_This post is written by Laura Smillie, project leader at the Joint Research Centre for the European Commission's Enlightenment 2.0 research programme. _

_It is the first in a series highlighting their work supporting EU policy. _

  • The problem: We live in an increasingly polarised present, looking to a complex and uncertain future while taking policy decisions within democratic systems inherited from the past.

  • Why it matters: We need the processes and structures that underpin our political decision-making to be equal to the complexities of the 21st century.

  • The solution: A new model for 21st-century political decision-making needs to be adapted to reflect new insights into how humans really think and decide.

Advances in cognitive, behavioural, decision and social sciences demonstrate that human behaviour is complex and many drivers influence political decision-making in addition to facts and logic. Yet despite this evolution, political decision-making models are – for the most part – still based upon the more simplistic Enlightenment model of rationality.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (DG JRC) seeks to understand the way in which facts, values, interests, concerns and social relations drive political behaviour and decision-making as well as the interplay between individual and group decision-making. We seek to understand these drivers to increase trust in our political systems and make them more responsive to citizens and robust to the challenges of polarisation.

DG JRC seeks to understand the drivers that influence political decision-making through its multi-annual research programme Enlightenment 2.0. This project brings together experts from multiple academic disciplines, policymakers, stakeholders and citizens to promote evidence-informed policymaking.

If political institutions at the EU and Member State levels are to improve transparency, openness, and accountability, the Enlightenment 2.0 research programme seeks to provide the interdisciplinary scientific underpinning to optimise the evolution of these political decision-making processes.

"Essential components of human behaviour are governed by relatively stable principles that remain largely static even as the technological environment changes rapidly."

The new age of enlightenment

The pandemic has shown the vital role that evidence has in informing the right policy choices to protect lives and livelihoods. However, we have also witnessed that evidence-informed policymaking is under threat.

These challenges are explored in the European Commission’s report – the first Enlightenment 2.0 output – “Understanding our political nature”, which brought together renowned experts from many different research fields. The result is a comprehensive interdisciplinary report about the drivers of political behaviour and decision-making. While the original report was published in 2019, the pandemic has given renewed relevance to many of the issues discussed which is why the JRC made it available in French, German, Italian and Spanish in the course of 2021.

The second report is Technology and Democracy: understanding the influence of online technologies on political behaviour and decision-making, published in October 2020. This saw an international team of experts take a behavioural science approach to investigate the impact of online platforms on political behaviour and its impact on democracy. The report identifies key "pressure points": challenges that emerge when we interact politically on online platforms that are not subject to much public oversight or democratic governance.

The experts found that essential components of human behaviour are governed by relatively stable principles that remain largely static even as the technological environment changes rapidly. In the absence of behavioural insights, policymakers may feel that they are constantly playing catch-up with online technological advances. This report was intended to give policymakers their agency back.

How policymakers can learn from people

The forthcoming Enlightenment 2.0 report on Values & Identities: A policymaker’s guide, will be launched later this month: on 17 November. Here we shed light on what citizens want. The report will look at how individual values, attitudes and identities influence political behaviour. In order to understand the shift towards identity and populist politics, we need to better understand citizens’ values and social identities. To learn more, please join us at the launch event, which you can register for here.

The fourth pillar of the research programme focuses on the communication between science, government and citizens. Titled Meaningful and ethical communications, the project builds directly on the previous research conducted under Enlightenment 2.0 and seeks to understand how scientists and policymakers can ensure meaningful communication without resorting to manipulative tactics used by those who wish to undermine liberal democracy. In addition to the contribution from scientists, this project will also involve citizens to understand what they consider to be meaningful and ethical communication.

A new model for 21st-century political decision-making could be adapted to reflect new insights into how humans really think and decide. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (DG JRC) wants to understand the way in which facts, values, interests, concerns and social relations drive political behaviour and decision-making as well as the interplay between individual and group decision-making. We seek to understand these drivers to make our political systems more trustworthy and responsive to citizens and robust to the challenges of polarisation. If political institutions at the EU and Member State levels are to improve transparency, openness, and accountability, the Enlightenment 2.0 research programme seeks to provide the interdisciplinary science to help promote the evolution of these political decision-making processes.

Not being rational is not a weakness; it is human. We simply need to design human-centric policymaking processes.

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