For Elisabeth Conradi Political Theory has three fundamental purposes: firstly, to interpret societal and political conditions so they become distinct, visible and apprehensible; secondly, to express and elaborate critique by analyzing prevalent notions in view of their inherent biases, and to overcome the conceptual barriers of thought; thirdly to think about how to improve conditions that need to be changed by framing new and approved ways of transformation.
Conradi’s research in Political Theory is centred on Democratic Theory, in particular focusing on questions of participation and representation. She addresses the issue of societal transformation through everyday communication, raises the question whether the household in general and the German example of Cooperative housing might be seen as a political source of civil society (2009) and reflects on the effect of civic alliances to democratic practice. In particular she is concerned with Inclusion and the cultivation of debate in deliberative democracy (Conradi 2013).
She also reflects about democratic decisions on regional Infrastructure policies and the part of Civil Disobedience in order to explore the relationship between civil society and democracy (Conradi 2010). Her concept has been debated >>. Conradi has also published on the question of whether or not Voting Rights should be available to everybody who is forced to obey the laws of the region in which the person lives. Thereby she thematizes the belonging to the demos as a challenge for political theory >>.
Elisabeth Conradi has been a member of the Political Theory Section of the German Association for Political Science, the DVPW, since 2002. She organised a conference about the work of Iris Marion Young in memory of her as a political theorist and presented papers at the regular conferences of the political theory section. She spoke for example on the phenomenon of exclusion as a challenge for political theory (fall 2013), on Inclusion in democratic debates (fall 2007), on Hannah Arendt as a political Intellectual (fall 2005), and on the political debate about Human science in the context of professional ethics (spring 2003).