REDIRECT

REDIRECT : The REpresentative DIsconnect: diagnosis and strategies for RECTification

The focus of REDIRECT is to study the current transformation of democratic polities in Europe, to realise whether and how their centres of gravity are shifting, and to improve our understanding of the “representative disconnect” – a multidimensional phenomenon of regression of the demos-kratos linkage involving institutional, behavioral and affective components. REDIRECT moves from the idea to study representative democracy in a comprehensive manner, connecting several relevant dimensions of analysis, in order to extract sustainable ideas and viable instruments to cope with the current problems of “democracy in flux”. These, in turn, will allow a parsimonious formulation of remedies, to be activated both at the institutional level (i.e. assuring a future to crucial “mediating bodies” of representatives democracy like parties, leaders, parliamentary institutions), and at the level of civil society.