Project Information
PADEMIA is a Europe-wide network of 56 academic institutions from 31 countries to promote research and teaching on parliamentary democracy in Europe. It seeks to enhance discussion among students, junior and senior researchers, also in exchange with stakeholders, on how to deal with the new challenges parliaments and citizens across Europe are facing today.
The work packages deal with the relationship between citizens and parliamentarians within the context of representative democracy and the challenges this relationship faces. Scholars have pointed to a decreasing legitimacy of parliamentary representation due to lower turnout in elections, diminishing party identification, and, at the same time, an increase in demands for group recognition undermining the representational link between political institutions and the citizens. The work package aims to deal with these challenges to representative democracy both from a theoretical and an empirical perspective. What are the effects of those changes on standard theories of representation? How do they transform key concepts such as responsiveness and accountability? How do they impact the electoral behaviour of citizens and formal structures of representation? And in what way do the central actors of representation in liberal democracies, parliaments, cope with the challenges? How do they maintain the crucial link with their citizens?
