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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Miten edustuksellinen demokratiamme on muuttumassa? Digitaalisen käsitehistorian näkökulma

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Recent concerns about representative democracy being in crisis should be related to longer-term histories of ‘representation’ and ‘democracy’. Conceptual history analyses diachronic change and synchronic contestability of such key terms. Digital history can help understand evolvement in tensions over popular representation and representatives' changing perceptions on their parliamentary role. N-gram analyses and visualizations of relative word frequencies reveal long-term patterns and justify selections for qualitative analysis. Contextualising close reading shows how representative democracy has been increasingly complemented with participatory and direct democracy in the UK parliament, for instance, since the 2000s. These observations lead to questions on parallel developments in other European countries.