Policy Labs

Across Europe and the USA societies are polarizing. Attitudes and voter behaviour are diverging fast, particularly in the youngest group of voters. Across Europe, 60 percent of young men reported in 2024 that they would consider voting for a radical right party. This is a dramatic shift in young voters’ attitudes with serious implications for the future of democracy across Europe. Is the shift episodic or generational? Is it contextual or rooted in ideology? We examine these and other questions and explore the reasons for these changes. 

More broadly, we ask how social transformations can be managed to strengthen rather than weaken support for democracy and the essential diversity of our democratic societies. How can we respond to political polarization, growing socio-economic inequality, changes in gender relations, and the increasing ethnic and religious diversity of our societies? How can we manage the transformations required by climate change mitigations and the effect of AI on labour markets.

We work in partnership with political decision makers, policy analysts and civil society organisations to inform public policy. 

We deliver recommendations based on careful scientific analyses of the data available. 

Democracy is the only form of government based on the values of freedom, equality, justice, accountability, and governance for the common good. Yet, democratic institutions are increasingly vulnerable to authoritarian capture, as populist actors exploit institutional weaknesses. Citizens’ trust in democratic institutions is in secular decline (OECD, 2024), and this is often matched by the frustrations of politicians and civil servants with the rigidity of democratic processes.

Together with partners in politics and civil society, we evaluate sector-leading interventions to address the vulnerabilities and inefficiencies of democratic institutions, enabling better representation, greater responsiveness, and meaningful citizen engagement.

We work with political decision-makers, civil servants, and civil society.

We provide analysis and robust, evidence-based recommendations.

We empower decision-makers to anticipate and mitigate the vulnerability of liberal democratic legal frameworks to authoritarian capture. 

We support the development of effective and scalable strategies to attract a broader range of political talent, broaden political participation, and structure democratic innovations to deliver effective outcomes. 

We are exploring ways that can encourage a new generation of civil and political leaders to support democratic values across the world

We work in partnership with UN organisations, such as UNESCO, to instil and foster important values, such as ‘hope’, that are central to the multilateral action needed to address present challenges. 

We are identifying and counter the common strategies that authoritarians adopt to legitimise political control.

We are working in partnerships with organisations such as the Polarization Research Lab and Freedom House, to advance knowledge of the diffusion strategies of autocracies and develop early warning systems that detect threats to global democracies.