Crisis and mutation in the institutions of representation in ‘real-existing’ democracies

Philippe C. Schmitter

Journal of Chinese Governance, 2019, vol. 4, issue 4, 323-338

Abstract: ‘Real-existing Democracies’ (REDs) seem to be in real trouble. Academics and practitioners tend to agree on this and both can produce long lists of negative trends to illustrate it. The one thread that connects all of these symptoms is representation and, even more specifically, the extent to which citizen representation through political parties competing in ‘free and fair’ elections within territorial constituencies is capable of keeping rulers accountable and ensuring their legitimacy. Could it be that what are no longer working as they used to and, therefore, generating most of the disaffection among citizens are the partisan channels for articulating, aggregating, deliberating and deciding among competing interests and passions?

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23812346.2019.1672362 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rgovxx:v:4:y:2019:i:4:p:323-338

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rgov20

DOI: 10.1080/23812346.2019.1672362

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Chinese Governance is currently edited by Sujian Guo

More articles in Journal of Chinese Governance from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().