TOPICS: CITIZENS AND POLITICS, A DISCONNECTED LINK in Spring 2026 (PO5091B)

Western democracies 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 its quality and the identification of defects become more and more relevant - for political scientist as well as for practitioners.

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 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. We address furthermore current developments and challenges to representative democracy by analyzing the rise of populism, challenger parties and the radical right. Finally, we critically reflect our findings and discuss the future of representative democracy. We concentrate on Western democracies.

1) Development of a comprehensive perspective on theories and developments that concern the relation of citizens and politics

2) Understanding of the main aspects of representation theory and the ability to apply these for empirical analyses

3) Evaluation of the functioning of todays’ representative democracies

4) Identification of the challenges that representative democracy is facing

5) Development of an understanding of the most crucial changes that representative democracies pass