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The delinking of issues of redistribution from the current wave of democratization is truly remarkable. In the nineteenth century, democracy meant replacing the representation of property by the representation of the people and meant related developments

Democracy is defined by two core tenets: voice and pluralism. Within these constraints, a wide variety of regime types can be designed. We show that the only new, untested form of democracy is when every citizen is governed by the political party of his/her choice. Multiple full-edged governments would coexist in the same national territory at the same time, each one sovereign only over the people who chose to vote for it - hence the name: Choice Democracy. Choice Democracy can be regarded as pure polyarchy, the broadest form of political competition, and a robust mechanism for disciplining government agencies. We argue that this system makes democracy more stable by reducing the risk of revolutionary and financial crises. We develop a theory for the optimal number of governments per countries, where the answer is determined by a trade-off between cooperation and competition. We also provide evidence indicating that Choice Democracy would be viable in the real world.

In this article I submit that the pandemic politics of the Covid-19 crisis have unmasked the inadequacies of existing representative democracies. Mixing the experiences and responses of various democracies and thinkers to this crisis, particularly from India and South Africa, I argue that a minimally functioning democracy must do two things at least: ensure the health and well- being of citizens and the equal means competitively to select prudent, empathetic and courageous leaders. For this, I suggest, we need a politics that allows us to express and assess our needs, and determine who is best placed to represent us in responding to these needs, all in non-dominating conditions. To this end, the article also proposes and defends four institutional reforms that would enable a dynamic, anti-oligarchic form of democracy to consistently empower the least powerful and keep elites properly in check.

Ideals of democracy.--Institutions of democracy.--After-war social problems.--After-war transportation problems.--After-war political problems. ; Mode of access: Internet.

This volume brings together expert contributors to explore the intersection of two major contemporary themes: globalization, and the contribution that both domestic party politics and international party support make to democratization. Globalising Democracy clearly shows what globalization means for domestic and international efforts to build effective political parties and competitive party systems in new and emerging democracies. Contrasting perspectives are presented through fresh case studies of European post-communist countries, Africa and Turkey. The reader is clearly shown how international party assistance is a manifestation and vehicle of globalization, and explores how it may be assessed in terms of: global economic integration the growth of global communications the development and implications for party politics of multi-level governance. This is the first book to analyze the impact of globalization on democracy and will be of great interest to all students of international relations, governance and politics.

Fecha de Lectura de Tesis Doctoral: 12 Diciembre 2019 ; The main purpose of this PhD dissertation is to compare the systems of direct and representative democracy from a theoretical point of view. Faced with the undeniable success and popular acceptance of instruments of direct democracy such as referendums and popular consultations when making decisions, a very natural first question is when voters prefer a system of direct democracy or a system of representative democracy. In Chapter 1, we propose a model to investigate under which conditions voters prefer either one or the other system. We show that direct democracy is the preferred instrument for collective choices in societies in which the populist rhetoric of people against the elite succeeds. We also find that the demand for direct democracy is increasing in the polarization of the electorate. The success of direct democracy is recently resulting in the emergence of social movements and political parties asking for the direct participation of citizens in the decision making process. These groups highlight the inability of representative democracy to implement what the majority of people desires for each issue that comes up for discussion. In Chapter 2, we study under which conditions direct democracy and representative democracy may be equivalent in terms of outcomes. We find that this equivalence becomes less likely to be held the more divided the electorate in evaluating which are the more relevant issues for the society and the less polarized are the politicians. Concerning how voters' preferences are aggregated, in Chapter 3 we consider a class of preference aggregation mechanisms, known as scoring rules, and show that none of them is guaranteed to select the Condorcet winner from among the set of alternatives at every profile of preferences, except in very specific cases.

This paper is an interrogation of the relationship between democracy and ethnic identity politics in Sikkim, Darjeeling and east Nepal and proposes that ethnic politics represents a regionally speci c form of democracy. The paper discusses the way that socio-economic grievances are transformed into ethnic grievances in order to facilitate political mobilization and deeper engagement with the state. In this process, discussions and debates are framed around ethnicity but are presented and deliberated within state approved democratic practices. In the eastern Himalaya, ethnic identity is one of the most important and powerful bases for political mobilization and while its ability to attain desired political outcomes is debatable, what ethnic politics has led to is the further entrenchment of democracy in the region.

A majority of the world's nations identify themselves as democracies, but their interpretations of democracy vary widely. Dr. Matthew Lungerhausen, Dr. Erich Lippman, Dr. Edward Guernica, and Dr. Iris Wong join our podcast to discuss illiberal democracies in the past and present. [season 1, episode 14] ; https://openriver.winona.edu/athenaeum/1027/thumbnail.jpg

Consociational democratic systems balance power between groups with the aim of avoiding or stopping (violent) conflict. Consociational democracy encourages, facilitates or necessitates the formation of a coalition between representatives of different societal groups. Consociational democracy is regarded as a highly influential and much debated area of research in political science, as well as the dominant model of democracy for divided societies. Consociational institutions are often implemented as part of peace agreements to create a stable democracy in a divided post-conflict society. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, consociational democratic arrangements formed part of the peace agreement that brought an end to the war in 1995. Yet, consociational democracy is scrutinized for not upholding liberal values and impeding the development of a country. The focus on the political representation of groups may come at the cost of individual rights and liberties. Furthermore, fixating on groups may only lead to further segmentation of societies, exacerbating the divisions that were already impeding social cooperation. The focus on elite-level politics may be at odds with democratic participation and deliberation. This study investigates whether and how a consociational theory for democracy can be compatible with liberal values of individual freedom and equality. It involves a theoretical exploration of the role that liberal values play in consociational theory. Furthermore, theoretical concerns about consociational democracy may have a significant impact in practice. A case study of consociational democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina forms an important part of this study.

Democracy usually is identified by the right to vote. However, in recent times voting procedures have been criticized, as they seemingly do not guarantee that all parts of the population have an adequate voice in the established political process. We suggest invigorating an old but nearly forgotten procedure to overcome this deficit: Aleatoric Democracy based on a combination of voting and random decisions. By using random mechanisms the interests of the whole population are considered. Persons and ideas, being so far disregarded, are taken into account. Democracy becomes vivid and creative, and does not run the danger of being entrenched.

This book presents a close look at the growth, success, and proliferation of ethnic politics on the peripheries of modern South Asia, built around a case study of the Nepal ethnic group that lives in the borderlands of Sikkim, Darjeeling, and east Nepal. Grounded in historical and ethnographic research, it critically examines the relationship between culture and politics in a geographical space that is home to a diverse range of ethnic identities, showing how new modes of political representation, cultural activism, and everyday politics have emerged from the region.

Indonesia has continuously been praised as a successful post-authoritarian country transitioning to democracy. However, seeing the numerous human rights violations in the past decade alone especially towards alternative political, religious and sexual identities, the success of democracy in Indonesia has been put under the spotlight. This raises the question of the development of democracy and the use of democracy in Indonesia in practicing and upholding principles of social equality for all. In this article I wish to provide an overview of majoritarian democracy, a form of democracy that is understood and practiced in Indonesia. A form of democracy that rather than upholding values that safeguards individual rights and diversity, may in fact undermine religious and cultural diversity, enforcing a homogenized national culture and values, which in return may engender human rights violations in the name of national security that it in itself is defined by the majority.

This paper examines the preliminary relationship between democracy and Marxism by revisiting one of the earliest works of Karl Marx, which introduces his articulations on "true democracy". This includes some unique propositions regarding the normative and procedural aspects of democracy, the social nature of human beings, primogeniture and private property, and universal suffrage by exposing the contradictions within Hegel's theory of political institutions. The arguments are situated within his main concerns about overcoming the civil-political divide and expanding political emancipation to human emancipation. The strength of Marx's critique of the formal principle of democracy is situated alongside the plausible merits and gaps in his proposal for "true democracy" as an alternative. This paper explores what such an exegetical exercise could mean for Marxist practitioners in the present world.

This book proposes a new institution — the 'People's Forum' — to enable democratic governments to effectively address long-running issues like global warming and inequality. It would help citizens decide what strategic problems their government must fix, especially where this requires them to suffer some inconvenience or cost. The People's Forum is first based on a new diagnosis of government failure in democracies. The book tests its own analyses of government failure by seeing whether these might help us to explain the failures of particular democracies to address (and in some cases, to even recognize) several crucial environmental problems. The essential features of a new design for democracy are described and then compared with those of previous institutional designs that were also intended to improve the quality of democratic government. In that comparison, the People's Forum turns out to be not only the most effective design for developing and implementing competent policy, but also the easiest to establish and run. The latter advantage is crucial as there has been no success in getting previous designs into actual trial practice. It is hoped that this book may inspire a small group to raise the money to set up and run the People's Forum. Then, as citizens see it operating and engage with it, they may come to regard the new Forum as essential in helping them to deliberate long-running issues and to get their resulting initiatives implemented by government. Smith also discusses how the People's Forum must be managed and how groups with different political ideologies may react to it. An Afterword sets out the method by which this design was produced, to help those who might want to devise an institution themselves. The new concepts in environmental science that the book develops to test its diagnosis are applied in an Appendix to outline crucial options for the future of Tasmania. Similar options apply to many countries, states and provinces. As indicated above, those choices are currently beyond the capacity of democratic governments to address and in some cases, even to recognize. But the People's Forum may lift them out of that morass.

This paper takes a look at the current state of Western democracy and the crises looming within it. Financialization of the democratic system, evident in the far-reaching influence of well-funded interest groups; emergence of the new media platforms that can sway public opinion almost instantly; the growing influence of digital technology giants due to the vast amount of user data that they possess; the overall influence of the Internet as an abstract entity; the failure of the education system unable to cope with modern day challenges – these are some of the factors that have significantly eroded the Western democracies for the past several decades. The text uses both discourse and content analysis in a complementary way. It is the author's opinion that the factors listed in this paper indicate that Western democratic regimes are likely to transform into some forms of oligarchy, authoritarianism or, most worryingly, ultra-modern manifestations of totalitarianism aided by the array of modern technologies and methods of mass legitimization.