title: Dementia and representative democracy: Exploring challenges and implications for democratic citizenship.
abstract: Despite growing recognition of the rights of people with dementia for full citizenship, issues related to democracy, whether from theoretical or practical perspectives, remain neglected. Especially since discourses on dementia have expanded to this rights-based approach, it is imperative to begin to examine the meanings and practices of democracy within a context of dementia. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to assess implications of dementia in the context of democracy. Rather than surveying the variety of democratic concepts, it will focus the analytical framework on representative democracy and then outline several challenges to and for representative democracy and citizens with dementia. The intention is to begin to identify paths for ensuring representation, inclusion and participation for those who have dementia.
authors.affiliation: Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany sonnicksen@pg.tu-darmstadt.de.
authors.forename: Jared
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sonnicksen
mesh_terms: D002961:Civil Rights; D003704:Dementia / Q000523:psychology*; D003709:Democracy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D026684:Personal Autonomy
keywords: citizenship; dementia; democracy; elections; representation; voting