Failing Political Representation or a Change in Kind? Models of Representation and Empirical Trends in Europe

This article reviews Peter Mair's argument on the failure of political parties and the subsequent failure of representative democracy in Europe. It develops a conceptual framework to test the validity of Mair's argument against competing interpretations of the development of representative...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:West European politics 2014-03, Vol.37 (2), p.400-419
Main Authors: Thomassen, Jacques, van Ham, Carolien
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Audiences
Conceptualization
Democracy
Europe
Evaluation
legitimacy
Political Parties
Political Representation
Political Science (Excluding Peace and Conflict Studies)
Representation
Representative Democracy
Statsvetenskap (Exklusive freds- och konfliktforskning)
Validity
Values
Voters
Voting
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Summary:This article reviews Peter Mair's argument on the failure of political parties and the subsequent failure of representative democracy in Europe. It develops a conceptual framework to test the validity of Mair's argument against competing interpretations of the development of representative democracy. It identifies three ideal typical models of representative democracy that seem to have succeeded each other over time: cleavage-based democracy, competitive democracy, and audience democracy. The article proposes specific empirical hypotheses for political parties and voters in each of these periods and provides empirical evidence to test the validity of these hypotheses. It concludes with a discussion of the results, evaluating whether the changes that occurred indicate failure of representative democracy or rather the emergence of a different form of representative democracy.
ISSN:0140-2382
1743-9655
DOI:10.1080/01402382.2014.887881