| This project is aimed at extending theoretical and empirical knowledge of how transitions of party democracy affect political legitimacy. The project consists of three interrelated PhD-projects that focus on three aspects of current transitions of party democracies. The first project investigates at a conceptual and theoretical level whether transparency of political processes is beneficial to the legitimacy of democratic means of governance (throughput-oriented legitimacy). The second project investigates empirically on the basis of survey data whether the decline of political trust among citizens is universal, or contingent upon characteristics of political and media systems. The third project focuses on changes in leadership styles and in the ways leaders are portrayed in the media. It involves a content analysis of the media coverage of sic successful politicians from the 1980's and six successful politicians from the early 2000s. |
