ERC Starting Grant / 2027–2032
How political elites claim responsibility.
How citizens judge it.
And what this means for democracy.
01 — The project
Keeping a promise. Accepting limits on power. Owning an unpopular decision. In politics, being responsible can mean very different things.
DEMOCRESP examines how politicians and citizens define, contest and evaluate political responsibility—and its opposite. It asks why conduct that some regard as responsible is rejected by others, and why apparently irresponsible behaviour can win public support.
At the heart of the project is a question of costs: do political actors accept the political, reputational and material costs of their choices, or shift them onto opponents, future generations and society?
The project connects elite discourse with citizens’ expectations to understand how agreement—and disagreement—about responsibility shapes trust, legitimacy and political behaviour.
02 — The conceptual framework
The project starts with four dimensions of responsibility, while remaining open to the meanings citizens themselves bring to the concept.
What do we stand for?
Maintaining coherent policy commitments, even when doing so is electorally costly.
Taking responsibilityHolding to a policy commitment in the public interest.
Shifting the costsUndoing policies to retaliate against opponents rather than advance an alternative vision.
Which limits do we accept?
Respecting checks, oversight and binding rules when they constrain partisan advantage.
Taking responsibilityAccepting constitutional checks and independent oversight.
Shifting the costsUndermining or bypassing constraints to secure a political advantage.
Who owns the decision?
Accepting liability, explaining choices and bearing the reputational costs of failure.
Taking responsibilityOffering explanations, sharing credit and accepting blame.
Shifting the costsScapegoating others and presenting contrition as weakness.
Whose future is at stake?
Recognising past commitments and the long-term consequences of decisions made today.
Taking responsibilityAcknowledging inherited commitments and considering future generations.
Shifting the costsDisowning the past and passing today’s burdens on to successors.
These are objects of investigation: DEMOCRESP asks how elites and citizens interpret, combine and challenge them.
03 — The research programme
Three connected work packages bring political communication, citizen perceptions and democratic citizenship into the same picture.
How do political actors claim, contest and deny responsibility—and how do their strategies change across countries and over time?
Parliamentary debates, party manifestos and a new comparative corpus of leader and campaign speeches reveal how responsibility is framed in political competition.
Building the conceptual and empirical foundationsWhat does responsibility mean to citizens, and which claims resonate with whom, under which conditions?
Citizens’ own definitions inform new measures and realistic survey experiments. A three-wave panel in Austria, Germany, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom traces evaluations over time.
Connecting political claims with citizens’ expectationsWhat happens when elites’ claims and citizens’ expectations align—or pull apart?
The project studies trust, democratic legitimacy and electoral behaviour, and examines how political actors in Austria and the United Kingdom respond to accusations of irresponsibility.
Explaining consequences and the feedback to political elitesThe comparative design spans different party systems, forms of government and institutional settings. Coverage varies across the project’s corpora and methods.
04 — People
Based at the University of Innsbruck, DEMOCRESP brings together comparative politics, survey research and computational social science.
Principal investigator
Department of Political Science
University of Innsbruck
Fabian studies political representation, party competition and populism. His research combines comparative data, survey experiments and computational text analysis to understand the relationship between political elites and citizens.
The planned team includes a postdoctoral researcher, a doctoral researcher and research assistants. Team members and recruitment announcements will be added as the project develops.
05 — Outputs & open science
DEMOCRESP will share its findings, data and tools with researchers and wider audiences. Project outputs will appear here as they become available.
Peer-reviewed articles on responsibility in elite discourse, citizen evaluations and democratic citizenship.
Articles & working papersA comparative campaign-speech corpus, multilingual text models, survey instruments and replication materials.
Open, documented & reusableA popular-science book, policy briefs and workshops connecting the findings with public debate.
Ideas for a wider conversationLet’s talk responsibility
For research collaborations, project enquiries or media requests, contact the principal investigator.
fabian.habersack@uibk.ac.atFabian Habersack
University of Innsbruck, Austria