SoSe 22: Citizens and politics – a disconnected link
Mirjam Dageförde
Kommentar
In recent years the legitimacy of representative logic has been called into question due to several factors: the erroneous notions of democracy often offered by the media and opinion polls, the idea of power being confiscated by a caste of politicians, further enhanced by processes of European integration and globalization. Meanwhile, we face a presumed “crisis of representation”, a loss of confidence in politicians, political parties and institutions which leads to growing gaps between society and the political sphere. Hence, the analysis of the process of representation, approaches to judge about its quality and the identification of defects become more and more relevant for political scientist as well as for practitioners.
Recurring to Pitkin’s famous description of representation as the making present something that is literally absent which occurs if politicians act in the interest of the represented, the schedule of this seminar is as follows: First, we discuss the presumed crisis of representation through investigating indicators for it. Second, we examine the concept of representation and classify the main actors and institutions in this process. Third, the approaches for (a) analyzing actor’s behavior and (b) judging about the quality of representation are discussed. This will lead to an examination of factors that influence actor’s behavior and elements that might affect the quality of representation. Finally, we critically reflect our findings and discuss possibilities to weaken the ties between citizens and politics. The readings are a mix of classics and current literature on the given topic.
To sum up, the seminar addresses the following questions:
- What is political representation and how can we address the relation between citizens and the political sphere?
- Which aspects concern political representation?
- What are the most important actors and institutions in the process of representation?
- How can we judge about the quality of representation?
- What influences the quality of representation?
- How does populism and the rise of challenger parties influence representation and its functioning?
- What is the meaning of these findings for the (prospective) functioning of representative democracy? Schließen
14 Termine
Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung