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The advance of digital technology in the field of politics in the last 20 years has raised the expectations about enhancing the potentials of the long dominant model of representative democracy. The need to reinvigorate the overall political process was talked about since the first signs of decline in the civic engagement in the second half of the past century. In the meantime, technological gadgets, and, especially the great versatility of Internet applicability have indeed contributed for better communication between the political elites and their people and for sharing the information on the unprecedented level. Yet, the key challenge still seems barely touched: how to provide meaningful participation of the politically awakened individuals in the decision-making processes within the states. In the article we offer a brief survey of the European and USA achievements in the field of e-voting and Internet-voting in order to show how the political, technical and security concerns are still prevailing in the debates thus undermining the trust in the new modes of casting the votes. Also, we present the results of the survey done with 120 students in the Republic of Macedonia and their considerations about the eventual Internet voting in the country. Applying the descriptive and analytical methods we would argue that the immense possibilities for using Internet in politics are far from being exploited, so the initial miscalculation and failures should not discourage the communities from observing new pathways for improving the unavoidable digital component of democracy.

This article presents the argument that European Central Bank (ECB) policy-making from the start of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010 undermined the democratic legitimacy of the ECB. We start with the argument – defended by a number of scholars including Majone and Moravcsik – that where European Union (EU) policy-making is technocratic and does not have significant redistributive implications it can benefit from depoliticization that does not undermine the democratic legitimacy of this policy-making. This is notably the case where EU institutions have narrow mandates and are constrained by super-majoritarian decision-making. Prior to the international financial crisis, the ECB's monetary policies were shaped entirely by the interpretation that its mandate was primarily to ensure low inflation. From the outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis, the ECB adopted a range of policies which pushed its role well beyond that interpretation and engaged in a form of redistribution that directly undermined treaty provisions.

This paper questions the notion that women in the Atlantic region are uniquely hobbled by conservatism and traditionalism in their political choices, arguing instead that resistence to women's full participation in formal political structures is a national phenomenon and that Atlantic Canada's political marginalization within the federal framework serves as the context for women's political marginalization in the region. It also argues that the failure to address the exclusivity of our political structures constitutes a "democratic deficit," a serious loss of talent that we can ill-afford at the dawn of the twenty-first century. ; Cet article questionne la notion que les femmes de la region de 'Atlantique sont uniquement entravee par le conservatisme et le traditionalisme de leurs choix politiques, discutant plutot que la resistance envers la participation totale des femmes dans les structures politiques formelles est un phenomene national et que la marginalisation politique au Canada Atlantique a rinterieur du cadre federal sert de contexte pour la marginalisation des femmes dans la region. Il discute aussi du fait que de ne pas adresser Pexclusivite de nos structures politiques constitue un « deficit politique, une grande perte de talent que nous ne pouvons nous permettre a l'aube du vingt et unieme siecle.

In this paper, I develop a critique of Habermas' concept of communicative action. My critique is based on the concept's inability to grasp the complexities of democratic politics and democratic political action. I first show that the central seed of this inability is to be found in his early masterpiece, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. This genealogical beginning is followed by a more conceptual critique of communicative action's dichotomist foundations, its moralization of speech act's theory, and its incorporation of the dyad's dialogue as the elementary form of human communication. During this conceptual critique, I present a different notion of how the strategic and communicative dimensions of action intertwine in political action proper.

In the present paper I take a critical view on the well-known discursive dilemma which captures the difference between governance by collective reasoning or governance responsive to majoritarian will. Then I suggest the republican concept of collective reason as a new perspective for study of EU and analyse the European Union as an example of a system which collectivises reason. From such perspective the notorious democratic deficit is explainable as the contradiction between collective reason and popular will. This problem brings home the conclusion that neither collectivising reason nor responsiveness to majority will alone can fully satisfy our normative demands. Thus, I claim that it is necessary to find a way out of the dilemma by a decision-making process that can bring about the two solutions in the same time. I suggest that in polities where people (as individuals) identify with the people (as a group) the gap is closed by a stepwise process of deliberation in the public sphere. Paneuropean deliberation is possible solution for Europe but in practice is obstructed by the competition from the spontaneous deliberation in the existing national public spheres. The latter are more robust, so they close the rationality gaps faster at national level; national public opinions tend to polarise and defend a 'national' interest against further deliberative challenges. I argue that the notion of competition is useful to explain why despite the development of the common democratic institutions at EU level and the emergence of weak European public, the deficit is bound to persist.

ÖZETAvrupa Birliği Tek Senet ve Maastricht Antlaşmaları'ndan sonra siyasi bütünleşmesine hız verdikçe yönetim ve demokrasi konularındaki tartışmalar da önemli boyutta artmıştır. Bazı çevreler daha da ileri giderek AB'nin çok kültürlü, çok milletli ve çok lisanlı sosyal yapısı hiçbir zaman demokratik yönetimin gerçekleşmesine izin vermeyecektir türünden iddialar bile ortaya atmaktadır. Bu iddia sahiplerine göre demokrasi için aynı köken, dil, din ve kültürel yapıdan beslenen homojen bir toplum üzerine bina edilmiş bir demos gereklidir. Ayrıca uluslar üstü bir yapı olarak Avrupa Birliği gerek karar alma mekanizması içinde gerekse hükumet fonksiyonlarını yerine getirmede bir çok demokratik eksiklik iddialarına da maruz kalmaktadır. Direkt halk seçimiyle iş başına gelen tek kurum olarak Parlamento, Avrupa halkının temsilinde ve onlar için karar alma sürecinde zayıf kalmaktadır. Komisyon Birlik içinde bir yürütme organı olarak görülmesine rağmen halka hesap verebilirlik özelliği neredeyse oluşmamıştır ve bu kurum içindeki aşırı bürokratik yapı demokratik yönetim kanallarını tıkamaktadır . Karar alma ve uygulamada en etkili organ olan Konsey ise bu görevlerinde şeffaf olmayan bir tarz benimsediği için eleştirilmektedir. Bununla birlikte ülkeler arası ekonomik, finansal, ticari, sosyal ve kültürel etkileşimin neticesi olarak globalleşen çağımızda demokrasinin milliyetçi anlamı oldukça zayıflamıştır. Dolayısıyla bu yeni oluşan demokrasi yaklaşımı ulus devletçi manasından sıyrılmış ve demos oluşumu için artık global olarak kabul edilen hukukun üstünlüğü, insan haklarına saygı ve sivik erdem gibi değerler üzerine oturmuş bir sosyal kimlik yeterli görülmektedir. Dolayısıyla AB' nin demos problemi üye devlet halkları arasında güçlü bir 'Avrupa vatandaşlığı' duygusunu oturtmakla ortadan kalkacaktır. Bununla birlikte kurumsal demokratik eksiklikleri yok etmek için ise en etkili üç kurum arasındaki güç dengesini optimize etmek gerekmektedir. Dolayısıyla, Avrupa Birliği üye devletlerle Birlik arasındaki güç köprüsünü ayarlamak adına, Almanya örneğinde olduğu gibi, federal felsefeden beslenen bir yapıya oturtulmalıdır. Bu federalleşme prosesi içinde kurumlar arası bir çok kombinasyon geliştirilebilir; örneğin Konsey ve Parlamento karar almada iki meclisli bir sisteme dönüşebilir; veya Komisyon başkanının ve istenirse üyelerin de direkt olarak seçilebileceği bir sistem benimsenebilir; veya Bölgeler Komitesi' ne ve Ekonomik ve Sosyal Komite' ye karar almada daha fazla sorumluluk verilebilir. Şurası önemlidir ki, ancak bu gibi radikal yasama ve yürütme reformlarıyla AB demokrasisini güçlendirip yeni üyeleriyle geleceğe hazırlanabilecektir.ABSTRACTAs the European Union went through a political integration after the Single European Act and the Treaty of Maastricht, the debates associated with its governance and democracy were multiplied. It was claimed that since the Union has a multicultural, multiethnic and multilingual social structure, to develop a democratic governance is impossible. Because democracy requires a demos that is the community of the same origin, religion and cultural backgrounds. Furthermore, the EU has many democratic deficits in decision making and executing governmental functions as a supranational entity. The European Parliament, the unique directly elected institution, is weak in representing European people and decision making for them. Although the Commission functions as an executive governmental body it is not accountable for the people for its actions. The Council, the most influential organ in decision making and implementation, however, is very opaque and secretive in its fulfillments.However in our globalized era, the nationalist understanding of democracy has already disappeared due to intense interaction of states in economic, financial, commercial and social affairs. This democracy approach, nonetheless, must be stipped of its nation statal understanding and be based on a demos whose identity is formed around globally recognized values like civic virtues, respect for the rule of law and human rights. So, this demos problem is overcome only by embedding a strong European citizenship feeling amongst the people of member states.In order to solve institutional democratic deficits, however, to optimize the power balance between the three most effective institutions is required. For this purpose the government of the EU should be benefit from federal principles in order to adjust this balance bridge between the Union government and the member states as it is the case in German type federation. This can be achieved through many administrative combinations like converting the Council and the Parliament into a bicameral structure in decision making; or through direct election of the Commission president and the members; or through allocating more responsibility over the Committee of Regions or Economic and Social Committee. Only with such a radical legislative and administrative reforms will the EU strenghten its democracy and will be ready for enlarging with the new member states for the future.

This paper provides a realist analysis of the European Union's (EU) legitimacy. We propose a modification of Bernard Williams' theory of legitimacy, which we term critical responsiveness. For Williams, 'Basic Legitimation Demand + Modernity = Liberalism'. Drawing on that model, we make three claims. (i) The right side of the equation is insufficiently sensitive to popular sovereignty; (ii) The left side of the equation is best thought of as a 'legitimation story': a non-moralised normative account of how to shore up belief in legitimacy while steering clear of both raw domination and ideological distortions. (iii) The EU's current legitimation story draws on a tradition of popular sovereignty that sits badly with the supranational delegation and pooling of sovereign powers. We conclude by suggesting that the EU's legitimation deficit may be best addressed demoicratically, by recovering the value of popular sovereignty at the expense of a degree of state sovereignty.

Many academics and commentators argue that Europe is suffering from a democratic deficit. An interesting proposal that has been put forward to address this problem is to elect some members of the European parliament in a pan-European district. In this article, we evaluate this proposal using an online experiment, in which thousands of Europeans voted on a pan-European ballot we created. We find that the voting behaviour of European citizens would be strongly affected by the presence or absence of candidates from their own country on the lists. If a pan-European district is created, our findings provide an argument in favour of using a closed-list ballot and establishing a maximum number of candidates from each country on the lists.

Transgender people—people whose gender identity or expression is different from their assigned sex at birth—and their allies advocate for the inclusion of gender identity or transgender in state non-discrimination policies. These policies generally proscribe discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Courts and administrative agencies have determined discrimination against transgender people is a violation of existing statutes, but there remain efforts by advocates to seek policies that explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of transgender status, which are often the result of legislation going through the political process. A pluralist understanding of the political process theorizes that a majority coalition of minorities can offer social groups policies they support. This rests on the presumption that a majority coalition of minorities should rule. Any indication to the contrary may suggest a democratic deficit, whereby more than a majority is necessary for policy introduction. We find that there is a substantial democratic deficit regarding the inclusion of gender identity or transgender in employment non-discrimination policies. On average, state support for the policy must be 81% in order for the state to have a policy reflecting such sentiment. This leaves substantial implications for the political powerlessness of transgender people in the political process.

This article presents one way of changing the participatory culture of training teachers – the Critical Integrative Teacher Education (CITE) programme now being implemented at Jyväskylä University. For the last ten years the Finnish school system has been the centre of considerable international attention because of its success in PISA. The Finnish school, however, has two faces. In the shadow of those good learning outcomes there lurks a democratic deficit in school and a lack of school wellbeing amongst children. This article examines the nature of the Finnish school and teacher education from the perspective of democracy. If participatory culture in Finnish schools is restricted, then the same also applies to teacher education. The long tradition of education as well as the radical school democracy experiment in the early 1970s resulted in the neutralization of teacher education and the removal of politics and politicality. This led to a teacher education with the emphasis on didactics and psychology but with a social viewpoint conspicuous by its absence. Even though the system offers opportunities to implement even radically different training methods, there is little that is done differently.

Democracy has always been a debated concept but even more so in the 21st century when we are faced with a crisis in democracy and citizens have overlooked the democratic values and responsibilities in society. Citizens have lost faith in democratic values as they see their countries facing economic problems and high unemployment, and are influenced by what they read on the media. Citizens are turning to populist and far right movements in order to seek resolution to the problem of immigration. This paper commences with a theoretical analysis of the changes that have occurred in the definition of democracy, their effect on society in recent decades and how democracy is now in crisis. Reference is then made to a longitudinal study administered by the author in January 2019 focusing on the students' understanding of 'democracy' and 'citizenship' in the 21st century using the same research instrument employed in 2004 to compare and contrast the progress or shortcomings related to the understanding of the concept of 'democracy' and 'citizenship' of young Maltese students attending the Junior College of the University of Malta. Keeping the findings in mind, the study proposes a number of recommendations to better prepare young Maltese citizens to face the challenges they will definitely meet throughout their life and also in defence of the value of democracy. ; peer-reviewed

In classical party democracy, elections serve as an "instrument of democracy" (Powell 2000): they are the mechanism to connect policy preferences of the electors (within the electoral arena) to the political production (within the legislative arena). At the European level the linkage seems to be lost because the political actors performing in the two arena are not the same and the logics of behaviour are quite different. The EU calls for truly "Europarties" to become more democratic in its procedural and substantive prerequisites and this entails not only a progressive emancipation of party structures at European level but also an integration between them. In fact, we will have full Europarties only when the two party structures at EU level are either independent from national parties and linked to each other: if intra- and extra- parliamentary faces become really European and connected entities, legislators will be accountable to voters and, consequently, democratic deficit will decline. The main aims of this paper are, firstly, to investigate if and to what extent political parties at European level are able to perform the electoral and legislative functions in the two separated arena and, secondly, if intra- and extra- parliamentary faces of the Europarties are still separated or, rather, have become integrated. In other words, I will delineate the process of institutionalization of the Europarties looking at their progressive autonomy from national parties and systemness/integration at European level (Panebianco 1988).

Published online: 29 Aug 2018 ; This article shows that the quasi-fiscal nature of the ECB's unconventional monetary policy measures and its troika membership created three mutually reinforcing threats to its political independence. First, it led to a rising level of public distrust in the ECB. Second, it triggered an elite dissensus on whether political independence of central banks was still the appropriate solution to the time inconsistency problem. Third, it created institutional overburdening with negative repercussions for the central bank's output legitimacy. Faced with this diverse set of challenges in creditor and debtor countries, the ECB exploited EMU's democratic deficit by relying on visits to national parliaments to preserve its independence.

In the present article I take a critical view of the well-known discursive dilemma which captures the difference between governance by collective reasoning and governance responsive to majoritarian will. I identify a problem with the solution preferred by the republican theory which I call the rationality gap and suggest that in principle deliberation in the public sphere may bring the two ends together, thus avoiding the gap. Then I look at the European Union (EU) through the prism of civic republicanism and analyse it as an example of a system which collectivises reason. From such a perspective, the notorious democratic deficit is explainable as a contradiction between collective reason and popular will. In principle, pan-European deliberation could close the gap there, too. However, it is obstructed by competition from spontaneous deliberation in the existing national public spheres. The latter are more robust and for that reason the rationality gaps arising there are closed faster so that national public opinions polarise and defend 'national' interest against further deliberative challenges at the upper level. I argue that the notion of competition is useful to explain why, despite the development of common democratic institutions at the EU level and despite the emergence of a weak pan-European public, the deficit is bound to persist.

In the present article I take a critical view of the well-known discursive dilemma which captures the difference between governance by collective reasoning and governance responsive to majoritarian will. I identify a problem with the solution preferred by the republican theory which I call the rationality gap and suggest that in principle deliberation in the public sphere may bring the two ends together, thus avoiding the gap. Then I look at the European Union (EU) through the prism of civic republicanism and analyse it as an example of a system which collectivises reason. From such a perspective, the notorious democratic deficit is explainable as a contradiction between collective reason and popular will. In principle, pan-European deliberation could close the gap there, too. However, it is obstructed by competition from spontaneous deliberation in the existing national public spheres. The latter are more robust and for that reason the rationality gaps arising there are closed faster so that national public opinions polarise and defend 'national' interest against further deliberative challenges at the upper level. I argue that the notion of competition is useful to explain why, despite the development of common democratic institutions at the EU level and despite the emergence of a weak pan-European public, the deficit is bound to persist.