How do you measure democracy when air-raid sirens interrupt fieldwork, protesters are challenging the state and student researchers risk being labelled as foreign agents? Across six EU candidate countries, RE-ENGAGE is asking ordinary citizens who they trust, where they turn in a crisis and whether they still believe political change is possible.
In this episode, Jessica Hendrick welcomes Morten Bøås, research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and lead of RE-ENGAGE’s comparative fieldwork across Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine. Morten argues that trust may be society’s strongest defence against disinformation—and that Brussels often spends too much time on reforms citizens cannot see while overlooking the everyday improvements that could stop frustration from turning into rage.
Drawing on surveys conducted by locally trained university students, interviews with EU officials and fictional crisis scenarios involving support from the EU, Russia, China and Turkey, Jessica and Morten go inside RE-ENGAGE’s largest research efforts. They uncover a surprising picture: Serbians trust almost no external power, Moldovans proved far harder to destabilise with disinformation than expected, and citizens across the region often place more faith in neighbours than the state.
Why do people who regularly consume propaganda know not to trust it in a real crisis? Why can visible anger be healthier than silent resignation? And what must the EU change if it wants to support democracy that citizens can actually see, feel and believe in?
The episode was cross-published to NUPI’s World Stage by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.
Further reading:
This podcast was recorded on December 12th, 2025.
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