Drivers of political action and reaction: representation, legislative decision making, and the news media as struts of democracy.

Today’s public and academic debates bespeak that democracies are under increasing strain from emerging crises. This dissertation contributes to the debate by shedding light on the entanglement of political representation, legislative decision-making, and traditional news media as foundational structures of democracy. While these phenomena are traditionally considered pillars, this thesis argues that each should be conceived as a strut, given the specific and differentiated nature of their support for democratic governance and their interactions. In three chapters, this thesis examines how these phenomena and the groups of actors they entail are functionally intertwined, underscoring that they matter in nuanced rather than general ways. This includes, first, the impact of traditional news media on policy responsiveness; second, the classification and analysis of representative styles in parliamentary speech data; and third, the influence of news media on pandemic decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical evidence in each chapter suggests that the prerequisite structures of democratic governance are more complex and multidimensional than some terminology implies, and that embracing this understanding is beneficial in understanding democracy’s resilience to current and future challenges.