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This article discusses the most recent publishing projects devoted to the history and intellectual accomplishments of the Polish cooperative movement before 1939. It illustrates the political dimension of the concept of cooperation, the need to deepen the research on the symbolic universe of the movement and the effect which defining the peripheral status of the Polish economy had on the development of the economic analyses of the Polish cooperators. The political philosophy of Polish cooperativism, created primarily by Edward Abramowski, in many respects exceeds the limitations characteristic for the classical modern ideologies of the political left-wing, thanks to which it inscribes in the process of ―inventing tradition‖ by the modern emancipation movements in Poland.

One highly significant phenomenon demonstrating that public life is becoming increasingly democratic is provided by the formal and material guaranty of the citizens' political participation. Legitimization of power is an important issue. For the sake of simplicity, it may be said that one political option or another has won the elections. Under Polish conditions, an electoral victory means that a given party won more votes than any other. But by no means does it say that this party has won the support of a majority of voters. Poland has been ruled by the parties that have won anything from 20.41% of the votes, as the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) did in 1993, to the 41.51% Civic Platform (PO) won in 2007. This shows that power has been exercised by political parties that have not won the approval of a majority of voters. The picture looks even worse when the support rulers enjoy is not measured in terms of approval expressed by voters, but in terms of absolute values, i.e. the proportion of all citizens entitled to vote. The legitimization of power is extremely low when analyzed from this perspective. In the best case it amounts to 21.89% obtained by the victorious party, and 26.58% of all entitled to vote won by the coalition formed by the victorious parties to rule after the elections. Thus it is difficult to talk about democratic governance, understood as the rule of the majority. It should rather be concluded that the ruling parties are those that have won the largest support, which only means that they have collected more votes than any other political power taking part in the same elections. Understood in this way, power is not exercised on behalf of a majority, but by the best organized minority.

Departs from the theory of transition to discuss democratization in postauthoritarian Brazil & argue that democratization must involve the political system's submission to control by civil society. It is contended that the theory of transition is insufficient in explaining the Brazilian democratization process. In contrast, it is argued that in Brazil, democratization involved the survival of an influential nondemocratic political culture combined with the demand of ascending social movements for the renewal of political culture. Where the theory of transition presupposes the compatibility of civil & political society in the absence of authoritarianism, it is argued that institutional reform is a result to be achieved through the actions of consciously democratic participants. M. Greenberg

Recent scholarship has warned that the American public is turning away from democracy, with many focusing on the role of polarization in driving these trends. While these studies devote a great deal of attention to conceptualizing and measuring polarization, however, there is much less attention to the concept of democracy itself. As a result, they encounter several problems: First, lack of attention to the categorical and contextual differences between various democratic transgressions can lead to misleading findings. Second, slippage between macro and micro level analysis of backsliding can make it difficult to draw solid inferences about attitudes. Finally, lack of attention to contestation within the concept of democracy obscures a different kind of regime contention reflected in public attitudes. These problems confound efforts to understand whether the American public is truly turning away from democracy and point to the need for greater collaboration among scholars from different intellectual traditions and methodological orientations.

In this paper,the concept of creative emotion (émotion créatrice) and the understanding of democracy, which arises out of it, in the philosophy of Bergson is analysed. This specific emotion does not depend on an object's intellectual representation; therefore, Bergson refers to it as "supra-intellectual." Contrary to the usual "infra-intellectual" emotions, it is primary in regard of the mind and the will, and it comprises the fundamental matrix of creative acts of the human being. Creative emotion is one of the forms of the intuition of duration that is rooted inélan vital. It not only determines the essential changes in the fields of art, religion or science, but also re-configures the political rationality by revealing a deeper form of sociality. Thus, the presumed anti-sociality of the philosophy of Bergson is denied. In his last work,The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Bergson shows how creative emotion transforms understanding of democracy and how it turns this political conception into a dynamic movement corresponding to the deep process of the human being and the whole reality. ; Straipsnyje analizuojama kuriančiosios emocijos (émotion créatrice) sąvoka ir iš jos kylantis demokratijos suvokimas H. Bergsono filosofijoje. Ši specifinė emocija nepriklauso nuo objekto intelektualinės reprezentacijos, todėl Bergsonas ją vadina "supraintelektualine". Skirtingai nuo įprastinių, "infraintelektualinių" emocijų, ji yra pirminė proto ir valios atžvilgiu ir sudaro fundamentalią žmogaus kūrybinių aktų matricą. Kuriančioji emocija– tai viena iš trukmės intuicijos formų, įsišaknijusių gyvybiniame polėkyje. Ji ne tik lemia esminius pokyčius meno, religijos ar mokslo srityse, bet ir, atskleisdama gilesnio socialumo formą, rekonfigūruoja politinį racionalumą. Tuo yra paneigiamas tariamas Bergsono filosofijos antisocialumas. Paskutiniame savo veikaleDu moralės ir religijos šaltiniaiBergsonas parodo, kaip kuriančioji emocija transformuoja demokratijos suvokimą, šią politinę koncepciją paversdama dinamišku judesiu, atitinkančiu gilųjį žmogaus ir visos tikrovės procesą.

CONTENIDO Editorial Bello de Arellano, María Eugenia Investigación Identidad en el Táchira. Identity in Táchira. Izarra, Douglas Lengua y frontera en el Táchira: un estudio sociolingüístico sobre actitudes. Language and frontier in Táchira: a sociolinguistic study about attitudes. Freites Barros, Francisco La Zona de Integración Fronteriza: Táchira-Norte de Santander: aspectos jurídicos, institucionales y administrativos. Border Integration Zone in the area of Táchira and Norte de Santander: legal, institutional and administrative aspects. Sánchez Chacón, Francisco Javier Las desigualdades en los TLC con Estados Unidos: el caso colombiano. Inequalities in the United States' FTAs: the Colombian case. Romero, Alberto y Vera C., Mary A. La Universidad Latinoamericana en la encrucijada. Latin American university in the turning point. Castellano de Sjöstrand, Egilda La educación ambiental desde la explicación de la realidad geográfica. The environmental education from the explanation of the geographic reality. Santiago Rivera, José Armando Democracia, proceso de democratización y espacialidad de poder. Democracy, the process of democratization and the spatiality of power. Aragort Solórzano, Yubirí Análisis El estado Los Andes en la época de Antonio Guzmán Blanco 1881-1887 Artigas D., Yuleida Colombia y Venezuela: nuevas tensiones. Cronología del canje que nunca se dio. López, María Eugenia Agenda De las relaciones colombo - venezolanas (mayo - octubre 2007) López, María Eugenia Índice acumulado ; 69-74 ; yas03nam@hotmail.com ; semestral ; Nivel analítico

According to Huntington's (1991) theory of "reverse democracy", countries undergoing (or having undergone) a transition to democracy during a wave are always subject to democratic backsliding in the subsequent wave. During the third wave democratization, the fall of the Soviet Union and other despotic regimes in Latin America led to the gradual "autocratization" of many of these countries in the late 1990s and early 2000s. More recently, in 2011, the collapse of several authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region underscored important aspects of democratization, a process in which both women and new media technologies played a key role. However, the direct aftermath of the Arab Spring also revealed a significant democratic backsliding with the outbreak of civil and tribal wars in the region, the rise of political Islam to power, and the resulting backlash against women's socio-political and legal rights. Drawing on Huntington's theory of "reverse democracy", I question whether, and to what extent, the Arab Spring could constitute a case of "fourth wave democracy"—especially considering that this most recent wave has been little, if not at all, explored and analysed. To do so, I adopt a feminist perspective that foregrounds the role of gender as the primary focus of my analysis to examine how the Arab Spring exemplified aspects of a "reverse democracy", namely in terms of its impact on women's rights and their resulting social status in the aftermath of the uprisings. I take three countries as case studies: Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco.

This book explores the emergence of identity politics and violence at the forefront of political life in an Indian state. Through a close reading of everyday politics in West Bengal, India, the volume presents unique observations on Indian politics and its trajectories

This paper starts with a conceptual analysis of active citizenship, based on a functional approach distinguishing four dimensions of citizenship. Active Citizenship for Democracy is described as a set of competencies and behaviours which are apt to fulfil these functions. A comprehensive framework on possible indicators both for competencies and for behaviour is laid down. The paper concentrates on the presentation of data and statistical methods in the course of constructing a composite indicator on active citizenship behaviour. Public data available from the following surveys is taken into account: Civic Education Study (IEA-CIVED); European Social Survey (ESS) Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) and Word Value Survey (WVS). As the authors don't see sufficient theoretical and empirical basis for developing a composite indicator on European active and democratic citizenship competencies, the paper presents two preliminary achievements. The paper finishes with a documentation on further research needs related to conceptual and statistical analysis as well as to the usage of indicators. (DIPF/DBS)

This dissertation examines the ability of the media to monitor politicians and the ability of voters to acquire politically relevant information. The dissertation is primarily made up of three separate papers. The first paper (Chapter 2) asks why citizens routinely fail to vote out of step representatives out of office and what institutions can help voters hold politicians accountable. To the extent that politicians exploit voters' lack of information to win at the ballot box despite shirking in Congress, the press could foster democratic accountability by sounding the alarm on out of step representatives and alerting otherwise inattentive voters that it is time for change. In the first paper in my dissertation I collect an original dataset of local newspaper coverage of candidates in the 2010 House election in order to find out whether newspapers play this role for voters and act as a watchdog of incumbent representatives. After working with research assistants to provide human classification of a random subset of these articles, I use a text as data machine learning approach to measure the content of the much larger volume of articles that we cannot read. After validating an ensemble ``SuperLearner'' by demonstrating out-of-sample classification accuracy that for many features approaches human inter-coder agreement, I show that challengers receive less coverage than incumbents in competitive districts, horse race coverage displaces policy coverage, and newspapers do not sound the alarm on out of step incumbents. Newspapers do provide a whiff of scandal when representatives are referred to the House Ethics Committee for potential ethics violations, but they do not criticize representatives accused of some form of corruption at significantly higher rates. Even in congressional districts that closely correspond to newspaper markets, journalists act as neither watchdog nor lapdog, but instead provide overwhelmingly neutral coverage, failing to criticize incumbents who vote against a majority of their constituents on landmark legislation.The second paper (Chapter 3) provides experimental evidence that candidate appearance influences vote choice. According to numerous studies, candidates' looks predict voters' choices---a finding that raises concerns about voter competence and about the quality of elected officials. This potentially worrisome finding, however, is observational and therefore vulnerable to alternative explanations. To better test the appearance effect, we conducted two experiments. Just before primary and general elections for various offices, we randomly assigned voters to receive ballots with and without candidate photos. Simply showing voters these pictures increased the vote for appearance-advantaged candidates. Experimental evidence therefore supports the view that candidates' looks could influence some voters. In general elections, we find that high-knowledge voters appear immune to this influence, while low-knowledge voters use appearance as a low-information heuristic. In primaries, however, candidate appearance influences even high-knowledge and strongly partisan voters.The third paper (Chapter 4) examines which major events in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign saw only a brief spike in coverage and which became a more permanent feature of campaign coverage. In particular, I analyze coverage of six major events in the presidential campaign to test the hypothesis that news outlets of all persuasions will cover major events as news, but only partisan outlets will continue to discuss negative stories about their opponents long after the event that made the topic news. Broadly, I find that all outlets do indeed pick up major stories temporarily, but that the more tradition news news organization in my study does not stick with a higher level of coverage of any topic after a seven day window following the related event. Partisan outlets, in contrast, either continue to cover negative stories about the opposing candidate at a higher rate or were already on the story before a related event caused everyone else to temporarily pick up the story. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses the implications of my findings for democratic accountability and the health of American democracy. I conclude that for the most part democracy is conducted in a dim light.