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Why Most Reforms Fail (Even When Everyone Means Well)

January 26, 2026 at 10:25 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Most of the EU’s most important work doesn’t feel like power. It feels like normal life. That’s the paradox of prevention: when it works, it is invisible.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/eu-in-prac...

#EuropeanUnion #EU #CleanAir #EUPolicy #PublicHealth
#PolicyThatWorks #CivicEducation

Cleaner air doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t trend. It doesn’t feel like a policy success. It simply feels like “normal life.”

January 10, 2026 at 12:13 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

We tend to talk about disengagement as if it were a personal failure or a generational mood. However, school has a bigger role to play in civic agency and political capacity than we assume.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/the-gym-fo...

#democracy #activecitizenship #education #youthempowerment

when young people learn to follow rather than to question, democracy suffers.

January 7, 2026 at 10:28 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

At the start of the year, disengagement can feel like self-protection. But when participation is real and consequential, despair doesn’t vanish, it turns into movement. That bridge is worth paying attention to.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/rehearsing...

#Democracy #Participation #Society

The bridge between despair and democracy is engagement

January 6, 2026 at 10:24 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Clean air in Europe isn’t accidental. It’s the result of decades of shared standards,scientific evidence, and political choices that quietly protect public health, especially children and the most vulnerable.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/eu-in-prac...

#AirQuality #EU #Governance #PublicHealth

December 22, 2025 at 6:24 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

The quiet danger facing democracies today: not collapse by force, but decay by fatigue.

associationredefine.substack.com/p/the-empire...

#Democracy #StarWars #DemocraticResilience #PowerAndPolitics #CivicEducation #PoliticalLiteracy
#TeachingDemocracy #StoriesThatTeach #PopCultureAndPolitics

When Palpatine declares, “I love democracy,” he’s not lying. He loves it the way a pyromaniac loves fireworks — for the spectacle, not the structure.
His rise followed a playbook older than any sci-fi canon: create fear, promise order, and make power look efficient.

In the Attack of the Clones scene where the Senate grants him “emergency powers,” applause erupts. Democracy, as the Republic reminds us, doesn’t implode; it erodes under convenience.

December 22, 2025 at 5:52 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Europe has talked strategic autonomy for years - energy, defence, supply chains.This reform suggests something deeper: autonomy in democratic resilience - detection, information integrity, civic capacity, and protected civic space.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/from-crisi...

#EuropeanDemocracy

For years, Europe has discussed strategic autonomy in the context of defence, energy, climate, supply chains, and digital sovereignty. But the Democracy Shield quietly introduces a new and deeper concept: one that will define Europe’s political evolution for the next decade:

Strategic autonomy in democracy itself.

This is a profound shift.

December 21, 2025 at 9:46 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Reform knows how to look like movement.
Alignment. Participation. Innovation. Policy.
All motion. Very little displacement.

We mapped the system behind that pattern here:
associationredefine.substack.com/p/reform-myt...

#SystemsThinking #InstitutionalChange #Power #Governance #OrganizationalDesign

A Systems Map for Understanding Change That Never Quite Lands

Europe and the Question of Strategic Autonomy

December 19, 2025 at 12:53 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

If democracy is learned by doing, the question is simple: where do we actually let people practice it?

open.substack.com/pub/associat...

#democracy #EU #EuropeanUnion #CivicTech #EdTech #YouthParticipation #VirtualReality #education #civiceducation #experientiallearning #democracyeducation

December 15, 2025 at 9:44 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Much of the debate on Europe’s strategic autonomy focuses on power and positioning.
This piece asks a different question: what kinds of societies are actually able to hold power without fragmenting?
open.substack.com/pub/associat...

#StrategicAutonomy #EuropeanUnion #Democracy #SystemsThinking

Power Without Readiness

open.substack.com

December 14, 2025 at 11:29 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Calm is not neutral.
Often, it’s just debt we haven’t acknowledged yet.

open.substack.com/pub/associat...

#SystemsThinking #Leadership #ClimateJustice #GlobalInequality #FutureOfDemocracy

Borrowed Calm

Stability in a World of Postponed Consequences

open.substack.com

December 12, 2025 at 12:26 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

There’s a difference between giving a community a tool and giving them access. Only one of those rewires how a place thinks.
Today’s piece is about the moment everything clicked. Just not the way we expected.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/rebuilding...

#DigitalCommons #CivicTech #OpenSource

The Commons Are Back: What We Learned While Rebuilding Shared Digital Infrastructure

A guided journey to rediscover what we share and what we can build together.

Tools for Building Better Thinking Spaces

December 10, 2025 at 5:31 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

A small toolkit for people who create spaces where real thinking can happen.

✨ Design principles
✨ Youth debate framework
✨ Reflection prompts
✨ Curiosity tools

All shaped by years of work with young people.

open.substack.com/pub/associat...

#Democracy #CivicIntelligence #YouthWork #Facilitation

A full set of tools built from our Youth4Peace and EU Democracy Campus work — designed to help educators, facilitators, and youth workers create spaces where real thinking can happen.

open.substack.com

December 9, 2025 at 9:03 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Why does reform so often look promising… and then quietly collapse back into old patterns?

We dive into the ghost layers: the real reason change fails unless we rewrite what systems remember.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/designing-...

#Democracy #Governance #SystemsThinking #PoliticalCulture

Designing With Ghosts: A Practical Guide for Reformers, Activists & Policymakers

On The Invisible Memories That Shape Systems, Citizens, and Change

Where Do We Gather? The Geography of Belonging in a Disconnected, Algorithmic World

December 7, 2025 at 5:16 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

An essay on something we rarely talk about: How loneliness, algorithmic feeds, and AI persuasion are reshaping the very spaces where democracy lives. t’s about public life, belonging, and the architectures we need to rebuild.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/where-do-w...

#democracy #technology

An essay about fragmentation, power, and the architectures of hope that democracies must build now.

rescEU: The Hidden Infrastructure Young People Should Know About

December 6, 2025 at 12:23 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Europe supports us in ways we rarely see.
Our new EU in Practice post reveals the quiet power of rescEU,from wildfires to pandemics.
With video + activities for educators.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/resceu-the...

#EuropeanUnion #CivicEducation #ClimateResilience #DisasterResponse #Democracy

How Europe Quietly Built a Safety Net for an Age of Cascading Disasters

From Crisis to Capacity: The EU’s Most Ambitious Democracy Reform in 20 Years

December 5, 2025 at 1:27 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

A significant EU reform landed recently. We’ve published an in-depth analysis that connects the dots across the Democracy Shield, the Civil Society Strategy, and the deeper cultural shifts beneath them.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/from-crisi...

#Democracy #EuropeanUnion #TechnologyandSociety

How the European Democracy Shield is reshaping trust, participation, and democratic power across the continent

Micro-Repair for Macro-Change: A Toolkit for the Everyday Citizen

December 3, 2025 at 11:42 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

We often think change requires heroism. But we keep seeing the same truth:

Big systems don’t break all at once. People do. And the smallest human repairs often prevent the largest civic fractures.

associationredefine.substack.com/p/micro-repa...

#EmotionalIntelligence #Resilience #Democracy

How tiny emotional practices rebuild clarity, resilience, and the civic world we share.

What Youth Debates Teach Us About Designing Spaces Where People Can Think Again

November 28, 2025 at 4:49 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

For the last two years, we’ve watched more than a thousand young people step into carefully designed spaces and show us what thinking looks like when the environment supports it.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/what-youth...

#YouthDebates #CivicEducation #DemocraticSkills #CriticalThinking

How slowing down, listening differently, and redesigning the room can transform the way we learn democracy.

The Collapse of Knowing: What a Youth Debate Taught Us About the Future of Truth

November 25, 2025 at 1:34 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

It began with a simple youth debate. And it ended with a deepfake that stopped everyone in their tracks. What unfolded next said more about our democracy than any policy report we’ve read this year.
associationredefine.substack.com/p/the-collap...

#AttentionEconomy #DigitalDemocracy #Disinformation

Democracy’s New Frontier Isn’t Law or Policy. It Is Perception.

Episode V: From Jedi to Citizen — The Hero’s Journey of Democracy

November 15, 2025 at 11:19 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Every generation faces the same question: How do we keep freedom alive?

This video turns that question toward us, exploring how democracy depends not on heroes, but on citizens who keep learning, questioning, and showing up.
youtu.be/E0IP3IP1mKE

#Democracy #Education #StarWars #EuropeanUnion

Episode IV: Star Wars Teaches Democracy — So You Don’t Learn It the Hard Way

November 13, 2025 at 9:07 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

This video explores what Star Wars can teach us about the fragility and resilience of democracy. We ask how systems built on freedom can drift toward control, and how they can find their way back again.
youtu.be/roFntH59llE

#Democracy #Education #StarWars #civiclearning #EuropeanUnion

Episode III: How to Build a Galactic Council — and Keep It Democratic

November 12, 2025 at 9:34 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

Every democracy starts with the same question: How do we share power without losing unity?

We invite kids to explore what it means to design fair institutions, represent diverse worlds, and keep participation alive once the rebellion ends.

youtu.be/Y15cc5XMTp4

#Democracy #Education #StarWars #EU

Episode II: The Empire, the Republic, and the EU — A Civic Showdown

November 11, 2025 at 8:20 AM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

This video compares 3 systems of power - galactic and European - to help students understand how structure shapes freedom, and why even the most advanced democracies must keep renewing their balance between order, participation, and trust.
youtu.be/bsCRCfrRh7c

#Democracy #StarWars #EuropeanUnion

Episode I: The Galactic Republic Explained — What Star Wars Teaches About Democracy

November 10, 2025 at 1:26 PM

REDefine

@redefine-pt.bsky.social

What if the best way to teach democracy was to start in a galaxy far, far away?

This is Episode I of our EU Democracy Campus: Star Wars Edition videos. We use it in the beginning of the lesson.
youtu.be/0mmXB29cubg
May democracy, and curiosity, be with you!