A1 Journal article (refereed)
Miten edustuksellinen demokratiamme on muuttumassa? : digitaalisen käsitehistorian näkökulma (2023)

Ihalainen, P. (2023). Miten edustuksellinen demokratiamme on muuttumassa? : digitaalisen käsitehistorian näkökulma. Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae, 2(1), 116-137. https://doi.org/10.57048/aasf.130119

JYU authors or editors

Ihalainen, Pasi

Publication details

All authors or editors: Ihalainen, Pasi

Journal or series: Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae

ISSN: 2953-9048

eISSN: 2954-1050

Publication year: 2023

Publication date: 30/05/2023

Volume: 2

Issue number: 1

Pages range: 116-137

Publisher: Suomalainen tiedeakatemia

Publication country: Finland

Publication language: Finnish

DOI: https://doi.org/10.57048/aasf.130119

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Open Access channel

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/87491

Abstract

Recent concerns about representative democracy being in crisis should be related to longer-term histories of ‘representation’ and ‘democracy’. Conceptual history analyses diachronic change and synchronic contestability of such key terms. Digital history can help understand evolvement in tensions over popular representation and representatives' changing perceptions on their parliamentary role. N-gram analyses and visualizations of relative word frequencies reveal long-term patterns and justify selections for qualitative analysis. Contextualising close reading shows how representative democracy has been increasingly complemented with participatory and direct democracy in the UK parliament, for instance, since the 2000s. These observations lead to questions on parallel developments in other European countries.

Keywords: political systems; democracy; representative democracy; parliamentarism; parliaments; political culture; conceptual history; discourse research; corpus-based research; digital humanities