Toward a new form of representative democracy? Introducing a comparative database on parliamentary democracy during the pandemic

As we have entered a third wave of COVID-19 with concomitant economic restrictions, there is only a patchy understanding of how European representative democracy has fared since the beginning of the health crisis. As national and European authorities have often reacted by executive orders, to adequately tackle the mounting challenges related to public health and the economy, the role of parliaments have become less clear and understood. This paper is a conceptual and empirical preparation exercise for a comparative database project that aims to shed some light on this knowledge gap. By collecting qualitative and quantitative data on institutional changes in representative democracy at the national and European levels – while also paying close attention to the changing landscape of EU socio-economic governance – the project sets out the following goals: 1) to gain a better understanding of how representative democracy has fared during the pandemic, 2) locate these institutional changes in a broader theoretical and empirical context of the global financial crisis and the sovereign debt crisis, and 3) serve as an empirical basis for comparative research designs. More specifically, the paper sets out to: a) review the literature on representative democracy at the national and supranational level since the two aforementioned crises; b) review the emerging literature on representative democracy during the pandemic; c) develop a preliminary coding scheme for organizing raw data, based on the existing scholarly and press accounts; d) discuss a rationale for selection of country cases from Europe’s Northern, Southern and Eastern regions; e) identify potential empirical research strategies, including strategies for obtaining primary and secondary data. If successful, the paper would facilitate building a team of fellow academics and country experts, willing to contribute to the construction of the comparative database and subsequently engage in research collaborations.