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Resilient societies are able to maintain high levels of care, work and inclusion, despite the challenges posed by changing circumstances. We argue that a key component in the potential of societies to achieve this resilience is their ability to sustain cooperation within and between families, organizations, and communities. Cooperation is difficult to sustain over time. Cooperation in one area (in organizations) can undermine it in another (the family). There can be undesirable consequences, for instance for individuals not involved, and the conditions on which cooperation was established can change. Even though cooperation is a fundamental and inextricable part of the human condition, it is not surprising that the journal Science in 2005 placed it atop its list of the most compelling scientific puzzles to be solved. The SCOOP consortium proposes a major, interdisciplinary multi-methods program of study to identify the secrets of sustainable cooperation and to elucidate its effects on care, work and inclusion. SCOOP brings together leading Dutch scholars in Sociology, History, Psychology, and Philosophy. Together, they have built an innovative theoretical model to integrate their complementary expertise and developed an interdisciplinary joint research strategy. Using this approach, they will disentangle the mystery of cooperation and, their program will generate novel solutions for care, work, and inclusion and contribute roadmaps to enhance the resilience of societies. In addition to the academic breakthroughs generated by this program, it will also offer several tangible long-term gains, including the development of a multi-method, open-access data interface; a research infrastructure capable of tackling cooperation issues from multiple disciplinary perspectives; and a talent selection and training program to prepare the next generation of top researchers. The main result will be the generation of insights and instruments that can be used by societal partners and stakeholders to foster a resilient society.

Economic risk factors and their impact are not constant over time. For example, the liquidity of financial markets, the risk of bankruptcy, and the effectiveness of economic policies all vary significantly over time and over different states of the economy. Not accounting for potential time-variation may lead to an incorrect understanding of economic mechanisms and to flawed policy advice. Koopman, Lucas, Schwaab (2009b) illustrate the importance of this for the 2008 financial crisis. They show that models with time-varying bankruptcy probabilities would have predicted the large rise in defaults substantially better than models with constant probabilities or models with external conditioning variables. The incorporation of time-varying parameters in empirical economic models, however, is not widespread. This is mainly due to the complexity of the corresponding econometric techniques. This complex approach used in the current literature obstructs the broader adoption of these models and impedes our further understanding of the magnitude and origin of time-variation in economic relationships. The proposed research agenda develops a new methodological framework for time-varying parameter models that is (i) as flexible and general as the current (econometrically complex) methodology, (ii) statistically rigorous, yet (iii) sufficiently tractable to be actually used by a wide(r) community of applied researchers. Such a new model class has a wide potential research impact. The idea builds on recent findings by Creal, Koopman, Lucas (2008). This proposal develops the statistical foundations of the new approach. The methodology is applied to investigate time-variation in a number of complex economic settings involving the stability of financial markets and the assessment of risk. Further conceptual of generalizations of the methodology are also explored to open up new areas of research. In this way, the proposed research agenda contributes to pushing the potential instability of economic models more to the center of the policy debate.

Political parties, being central agents in representative democracies, face a major challenge due to two simultaneous developments: 1) the decreasing responsibility of national governments for policies, resulting from trans-nationalisation, decentralisation and privatisation, and 2) the increased volatility of electorates. Whilst electoral volatility increases the need for political parties to find large and stable electoral support for their policies, the possibilities of distinguishing oneself from electoral rivals are undermined by the erosion of power of national governments resulting from trans-nationalization, decentralization or privatization. And while elected politicians thus have increasingly less influence, they are increasingly held accountable by the electorate. Very little is known about the ways in which shifting responsibility and increasing volatility affect support for the democratic regime, its core institutions (such as governments, parliaments and political parties), and the actors in these institutions. We propose to study these relationships empirically, as well as normatively. Our research programme consists of 4 PhD projects, two studies focusing on the empirical relations between on the one hand increasing volatility and shifting responsibilities and on the other hand specific and diffuse support. The two theoretical projects will conduct a normative analysis of these relations, evaluating the nature of the changes that we are confronted with and the demands that are placed on political elites and citizens as a consequence.