The TDP researches the youth participation toolbox in all forms and at all levels of governance, from protest and civil disobedience, to elections, anticipatory governance, assemblies or legislative theater.
Youth futures in current projects
The YouthDecide2040 Horizon project models and tests participatory foresight practices to democratise our shared futures. Intergenerational, youth-led dialogues are at the core of deliberative processes in interconnected regional, national and transnational assemblies. Between January 2025 and December 2027, the Transnational Democracy Programme will contribute as a key consortium partner to numerous activities. Ambitiously, YD2040 brings together experts in future studies with scholars working on democratic innovations and backsliding. The joint diagnosis of the state of democracies, imbued in youth attitudes toward democracy, paves the way for cross-border engagement through multi-layered participatory processes. These include 20 national workshops welcoming 600 youth members, regional workshops and a digital platform engagement strategy, along with a final transnational deliberation, where harnessing the collective intelligence of multiple stakeholders will allow us to define the pathways to key democratic change for Europe.
While delivering on the core activities of the national workshop, the TDP has organised an event endorsed by the Province of Lecce, where local and regional political representatives, as well as civil society organisations and researchers debated the future of democratic renewal with the workshop participants and a wider local audience. This has consolidated a network of local universities and civil society organisations that mobilise around meaningful youth participation. The findings from the workshops will also enable the TDP team to analyse the evolving attitudes on competing visions of democracy, as they have evolved through the deliberative process. The ultimate aim of the TDP team is to continue exploring how to sequence democratic innovations through participatory chains that maximise resources, political capital and a growing pedagogy of non-electoral participation for youth. As we found within the Democratic Odyssey project, it is paramount that deliberations remain centred around cross-cutting and intergenerational themes for them to be appealing to youth.
The Politics of Hope: Social Movements for New Democratic Futures
Directed by STG Senior fellow Shalini Randeria, who holds Excellence Chair at University of Bremen, Germany (supporting the project), in cooperation with Kalypso Nicolaidis, this project explores the democratic implications of youth protest in South Asia, bringing movements in Nepal, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka into comparative perspective. It asks how young people turn frustration with corruption, inequality and blocked futures into collective action, and under what conditions this mobilisation can generate lasting democratic change. Comparing different political contexts and trajectories, the project examines the passage from protest to governing, the relationship between youth movements and established institutions, and the challenge of sustaining inclusive participation after moments of rupture. Its central concern is how the power to challenge entrenched elites can become the capacity to build democratic alternatives, and what these experiences can teach movements elsewhere in the world about translating hope into durable citizen power.
The initiative was launched at STG by a public debate on “Flamingos, cockroaches and youth revolts” and later expanded on in the Democracy Dialogue series. The TDP focuses on drawing joint lessons from youth revolts in South and South-East Asia, as well as Western Balkans and other regions of the world. This enables a cross-cutting analysis of the contrast between low participation of youth in formalised democratic processes on the one hand, and the emerging spaces for bottom-up politics on the other.
Embedding youth futures in institutional dialogue
The Transnational Democracy Programme focuses on opening the institutional space for youth with very targeted initiatives. These include participating in the co-design a Young Citizens Assembly on Pollinators with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, or the work of YouthDecide2040 aimed at providing policymakers with a toolbox on how to mobilise youth participation in meaningful and inclusive ways.
Additionally, the principles of Democratic Odyssey shine through with deliberative processes set up with schools, where the local anchoring of a broader, transnational assembly can help nourish local seeds of engagement and co-creation. The TDP has developed initiatives with local, institutional representatives in Florence on the city and elementary school kids to discuss the future of the city. Similarly, under the broader umbrella of STG, Officine d’orizzonti offers a series of simulations of the European Parliament to high school students. The TDP also has initiatives in the works regarding civic education in lifelong learning (LLL), additional work on the pedagogy of sortition developed with Democratic Odyssey and the overall cultures of youth participation imbued in all current projects.