RESPOND: Rescuing Democracy from Political Corruption in Digital Societies

腐败和不当影响不仅与对民主的不满有关，而且会损害民主的质量。但今天的政治腐败究竟是如何运作的呢？它对民主的负面影响会有多深？反贪腐的努力如何能恢复人民对民主制度的支持，并促进他们参与廉正，拒绝不民主的建议和行动？为了应对民主面临的这些关键挑战，RESPOND提出了一种对政治腐败的全新跨学科评估，在这里，腐败被视为行为和行为，经常在合法性的灰色地带扩散，导致决策偏差和政策周期中的排斥。它通过：1)分析四种当代和相关的政治影响形式（政治融资、游说、旋转门/个人关系和媒体捕获），以了解它们何时成为与特定政治腐败模式相关的令人不安的影响形式；因此，破坏公平竞争和政治决策过程的广泛参与；2)评估政治精英和公民如何理解政治腐败，以及如何通过媒体和教育在社会上构建政治腐败，以及它对民主的合法性和可信度以及对应对它们的反应的影响；3)探索现有的和新兴的数字技术如何与政治腐败纠缠在一起，以及它们如何在国家和跨境层面改善反腐败和促进诚信战略；4)与相关利益相关者共同创造，设计、测试和修订实践和工具，包括RESPOND开发的新风险指标，以加强当前民主国家的公民监督和诚信。通过混合方法的研究设计，《回应》调查了27个欧盟国家和11个邻国，以表明如何使政府、公职人员和政党在道德上表现更好，并恢复民主的受欢迎程度。

Corruption and undue influences are not only linked to democratic discontent but compromise the quality of democracy. But how exactly does political corruption operate today? How deep can its negative impact on democracy go? And how can anti-corruption efforts recover people’s support for democracy as a regime and promote their engagement with integrity and their refusal of undemocratic proposals and actions? To address these crucial challenges for democracy, RESPOND proposes a novel interdisciplinary assessment of political corruption, seen here as conducts and acts, often proliferating in grey zones regarding legality, that results in decision-making bias and exclusion in the policy cycle. It does so by: 1) analyzing four contemporary and relevant forms of political influence (political finance, lobbying, revolving doors/personal ties and media capture) to understand when they become troubling forms of influences connected to specific political corruption patterns; hence, undermining fair competition and broad participation in political decision making processes; 2) evaluating how political corruption is understood by political elites and citizens and is socially constructed through media and education, as well asitsimpacts on both democracy’slegitimacy and credibility and on responsesto counter them; 3) exploring how established and emerging digital technologies entangle with political corruption and how they improve anti-corruption and pro integrity strategies at both national and cross-border levels; 4) engaging in co-creation with relevant stakeholders to design, test, and revise practices and tools, including new risk indicators developed by RESPOND, to increase civic monitoring and integrity in current democracies. Through a mixed-method research design, RESPOND investigates 27 EU countries and 11 neighbouring countriesto signal ways to make governments, public officials, and political parties perform better ethically and recover democracy’s popularity.