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Democratic Theory (democratic + theory)
Selected AbstractsThe Myth of International Delegation: Limits to and Suggestions for Democratic Theory in the Context of the European Union1GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 1 2007Hans Agné This paper presents an argument as to why democratic states are unable to delegate authority to international organizations. Influential attempts to justify democratically such international bodies as the European Union by means of delegation are found to be untenable. At a more general level of theorization, it argues that the theory of delegation as involving the recoverability of delegated authority leaves us unable to identify democratic reforms for international organizations. As a remedy to the latter problem, the article proposes an alternative theory of democratic ,delegation', one that applies equally well to national and to international politics. [source] Democratic Theory and Political CampaignsTHE JOURNAL OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2004Keena Lipsitz First page of article [source] Choice versus sensitivity: Party reactions to public concernsEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 6 2004Michael D. McDonald Under certain circumstances, however, party convergence on these may preclude electoral choice, thus creating conflict between two democratic ,goods'. We examine possible tradeoffs between choice and responsiveness, and see which actually occur in 16 postwar democracies. Party policy positions turn out to be more strongly related to party ideology than popular concerns, thus privileging differentiation and choice over sensitivity and responsiveness. Implications for democratic theory and practice are considered. [source] Political Representation in Leader Democracy1GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 3 2005András Körösényi The essay focuses on the neglected problem of democratic politics, i.e. on the role of leadership. Although in democracies public office holders are controlled to a certain extent, leaders still have wide room for political manoeuvre and decide without any ,instruction' of the citizens. Re-working Weber's and Schumpeter's theory, the author aims to build the model of leader democracy. He highlights the major traits of it in a comparison with the deliberative and the aggregative,utilitarian concepts of democratic theory. The theory of leader democracy is applied to the problem of representation, which, in contrast to mechanical mirroring, gains a new, dynamic and qualitative meaning. [source] Won't Get Fooled Again: The Paranoid Style in the National Security State1GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 4 2003Thomas C. Ellington In meeting the threat posed by terrorism, the democratic state also faces a paradox: those practices best suited to defending the state are often least suited to democracy. Such is the case with official secrecy, which has received renewed attention. Military and intelligence operations frequently depend on secrecy for their success. At the same time, democracy depends on openness, a fact too often neglected by democratic theory. Official secrecy subverts citizen autonomy and in so doing creates fertile ground for paranoid-style thinking. For the United States, a history of secrets and lies has left a legacy of distrust and paranoia. [source] American Democratic Interventionism: Romancing the Iconic Woodrow WilsonINTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 3 2008Constance G. Anthony There is an American foreign policy tradition in respect to military interventions in the Third World, which validates the importance of democratic ideals as central to the success of the policy. Woodrow Wilson is the founding father of this tradition. While the normative commitments of Wilson made sense in Victorian America and can probably be considered innovative for his day, the manifest lack of success in transferring democracy through military intervention leads us to question the character of Wilson's interventions and the ideals that motivated them. This essay will consider the content of Wilson's democratic theory and its integration into ideals of national mission and destiny; how this became the philosophical basis for policies of military intervention; the assessments offered by historians of the success of this policy; and the role of racial paternalism in legitimating the policy at the time. In a contemporary respect, we are left with the question of whether we want such a philosophy of democratic interventionism to be the basis for transferring democratic values and practices to Third World countries today. [source] Foreign Policy Gaps between Citizens and LeadersINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2000Benjamin I. Page Persistent gaps between the policy preferences of leaders and those of citizens are problematic from the point of view of democratic theory. Examination of the foreign policy preferences of samples of citizens and leaders from seven Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR) surveys between 1974 and 1998 reveals many differences of 30, 40, and even 50 percentage points. Often a majority of the public has disagreed with a majority of leaders. Some of the same gaps have persisted over the full 24-year period of these surveys. The pattern of gaps is considerably more complicated than a simple difference in degree of commitment to internationalism. Citizens have generally put a higher priority than leaders on expanding domestic programs like Social Security, crime fighting, and health care, and have been more eager to cut foreign economic aid. But there have not been substantial gaps with respect to defense spending or military aid. More members of the public than leaders emphasize foreign policy goals related to protecting Americans' jobs and ensuring Americans' health and physical security (e.g., from terrorism, drugs, and epidemic diseases). Citizens have been more reluctant than leaders to use U.S. troops in most circumstances, but the opposite is true of situations involving Latin America. Citizens have been more willing to bomb than to commit troops, though not indiscriminately so, and many more citizens than leaders oppose selling weapons abroad. Fewer members of the public than leaders have favored most kinds of cooperative relationships with adversary countries. But more members of the public than leaders generally support the United Nations, and more favor multilateralism in general. About the same number of citizens as leaders have supported NATO. Some of these gaps may reflect lower levels of attention to foreign affairs and lower levels of information among the public than among leaders, but many of the gaps may instead reflect different values and interests. In cases where the public is ill-informed, persistent gaps suggest a failure of leaders to educate and persuade. Where public opinion is well-informed and deliberative, democratic theory would seem to call for responsiveness by policymakers. [source] The Role of an African-American Candidate on Psychological Engagement and Political Discussion in a Local ElectionPOLITICS & POLICY, Issue 2 2009JAS M. SULLIVAN There have been numerous studies of African-American political participation, but little research investigating the effect of African-American candidates on political discussion. This is surprising, given the importance of political discussion in democratic theory and the increased attention it has received in the literature. We address this gap by examining the effect of a successful African-American Democratic candidate on psychological engagement and political discussion in a majority white, majority Republican local election in the Deep South. Our findings reveal a paradox,African-American voters paid more attention to the election and reported being more informed and more satisfied with the candidates, but were less likely to have discussed the election. The negative effect of race was less than in other concurrent races, indicating that the presence of an African-American candidate may limit but not erase participation differentials in political discussion. [source] Legitimacy, Political Equality, and Majority RuleRATIO JURIS, Issue 1 2008WOJCIECH SADURSKI The egalitarian character of MR is established by exploring "puzzles" in democratic theory, such as the insensitivity of democratic voting procedures to unequal intensity of citizens' preferences, and the relationship between the principle of unanimity (sometimes thought better to respect citizens' equality) and MR. Special attention is directed to the relationship between political equality and equality in the outcomes of political decisions: The claim is made that the language of equal political opportunity captures well the idea of equal political influence, in the circumstance of disagreement about what is required to achieve equal treatment through the outcomes of political decisions. [source] Ideological Congruence and Electoral InstitutionsAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2010Matt Golder Although the literature examining the relationship between ideological congruence and electoral rules is quite large, relatively little attention has been paid to how congruence should be conceptualized. As we demonstrate, empirical results regarding ideological congruence can depend on exactly how scholars conceptualize and measure it. In addition to clarifying various aspects of how scholars currently conceptualize congruence, we introduce a new conceptualization and measure of congruence that captures a long tradition in democratic theory emphasizing the ideal of having a legislature that accurately reflects the preferences of the citizenry as a whole. Our new measure is the direct counterpart for congruence of the vote-seat disproportionality measures so heavily used in comparative studies of representation. Using particularly appropriate data from the,Comparative Study of Electoral Systems,,we find that governments in proportional democracies are not substantively more congruent than those in majoritarian democracies. Proportional democracies are, however, characterized by more representative legislatures. [source] Game Theory, Information, and Deliberative DemocracyAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2009Dimitri Landa We contend that, with a suitably broad notion of rationality and a diverse set of motivations, the game-theoretic tradition is particularly well suited for generating insights about effects of deliberative institutions and that progress in the development of deliberative democratic theory hinges on making proper sense of the relationship between game-theoretic and normative theoretic approaches to deliberation. To advance this view, we explore the central methodological issues at the core of that relationship and address the arguments raised against the relevance of game-theoretic work on deliberation. We develop a framework for thinking about the differences in how the normative and the game-theoretic approaches frame and answer questions about deliberation and articulate an approach to a deliberative democratic theory that builds on the strengths of both of these theoretic traditions, properly informed by empirical scholarship. [source] | ||||||||||||||||||||||