Towards a new era of representative democracy: The ActEU legacy in one book
09 April 2026
Blog post by Daniela Braun, Alex Hartland, Michael Kaeding, Zoe Lefkofridi, and Kristina Weissenbach
Over the past years, Der (europäische) Föderalist has accompanied the ActEU project as a recurring point of reference for debates on the state of democracy in Europe.
“Across multiple contributions in this blog, ActEU researchers have invited us to look beyond headline indicators of democratic decline and to ask more fine‑grained questions about trust, legitimacy and representation in Europe’s multi‑level political system. This has included analysis of trust and economic deprivation, trust and local government, polarisation and climate protests, representation, and the 2024 European Parliament elections, as well as details of the project’s youth outreach activities.
With the publication of the open‑access edited volume Activating European Citizens’ Trust in Times of Crisis and Polarization: Towards a New Era of Representative Democracy, this intellectual journey now reaches its culmination. The book brings together the central theoretical reflections and empirical findings of the Horizon Europe-funded ActEU project and translates them into a coherent analytical framework.”
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ActEU Youth Democracy Labs: A young perspective on politics and political education in the EU
19 February 2026
Blog post by Alex Hoppe
“In the last years, political participation, representation, polarization, and, not least, political trust have been recurring topics of debate in the European Union. The ActEU research project has focused on these issues as well. One societal group which is often in the center of debates on these issues is the European Youth. Taking the young perspectives on the EU multi-level political system and the problems we have in political education on the EU serious is immensely important.”
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From seats to sentiments: What Austria teaches us about trust and representation in a multi-level Europe
26 January 2026
Blog post by Ermela Gianna, Matilde Ceron and Zoe Lefkofridi
“In this short article, we discuss citizens’ objective representation (descriptive and substantive) along with their subjective experience of representation and their levels of trust in representative institutions. While it might be expected that these three aspects are all closely linked together, our actual findings are more complex. Understanding how citizens’ experience of being represented connects (or fails to connect) to their trust in democratic institutions can shed light on the links between inclusion, responsiveness, and perceived fairness across levels of governance.”
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What’s trust got to do with it? Political trust, polarized opinions and climate protest in Europe
20 January 2026
Blog post by Louisa Parks
“Existing scholarship has shown that European citizens’ views about climate change are increasingly polarised, but not between climate believers and climate denialists (i.e. those that do and do not believe in the existence of human-driven climate change). In Europe the picture is more nuanced. While the vast majority of Europeans accept the existence of human-driven climate change, we do still disagree in important ways over policies: their type, extent, speed, and, crucially, costs and who should pay (Caldwell, Cohen, and Vivyan 2024).”
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Out of step? The EU’s difficult election dance
15 December 2025
Blog post by Alex Hartland, Daniela Braun, Giuseppe Carteny, Rosa M. Navarrete, and Ann-Kathrin Reinl
“It famously takes two to tango, but what happens when one partner is waltzing while the other foxtrots? The relationship between voters and parties is one such complicated dance, with high potential for misalignment. Do European politicians do what the public wants, and do the public even notice? In a recently published study of the 2024 European Parliament elections, we show that most parties are substantially out of sync with voters’ priorities on a number of issues.”
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Multi-level democracy and political trust in Europe: The role of the subnational level
01 December 2025
Blog post by Felix-Christopher von Nostitz
“Multilevel governance is a key concept used to describe the functioning of the European Union. However, how democracy is structured in this multi-level setting is less explored, leading to a recent increase in the interest of multi-level democracy in Europe (Giegerich 2026; Sellers et al. 2020). Given its quasi-federal non-state polity of still sovereign member states, democratic institutions are implemented and organised in very different ways at the local, regional, national and European level across Europe.”
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"Economic deprivation reduces political trust"
25 November 2025
Blog post by Henrik Serup Christensen and Janette Huttunen
Political trust is a fundamental precondition for the stability and legitimacy of the political system. For our societies to function smoothly, we need to hold at least some level of trust in the actors and institutions that make authoritative decisions on our behalf. We do not have to agree with everything they do, but a general belief that the system works for the common good is nonetheless favourable. For this reason, the study of political trust has been a central theme within political science.
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