The Centre on Regional Democratic Governance (CREDGOV) is a research centre that conducts cutting-edge research on regional democracy and that actively engages with policy-makers to improve regional democracy. Regional reform is constantly debated and implemented across the whole of Europe. Very often, the main argument for implementing institutional reform is to improve representative democracy. Yet, when and how regional reform contributes to good democratic regional governance is poorly understood. With a team of five researchers we set out to remedy this lacunae in our knowledge by identifying the causal mechanisms underlying the regional vote and by assessing the impact of regional voting on regional parliaments and executives. You can read more about our research under Strengthening Regional Democracy - Contributing to Good Democratic Governance.
The Centre on Regional Democratic Governance maintains the Observatory on Regional Democracy which is a web portal for anyone who is interested in political, social, and economic data at the regional level. The Observatory seeks to counter 'methodological nationalism' in mainstream political, economic, and social science which is the tendency to collect nationally aggregated data with the result that variation at the sub-national scale is not empirically observed nor theoretically investigated. The team of the Centre on Regional Democratic Governance collects a swath of data on elections, parties, parliaments, governments and institutions at the regional level and this data is made available through the Observatory on Regional Democracy. The Observatory also provides regional data collected by other researchers and links to resources provided by other organisations.
The Observatory on Regional Democracy also publishes data on the web portal European Regional Democracy Map. The European Regional Democracy Map aims to raise awareness on the diversity among regional democracies across Europe and the webportal is a collaboration between the Centre on Regional Democratic Governance and the research team of the Regional Parliaments Lab (REGIOPARL).
The Centre on Regional Democratic Governance and the Observatory on Regional Democracy are hosted by the Department of Comparative Politics at the University of Bergen. Funding is provided by a Starting Grant from the Trond Mohn Foundation and the University of Bergen.