Date: 7 May 2025
Time: 10:00-11:45
Venue: Institute for Futures Studies, Holländargatan 13 in Stockholm, or online.
Research seminar with Andreas Duit, Professor at the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University. Andreas Duit works in the field of comparative environmental politics, with special focus on the role of the state in addressing environmental problems. He mainly uses quantitative methods and cross-national panel data but has also engaged in complex system analysis andsurvey data analysis.
Abstract
Contemporary democracies are undoubtedly facing multiple challenges. The rise of polarization, authoritarianism, and a widening legitimacy gap all signal that democratic governance is a system under duress. At the same time, it has become increasingly evident that representative democracies struggle to provide adequate responses to the grand challenges of our time, such as environmental degradation, rising inequalities, national security concerns, and growing segregation. Various explanatory frameworks have been proposed for this dual predicament, many of which focus on exogenous factors such as globalization, technological change, and social media. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to a central feature within modern democratic systems: how policies, once implemented, shape voter support for political representatives, which in turn influences the likelihood of future policy changes. This key mechanism in democratic governance is often referred to in the literature as policy feedback. In this presentation, I will discuss some preliminary findings from a research project investigating the role of policy feedback in contemporary democracies. Drawing on data on policy reforms in 30 countries from 1970 to 2020, I argue that policy feedback mechanisms help explain why political representatives are finding it increasingly difficult to design effective policies and address pressing social problems through policymaking.
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