Changing Patterns of Participation and Representation in Contemporary Democracies

The main research question for this project is how the processes of participation and representation are being affected by these social changes, and in turn, what effect participation and representation patterns have on the legitimacy of democratic government. We want to look at citizens (participation, attitudes), at political parties (organization, strategies), at other intermediary organizations (media, social movements) and at political decision-makers (role perception, links with society). This multi-facetted research will be broken down in several smaller projects or work packages. What all these packages have in common, however, is the fact that they investigate aspects of the same central research question. There will be two major common research instruments that will take on board questions from most of the work packages and that will deeply integrate the whole project: a pre- and post-electoral (population) survey (panel) for the regional elections in Belgium (2009) and an international survey of members of national and regional parliaments. More information can be found on www.partirep.eu