Christopher Wratil

MULTIREP – “Multidimensional Representation: Enabling An Alternative Research Agenda on the Citizen-Politician Relationship” is a five-year research project funded by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (September 2023 – August 2028). The project aims to expand quantitative scholars’ understanding of political representation beyond the traditional conceptions of substantive and descriptive representation. It seeks to identify additional dimensions of representation that citizens care about, using in-depth interviews and survey-experimental techniques. For the most important dimensions, the project will develop novel quantitative survey and text-analytical tools to measure citizens’ preferences and politicians’ behavior, and it will also advance normative standards to assess the quality of representation. Thereby, MULTIREP aims to reshape the scope and depth of quantitative empirical research on representation and enable an alternative research agenda on the citizen-politician relationship. Ultimately, the project seeks to address declining trust in democratic politics by providing a more complete picture of what it means for citizens to feel represented. A description of the project can be found here.