Radical Politics and Representative Institutions

Do democratic representative institutions help foster or impede radical change? Over the last 25 years, democratic representative institutions have been challenged from two sides: first, by the alter-globalization movements from the late 1990s onward and the movements of the squares in the early 2010s, both of which argued that political institutions and parties were part of the problem rather than the solution; and, second, by populist movements claiming to represent the people in ways that circumvent the institutions of representative democracy. The project examines the relationship between political institutions, political parties and radical politics in the Global North and the Global South today, specifically Denmark and South Africa. Looking at this question across the Global North/Global South divide provides us with a novel perspective on the relationship between democratic representative institutions and radical change