From Frustration to Imaginaries of Change: Young Europeans on the Future of Representative Democracy

The growing popularity of radical right-wing parties (with anti-immigrant, anti-minority, and anti-equality slogans) among young Europeans raises questions about the causes of their disillusionment with liberal democracy. Our approach to answering the question of how democracy can be repaired draws on the concept of representative ecology, understood as “a web of practices and relations interacting and influencing each other” (Castiglione 2024: 15). Such a model allows us to grasp complexity and relationality of everyday life as a realm in which trust and credibility are built and tested, while also examining the effectiveness of formal democratic institutions. Changes in how this system is organized – the creation of connections among its elements and the definition of directions and modes of transformation – occur through social imaginaries, which stimulate transformations of practices but also change under their influence. Speculating about the possible future of democracy therefore requires not only understanding the experiences with democracy that younger generations have, but also their visions of the future, desires, and motivations for change. In the presentation, we will discuss the results of a comparative analysis of twelve focus group discussions conducted with young adults aged 18 to 30 – six in Brussels and six in Kraków - within the framework of the REDIRECT project. Starting from a discussion of what representative democracy means to young people, we asked what kinds of changes it requires, what kind of democracy they expect, and what fears and hopes they associate with the future of democracy. The comparative analysis of the discussions allows us to draw conclusions about the similarities and differences in how young people in Belgium and Poland experience representative democracy. They acknowledge the value of democracy as an idea (freedom of expression, equality before the law, and individual rights), but they also share frustrations related to a sense of insecurity resulting from the lack of representation of their interests and needs (housing, public services). Across all focus groups in Brussels, participants increasingly adopt a majoritarian and outcome-oriented logic, prioritizing efficiency, speed, and problem-solving over democratic procedures and institutional counterbalances. This shift does not translate into a rejection of representative democracy as such. Rather, participants criticize political elites and decision-making processes while expressing a desire for “better” and more decisive representatives. By contrast, the discussions in Kraków reveal the extent to which young people are discouraged by the polarization of the political scene, which they perceive as driven by struggles to maintain power for its own sake and by ongoing conflicts over the past. Within the network of institutions, they identify inconsistencies—for example, schools, which could be crucial spaces for democratic socialization, in practice reproduce competitive rather than cooperative relations, thereby exacerbating economic and symbolic inequalities (as well as feelings of being represented). To sum up, the results of our research show that in order for democracy to be repairable, it requires reconceptualization: recognizing how social imaginaries (what democracy is), imaginaries of the social future (what democracy can be or should be), and everyday practices mutually shape one another.