Towards a new era of representative democracy: The ActEU legacy in one book

By Daniela Braun, Alex Hartland, Michael Kaeding, Zoe Lefkofridi, and Kristina Weissenbach

The Horizon Europe project Activating European Citizens’ Trust in Times of Crisis and Polarisation (ActEU) examined questions of political trust and democratic legitimacy in Europe. This article is part of a series in which ActEU researchers present their findings.

Out now!

Over the past years, Der (europäische) Föderalist has accompanied the ActEU project as a recurring point of reference for debates on the state of democracy in Europe. ActEU researchers – a consortium of twelve European partner institutions – investigated political trust and legitimacy in Europe, focusing on citizen attitudes, participation, and the representation of policy preferences. Their overall aim was to map persistent problems of declining trust in the EU’s multi-level governance system and develop a toolbox of remedial actions for policymakers, civil society, and the educational sector to enhance political trust.

Across multiple contributions in this blog, ActEU researchers have invited us to look beyond headline indicators of democratic decline and to ask more fine‑grained questions about trust, legitimacy and representation in Europe’s multi‑level political system. This has included analysis of trust and economic deprivation, trust and local government, polarisation and climate protests, representation, and the 2024 European Parliament elections, as well as details of the project’s youth outreach activities.

With the publication of the open‑access edited volume Activating European Citizens’ Trust in Times of Crisis and Polarization: Towards a New Era of Representative Democracy, this intellectual journey now reaches its culmination. The book brings together the central theoretical reflections and empirical findings of the Horizon Europe-funded ActEU project and translates them into a coherent analytical framework.

Trust is not a by-product, but an indispensable resource for democracy

The timing of this publication could hardly be more appropriate. European democracies are operating under conditions of permanent stress: successive crises, intensified geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty and deepening social and political polarisation. In such contexts, political trust is often treated as a diffuse sentiment that simply “falls” during crises. The volume starts from a different premise: Trust and legitimacy are not residual by‑products of democratic politics, but indispensable resources without which representative democracy cannot function in the first place.

Political trust, we argue, is a crucial yet underestimated element in Europe’s representative democracies. A trusting relationship between citizens and the institutions of the state ensures the functioning of democratic systems, reduces transaction costs and facilitates the justification of political decisions. Without the commitment of a critical mass, democratic governments cannot gain legitimacy among the populace.

While a stable relationship of trust between citizens and the state through political parties is a prerequisite for representative democracies in normal times, it is even more important in times of significant democratic change and turmoil, i.e., when democracies are in flux. Periods of crisis reveal not only whether citizens trust institutions, but also whether they feel represented, heard and able to participate meaningfully in political life.

The ActEU triangle: attitudes, behaviour, representation

At the conceptual core of the book lies the ActEU triangle, which provides a novel starting point for analysing trust and legitimacy in Europe. Instead of relying on single survey items asking citizens how much they trust “politics” or “parliament”, the triangle connects three analytically distinct yet empirically intertwined dimensions: political attitudes, political behaviour and political representation.

The ActEU triangle. (Click to enlarge.)

By linking what citizens think, how they act and how their preferences are represented in political outcomes, the framework allows for a more precise diagnosis of democratic strengths and weaknesses in Europe’s multi‑level systems.

Declining trust is often rooted in concrete experiences of exclusion

Building on this framework, the empirical chapters of the volume draw on original ActEU survey data and complementary qualitative evidence to map trust and legitimacy across different European contexts. Within seven multi-level case studies – Austria, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and Spain – the book covers a wide range of political systems and democratic traditions and explicitly takes into account the interaction between regional, national and European levels of governance. Across cases, a central finding stands out: Trust deficits are rarely uniform. They differ across institutions, policy areas and political levels, and they are often closely linked to perceived gaps in political representation.

Polarising policy fields such as migration, climate change or gender equality emerge as particularly revealing stress tests for representative democracy. In these areas, citizens’ attitudes, participatory behaviour and experiences of representation often diverge in ways that conventional trust indicators fail to capture. The ActEU approach shows that declining trust is frequently rooted not in general scepticism towards democracy, but in concrete experiences of misrepresentation or exclusion. This insight can be studied in much more detail in future research drawing on our innovative data sources, such as the ActEU Citizens’ Emotions & Trust Focus Group Dataset as well as the ActEU Digital Political Discourse Dataset.

Democratic renewal begins with careful analysis

Importantly, Activating European Citizens’ Trust does not stop at diagnosis. Throughout the volume, the authors emphasise that trust is not a fixed end‑state but a dynamic relationship that can be strengthened or weakened by institutional design, political practices and modes of representation. By systematically linking attitudes, participation and representation, the ActEU framework opens up space for targeted democratic reforms – from improving representational responsiveness to strengthening participatory channels suited to Europe’s complex multi‑level reality.

As the final contribution to the ActEU series on Der (europäische) Föderalist, this book thus provides a fitting conclusion. It encapsulates the project’s core ambition: not merely to document declining political trust, but to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of how representative democracy in Europe can adapt, recover and endure under conditions of crisis and polarisation. At a moment when democratic pessimism often dominates public debate, the volume is a timely reminder that democratic renewal begins with careful analysis – and with taking citizens’ trust seriously.

Daniela Braun is Professor of Political Science with a specialisation in European Integration and International Relations at Saarland University.

Alex Hartland is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of European Social Research at Saarland University.

Michael Kaeding is Professor of European Integration and European Policy at the University of Duisburg-Essen and Director of Studies of the European Political and Governance Studies Department at the College of Europe in Bruges.

Zoe Lefkofridi is Professor of Politics & Gender, Diversity & Equality at the Department of Political Science of the University of Salzburg.

Kristina Weissenbach is substitute professor for Ethics in Political Management and Society at the University of Duisburg-Essen and research coordinator of the NRW School of Governance.

Daniela Braun, Alexander Hartland, Michael Kaeding, Zoe Lefkofridi, Kristina Weissenbach (eds.): Activating European Citizens’ Trust in Times of Crisis and Polarization: Towards a New Era of Representative Democracy, Cham: Springer Nature 2026 (open access).

Economic deprivation reduces political trust [DE/EN] ● Henrik Serup Christensen and Janette Huttunen Multi-level democracy and political trust in Europe: The role of the subnational level [DE/EN] ● Felix-Christopher von Nostitz Out of step? The EU’s difficult election dance [DE/EN] ● Alex Hartland, Daniela Braun, Giuseppe Carteny, Rosa M. Navarrete, and Ann-Kathrin Reinl What’s trust got to do with it? Political trust, polarized opinions and climate protest in Europe [DE/EN] ● Louisa Parks From seats to sentiments: What Austria teaches us about trust and representation in a multi-level Europe [DE/EN] ● Ermela Gianna, Matilde Ceron, and Zoe Lefkofridi ActEU Youth Democracy Labs: A young perspective on politics and political education in the EU [DE/EN] ● Alex Hoppe Towards a new era of representative democracy: The ActEU legacy in one book [EN] ● Daniela Braun, Alex Hartland, Michael Kaeding, Zoe Lefkofridi, and Kristina Weissenbach

Pictures: Book cover: Springer Nature; authors’ portraits: private [all rights reserved].