The success of representative democracy depends on political representatives adequately representing the preferences of citizens (substantive representation) and on citizens perceiving this representation as satisfactory (subjective responsiveness). In this respect, political parties play a prominent role as mediators between society and the political system. With the politicization of immigration in the course of the so-called "refugee crisis", their mediation performance and thus successful democratic representation is facing great challenges. The processing of social conflicts by party democracy has become precarious: On the one hand, the views of citizens without a migration background have become more diverse and controversial. On the other hand, the political integration of immigrants demands that their distinct positions and demands for representation be taken up by political actors.

In light of these challenges to democracy, our research project investigates to what extent the positions and issue attention of political parties with regard to integration and migration reflect the diverse preferences of the population and what consequences result from possible representation gaps for the support of democracy and the configuration of the party system.

In Mannheim, we focus on political actors, their positions on the issues described above, and their behavior. Personally,  I used the data collected in our survey and applied multivariate regression analysis to develop empirical insights into the questions raised above. Additionally, I am responsible for the supervision of our employees, i.e. the research assistants and student assistants, and for the coordination with the researchers in Duisburg and Berlin.

Overall, our research design is based on a differentiated concept of democratic representation, which we empirically examine with a multifaceted perspective on citizens and political representatives. With the combined application of established (e.g. survey research) and new methods (computer-assisted text analysis/computational social science), we aim to achieve a sufficient explanation of the complex phenomenon.