Wie die Demokratie sich per Demoskopie selbst beobachtet

What changed role do polls play in contemporary democracies? What effects does the routine and increasingly frequent determination of political popularity ratings have on the political process? Are polls increasingly becoming an opinion-forming instrument rather than one that merely depicts opinions? Are polls, which are increasingly present in modern democracies, problematic in terms of democratic theory - and if so, in what respects? This paper argues and empirically plausibilizes the thesis that in times of decreasing party identification, fragmentation of the party system, stronger presence of political self-monitoring instruments that give popularity, positive as well as negative, ever faster and more comprehensive attention, the feedback loops of politics and public opinion become shorter. Overall, according to the central thesis, representative democracy is thus increasingly forfeiting the learning opportunities that lie in the temporal decoupling between the licensing of political action in elections and this action itself.