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Trajectories and Transformations of the Democratic Representative System
Author(s) -
Castiglione Dario
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
global policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.602
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1758-5899
pISSN - 1758-5880
DOI - 10.1111/1758-5899.12223
Subject(s) - democracy , representation (politics) , normative , politics , process (computing) , authorization , sociology , political science , law and economics , political economy , public administration , epistemology , computer science , law , computer security , philosophy , operating system
This article suggests that there are many ways of characterizing the transformations of contemporary democracy, but that particularly Peter Mair's analysis of the ‘hollowing out’ of democracy suggests that we are witnessing a process of democratic disempowerment, with citizens becoming disaffected and political elites more insulated. A particular terrain of such a process is that of political representation. This article focuses on the conceptual and institutional transformations of the ‘standard version’ of political representation and whether the shift from a more formal and centralised system, based on authorization and control, to more informal, diffuse and trust‐based processes of representation may still meet the normative requirements of democratic politics.