The Future of Representative Democracy

by Edited by Sonia Alonso , John Keane , Wolfgang Merkel

• ISBN13: 9780521177030
• ISBN10: 0521177030
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Future of Representative Democracy poses important questions about representation, representative democracy and their future. Inspired by the last major investigation of the subject by Hanna Pitkin over four decades ago, this ambitious volume fills a major gap in the literature by examining the future of representative forms of democracy in terms of present-day trends and past theories of representative democracy. Aware of the pressing need for clarifying key concepts and institutional trends, the volume aims to break down barriers among disciplines and to establish an interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars. The contributors emphasise that representative democracy and its future is a subject of pressing scholarly concern and public importance. Paying close attention to the unfinished, two-centuries-old relationship between democracy and representation, this book offers a fresh perspective on current problems and dilemmas of representative democracy and the possible future development of new forms of democratic representation.

Author Biography

Sonia Alonso is Senior Fellow at the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB). John Keane is Professor of Politics at the University of Sydney and Research Professor at the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB). Wolfgang Merkel is Director of the research unit 'Democracy: Structures, Performance, Challenges' at the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB), and Professor of Political Science at the Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. vii
List of tables	p. viii
Notes on contributors	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Editors' introduction: Rethinking the future of representative democracy	p. 1
Representative democracy and its critics	p. 23
Representative democracy and the populist temptation	p. 50
The wider canvas: representation and democracy in state and society	p. 74
Performance and deficits of present-day representation	p. 96
Do parliaments have a future?	p. 124
Engendering representative democracy	p. 144
Representative democracy and the multinational demos	p. 169
Diagnosing and designing democracy in Europe	p. 191
Monitory democracy?	p. 212
Representing nature	p. 236
Democracy and representation beyond the nation state	p. 258
General bibliography	p. 282
Index	p. 302
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