The Interchange Between Democratic Institutions and the Globalisation of the Economy

Following World War II, globalisation and market liberalisation triggered a period of unprecedented growth. Recently, these trends appear to reverse, whereby globalisation and corporations started to pose challenges for liberal democracy, social cohesion and environmental sustainability. DemoTrans is an impact-driven research project that will provide theoretically and empirically robust recommendations on how to reinvigorate democratic governance by improving the accountability, transparency, effectThe notion that liberal, representative democracy is in some form of crisis ? or even a terminal decline ? has been brought forward by numerous scholars (for a recent review, see Bickerton & Accetti, 2021). While the globalisation and liberalisation of markets triggered a period of unprecedented growth ? as well as improvements in standards of living and consolidation of liberal democracies ? in the decades following the Second World War, we have recently witnessed a substantial reversal in these trends. Today, globalisation and global corporations rather appear to bring challenges to liberal democracy, social cohesion as well as the environment. The academic literature studying these developments often focuses on describing and interpreting what is going ?wrong?. However, the key challenge is to outline and understand the new type of politics that is emerging in its place as well as to envisage and develop the contours of new promising approaches to re-embed democracy and capitalism. This key challenge lies at the heart of the DemoTrans project, and we address it by bringing together a multidisciplinary consortium of six experienced and leading research groups from four European research universities and an NGO with a strong track record. Building on their wide-ranging expertise, DemoTrans will develop novel theoretical and empirical academic research aimed at robust recommendations that encouraging stronger democratic accountability and inclusion in economic processes.