REDIRECT: The REpresentative DIsconnect: diagnosis and strategies for RECTification

REDIRECT的重点是研究当前欧洲民主政体的转型，了解它们的重心是否以及如何发生转移，并提高我们对“代表性脱节”的理解——一种涉及制度、行为和情感成分的民众与奎托斯联系回归的多维现象。 REDIRECT从理念转向全面研究代议制民主，连接几个相关的分析维度，以提炼出可持续的思路和可行的工具来应对当前“流动中的民主”问题。反过来，这些将允许在机构层面（即确保政党、领导人、议会机构等代表民主的关键“调解机构”的未来）和公民社会层面启动补救措施的简约制定。在对代议制民主的理论反思进行批判性回顾的同时，还将对代议制脱节现象的几个实证维度提供跨学科和多层次的方法，重点关注几个主题：代议制危机、对机构和政治代表的信任、政治个性化、政治个人主义、大众精英一致性、社会和社交媒体不满。该项目预期的长期成果标志着从诊断到纠正策略的转变。事实上，REDIRECT旨在提供一些务实的建议，以双向街头干预的方式重新安排民众与奎托斯的关系：自上而下的制度改革方式（即立法和程序创新，以确保公民的透明度和充分信息）以及自下而上的公民与调解机构之间加强联系的方式（即通过数字化重新动员公民、传播社会可持续性和公民教育等共同价值观）。

The focus of REDIRECT is to study the current transformation of democratic polities in Europe, to realise whether and how their centres of gravity are shifting, and to improve our understanding of the “representative disconnect” – a multidimensional phenomenon of regression of the demos-kratos linkage involving institutional, behavioural and affective components. REDIRECT moves from the idea to study representative democracy in a comprehensive manner, connecting several relevant dimensions of analysis, in order to extract sustainable ideas and viable instruments to cope with the current problems of “democracy in flux”. These, in turn, will allow a parsimonious formulation of remedies, to be activated both at the institutional level (i.e. assuring a future to crucial “mediating bodies” of representatives democracy like parties, leaders, parliamentary institutions), and at the level of civil society. In parallel to a critical review of the theoretical reflection on representative democracy, an interdisciplinary and multi-level approach to several empirical dimensions of the phenomenon of representative disconnect will be offered, focusing on several topics: the crisis of representation, trust in institutions and political representatives, political personalization, political individualism, mass-élite congruence, social and social-media discontent. The long-term outcomes expected from the project mark the passage from the diagnosis to the strategies for rectification. Indeed, REDIRECT aims at providing a number of pragmatical recommendations to rearrange the demos-kratos relationship along a two way street intervention: the top-down way of institutional reforms (i.e., legislative and procedural innovation to ensure transparency and full information to citizens) and the bottom-up way of a stronger liaison between citizens and mediating bodies (i.e., remobilizing citizens via digitalization, diffusion of shared values such as social sustainability and civic education).