Dr Ozge Zihnioglu

Imagining the relations of civic rights and democracy as self-evident and unproblematic disregards their plural argumentative uses, the dissensual features of their conceptual and institutional relationship, their national legal and political traditions both divergent and intertwining, and the many obstacles that hinder their common fulfilments in practice.

Those conditions pose a prior challenge to intellectual debates whose character and value are usually seen as hardly relevant to European politics. The COST Action aims at recasting the interface between intellectual debates, public debates, politics, and policy action with the contributions of more argumentatively- and historically-oriented social science accounts and better institutionally-, politically- and legally-informed humanities research.

Since the early nineties, the responses of European democracies to the growing conflicting claims on civic rights of individuals and groups in secularized societies framing new forms of ethnic, religious, and civil diversity, have been theorized largely in unrelated spheres. By advancing this form of cooperative research, the Action seeks to provide new insights into the links (theoretical, political, and institutional) between civic rights and democracy in Europe. Widening their perspective of analysis and deepening their transnational understanding become a constructive condition to engage scholars as well as social and political agents in RECAST debates, with the aim of better informing political reform.

Drawn on a transnational, cooperative network, such interdisciplinary endeavour will contribute to bridge the gap that separates politics and policy action from humanities and social science research focused on the intricate relations between civic rights and the practices of democracy in Europe.