The REDIRECT project, funded by the European Union, focuses on addressing the challenges associated with the current transformation of democratic politics in Europe. This transformation is characterized by a crisis of representation, including declining trust in institutions and political representatives, political individualism, mass-elite imbalance, and social and social-media discontent. This multidimensional phenomenon, known as “representative disconnect”, refers to the regression of the connection between the demos (people) and kratos (power).
The project takes an interdisciplinary and multi-level approach, examining various empirical dimensions of representative disconnect. By studying the shifting centers of gravity within democratic polities in Europe, REDIRECT aims to enhance our understanding of this phenomenon. The project seeks to extract sustainable ideas and viable instruments to address the challenges of a democracy in flux. It emphasizes the importance of analyzing institutional, behavioral, and affective components of representative democracy.
REDIRECT also conducts a critical review of the theoretical reflection on representative democracy while offering practical recommendations. These recommendations aim to rectify the issues identified and promote a two-way approach to the demos-kratos relationship. The project suggests top-down interventions, such as institutional reforms that ensure transparency and provide citizens with comprehensive information. It also emphasizes the need for bottom-up initiatives, such as strengthening the connection between citizens and mediating bodies through digitalization, promoting shared values of social sustainability, and fostering civic education.
The ultimate goal of the REDIRECT project is to contribute to the formulation of strategies for improving the democratic process by addressing the challenges of representative disconnect and promoting a stronger connection between citizens and their representatives.
The analytical framework
REDIRECT offers a normative and empirical framework for assessing how democratic representation functions in modern mass societies. It views representation as both functional and legitimating—enabling governance while expressing public voice and assent.
The framework builds on the “representative turn” in democratic theory, emphasizing that representation has distinct democratic qualities, complementing deliberative, participatory, and constitutional models.
REDIRECT identifies three key conditions for democratic representation:
- Public Space for Competition and Deliberation: Representation creates an arena where citizens and elites engage in policy debates and ideological competition, fostering political identity and unity despite diversity. The way this space functions depends on the institutional model (e.g., parliamentary vs. presidential) and national contexts.
- Interactive Decision-Making Process: Legitimate governance emerges from a contested and evolving process where political elites and citizens form a precarious but broadly accepted political judgement. This process, though historically exclusionary at times, enables stable and responsive rule.
- Reception of Bottom-Up Claims: Effective representation relies on integration within constitutional frameworks and a wider “ecology of representation”—including media, civil society, knowledge institutions, interest groups, and social movements. These elements connect grassroots demands to institutional politics.
When these conditions are met, representative democracy gains trust and legitimacy. Its strength lies in mediating between elites and citizens, evolving with social pressures, and using diverse tools and practices within a broader systemic and ecological structure.
The Methods
REDIRECT employs a mixed-method approach combining qualitative and quantitative, observational and experimental tools. These include cross-national mass and elite surveys, qualitative interviews, content analysis, survey experiments (including conjoint designs), and the Delphi method. The methodological integration supports both analysis of the representative disconnect and the development of reconnection and redirection strategies.
A cross-national mass survey targets eight European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, UK) to supplements existing trust/satisfaction measures with novel items on citizen expectations toward institutions and representation. Embedded survey experiments test how crisis-induced insecurity influences attitudes toward representative institutions.
A cross-national MP survey complements this by examining legislators’ role perceptions and expectations of citizens. It addresses the lack of comparable data on congruence between citizens and MPs, applying online survey methodologies.
Qualitative interviews are conducted with MPs, MEPs, citizens in assemblies, and civil society actors. Countries include Poland, Italy, Hungary, Belgium, the UK, Norway, France, and Germany. Interviews explore democratic backsliding, citizens’ assembly impacts, and underrepresented group perspectives. Focus groups complement interviews, especially with party elites and young citizens (18–35) in Brussels and Kraków.
Content analysis assesses representative disconnect and democratic backsliding via semi-automated and qualitative analysis of parliamentary speeches and young MPs’ discourse in seven countries and the EU. It also examines party communication in media, EU legitimacy, and crisis governance.
Experiments investigate how perceived MP responsiveness influences trust and participation. A two-round online experiment analyses emotional and cognitive mediation, while a conjoint experiment tests causal effects of legislator characteristics (e.g., policy vs. allocation responsiveness, gender, ideology) across all REDIRECT countries. adds an experiment linking COVID policy-making to trust and democratic satisfaction.
The Delphi method in engages experts anonymously across multiple rounds to evaluate policy responses to representative disconnect. It facilitates reasoned convergence or clarification of disagreements. It is suited to issues lacking conclusive empirical evidence but involving normative and analytical complexity, such as party and parliamentary adaptation to political disengagement.
