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Critical Candidates: Elite Attitudes Towards the Functioning of Representative Democracy

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Candidates, Parties and Voters in the Belgian Partitocracy

Abstract

Although citizens see representative democracy today almost unanimously as the most desirable form of government, the institutions of advanced industrial democracies receive steadily more criticisms. In this chapter, we pay attention to an (often) neglected perspective, namely the criticalness of political elites towards representative democracy. Drawing on the Belgian Candidate Survey, the results of our analysis suggest that candidates’ attitudes depend on how integrated they are in the current representative democratic system. Especially outsiders to the political system are more critical and, at the same time, more supportive for direct democratic arrangements. These findings invite to reconsider the power relations between critical and noncritical candidates in a representative system that remains unchanged despite the criticisms of a considerable number of both citizens and candidates.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

    Christoph Niessen

  2. Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Christoph Niessen, Nathalie Schiffino & Vincent Jacquet

  3. Federal Public Service for Economy, SMEs, Self-Employed and Energy, Brussels, Belgium

    Ludovic Deschamps

Authors
  1. Christoph Niessen
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  2. Nathalie Schiffino
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  3. Vincent Jacquet
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  4. Ludovic Deschamps
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christoph Niessen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Audrey Vandeleene

  2. Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Lieven De Winter

  3. Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Pierre Baudewyns

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Niessen, C., Schiffino, N., Jacquet, V., Deschamps, L. (2019). Critical Candidates: Elite Attitudes Towards the Functioning of Representative Democracy. In: Vandeleene, A., De Winter, L., Baudewyns, P. (eds) Candidates, Parties and Voters in the Belgian Partitocracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96460-7_12

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