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Contemporary Challenges to Political Representation

Civil Society
Democracy
European Politics
Parliaments
Political Parties
Representation
S010
Sandra Kröger
University of Exeter
Johannes Pollak
Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna

Endorsed by the ECPR Standing Group on Political Representation


Abstract

Sandra Kröger is a lecturer at the politics department of the University of Exeter. She holds degrees in social sciences (Humboldt University Berlin, Paris VIII) and Interdisciplinary France studies (University Freiburg) and obtained her PhD at the University of Göttingen. From 2008-2011, she was lecturer at the Jean Monnet Center for European Studies (CEuS) at the University of Bremen, and from 2011-2013 a Marie Curie Fellow in Exeter. Her current research interests are the ways civil society organizations construct and organize political representation across the different levels of governance as well as national parliaments in EU policy-making and democratic representation in the EU more broadly. Johannes Pollak is Professor of Political Science at Webster University Vienna and Head of the Political Science Department at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS). He previously was a Jean Monnet fellow at the Schuman Centre of the European University Institute, Florence; a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Reading; and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the LSE. Main research areas: European democracy, democratic theory, political representation and EU energy politics. This section enjoys the support of the SG on Political representation. Abstract The transition from the national to the post-national constellation has profound consequences for the conceptualization and institutionalization of democracy in general, and of representative democracy in particular. The modern territorial state, and with it the link between democracy and representation, is challenged through a variety of ‘diversification’ processes that have created new levels and forms of governance, including that of supranational (European) integration, which have contributed to the dilution of traditional representative politics. These processes challenge our understanding of representative democracy as electoral democracy within clearly delineated nation-states, provoking a situation in which new frontiers of representation develop, with as yet underexplored implications for democratic practice and theory. This section will explore contemporary challenges to the standard account of political representation. It is interested both in traditional and more recent actors of political representation as well as in their interactions; in political representation at all levels of governance; in methodological advances in the research of political representation; and in normative thinking about desirable criteria for political representation, within states, for supranational organisations such the EU, and globally. Following the aim of the SG, this section addresses issues of political representation broadly conceived, from different theoretical perspectives and involving different disciplines, in order to make theoretical, methodological and empirical progress.
Code Title Details
P012 Assessing the Challenges for the Quality of Representation View Panel Details
P093 Equal Representation in Electoral and Non-Electoral Settings View Panel Details
P209 National Parliaments in the EU View Panel Details
P271 Political Parties and the EU View Panel Details
P273 Political Representation beyond Elections View Panel Details
P309 Representation and Democracy – Still a Strong Link? View Panel Details
P311 Representation in Global Governance View Panel Details
P346 The 'Constructivist Turn' in Political Representation: Exchanges between Theoretical and Empirical Scholars View Panel Details
P410 Who gets Represented in EU Policy-Making? View Panel Details