📑 Upcoming Special Issue – The Representative Disconnect in Contemporary European Democracies | Politics & Governance | September 15, 2025 📰

Eline Severs (Vrije Universiteit Brussels) and John Erik Fossum (University of Oslo), both members of the REDIRECT consortium, will serve as Editors of a new Special Issue proposed to Politics & Governance:

“The Representative Disconnect in Contemporary European Democracies.”

🔎 About the Special Issue:

Developed within the Horizon Europe REDIRECT project, the issue examines the representative disconnect as a multidimensional phenomenon—institutional, behavioural, and affective—in the context of broader cultural and social transformations such as globalization, neoliberalism, individualism, and digital media.

📌 Key Themes:

  • Declining trust, political indifference, and populist/technocratic appeals reshaping representation

  • The weakening of mediation and compromise in democratic politics

  • The role of political parties and youth experiences in polarized contexts

  • Methodological diversity: from elite and mass surveys to youth focus groups and claim analysis

🌍 Bringing together qualitative and quantitative approaches, the issue seeks to clarify how European democracies are being reshaped by processes of disconnection—and what this means for the future of representation.

📅 Date: September 15, 2025

📖 Journal: Politics & Governance

🤝 Partners: Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB), University of Oslo (UiO)

👤 Editors: Eline Severs & John Erik Fossum

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