King's College London

Dr Udit Bhatia is one of four principal investigators on the Popular Government in Global Perspective project (POPGOV), an ambitious six-year research endeavour which argues that the world's dominant form of democracy – representative government - is failing ordinary people.

Dr Bhatia and colleagues Pierre Etienne Vandamme (Université Catholique de Louvain), Bruno Leipold (London School of Economics and Political Science), and Yanina Welp (University of Girona) have been awarded a €9.2 million Synergy Grant by the ERC to deliver the project.

“At a time when representative systems face mounting pressures and public trust is fragile, this grant allows us to explore alternatives that give people a more direct voice in their own governance and will help shape new models of popular government that are both inclusive and resilient for the future.”

The POPGOV project argues that while modern representative government - which is characterised by regular elections and independent representatives - has become the main alternative to authoritarianism, it often serves to empower a narrow group of elites above others.

The system suffers from “unequal responsiveness", often tilting decisions in favour of the wealthy and special interest groups and this, the researchers say, has created widespread dissatisfaction.

The project aims to counter this by uncovering alternative democratic models, which it groups under the label "popular government". These are defined as political forms that genuinely seek to empower ordinary citizens, not just a select few.

The study aims to break new ground by combining history, political philosophy, comparative politics and empirical research across five packages of work. Researchers will study historical, defeated democratic visions in India, South Africa, and Chile alongside existing or proposed elements of popular government around the world. These include mechanisms like citizens' assemblies, recall elections, and theoretical models like "lottocracy" (selection by lottery).

A lecturer in political theory in the Department of Political Economy, Dr Bhatia will be leading on a package of work that will examine how popular government has been understood in the Global South, bringing a global scope to the project.

He was previously a senior lecturer at the University of York and a co-investigator for the project, Pluralist Agreement and Constitutional Transformation (PACT) which was awarded a major research grant by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

“I am particularly excited to work with Yanina, Bruno, and Pierre-Etienne. The team brings diverse disciplinary and geographical perspectives to the study of democracy and its institutions.”

The goal for the research team is to identify the core principles of popular government and assess the challenges to implementing them. The team believes that by charting viable alternatives to representative democracy, the research can serve as a "bulwark against democratic backsliding".

By showing that other options exist, they hope to make it less likely that citizens turn their back on democracy and ultimately expand society's collective political autonomy.