Suchergebnisse

The Lawrence and Lynne Brown Democracy Medal, presented by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State, recognizes outstanding individuals, groups, and organizations that produce innovations to further democracy in the United States or around the world. 2019 Brown Democracy Medal winners David M. Farrell and Jane Suiter are co-leads on the Irish Citizens' Assembly Project, which has transformed Irish politics over the past decade. The project started in 2011 and led to a series of significant policy decisions, including successful referenda on abortion and marriage equality. Thanks to generous funding from The Pennsylvania State University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes, available from Cornell Open (cornellopen.org) and other Open Access repositories.

Over the years, many scholars have examined the relationship between electoral systems and measures of voter satisfaction with democracy. The tendency in these studies has been to explore the traditional Proportional Representation/non-Proportional-Representation dichotomy, assessing whether more proportional systems produce higher levels of satisfaction. This article examines another dimension of electoral system variation - namely the degree to which the ballot structure incorporates ordinal, or preferential features. Given that proponents of such systems extol their virtues as offering voters 'greater choice', it is interesting to explore how this actually plays with the voters. The article makes use of cross-national data from the comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project to examine the relationship between preferential voting and levels of satisfaction with democracy.

Over the years, many scholars have examined the relationship between electoral systems and measures of voter satisfaction with democracy. The tendency in these studies has been to explore the traditional Proportional Representation/non-Proportional-Representation dichotomy, assessing whether more proportional systems produce higher levels of satisfaction. This article examines another dimension of electoral system variation - namely the degree to which the ballot structure incorporates ordinal, or preferential features. Given that proponents of such systems extol their virtues as offering voters 'greater choice', it is interesting to explore how this actually plays with the voters. The article makes use of cross-national data from the comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project to examine the relationship between preferential voting and levels of satisfaction with democracy.

Deliberative democracy is for many the most significant development in democratic theory in the last 50 years and it has been used in some places to solve real-world policy problems. However, measuring the impact of deliberative methods is not clearly achievable because several independent variables are manipulated simultaneously. One of the main goals of deliberation is opinion change and thus it is important to understand why opinions change. This paper utilises comparison groups in order to isolate the impact of deliberation from information in the deliberative process. We outline the results of a quasi-experiment in which deliberation took place in a citizens' assembly (CA) in Ireland. As part of this we measured the impact using pre- and post-test controls, including a group given the information the CA participants received, but without the deliberation. The results of the analysis provide evidence of a separate deliberation effect.