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Market-oriented political participation, often referred to as political consumerism, is one of the most rapidly proliferating modes of citizen participation in the Western world. Argued to circumvent the political sphere, this rising mode of engagement has caused scholars to consider the relationship between political consumerism and the functioning of representative democracy. So far, however, the implications of market-oriented participation for the role of elected representatives have been widely overlooked. Drawing from the theory of responsibilisation, I consider whether political consumerism, by circumventing the traditional political arena, risk challenging the role of representatives as responsible actors within the confines of representative democracy. Resorting to a mixed-method approach, using data from the online panel of Swedish politicians, as well as interview material with Swedish MPs, this article investigates representatives' attitudes to political consumerism and finds a considerable support among the elected, with the greatest approval among representatives to the left. But when considered in relation to representative democracy, political consumerism is argued to challenge its core functions, including the responsibility and accountability assigned to representatives. Together the results accentuate a strong reliance on market-oriented participation among representatives in Sweden, but also a recognition of potential democratic perils related to the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how income inequality among individuals in each country and trade costs depicting geographic distance between countries impact economic welfare and regime choice under representative democracy, comparing three trading regimes: most favored nation, customs union, and free trade agreement. We examine two cases: one in which trade costs are incurred symmetrically among all countries, and the other in which no trade costs are incurred among the potential member countries, but only between them and nonmembers. In each case, we identify the political feasibility of each regime as well as the impact on the average welfare levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to capture, represent, and materialize public interest in urban planning has gone through multiple rounds of experimentation, crystallizing a number of regulatory regimes of planning in different historical and political-economic contexts. However, how to define the "public" and capture the public interest in urban planning remains problematic in both planning practices and democratic theory. Therefore, drawing upon Dewey and Habermas's view of the public sphere, this paper introduces a scale perspective to examine the subjects in planning and the power framing process in defining the public in urban regeneration policymaking. First, this paper revisits the current debates on the concept of public interest and identifies three interpretations of public interest materialization: utilitarian, unitary, and communicative. Second, this paper illustrates the institutionalization process of public interest in China's urban planning system. We critically examine the evolving mechanisms of public representation in China's urban regeneration policymaking since 1949. The institutionalization of public interest in China shows distinguished trajectories from the Western countries. These differences are caused by different values that define the scale of "public" in different socio-political contexts. Given the emerging communicative turn in China, we found a hybrid norm of public interest as reflected in the recent "co-production" model of urban regeneration. The contribution of this paper is threefold: 1) highlights the validity of the public interest concept by introducing a scale sensitivity to analyze the subjects in planning; 2) complements public interest typology by identifying a hybrid norm in China that weaves between unitary and communicative interpretations; 3) revisits Dewey's democratization theory by conceptualizing the institutionalization of public interest in semi-authoritarian China that is determined across the scales of subjects in planning, the ever-changing political-economic contexts, and the planning application in established rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article discusses scientific research in relation to the norms of representative democracy, arguing that politicians are committed to base their policy on scientific evidence. It is argued that people have both natural interests and social interests and that our natural interests, which we have acquired through natural selection and adaptation, are best taken care of by a representative democracy in which science proliferates. The article also argues why politicians and the public should trust science as the best means to fulfil our natural interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rising life expectancies and low birth rates across the Western world have heralded a profound change in the way representative democracy operates. Whereas representative democracy was politics for the young made by the old in the past, it is turning into politics for the old made by the old in the 21st century. Following Yosuke Buchmeier and Gabriele Vogt's recent reflection on Japan's status as the democracy with the oldest electorate, this article considers the case of Germany's aging electoral democracy, using the 2021 federal election as its empirical foundation. Employing what Ian Shapiro labels a problematizing redescription, the paper demonstrates that a recharacterization of gerontocratic rule as political adultism better explains the election outcome than a characterization of gerontocratic rule as such. In doing so, it draws up an original conception of political adultism as the socially-accepted interpersonal, structural, and institutional discrimination of young and younger people in politics and distinguishes between two temporal phases as disenfranchised and enfranchised political adultism. The two-stage idea of political adultism gives voice to the structural injustice toward young people as political beings and facilitates a critical reflection on whether the policy of lowering the voting age to 16 would really be as desirable as many of its proponents believe it is. The unique contribution of this article is the formulation of a new social structure that diagnoses a distinctive experiential bias in democratic politics at a time in which the relationship between demography and democracy is coming to a head. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, several social movements in western democracies argue that traditional representative democracy has failed to adequately represent the will of the "people", and instead support direct democracy as the only political system to restore the will of the majority. We analyze under what conditions the policy – a vector of decisions on every issue – implemented by the winner of a bipartisan electoral competition coincides with the policy that citizens would choose by means of direct democracy. We find necessary and sufficient conditions for this equivalence to hold, implying that, as long as at least one of them is not fulfilled, a divergence of outcomes between direct and representative democracy arises. The first condition requires that the outcome of majority voting issue-by-issue is the Condorcet winner relative to the voters' preference profile over the set of policies. The second requires that either that outcome is the preferred policy for at least one of the candidates, or that candidates' preferred policies differ on every single issue. We reinterpret some findings in the literature in the light of our model and present them as potential reasons why the equivalence between direct and representative democracy may fail. • We find necessary and sufficient conditions for the coincidence of policies implemented under direct and representative democracy. • Loosely divided electorates and highly polarized politicians favor such a coincidence. • The bundling of issues by politicians does not jeopardize the coincidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research of representative democracy under martial law is extremely relevant, especially in contemporary times when many countries face military conflicts and threats to national security. Notably, the military aggression of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine has significantly altered the agenda in Ukraine regarding elections. In wartime, there arises a need for swift decision-making, which can lead to temporary limitations on democratic procedures. Analyzing this issue will help find a balance between effective crisis management and preserving the core of the democratic order. The purpose of this study is to examine the functioning of representative democracy under martial law, particularly how democratic institutions and processes are preserved and adapted during a crisis period. The research methodology includes empirical, comparative, and logical methods. The study examines the functioning of representative democracy under martial law. It explores the peculiarities of the operation of democratic institutions and government bodies during wartime, including the role of parliament, the president, and the judiciary. Changes in legislation aimed at ensuring state security and stability, as well as mechanisms for protecting citizens' rights and freedoms, are analyzed. Special attention is paid to balancing national security and adherence to democratic principles. Potential risks to democracy under prolonged martial law and possible ways to minimize them are also considered. Conclusions are drawn that, despite existing restrictions, it is essential to ensure these restrictions are proportional and temporary, while maintaining oversight by civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) establishes a link between political dissatisfaction and support for DMPs. However, little is known about the sources of political dissatisfaction that trigger this support. Our research tackles this specific question and claims that citizen dissatisfaction is rooted in a position of 'losers of representative democracy', which leads citizens to be more open to reforms that move away from the representative model. Building on the literature on loser's consent, we focus on the effect of voting for a party not associated with the government and of descriptive and substantive (under)-representation in support of DMPs. We rely on a comparative survey conducted across fifteen Western European countries. Supporters of opposition parties and those who are badly represented, both descriptively and substantively, are more supportive of DMPs. These findings have important implications for understanding the public appeal for deliberative democracy instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently in Brazil, some politicians and organised groups have aimed to increase representation and legitimacy in legislatures via 'collective mandates', a democratic innovation (DI) that allows a group of citizens to collectively campaign and, if elected, share decision-making of a legislative seat. This article maps and analyses collective mandates implemented in Brazil from 1994 to 2022 to find their differences and similarities. This study identified 643 candidacies; 56 of them were elected for legislative mandates in city councils, state legislatures, and the National Congress. The qualitative analysis focused on six benchmark cases using the following analytical dimensions: initiative, group size, eligibility, moment of access, decision-making process, and interaction mechanism. The data sources were two nationwide reports on the theme (until 2020), raw data from the 2022 elections, and information available about the mandates on their websites, blogs, and social media. In conclusion, despite being generally labelled as 'collective mandates', the ongoing experiences have produced at least two subtypes: pure collective mandates and shared mandates. The common denominator holds the innovative concept: a legislator shares their power with a group of citizens, giving up parliamentary autonomy to foment democratic participation and accountability in the mandate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to initiate a conversation about the democratic quality of co-creation. There is growing interest in co-creation as a tool for mobilizing societal resources, enhancing creative problem-solving, and building broad-based ownership for public solutions. While researchers have focused on the contribution of co-creation to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public governance, few researchers have discussed the democratic quality of co-creation. This lacuna is filled by exploring the democratic contribution of co-creation through a comparison with well-known forms of democracy. The claim is that the democratic quality of co-creation lies in its ability to empower lay actors to take part in cross-boundary collaboration that may lead to creative problem-solving and to the exercise of a shared power based on joint agreements about innovative public value outcomes. The article is mainly theoretical and engaged in prospective analysis but also draws on empirical examples to illustrate the theoretical points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conspiracy theories gained considerable attention during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although studies have extensively explored their (mostly) negative impacts on various political and social aspects, like participation, health-related behavior, and violence, their influence on support for democracy remains relatively unexplored. The few existing studies offer conflicting findings, prompting my focus to shift from assessing generic support for democracy to examining preferences for alternative decision-making models. To address some limitations of prior research on alternative models of decision-making, I combine a trade-off item with a ranking methodology: respondents were prompted to indicate their first and second preferences for different democratic and non-democratic models over representative democracy. The study is based on data from a representative survey in Germany (July/August 2022; N = 2,536). My findings confirm that the belief in conspiracy theories is positively associated with a preference for direct democratic decision-making. However, conspiracy believers also favor expert-based decision-making over elected politicians—but direct democracy would be their primary choice. Although the evidence for a preference for autocracy over representative democracy is associated with a higher degree of uncertainty, it does suggest that conspiracy believers tend to favor “anything but” representative democracy. These findings contribute to the broader discourse on the impact of conspiracy beliefs on democratic systems.

This short piece discusses Hélène Landemore's proposal of an 'open democracy', as outlined in her recent book Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century. Acknowledging the value of Landemore's radical and ambitious proposals, I draw attention to a number of shortcomings and blind spots that have to do with how the case for an 'open democracy' is made: through an unduly brief and dismissive treatment of political parties; a methodological insensitivity to empirical variations of democratic performance and citizens' evaluations of the latter; a failure to distinguish between higher and ordinary law-making in the discussion of the central Icelandic case; and, finally, a surprising concession that realising an open democracy is all but infeasible in established constitutional democracies. If open democracy is to be an attractive ideal, these issues must arguably be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the transformations of technology in the last two decades, especially those related to privacy, based on the digital rights perspective. It debates how the concept of privacy is grounded on the distinction between public and private, a spatial metaphor no longer applicable in the face of the ubiquity of information and communication technologies. Hence, there is a premise stating the personal is increasingly more political nowadays, due to the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism. To anchor the theoretical debate in an empirically informed discussion, the work analyzes discourses about digital rights used in the main sessions of the Internet Governance Forum. The goal is to map the main Forum controversies about digital rights and their relation with contemporary democracies. Using a combined methodology based on both quantitative and qualitative data from the main sessions of the event, the analysis starts from a survey of the recurrence keywords related to the research; privacy, rights, surveillance, and freedom. From these results, a qualitative analysis of the discourses mobilized in these activities is conducted. The outcomes of the empirical analysis are then discussed from examples of technology regulation in the United States and the European Union. Among the main conclusions of the work, the emphasis lies on the need for transparency and accountability of the artificial intelligence algorithms. Related Articles: Glen, Carol M. 2021. "Norm Entrepreneurship in Global Cybersecurity." Politics & Policy 49(5): 1121–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12430. Robles, Pedro, and Daniel J. Mallinson. 2023. "Catching Up with AI: Pushing Toward a Cohesive Governance Framework." Politics & Policy 51(3): 355–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12529. Zeng, Jinghan, Tim Stevens, and Yaru Chen. 2017. "China's Solution to Global Cyber Governance: Unpacking the Domestic Discourse of 'Internet Sovereignty.'" Politics & Policy 45(3): 432–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12202. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent climate activism has played a key role in denouncing the unsustainability of representative democracy. Previous research has investigated the attitudes of climate activists towards representative institutions along the conceptual distinction between 'environmental' and 'ecological' democracy. Yet, little attention has been paid to climate activists' critique of capitalism and how it relates to demands for democratic reform. Our paper addresses this gap by conducting a mixed-method analysis of protest survey data collected in Belgium in 2019. Our findings show that activists display low levels of trust towards representative institutions, but still abide by the ideals of environmental democracy within the boundaries of existing institutions. At the same time, we observe a widespread critique of capitalism, signaling attraction towards the ideals of ecological democracy. Overall, our findings challenge the binary distinction between environmental versus ecological democracy, and raises normative questions about the role of environmental social movements in economic and democratic reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyse participatory tools developed in Central and Eastern Europe, in order to understand their potential impact on strengthening citizen participation in the decision-making process, and in countering the widespread lack of trust in public authorities.

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 exercise of legislative authority and, consequently, the determination of the country's policy while regulating public relations, constitutes the constitutional prerogative of the direct representative of the people - the Parliament. Nevertheless, considering the extensive nature of legislative activities and the intricacies of contemporary governance, there are instances where entrusting legislative functions to the executive branch becomes unavoidable. In scholarly literature and judicial practice, the delegation of the law-making function seldom sparks dissent. Although the extent and scope of delegation itself are permissible for constitutional purposes, it remains a subject of fervent debate. The Constitutional Court of Georgia has also established specific standards concerning the delegation of law-making competence. However, judicial decisions on this matter are not abundant. This paper is dedicated to exploring the delegation instrument and analyzing relevant international standards.

The UK's political constitution rests on the checking and balancing operations of a representative system in which parliament is sovereign. By contrast, referendums are often considered instances of popular sovereignty. Critics condemn them as populist appeals to a singular will of the people that risk majority tyranny, supporters believe they allow citizens to check and balance the elitism of politicians. Such arguments lay behind the criticism and praise of the Brexit referendum. This article argues that while the criticism is justified when referendums form an alternative to representative democracy, they can usefully supplement such a system provided they are embedded within and constrained by it. So conceived, the Brexit referendum can be regarded as consistent with political constitutionalism. Yet, this conception challenges claims that it represented the sovereign will of the people. The result remained subject to ratification by a sovereign parliament and could be legitimately overturned by that body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Atmosphere -- Ocean (Taylor & Francis Ltd) is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

There is a growing body of empirical research on democracies with strong or weak deliberative and/or direct democratic features. But how do these features affect the performance of a country? How do participatory types of democracies differ considering system performance, democratic performance, and social performance? Which type is more successful? Although these questions are most crucial and pressing in democracy research, they remain mostly unexplored. Our explorative study is a start to fill this gap. It analyzes which participatory types of democracies perform better: countries with less or more deliberation, countries with less or more direct democratic elements, countries that score high or low on both features. Based on several datasets and applying different statistical tools, we show that the associations between these types of democracy and performance are multifaceted. The most important finding, however, is clear-cut. Democracies with strong deliberative as well as strong direct democratic features perform better than other democracies. Combining deliberation with direct democracy seems to be the optimal formula to guarantee high social, system, and democratic performance. However, many questions remain open and we discuss the need for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents part of a larger study on potential relations between democracy and numeracy and mathematicsi teaching for adults. This study is motivated by the many challenges to democratic institutions and democratic values at local, national and international levels that I have observed in recent years. In this article. I go back to the 1980s to revisit literature on the connections between mathematics education and society, focusing on democracy. The chosen literature is not exclusively, but primarily, of Nordic origin and represents the context within which I was enculturated as a young student. Revisiting this literature and supplementing it with newer literature confirmed that the complex relations between mathematics education and democracy described by prominent scholars back in the 1980s are worth remembering and developing further, even today. Although these Nordic scholars focused on other parts of education rather than adult education, I find it relevant to consider the scholars’ descriptions of democratic aspects of numeracy and mathematics education in relation to adult education. The present article suggests a model, a frame, consisting of four boxes that can function as a pragmatic tool for analyses of democratic aspects of present-day adult education. The frame highlights that democracy can be interpreted as more than just the right to vote in elections. The frame shows two interpretations of democracy: representative democracy (RD), i.e. the rules and rights of citizens and representatives, and participatory democracy (PD), i.e. democratic participation and democratic communication among citizens in everyday life. The hope is that this frame may encourage, facilitate reflection on and influence the practice of democracy among teachers and students in adult education. To this end, the frame specifies reflections and practice both in school (IS) and outside school (OS). Examples from numeracy and mathematics instruction practice are presented, and some frame limitations are sketched out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the challenges facing democracy in Southeast Asia, including the decline of the liberal democratic model, the rise of populism, and the retreat of globalization. It identifies five key trends that have led to the deterioration of the democratic ethos in the region and highlight the emergence of strong populist leaders who promise change through radical reforms. The article argues that it is necessary to explore the emergence of new political governance models that are uniquely Asian and lie outside the perceived colonial shadows of North America and Western Europe. This study focuses on four emerging market countries in Southeast Asia. It uses qualitative research methods to examine how these countries are coping with the decline of liberal democratic principles and institutions in the region. The study aims to provide an overview of the possible outcomes of new political governance models as the area moves forward. The review highlights that while the decline of liberal democratic principles and institutions in Southeast Asia has hurt social and economic progress in the region, emerging market countries in the region have taken steps to address the decline by strengthening democratic institutions, increasing investment and trade, and strengthening vital economic sectors such as tourism and information technology. In addition, the review also discusses the potential for a new political governance model to emerge that is distinctly Asian and in keeping with the culture and history of each country in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discrepancy between democratic theory and practice is common to all democratic and quasi-democratic governments. Democratic recession manifests where there is an extreme discrepancy between normative democratic values and their practice - for instance where the state has flouted democratic normative rules (theory) and rendered major democratic institutions dysfunctional. This article posits that democratic recession can be seen in the 21st century as a reaction to at least four factors: 1) shifts in global geopolitics, 2) a crisis of representative democracy, 3) democratic silence, and 4) the rise of populism and post-truth framing. Indices of democracy do not, however, reveal the extent of the state's role in undermining democratic institutions (ie, political parties, election monitoring bodies, parliaments, the media, civil society), due to a bias of liberal individualism. The outcome has been a crisis of state legitimacy, where citizens lose trust in the state rather than in democratic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting from a classical literature in the field, but also from a series of more recent papers and researches, the text aims to identify new communication strategies in public administration and to make a theoretical analysis of them from the perspective of advantages and disadvantages that such structural changes can bring in relation to the public. The premise of our analysis is that, regardless of the tool used, communication is an avatar of democracy. We also show that the entire reading we make of the phenomenon is circumscribed to an epistemological approach that privileges an approach through which technologies and tools used by man and in society have the status of generative metaphors (N. Free) in the sense that they recreate and reconstruct public space and beyond. From this perspective, participatory democracy is a new democratic formula of the old representational democracy, technologically restored. The pluses and minuses arising from this change at the communication level in public administration provide enough ground for reflection when research results correlate with mental and social data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Derecho del Estado is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is generally argued that representative democracies are unresponsive to the needs of future generations. Representatives, standing for re-election, are incentivized by the needs of current generations, and fail to take the interests of the unborn into account. However, this argument bypasses the institutional diversity among parliaments. In this article, we focus in particular on bicameralism, and we ask whether the representation of future generations is more prevalent in upper than in lower houses. We expect that posterity's interests will be taken into account more strongly in upper houses which are (1) mandated to reflect on the long-term impact of policies, (2) less politically and publicly visible and (3) at least partially composed of non-elected members. Based on an exploratory analysis of representative claims made on behalf of future generations in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives and the Senate, we conclude that the institutional status of the parliamentary assembly is not related to the propensity of making claims on behalf of posterity. We provide several explanations why this might be so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An energetic scholarly debate discusses possible reforms of representative democracy. Some support participatory forms of democracy, others a more elite-driven or technocratic democracy. This study contributes to the growing literature on the subject by emphasizing political sophistication as a theoretically relevant predictor of attitudes to democracy: different models of democracy make different demands regarding the political sophistication of citizens. The analysis includes two dimensions and three measures of sophistication: personal sophistication measured as political knowledge and internal efficacy, and impersonal sophistication measured as assessment of others' political competence. Using the 2011 Finnish National Election Study, we find that perceptions of the sophistication of others have a substantial impact on preferences for political decision-making, and that politically sophisticated people support representative democracy. The analysis shows that perceptions of others' political competence, which has been largely neglected by previous research, is a both theoretically and empirically relevant predictor of preferences for political decision-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider collective decision‐making when society consists of groups endowed with voting weights. Each group chooses an internal rule that specifies the allocation of its weight to alternatives as a function of its members' preferences. Under fairly general conditions, we show that the winner‐take‐all rule is a dominant strategy, while the equilibrium is Pareto dominated, highlighting the dilemma structure between optimality for each group and for the whole society. We also develop a technique for asymptotic analysis and show Pareto dominance of the proportional rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MPs face a dilemma when it comes to deliberative mini-publics (DMPs): in a context of distrust, they may see it as an opportunity to re-legitimize themselves and solve complex policy issues. But it could also challenge the quasi-monopoly they used to have on political decisions and undermine the role of the Parliament and the primacy of elections. The article is found on 91 face-to-face interviews with French-speaking Belgian MPs sitting in federal or regional parliaments. First, we describe the profile of supporters of DMPs. We then identify three ideal–typical discourses: the power-sharing discourse, the consultative discourse, and the elitist discourse. The contribution of this article is twofold. First, it analyzes the argumentative frames used by MPs to assess deliberative mini-publics using a large number of interviews. Second, it demonstrates that their discourses depend on their evaluation of ordinary citizens' competence to participate and on their resulting vision of representation. Political actors mainly perceive DMPs as power-sharing instruments that would alter their elected position and the legitimacy of the election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to delineate a comprehensive account of the development of human civilization in terms of increasingly representative structures of governance, structures that make people more and more present on the upper echelons of decision-making. I hypothesize that there are three essential dimensions of this development: first, media of communication becoming increasingly abstract makes society increasingly conscious of itself because it gets the ability of self-reflection and self-critique from increasingly complex perspectives that do increasing justice to the society; second, the anthropomorphizing/relativizing of the increasingly creative forms of life; third, if the law-making is conducted within the exchange of perspectives in which the being and the people are properly represented, the laws thus issued make societies increasingly free (1) from the dictate of violent power (2) and to practiсe the art of interdependence, that is, to create new models of cooperation. The basic narrative is that of a balancing between the dependence on the outside force and self-dependence; growth occurs when we are able to relativize the force that creates our life on this particular stage, that is, to establish communication with it. If we are too reliant upon it or upon our own power, we stop participating in the exchange of perspectives, in politics that creates new, wider and deeper, contexts for social life. In this sense, humans are “called” to representational politics, to make themselves and each other present on the upper levels of law-making, so that the laws by which people live do justice both to their own desires and to the reality outside of them. The possibility of this representational activity is grounded in the icon of the Trinity where persons make themselves present to each other to the extent of full transparency but without any erasure of the difference.

The distortion in states' hierarchies causes discussions of legitimacy in inter-institutional and internal relations. The reason of this is the parts of hierarchy that aren't organized according to democratic legitimacy. The purpose of this study is to explain what the democratic legitimacy hierarchy is, how to establish and protect it. Through various visuals, it is specified who should be at the levels of hierarchy, and methods are proposed on how to renew the system if there are people who shouldn't be in those levels. Solution proposals are presented on how to prevent the crimes of authority encroachment that can be experienced in inter-level relations following the placement of legitimate people to the levels. Emphasizing that the main form of democracy is direct democracy, stating that implementation of democratic legitimacy hierarchy system is the first step to reach it, tips on how to progress to reach it in the next stages are given.

The electronic form of democracy carries the potential to resolve the crisis of the systems of the modern democratic structure, but recently its concept has been increasingly criticized. In this regard, researchers are interested in identifying the causes of this trend. The author suggests that the essence of the problem of e-democracy is in its internal contradictions: a) the convergence of the concept with other theories of democracy; b) ethical issues of the ICT exploitation within the political sphere. The former includes the combination in a single construction of fundamental features of both direct, deliberative and representative democracy in a single construction; substitution of the principles of direct democracy by the principles of plebiscite democracy; multidirectional aspirations expressed in involvement with the simultaneously existing internal apathy to the political sphere. Ethical contradictions: maximizing transparency with high manipulability; independence of decisions with controversial anonymity; reducing bureaucratic procedures as fraud acts increase; reduced number of absentists with persisting distrust of the system. Also, the methods of e-democracy within one society can create premises for both digital authoritarization and the strengthening of the role of civil society.

This article explores the normative foundations of the contemporary populist turn in Latin America from a theoretical perspective. We argue that the ongoing structural crisis of representative democracy, defined by its inability to identify and respond to growing social demands to provide valuable results for the majority of the population, negatively affects its legitimacy. This facilitates the irruption of a more radical political project, which, in the case of Latin America, is based on a populist discourse. The discussion focuses on the theoretical determination of the arguments used by populism to justify political action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular dissatisfaction with representative democracy has encouraged governments and legislatures worldwide to experiment with democratic innovations. However, despite calls for a 'systemic' approach to the study of democratic engagement and participation, empirical knowledge is limited about the diffusion of democratic innovations within civil society, and, in particular, about the connective mechanisms that bring the 'voice' of citizens to the 'ears' of political elites. This article responds to this gap, presenting original empirical research examining the UK House of Commons' e-petitions system. This research maps public engagement with parliamentary e-petitions across a range of expressive spaces, and highlights the facilitative role of non-institutional intermediaries. However, it also underlines the predominant role of institutional actors in structuring public participation, and shows that effective transmission between the informal public and formal political spheres remains contingent on both 'designed-in powers' of institutional coupling and 'developed practices' of public engagement. Through this analysis, the article makes an important contribution to debates concerning democratic innovations, political participation, and institutional design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the core concept of representation in light of democratic innovations and more specifically in the context of minipublics. We disentangle how representativeness is currently addressed within the minipublics' literature and provide an in-depth conceptual analysis of how emerging modes of representation and participation can be reconciled with(in) traditional norms of representative democracy. This paper scrutinises and emphasises issues concerning legitimacy and representation in minipublics and the potential of scaling up their outcomes to the larger public. Acknowledging that neither election nor sortition can fully satisfy all democratic values we propose an interpretive path and a framework of a 'hybrid' representative democracy that can accommodate a multi modal representation which combines both electoral and sortition driven representation and can shift the conceptual boundaries of representation in modern democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, new social movements are examined in comparison with old social movements. It has been argued that the novelty of new social movements stems from their responses to newly emerging social and political crises, which have changed the concept of political and the nature of social movements. The central argument is that social movements defend modern values, and there is no difference between old and new social movements regarding the values they support. However, since the new social movements are often compared to the working-class movement, the values they advocate are thought to be different. However, the working-class movement is not the sole movement in the nineteenth century, and it is possible to discuss various social movements. The new social movements emerged as reactions to representative democracy and established institutional politics. As the failures of the representative democracy are recognized, and as the scope of the political expands, new social movements have emerged to provide solutions to new problems. So, their newness is related to our contemporary conception of the political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern democratic states, citizen participation is promoted through representative channels. In recent years, at the different institutional and political levels in Spain, some classic parameters of democracy have been called into question, such as citizen representation, deliberation, and the responsibility of the rulers towards the citizens. This crisis coincides with a decline in bipartisanship in Spain and the appearance of new parties. Some of this parties championed the regeneration of democracy, committing themselves to encouraging transparency and citizen participation in public management. As local entities are the institutions closest to citizens, both transparency and participation become key elements to comply with these parameters, providing the technologies of information and communication (ICT) with new tools such as websites and portals, which can contribute to strengthening them. This research aims to analyze the use of these channels to promote transparency and citizen participation, by the municipalities of 4 autonomous communities (Catalonia, the Community of Madrid, the Valencian Community, and the Region of Murcia), placing special emphasis on how the left-right axes and old-new parties could influence, along with the population size of the municipalities. The method used consists of a categorical content analysis, based on the Infoparticipa Map indicators and two linear regression models using ordinary least squares. The results and conclusions of the study show that the size of the population and the autonomous community are determining factors in the transparency indices. In addition, the political formations aligned to the left of the ideological spectrum, together with some of the new parties, influence the greater transparency and participation of the websites of the municipalities governed by them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2008 economic crisis, the political legitimacy of representative democracy has eroded. The roots of this legitimation crisis are found in growing inequality and the unwillingness of representative democratic capitalist states to address the structural causes giving rise to this polarization. In many respects, in the third decade of the 21st century, the class nature of the state has rarely been so apparent since before the Keynesian era. Various historical and contemporary cases provide examples of a 'different kind of state' where the state's agenda setting function and policy outputs were informed by working class and other perspectives and interests. The result is greater social and economic inclusion generally and a democratization of the administrative state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The Lisbon Treaty stipulates that the functioning of the European Union will be based on representative democracy. The main bearers of representative democracy should be political parties, in this case European political parties. Therefore, the subject of this paper is the position of European parties in the political system of the European Union. The basic question is whether the Europarties are able to contribute to the democratic functioning of the political system of the European Union and thus build their recognizable identity. If we take into account the existing constitutional order of the European Union and the place of political parties in it, it is obvious that they are not able to contribute to forming European political awareness and to expressing the political will of the Union citizens.

New technological developments have heightened interest in understanding and evaluating new tools of participatory and representative engagement in the political sphere. Recent academic research in this area is mainly theoretical, and focuses on voters rather than legislators. This study addresses this gap in the literature by empirically exploring the unique case of proxy voting by members of the U.S. House of Representatives that was introduced as an emergency measure to allow the Congress to function during COVID-19. The core result from this study, given its finding that vote skipping during 2019 is positively correlated with the use of proxy voting during 2021, indicates that proxy voting in this case is connected to legislative shirking. Thus, it appears that the proxy voting mechanism introduced in 2020 via a U.S. House resolution represents a new configuration of traditional legislative shirking or vote skipping.