Magtudredningen - The Danish Democracy and Power Study

www.magtudredningen.dk/Engelsk/frame.htm

The research project on Democracy and Power in Denmark was launched after an initiative by the Danish Parliament. The purpose was to analyze the state of the Danish democracy at the entrance to the 21st century.

In 1994, the Danish Parliament formed a special committee "regarding an analysis of democracy and power in Denmark." The committee issued a report in the spring of 1997 in which a majority of the committee members recommended a Danish democracy and power study. The report stipulated that the duration of the Democracy and Power Study would be 5-7 years and that it should be headed by an independent steering committee consisting of active researchers.

Project purpose:

According to the report, the purpose of the Democracy and Power Study was to examine:

• the function of democracy in broad terms, including the influence of power structures in organizations and movements and the economic power structures on society, and
• the consequences of internationalization as far as transparency and visibility of decisions, influence and power in society.

Project focus areas:

On this background the steering committee started research projects in the following areas (details of the numerous subprojects are available from the project website):

• Citizenship
• Parliament and parties
• The public sector in transition
• Organizations, businesses and elites
• Political decision processes
• Opinion formation and the media in the political process
• Globalization and internationalization
• Long-term perspectives in the study of power and democracy
• Concepts of power and democracy.

Project steering committee:

• See list of steering committee members on the project website

Project website:

• http://www.magtudredningen.dk/Engelsk/frame.htm

Project publications:

• Aarhus University Press (www.unipress.dk) has all the project's publication on offer, many of them available as free downloads. Please note that most of the publications are in Danish.
• The direct link to Unipress' list of project publications is: http://www.unipress.dk/find/?q=magtudredning

Project publications in English

(downloadable here)

• A short version of the project's main conclusions is available in English: Power and Democracy in Denmark. Conclusions
• A conference paper: Power and Democracy in Denmark. The Parliamentary Chain of Governance, by Peter Munk Christiansen & Lise Togeby. Paper delivered at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2-5, Chicago