Still best friends? Representation and democracy

Declaring a crisis of representation seems to be as old a concept as the concept of democratic representation itself. For decades, research on representation has been speaking of a representation-participation gap. The fact that socio-economically disadvantaged population groups participate increasingly less in the democratic process is an unresolved dilemma in that context. Feeling more and more politically excluded, these groups tend to not cast their votes, making it impossible for the democratic promise of equality to be fulfilled. Research has been providing constant findings on crises of democratic representation, thus validating the discussion, especially within the post-democratic discourse: Political participation is regressing but, in addition to that problem, the question is whether representative democracy still rises to the challenges of ongoing ever changing transformation processes. One clue as to why socio-economically disadvantaged groups participate less: The ties between political parties and their traditional voters have weakened and we no longer have a clear division of social classes and milieus. How do we evaluate this development of more pluralistic representation patterns? Has voting behavior changed? Can the changing relationship between political agents and those being represented provide us with answers? Political Science interested in participatory matters will have to define which forms of representation inspire the various social classes to participate and influence as a basis of effective political responsiveness. All these topics are discussed in the thesis at hand which, through means of explorative qualitative field research, tries to pinpoint how local politicians and citizens experience specific forms of representation. The field research compares the politicians' self-image and their conception of representation to the citizens' expectations of representation concepts. Areas of democratic conflict will be highlighted and discussed in relation to political representation, inequality and administration.