Carolina Plescia

© Parente Antonietta

In her ERC Starting Grant project, Carolina Plescia will investigate what elections mean to citizens. This issue is of particular importance in consideration of the growing distrust in the election procedure itself as well as in the democratic institutions in many countries of the world. The social scientist develops a new typology of meanings and motivations for participating in elections. This way, she intends to introduce new concepts and indicators to election research to make the election procedure itself more understandable. Plescia also investigates so-called autocracies in Europe and beyond (e.g. Hungary and Russia). This allows to additionally gain new insights into elections outside of democratic systems. The project results are, therefore, an important basis for (re-)assessing elections and electoral systems. Moreover, the results allow to scrutinise previous interpretations of elections by media and politicians.