Parliaments and the Quality of Representative Democracy

Parliaments are at the centre of representative democracies. Its internal rules, composition, the roles, the behaviour of legislators, and the connection between citizens and representatives, are all aspects of the quality of democracy. Lately, an increasing number of authors call attention to democratic decline. The growing success of far-right and populist parties at democratic elections testifies that representative institutions are no longer able to fulfil their mission. Our section invites panels and papers dealing with representative democracy and the role of parliaments in strengthening democratic quality. The section welcomes studies at the local, national and EU levels. Both theoretical ideas and empirical papers are welcome with different study designs and methods. Short biographies Zsófia Papp is a research fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She publishes on campaign personalisation, legislative behaviour, and electoral accountability. She currently serves as Associate Editor at Political Research Exchange. Flemming Juul Christiansen is an associate professor in politics at Roskilde University. He publishes on legislative bargaining, parliamentary government and party politics. Currently, he is chair of the Nordic PSA and secretary of the ECPR parliamentary standing group.