Anxieties of Democracy in Europe and North America

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Claudia Landwehr; Professor Dr. Thomas Saalfeld; Professor Dr. Armin Schäfer
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 314364715

Anxieties of Democracy in Europe and North America (ANXIETIES) is a three-year intensive and sustained collaboration between a group of German/European scholars in the political and social sciences and a carefully matched team of scholars gathered by the US Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC). The main aims are (a) to define a research agenda for future joint projects at the cutting edge of empirical and normative debates about challenges to representative democracy; (b) to produce a number of publications for multiple audiences identifying anxieties about the ability of representative democracies to meet such challenges effectively and legitimately as well as evaluating possible institutional reforms; and (c) stimulate joint transatlantic funding applications for original research beyond the immediate funding period with a view of deepening research collaboration. The project extends the SSRC's Anxieties of Democracy project and is premised on a set of empirical observations identified in discussions between an SSRC group led by Ira Katznelson and a German/European group led by Claudia Landwehr, Thomas Saalfeld and Armin Schäfer: Across most advanced liberal democracies, there have been a number of developments challenging the normative foundations of such polities. These include (a) longer term social problems like growing inequality affecting access to, and participation in, the democratic process; (b) the implications for democratic accountability of the use of new policy instruments developed in response to economic and security crises (e.g., transparency of, and accountability for, measures to promote fiscal stabilization or homeland security); (c) trans-national multi-level coordination problems associated with phenomena such as climate change and migration; and (d) the incentives for democratic politicians to employ policy instruments whose political costs and benefits transcend one term in office or a few electoral cycles. A well-coordinated series of transatlantic conferences and workshops is to identify key challenges; evaluate the state of research; publish the results of these deliberations; develop a forward-looking research agenda and stimulate further original research around two general thematic areas: (a) political participation and representation in increasingly unequal societies; and (b) institutional capabilities and reforms in the face of new policy challenges. This institutional and behavioral analysis will be conducted with particular reference to specific policy areas: and (c) a discussion of specific research problems in the following policy areas: fiscal policy, climate change and immigration.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants