Crossing the divide: how can schools protect students from populism?

For its latest research project, DEMOS has pulled together data from across Europe and the world to find out whether educators can help students build the skills required to support democratic values such as equality, tolerance, and autonomy, and reject populist attitudes that divide society between the ‘pure people’ and imagined threats.

DEMOS (Democratic Efficacy and the Varieties of Populism in Europe) is a research and innovation project studying populism and its impacts on democracy. Funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, the project is carried out by 15 partner institutions in Europe and involves 10 scientific disciplines. DEMOS investigates the phenomenon of populism through the lenses of democratic efficacy. The idea combines attitudinal features (political efficacy), political skills, knowledge, and democratic opportunity structures. A novelty, democratic efficacy is understood as a condition of political engagement needed to address the challenges of populism.