Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
7,475
result(s) for
"DEMOCRATIC SYSTEMS"
Sort by:
Democratic Legitimacy
It's a commonplace that citizens in Western democracies are disaffected with their political leaders and traditional democratic institutions. But in Democratic Legitimacy, Pierre Rosanvallon, one of today's leading political thinkers, argues that this crisis of confidence is partly a crisis of understanding. He makes the case that the sources of democratic legitimacy have shifted and multiplied over the past thirty years and that we need to comprehend and make better use of these new sources of legitimacy in order to strengthen our political self-belief and commitment to democracy. Drawing on examples from France and the United States, Rosanvallon notes that there has been a major expansion of independent commissions, NGOs, regulatory authorities, and watchdogs in recent decades. At the same time, constitutional courts have become more willing and able to challenge legislatures. These institutional developments, which serve the democratic values of impartiality and reflexivity, have been accompanied by a new attentiveness to what Rosanvallon calls the value of proximity, as governing structures have sought to find new spaces for minorities, the particular, and the local. To improve our democracies, we need to use these new sources of legitimacy more effectively and we need to incorporate them into our accounts of democratic government. An original contribution to the vigorous international debate about democratic authority and legitimacy, this promises to be one of Rosanvallon's most important books.
eBook
Referendums, Initiatives, and Voters’ Accountability
Do democratic systems that include binding referendum and initiative processes violate a core principle of democracy, namely that legislators should be accountable? Some have argued that they do: these popular vote processes would grant the right to legislate to ordinary voters even though they cannot be held accountable—i.e., face possible consequences imposed by others for their actions and decisions. As a result, we should favor conventional representative systems over systems with popular vote processes. In this article, I analyze this ‘accountability objection’ to referendums and initiatives and the conception of voters as ‘legislators’ on which it relies and argue that it does not withstand scrutiny. I first demonstrate that there is no sound basis to characterize only voters in popular votes, and not voters in elections, as ‘legislators’. Therefore, the scope of the objection is broader than anticipated by its proponents: it cannot be consistently used to dismiss popular votes without also being fatal to elections. I then argue that voters’ lack of accountability is not fatal to either mass voting process. The institutional role of ordinary voters provides them with co-lawmaking powers; but these are not the kind of special powers that justify holding certain actors accountable in democratic systems. This does not exclude that voters have responsibilities. I close by highlighting that, compared to conventional representative systems, democratic systems including well-designed popular vote processes could offer voters more supportive conditions to meet such possible responsibilities.
Journal Article
Weber's theory of domination and post-communist capitalisms
This article has four main objectives. First, it introduces the ideal types of domination of Weber. Contrary to the received wisdom, which knows only \"three ideal types\" (traditional, charismatic and legal rational) I present the \"fourth\" type of domination, Weber called \"Wille der Beherrschten\" as an important correction of his ideal type of legal-rational authority. Next I make a novel, critical distinction between patrimonial and prebendal types of traditional authority. Third, I discuss various ways that communist regimes tried to legitimate themselves and how they entered eventually a legitimation crisis, leading to the collapse of communism. In the next section, I explore the different ways post-communist capitalisms seek legitimacy (with various combinations of legal rational authority and patrimonialism), and finally I conclude with a trend of re-convergence of some post-communist systems (especially Russia and Hungary, but with signs for similar trends elsewhere) into an illiberal, prebendal quasi-democratic system.
Journal Article
Resolving Conflicts in Africa’s Democratic Setting
Elections have become an indispensable aspect of Africa’s democracy and a strategy for choosing the people to govern states. Unfortunately, due to certain factors, including the quest for political power, which gives access to the treasury and the resource-endowment of the commonwealth, political actors, supported by their political parties have frequently resorted to violence during elections. The paper seeks to interrogate the multifaceted issues around elections and very importantly, electoral violence in Africa’s democratic environment. To achieve this objective, the paper will make a case study of Nigeria and Kenya as classical models of electoral violence. The choice is driven by the understanding that primordial imperatives are often mobilised as drivers of political violence in Africa’s democratic practice. To assemble its resources, the paper used the content analysis of relevant materials in the social sciences and humanities. In conclusion, the paper suggests the active participation of the African Union in the resolution of Africa’s security challenges.
Journal Article
Systematizing Democratic Systems Approaches
Abstract The notion that democracy is a system is ever present in democratic theory. However, what it means to think systemically about democracy (as opposed to what it means for a political system to be democratic) is under-elaborated. This article sets out a meta-level framework for thinking systemically about democracy, built upon seven conceptual building blocks, which we term (1) functions, (2) norms, (3) practices, (4) actors, (5) arenas, (6) levels, and (7) interactions. This enables us to systematically structure the debate on democratic systems, highlighting the commonalities and differences between systems approaches, their omissions, and the key questions that remain to be answered. It also enables us to push the debate forward both by demonstrating how a full consideration of all seven building blocks would address issues with existing approaches and by introducing new conceptual clarifications within those building blocks.
Journal Article
Democracy's Paradox
Does populism indicate a radical crisis in Western democratic political systems? Is it a revolt by those who feel they have too little voice in the affairs of state or are otherwise marginalized or oppressed? Or are populist movements part of the democratic process? Bringing together different anthropological experiences of current populist movements, this volume makes a timely contribution to these questions. Contrary to more conventional interpretations of populism as crisis, the authors instead recognize populism as integral to Western democratic systems. In doing so, the volume provides an important critique that exposes the exclusionary essentialisms spread by populist rhetoric while also directing attention to local views of political accountability and historical consciousness that are key to understanding this paradox of democracy.
eBook
The Social Media, Politics of Disinformation in Established Hegemonies, and the Role of Technological Innovations in 21st Century Elections: The Road Map to US 2020 Presidential Elections
Deep concerns about the rise in the number of technological innovations used for perpetrating viral dissemination of disinformation, via major social media platforms during multiparty elections, have been expressed. As strategy scholars observe, it is inimical to democratic systems whose election results are questioned by reason of faulty electoral processes. The Marxian alienation theory and Marilyn's ex-post facto research designs were used for evaluating the consequences of adopting political disinformation strategies (PDS) as tools for manipulation, via innovative artificial intelligent technologies, on established social media networks during recent democratic elections in the US and other rising hegemonies. The study observed that most governments and expert political campaigners continue to find it a politically viable platform suitable for swinging the votes of electorates in desired directions. Authors recommended stiffer regulations for media platforms and party agents as this would aid discontinuing the practice of PDS during elections in established and rising hegemonies.
Journal Article
Characterizations of democratic systems of translates on locally compact abelian groups
We present characterizations of democratic property for systems of translates on a general locally compact abelian group, along a lattice in that group.. That way we generalize the results from Hernández et al. (J Approx Theory 171:105–127, 2013) on systems of integer translates. Furthermore, we investigate the possibilities of more operative characterizations for lattices with torsion group structure, mainly through examples and counterexamples.
Journal Article