About the project
The main objective of REDIRECT is to enhance our understanding of the current transformations of representative democracy in Europe at national and supranational level, and at the interconnection between different levels of territorial representation.
REDIRECT wishes to assess whether the centre of gravity of democratic representation is shifting away from the traditional forms of political intermediation, such as parties, parliaments, and party-based government, and whether other forms of political representation are taking their place. Although these transformations are by now long seated, they seem to have reached a critical point in the first two decades of the 21st century, fomenting a sense of crisis and uncertainty, and a diffuse malaise in the European democracies.
The crisis of these institutions, as well as the changing attitudes and behaviour of citizens and political elites towards politics, have made the linking of the citizenry to the governing institutions more difficult and haphazard.
The two main questions REDIRECT addresses are:
a) what are the nature, scope, aspects and causes of the representative disconnect;
b) how can the current representative disconnect be addressed, ameliorated, and/or rectified?
Cooperation
University of Siena
HUN-REN Centre for Social Sciences
University of Salento
Jagiellonian University
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
University of Exeter
Financing
REDIRECT is funded by the EU’s Horizon-Europe programme under the call HORIZON-CL2-2022-DEMOCRACY-01 – Democracy in Flux.
Project period: February 2023 - January 2027
