Participatory Elites? (In)Equality of Political Participation in Austria.

Funding Institution: Austrian National Bank (Jubiläumsfonds)
Duration: March 2007 - January 2009
Coordinated by: Sieglinde Rosenberger
Researchers: Florian Walter

http://homepage.univie.ac.at/sieglinde.rosenberger/publikatio/Report_Participatory_Elites.pdf

The research project "Participatory Elites?" focuses on the relationship between political and social inequality. The main argument is based on the assumption that people of different socioeconomic status, ethnicity, gender and age are involved in the process of political opinion formation and decision-making to a strongly varying extent, which embodies one of the major challenges of contemporary western democracies.

To address the problem, the following questions are going to be answered: What do we mean by political participation? What is political equality? How does participation relate to the concept of political equality? How is political participation organised today? Who participates in Austrian politics? What do the activists claim? Are there patterns of equality in Austrian political participation? Is political participation in Austria less equal nowadays then it was in former times? Why? What can we do about it?

The final research report is available here.