Faculty Member Receives Grant for Democratization Research

The School of Diplomacy and International Relations has announced that Professor Benjamin Goldfrank, Ph.D, has received a grant from the esteemed Trans-Atlantic Platform for his international research initiative, PAR-CITY.

T-AP facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration through national and regional research agencies in the social sciences and humanities.

Professor Goldfrank has been affiliated with the School of Diplomacy and International Relations faculty since 2007. His research interests focus on the comparative analysis of Latin American politics and experiments in participatory democracy at the local and national levels.

As part of the PAR-CITY initiative, Goldfrank will investigate how cities around the world are reshaping democratic governance through Urban Participatory Innovations (UPIs). Led by Sam Halvorsen, Ph.D., from Queen Mary, University of London, PAR-CITY brings together 25 researchers from 21 universities across seven major cities: Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Lyon, New York, São Paulo, Toronto and Warsaw. T-AP has granted approximately US $1.4 million in funding for the three-year project through seven different research agencies. Six Co-PIs with different academic backgrounds will conduct the project in each country.

This interdisciplinary network will investigate how these cities react to the most pressing democratic issues of our time. The project has three main objectives; Address the empirical significance of cities in responding to the global challenges of Democracy, Governance and Trust (DGT); Explore the role of digital media, tools and technologies in either eroding or strengthening DGT in large cities; Advance concepts, models and theories of DGT through the central notion of UPIs.

Stephanie McNulty, Ph.D., from Franklin and Marshall College is heading the New York City team, which also includes Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Ph.D., from New York University's Urban Democracy Lab, Celina Su, Ph.D., from the City University of New York's Gittell Collective, and Professor Goldfrank. With support from the National Science Foundation, this team will coordinate efforts to do research on New York's participatory institutions such as community boards, PBNYC, The People's Money and The People's Plan, a grassroots initiative.

Professor Goldfrank, who has been researching participatory institutions for the past two decades said recently: "I am delighted to be a part of the New York City team with scholars I have known for many years and to join this larger network of researchers in Africa, the Americas and Europe. We are all excited about exploring how cities on both sides of the Atlantic have been experimenting with new participatory institutions in the face of daunting challenges, from corruption scandals and erosion of citizen trust to environmental crises and sudden influxes of immigrants. This network will allow us to better understand the possibilities for strengthening democratic governance in different contexts."

Through the project, the PAR-CITY network will continue contributing to the rich literature by producing a co-authored book, multiple journal articles, as well as a digital platform to disseminate their findings globally.

Categories: Nation and World, Research