Comments on: 🦋 Shift happens: rethinking democracy research in times of crisis https://theloop.ecpr.eu/shift-happens-rethinking-democracy-research-in-times-of-crisis/ ECPR's Political Science Blog Tue, 26 Aug 2025 10:03:23 +0000 hourly 1 By: Andreas Corcaci https://theloop.ecpr.eu/shift-happens-rethinking-democracy-research-in-times-of-crisis/#comment-52113 Tue, 26 Aug 2025 10:03:23 +0000 https://theloop.ecpr.eu/?p=23941#comment-52113 This is an interesting contribution that shifts focus in research on the science of democracy to what you call the 'demand side' (although I'd suggest using a term not taken from economics, such as demos or bottom up perspective). It makes a well-founded argument that crises of democracy and democratic backsliding could be better understood (and possibly addressed) by giving principles of democracy more attention instead of merely talking about procedures and instutitional aspects.

Interestingly, the contribution does not call for a paradigm shift in the study of democracies, but rather advocates the opening of the current paradigm. However, while maintaining this link seems sensible, wouldn't a more radical departure from the current approach to understanding and measuring democracy be required to go beyond existing pluralistic approaches?

An important future path in this line of thinking could be to embed this shifted focus in an exisiting (some version of republicanism) or a new kind of (empirical) democratic theory to avoid a merely incremental change. A stronger theoretical foundation could also be connected to measurement and empirical analysis more deeply through formalized framings, for example, through concept structures.

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