Suchergebnisse

The elections legitimize the will of the citizens to represent them in the representative bodies. This legitimacy comes through various forms of electoral processes. These processes take place in various forms, depending on constitutional and legal definitions on the one hand and political culture on the other. Political culture develops parallel to the development of representative democracy. During the development of political pluralism and the multi-party system there are different types of election organization, depending on the elected representative body, the level of power to be elected, the manner of election of the representative bodies and the time of their holding. Based on the elected representative body we have: parliamentary and presidential elections. According to the level of state bodies we choose, we have: local elections and central elections. According to the election method we have: direct and indirect elections. According to certain time intervals we have: regular and extraordinary regular elections. All these types of elections are organized based on the particular electoral legislation, election management and the electorate expressing their free will.

The point of departure of this article is to affirm the obvious superiority of Representative Democracy in comparison with other political systems world-wide, but also to recognize another phenomena, which is the increasing lost of its appeal in that part of the world where its superiority had always been maintained. In order to obtain a clear grasp of the cause of our present discontent with representative democracy we should begin (1) with having a closer look at what kind of political system representative democracy actually is. Then (2) I give a quick approach on what is wrong with the resemblance theory and address the discussion about political representation; and finally, (3) the last topic is about the alternative of Direct Democracy upon Representative Democracy, especially thinking about the referred dissatisfaction with the second. I will defend, however, that the search for direct democracy has then, ironically, led us back to what it pretended to improve and to replace. ; O ponto de partida deste artigo está em afirmar a superioridade óbvia da democracia representativa em comparação com outros sistemas políticos em todo o mundo, mas também para reconhecer outro fenômeno, que é a crescente perda de seu apelo em uma parte do mundo onde a sua superioridade sempre foi mantida. A fim de obter uma compreensão clara da causa do nosso descontentamento atual com a democracia representativa, devemos começar (1) com um olhar atento para o tipo de sistema política que a democracia representativa realmente é. Em seguida, (2) fazer uma abordagem rápida sobre o que há de errado com a teoria da semelhança e abordar a discussão sobre representação política e, finalmente, (3) o último ponto é sobre a democracia direta como possível alternativa em relação à democracia representativa especialmente pensando na referida insatisfação com a segunda. Defenderei, no entanto, que a busca pela democracia direta, ironicamente, nos levou de volta para o que com ela se pretendia melhorar e substituir.

The article analyses the development of representative democracy in Croatia from its independence to today. During the 1990s, Croatia changed its electoral system several times and had a bicameral parliament. With the constitutional changes implemented in 2001, the legislative power was organized on a unicameral principle. At the same time, the previous semi-presidential system was replaced by a parliamentary one. These changes represent only the basic framework within which representative democracy in Croatia developed over time. An important milestone in this development was the introduction of preferential voting at the national elections in 2015, which allowed the voters to vote for a particular list and a specific candidate on that list. According to some, this improved the problematic state of inner-party democracy, although, for others, the reform was not far-reaching enough. Given that representative democracy does not function in a vacuum, the article also considers the impact of direct democracy on the functioning of representative democracy in Croatia. Referring to the Croatian experience, it argues that this complementary form of democracy had a positive impact on the quality of representative democracy in the country. Nevertheless, in the face of representative democracy in Croatia, many open questions still need to be addressed. The most important one is how to increase the turnout in the elections, which is still comparatively low and arguably related to the low trust in politics.

The vote in the House of Commons, on February 1st, 2017, about whether the United Kingdom should leave the European Union raises a host of important theoretical questions in normative political theory. One of them is this: Main Question: In a representative democracy, can a member of a legislature legitimately flip-flop and vote in accordance with the majority view on Issue when she, prior to getting knowledge, through a referendum result, of what the majority view is on Issue, has defended, and recommended to voters, a view that is logically inconsistent with the majority view? This paper defends an affirmative answer to the Main Question. This conclusion is not trivial given that there are many ways in which a member of a legislature can engage in an act of illegitimate flip-flopping. The last section of the paper moves beyond the Main Question and the related issue of how a legislator can legitimately flip-flop. This section raises the question of whether the trustee view of what obligations a legislator has in a representative democracy towards her constituents is mistaken. An alternative to the trustee view is presented and discussed, and it is concluded that this alternative view is implausible.

Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- 1. Introduction -- I. A Guide to this Book -- II. The 'Basic Fact' of Modern Politics -- III. An Alternative: Referendums as Representative Democracy -- IV. What is a Referendum? -- V. Scope and Methodology -- VI. Referendums in a Global Context -- VII. Conclusion -- 2. The People or Politicians? A False Choice -- I. Introduction -- II. Two-track Democracy -- III. Constitutions -- IV. Legitimate Authority -- V. Constitutional Authorship -- VI. Participating in the Material Constitution -- VII. Conclusion -- 3. Why Referendums on Fundamental Constitutional Matters Cannot be Directly Democratic -- I. Introduction -- II. The Case for Referendums as Exceptional -- III. The People Coming Together to Make Decisions Instead of Decisions Being Made by Representatives -- IV. The People Coming Together to Make Decisions Instead of Decisions Being Made by Representatives -- V. The People Coming Together to Make Decisions Instead of Decisions Being Made by Representatives -- VI. The People Coming Together to Make Decisions Instead of Decisions Being Made by Representatives -- VII. Conclusion -- 4. Referendums as Representative Democracy -- I. Introduction -- II. Referendums as Providing Specific Direction to Representatives -- III. The Constitutional Implications of Treating Referendums as Representative -- IV. Justifying Referendums as Representative -- V. Procedural and Instrumental Arguments for Referendums -- VI. A Piecemeal Case for Referendums -- VII. The Right Kind of Reasons to Hold Referendums -- VIII. The Trickiest Case: Secession -- IX. Conclusion -- 5. Principles for the Use of Referendums -- I. Introduction -- II. Making Referendums Representative -- III. The Success Conditions of Referendums -- IV. Confronting the Case against Referendums -- V. Referendums as 'Remedies' -- VI. Conclusion.

A criticism of the capacity of representative democracy to do the job it is supposed to do, rather than being an attack on it: supervise, restrain and control government. Part of the argument is that corporatist mechanisms of consultation and bargaining are a vital supplement to representative democracy in the era of big government and organised social interests. Corporatism, it is claimed, would strengthen rather than weaken democracy in the UK and assist in the solution of the problem of Britain's economic decline. (PFB)

It is shown in this paper that the Median Voter Theorem lacks robustness in the sense that if voters have (even the slightest) preferences for the competing candidates, beside preferences for their current policy proposals, then no policy in the neighbourhood of the median voter's preferred policy constitutes an equilibrium (in pure strategies). This suggests that this classical theorem does not apply to representative democracy. Indeed, if voters do have candidate preferences, and these are strong enough, the policy-motivated candidates will, in general, adopt differing policy positions in equilibrium, and, under certain qualifications, the equilibrium outcome will be (close ti) a particular utilitarian optimum. More specifically, in a discretized model the policy outcome will lie between the preferred policy of the most popular candidate and this utilitarian optimum.

The totalitarian regimes of the 20th century - Nazism, fascism and Stalinism - in the same way as the dictatorships of South America and Africa, gave the human community a profound reflection on the future. This literature review problematizes the justifications and limits of representative democracy. It discusses the mechanisms of improvement of the democratic process for greater popular participation in the decisive spheres of political life. The lack of popular participation and a possible disbelief with political representation deserve to be addressed in order to continuously actualize democracy as a political regime.