We are interested in whether citizens feel represented by civil society organisations, such as NGOs like Greenpeace or labour unions such as FNV. In a time when democracies are under severe threat, a strong civil society is incredibly important as civil society organisations can provide a voice to citizens and represent their interests before government. In doing so, these organisations can form a complement to representative democracies and can enhance the legitimacy of decision-making. However, the interest group system can be flawed in practice and is not always able to fulfil its representative potential as it can be biased towards economic interests and can therewith even form a serious threat to our democracies.

In a quest to address this, our research project explores the potential of interest organisations to represent citizens. To that end, we ask how citizens view this and more specifically whether they feel represented by civil society groups, what they expect from such organisations and what role they envision for themselves in interest representation.  We aim to study these questions through interviews, surveys, experiments as well as computational methods and AI.

The research project helps make sense of the role that civil society organisations play in democracies, more specifically their potential to represent citizens and how they affect citizens’ sense of being represented and feeling heard. How citizens experience interest representation and what they require from it are important to understand, as civil society organisations ultimately depend on citizens’ mobilisation and participation. In turn, citizens could depend on civil society organisations to represent their interests, as they have the potential to continuously ensure the protection and engagement of especially those citizens, that do not gain adequate political representation in traditional political claims-making channels such as political parties. Moreover, inclusive and well-functioning civil society organisations can enhance how citizens experience political processes and ultimately ensure a more equal playing field when it comes to who is being heard in politics.

The aim is to generate in-depth knowledge on how citizens view and experience interest representation and what they (ideally) require from it. With these insights, we hope to be able to facilitate engagement as well as mobilisation of citizens in interest group politics. We especially aim to address those citizens that are currently not participating in any form of interest representation and are therefore unable to make their voices heard before government. We hope our insights are of interest to civil society organisations that seek to (continue to) represent their constituents in an adequate manner as well as policymakers that aim to incorporate the interests of society into their policies.

The FGGA Starter Grant creates more workload at the start, yet the grant helps early career researchers eventually to facilitate research on innovative topics, pressing issues but also providing them with an opportunity to explore complex methodologies. Ultimately, the grant contributes to building and sustaining early career paths and ensuring fairer and equitable academic competition.