🗣️ Consortium Debate – Dimensions of the Representative Disconnect | Exeter, United Kingdom | January 13, 2025 🇬🇧

The REDIRECT project held its first internal debate among consortium members, addressing the forms and dimensions of the representative disconnect. Far from a mere breakdown in communication, the disconnect is understood as a failure in the constitutive processes that sustain democratic engagement.

Democratic representation was discussed as a dynamic interplay of vertical and horizontal trust—linking opinion formation, debate, and consent with the development of governing capacity, authority, and leadership.

🔑 Key Dimensions of the Disconnect:

  • Intermediation Disconnect → weakening role of elections, legislatures, parties, and public opinion as meaningful channels of representation, alongside the erosion of societal intermediation once rooted in work and social structures

  • Governance & Accountability Disconnect → decision-making shifting away from representative institutions toward multilevel governance and emergency politics, raising issues of authorization, responsiveness, and responsibility

  • Affective Disconnect → citizens’ estrangement from the political class and broader disaffection with politics, reflected in declining participation, negative perceptions, and spectacle-driven communication

⚖️ Together, these dimensions highlight the complexity of representative democracy’s challenges, underscoring the urgent need to renew processes of engagement, trust, and democratic learning.

📍 Location: University of Exeter, United Kingdom

📅 Date: January 13, 2025

🤝 Partner: University of Exeter (UNEXTER)

#RepresentativeDisconnect #Intermediation #Governance #Accountability #AffectivePolitics