Political representation is a central pillar of modern democracies. Well-functioning representation is essential for trust between voters and political parties. However, the trust that political parties act in the interest of their voters is repeatedly challenged - not least by populist forces.

Against this background, the project is addressing different facets of political representation in order to identify mechanisms but also challenges of good political representation. How and why do parties change their positions in the course of the political decision-making process in parliament? How do compromises affect the representation of voters? What influence do descriptive characteristics of MPs have on substantive representation, i.e. on positions and preferences that these MPs represent in parliament?

The project examinesthe positions of political parties and MPs and how these change in the process of representation. For this purpose, different texts, such as election programs and parliamentary speeches, are content-analytically evaluated with the help of automated methods.