Research
The first research phase of NCCR Democracy started in October 2005 and ended in September 2009. The research projects were organized in four modules and investigated the key challenges to democracy in the 21st century which can be traced to two major trends:
- The processes of globalization, internationalization and European integration that undermine the problem-solving capacities and legitimacy of nation-states and of supranational political structures. (Module 1 and Module 2)
- The growing interdependence between the media and politics (“mediatization of politics”) that has profoundly altered the character of public debate. (Module 3 and Module 4)
Module 1 focused on the challenges to democratisation, while the second module addressed the challenges to polititical decision-making in established democracies. The two remaining modules investigated the origins of the “mediatization of politics” and its implications for the political process.
List of completed research projects in Phase I:
Module 1: Expanding democratic governance in the international realm
- IP 1 (Phase I): Democratizing global institutions: The WTO as an emerging polity
- IP 2 (Phase I): Promoting democracy in the EU and its near abroad
- IP 3 (Phase I): Democratizing divided societies in bad neighborhoods
- IP 20 (Phase I): From national to supra-national democracy in Europe
- IP 21 (Phase I): Legitimacy and democracy in multilateral integration
Module 2: Changing relations between input, throughput, and output in public governance
- IP 4 (Phase I): The impact of internationalization on Swiss policy processes in comparative perspective
- IP 5 (Phase I): Assessing the trend towards new regionalism in Swiss metropolitan areas
- IP 5a (Phase I): Cantonal strategies for the development of metropolitan areas: potential and limits
- IP 6 (Phase I): Information on public performance - creation, diffusion, and utilization
- IP 7 (Phase I): Democratic structures and processes and the provision of public goods
Module 3: Changing structures and actors of political communication
- IP 8 (Phase I): Democracy in the media society - Theoretical support and empirical validation of a societal term
- IP 9 (Phase I): Mediatization and structural change within political actors and organizations
- IP 10 (Phase I): The dynamics of political institutions in mediated democracies: political bargaining and the transformation of the public sphere
- IP 22 (Phase I): Explaining differences in political news - a comparative analysis across four Western democracies and four decades
