New PhD student

Hello everyone

My name is Rasmus, and I am a new PhD student in the section for political theory. I did both my BSc and MSc at the department, and I have also spent quite a bit of time as both a student assistant and a TA, which makes everything feel both new and familiar all at once.

My project centres on a largely forgotten constitutional provision called the imperative mandate and its applicability as a response to populism and democratic dissatisfaction. The imperative mandate allows citizens to not only elect politicians, but also to give them binding instructions, and recall them, if they do not comply. In this way, the imperative mandate promises to increase accountability between citizens and politicians, thereby tackling the dissatisfaction with representative institutions.

A central theoretical question is how the imperative mandate relates to the norms of liberal democracy. I will address this question by drawing on democratic theory in its radical and deliberative guises. The project also has a more practical aim of developing a possible institutionalization of the imperative mandate, that could be implemented in Western democracies. To do this, I will study both historical examples of the imperative mandate, as well as competing models of democratic defence. I am very lucky to have a team of supervisors, that can aid me in both theoretical and empirical endeavours: my main supervisor is Tore Vincents Olsen and my co-super is Svend-Erik Skaaning.

When I am not deep in philosophical reflections on democracy, I enjoy running, road cycling (mostly as a spectator…), music (indie, punk, jazz, and ambient in particular), as well as wine, beer, and cooking. Please feel free to stop by my office (1340-262) if you want to discuss populism, representation, or continental political theory. You are also more than welcome if you want to wax poetic about my non-academic interests. I look forward to meeting you all!