments. The project aims to reconnect citizens and governments, focusing on creating better ways to engage and participate for citizens and by working to defuse polarisation.

The Speak Up project provides novel insights into how to engage citizens and motivate them to contribute to societal transitions. The creation of Speak Up’s engagement frameworks and best practices seamlessly feed into the ECCO project’s objectives of understanding how citizens collectives can engage and mobilise citizens to participate in societal transitions.

For more information see: Speak Up

EC²: Energy Citizenship and Energy Communities for a Clean-Energy Transition

Involved: Dr. Lise Jans

EC² is a project that focuses on the clean-energy transition. The project sheds light on what it takes for energy citizenship and energy communities to thrive. EC² will research how the setup of energy communities can help or hinder the creation of “energy citizens”, people who are not merely energy consumers, but engaged and empowered energy users. Finally, the project will deliver a scale to measure how energy citizenship emerges in individuals.

The insights provided into the motivations of citizens to participate in decentralized energy communities could potentially apply to the broader context of citizens collectives and how they can convince citizens to participate, as well as reach and impact those who do not.

To read more about the EC² project see: EC²: Energy Citizenship and Energy Communities
for a Clean-Energy Transition