Arjan Schakel participates in a new Horizon Europe project

Congratulations with the project! Can you tell us some more about this project and your role? 

"The measures taken during the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe were decided and implemented by various international, national and subnational governments. LEGITIMULT analyses the effects of multilevel governance on the taken measures and assesses to what extent multilevel governance influences the impact these measures have on democratic governance. 
 
LEGITIMULT will heavily draw on the data collected and analysed by my team that is involved in the research project Strengthening Regional Democracy that is funded by the Trond Mohn Foundation. We have collected a swath of regional data and we have developed several indicators that tap regional democratic governance. Within LEGITIMULT, I will be leading a work package that is responsible for the development and analysis of a large quantitative dataset. This dataset will include for 31 European countries, the taken Covid-19 measures, indicators of democracy, and indicators that describe the multilevel governance structures within countries. The aim is to see in how far multilevel governance structures moderate the impact of Covid-19 measures on democratic governance."

And what impact will the result have for future crisis? 
 
"One of the main envisaged objectives of LEGITIMULT is to merge policy recommendations and practical tools into a toolkit for legitimate crisis management, ready for use in possible future crises. This toolkit will be developed in the experimental phase of the project, where interactive learning and practical tools are tested but also co-designed and co-refined with citizens, policy makers and practitioners in a participatory way."