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In this paper I aim to provide a novel account of the Democratic Argument for limitarianism. I first claim that the standard version of this argument is questionable due to its reliance on a problematic central premise, namely that excessive wealth damages democracy because of its detrimental impact on political equality. Subsequently, I relocate the fundamental democratic worry in regard to excessive wealth in the process of backsliding, and more specifically in the relation between excessive wealth and political polarization. I then offer a new account of the Democratic Argument for limitarianism which envisages wealth capping as instrumental for democratic resilience, but I maintain that the argument is not unambiguously successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social or relational egalitarians try to defend democracy non-instrumentally as a constitutive element of a society where no one stands as inferior or superior to anyone else. However, they face an instrumentalist challenge from within: Why not uphold a non-democratic regime if it outperforms democracy in protecting or promoting egalitarian social relations, for example, by stably producing substantive political decisions that guard against social hierarchies? This article explores the best response to this challenge from the social egalitarian non-instrumentalist standpoint. It argues that the instrumentalist challenge can be accommodated without abandoning the essential non-instrumentalist commitment to democracy; while a nondemocratic regime may be justified under less-than-ideal circumstances as a contingently effective means to realize more social equality, democracy can nevertheless be viewed as a necessary condition for the realization of full social equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One strategy in defence of compulsory voting is based on what I call the non-instrumental value of high turnout: the idea that almost-universal participation in elections is valuable per se. This article argues that we do not have democratic reasons to value compelled turnout. First, thanks to an original analysis of the practice of voting, I identify three constitutive rules that make the physical acts of marking and casting a ballot count as proper voting. This preliminary analysis serves to illuminate the fact that the act of voting has democratic value if it is performed in a free and reason-responsive way. Second, I identify political equality and popular control as democratic values that high turnout expresses. Finally, the article rejects the non-instrumental case for compulsory voting because it cannot ensure that people vote in a reason-responsive way and, if they do not, high turnout lacks democratic value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this critical comment, we argue that nondemocratic, but decent regimes fail to constitute legitimate governance under Applbaum's free group agency account. To make this case, we first introduce the three principles of liberty, equality and agency that Applbaum takes to flow directly from his free agency conception of legitimacy. Against this backdrop, we discuss Applbaum's claim that a nondemocratic regime along the lines of a Rawlsian decent consultation hierarchy could meet the threshold of legitimacy. Contrary to this suggestion, we argue that nondemocratic, but decent regimes cannot claim legitimacy under Applbaum's account because they are constitutively inegalitarian, thus failing to adequately grant citizens the equal normative power without which legitimacy is unattainable under the free group agency account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comment encourages normative democratic theorists to attend to the agenda for democratic theory that Steffen Ganghof sets in Beyond Parliamentarism and Presidentialism. I discuss Ganghof's distinction between 'procedural' and 'process' equality. I conclude with a meta-theoretical question about how theorists should think about advocacy for large-scale constitutional systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to critical reflections on my Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism by Sarah Birch, Kevin J. Elliott, Claudia Landwehr and James L. Wilson. It discusses how different types of representative democracy, especially different forms of government (presidential, parliamentary or hybrid), can be justified. It clarifies, among other things, the distinction between procedural and process equality, the strengths of semi-parliamentary government, the potential instability of constitutional designs, and the difference that theories can make in actual processes of constitutional reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pragmatism, political equality, recognition, democracy, engaged scholarship Keywords: pragmatism; political equality; recognition; democracy; engaged scholarship EN pragmatism political equality recognition democracy engaged scholarship 872 876 5 10/03/23 20231001 NES 231001 Reading this set of responses to my work left me feeling profoundly awed and humbled, ready to settle into a deep silence. Chambers is right to say that in the U.S. our politics currently involves not only polarization but also radicalization. [Extracted from the article]

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.)

The distinction between equality and sufficiency, much discussed in the distributive justice literature, is here applied to democratic theory. Overlooking this distinction can have significant normative implications, undermining some defences and criticisms of political equality, as I show by discussing the work of three prominent democratic theorists: Thomas Christiano, David Estlund, and Mark Warren. Most importantly, Christiano sometimes defends egalitarian conclusions using sufficientarian premises, or worries about inequality in situations where insufficiency is also part of the problem; inequality above the level of sufficiency is not always as troubling. Estlund makes the reverse error. He attacks rather than defends political egalitarianism, but insufficiency seems to explain some of his concerns. Nonetheless, I show that political egalitarians may need to specify a sufficientarian threshold, to avoid levelling-down objections. Democratic theorists should thus take seriously the distinction between political equality and political sufficiency. More generally, political theorists and philosophers should be aware of omitted variable bias and interaction effects due to conceptual stretching arising from under-theorised distinctions in their thought experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic theorists have long emphasized the importance of participatory equality, that is, that all citizens should have an equal right to participate. It is still unclear, however, whether ordinary citizens view this principle as central to democracy and how different violations of this principle affect subjective democratic legitimacy. The attitudes of citizens are imperative when it comes to the subjective legitimacy of democratic systems, and it is therefore important to examine how participatory inequalities affect these attitudes. We here contribute to this research agenda with survey experiments embedded in two surveys (n = 324, n = 840). We here examine (1) whether citizens consider participatory inequality to be an important democratic principle, and (2) how gender and educational inequalities affect subjective legitimacy and the perceived usefulness of the participatory input. The results show that citizens generally consider participatory inequalities to be important, but only gender inequalities affect subjective legitimacy and usefulness. Hence it is important to consider the type of inequality to understand the implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review essay, I explore the consequences of growing economic inequality within advanced democracies. My aim is not to provide novel empirical evidence but to stitch together disparate threads of existing literature to make the case that growing economic inequality should be viewed as one of the most significant problems afflicting industrialized democratic societies today. I begin by defining the concept of economic inequality and by outlining the methods for measuring this phenomenon empirically. In this section, I encourage scholars to shift away from complex indices in favor of decile ratios that are more legible to the public. Next, I summarize trends in income and wealth inequality within advanced democracies to illustrate the growing scale of the problem in recent decades. Subsequently, I make the case that rising economic inequality should be viewed as a concern of utmost importance for political economists by reviewing the literature in three key issue areas that may be adversely impacted by rising levels of inequality: political equality, far-right populism, and economic growth. In scientific terms, economic inequality is conceptualized as an independent variable, and I examine its impact on relevant dependent variables. I conclude by making a call to action with the hope of mobilizing scholars across countries and academic disciplines to study the determinants of rising economic inequality, and to advocate for policy measures to combat the problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political egalitarians tend to defend equal distributions of voting power at specific times, as in 'one election, one vote'. Appealing as it is, the principle seems incompatible with distributing power proportionally to the stakes voters have at different elections, as in 'one stake, one vote'. This article argues that the tension above stems from the temporal scope ascribed to political equality, as at specific moments of democratic decision-making instead of over entire lives. More specifically, ascribing a lifetime view to political equality renders equality compatible with proportionality at different elections. I first show that storable votes differ from standard votes in their distinctive commitment to lifetime political equality. I then argue that storable voting schemes are compatible with three key reasons to value political equality: equal consideration of interests, relational equality, and non-domination. Finally, storable votes are also consistent with proportionality at specific times. I conclude that the neglected idea of lifetime political equality can, through storable votes, deliver proportionality without inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lua Nova is the property of CEDEC 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.)

As part of Harold D. Lasswell's policy sciences, the decisions functions emerged to explore and understand comparative policy processes. The decision functions specified different categories of purposes, roles, and responsibilities performed, to various extents and ways, by all governments. These included intelligence, recommendation, prescription, invocation, application, appraisal, and termination. Additionally, the decision functions were not necessarily sequenced or in any government unit. Over time, the decision functions morphed in meaning and use, eventually supplanted by the policy cycle. This commentary digs up and polishes the decision functions and argues for their inclusion in contemporary policy process theories and research. We end with new questions and paths for advancing knowledge and contributing to Lasswell's vision in realizing greater human dignity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Algorithmic communications pose several challenges to democracy. The three phenomena of filtering, hypernudging, and microtargeting can have the effect of polarizing an electorate and thus undermine the deliberative potential of a democratic society. Algorithms can spread fake news throughout the society, undermining the epistemic potential that broad participation in democracy is meant to offer. They can pose a threat to political equality in that some people may have the means to make use of algorithmic communications and the sophistication to be immune from attempts at manipulation, while other people are vulnerable to manipulation by those who use these means. My concern here is with the danger that algorithmic communications can pose to political equality, which arises because most citizens must make decisions about what and who to support in democratic politics with only a sparse budget of time, money, and energy. Algorithmic communications such as hypernudging and microtargeting can be a threat to democratic participation when persons are operating in environments that do not conduce to political sophistication. This constitutes a deepening of political inequality. The political sophistication necessary to counter this vulnerability is rooted for many in economic life and it can and ought to be enhanced by changing the terms of economic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tongdong Bai's ambitious book, Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case, aims to not only draw on classic Confucianism to shed light on contemporary issues but also make Confucianism universally applicable to the human conditions widely shared around the globe. Bai's Confucian political theory carries distinctive merits in both its innovative approach and comprehensive scope, but there are still ambiguities of which he owes us more explanation. In this review article, I offer a brief summary of Bai's book and critically engage with three aspects of his account: (1) the acceptability of the Confucian hybrid regime, (2) its relationship with Confucian compassion, and (3) hierarchical international order. First, Bai's pursuit of service to the people as an end result makes it difficult to apply to societies that champion political equality and participation. Second, neither the supremacy of the Confucian value of compassion nor the hybrid regime's ability to carry it through is self-evidently clear. Third, the Confucian idea of unity among all-under-heaven undermines Bai's advocacy of patriotic allegiance to a particular state and hierarchical inter-state order where the multiplicity of states, albeit unequal, is preserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Quaestio Iuris (QI) is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) 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.)

The article argues that the possibility of an unlimited gap in income and wealth between the top and bottom segments of society is incompatible with a democratic commitment to political equality. The first section outlines why current distributive and relational approaches are unable to adequately address this problem. The second and third sections introduce the notion of material domination and argue that the only remedy against it is the containment of economic inequality within a certain proportion, expressed in terms of ratios between the material resources of the best-off and the worst-off. The fourth section spells out the constraints that any definition of these ratios should satisfy and shows, through a case study based on the contemporary United States, that an approximate, yet non-arbitrary definition is within reach. The fifth and final section rebuts some predictable objections to this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the two competing democratic concepts of liberalism and political equality in Korean politics. In the development of Korean democracy, liberalism has evolved as a form of anticommunism as a way to pursue social stability; meanwhile, political equality has emerged by means of civic participation as a way to seek equal opportunities to be involved in decision making. This article traces how political equality has tended to expand from the time of Kim Young-sam to the Roh Moo-hyun administrations, while liberalism dominated during the administrations of Lee Myungbak and Park Geun-hye. In addition, this article identifies different trends of civic participation between the progressive governments that promoted civilian ascendancy and the conservative governments that showed uncommunicative leadership in the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sortition, historically used in classical Greece, seems to be facing a process of resurgence, in an attempt to alleviate citizen disaffection and to improve the functioning of representative systems. The main objective of this article is, precisely, to reflect on the use of the sortition and the potential of deliberative mini-publics, and to analyze whether or not they have the capacity to increase the degree of citizens' in their representatives and institutions. It is concluded that there are certain conditions, which go through the implementation of random deliberative mini-publics, under which sortition could be combined with elections to try to alleviate citizen disaffection and to improve the functioning of representative systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-serving politicians and self-entrenchment of the political establishment is a diachronic problem tantalizing liberal democracies. Incumbent political actors around the world constantly purport to entrench not only their presence in the political arena, but also their power and as a result, barriers to entry to new political actors are set, the chain of the democratic choice is disrupted and equality of opportunity is distorted. This article focuses on the available means in the constitutional system in order to safeguard a level playing field in the political arena. To this end, this article has three scientific objectives. First, it elaborates on the significance of equality of opportunities in the political system. Second, it identifies how political self-entrenchment creates an uneven playing field. Third, it focuses on the remedies that exist in the constitutional system and examines both legal and quasi legal mechanisms. With an analysis on the current means that are available in the constitutional system, the judicial review, and the alternative political processes based on independent bodies and quasi-judicial mechanisms, this article concludes that self-entrenchment and self-serving politicians are mainly left to be resolved by political means, the so called self-corrective promise of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The equal political liberties are among the basic first-principle liberties in John Rawls's theory of Justice as fairness. Rawls insists, further, that the "fair value" of the political liberties must be guaranteed. Disavowing an interest in fair value is what disqualifies welfare-state capitalism as a possible realizer of Justice as fairness. Yet Rawls never gives a perspicuous statement of the reasoning in the original position for the fair-value guarantee. This article gathers up two distinct strands of Rawls's argument, and presents it in a straightforward sequence. Justice as fairness is contrasted to a competitor political conception of justice that is just like it but without the fair-value guarantee. A schema of the two-strand argument is presented in the Appendix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dramatic events of the crisis have reignited debates on the independence of central banks and the scope of their mandates. In this article, I contribute to the normative understanding of these developments by discussing John Rawls's position in debates of the 1950s and 1960s on the independence of the US Federal Reserve. Rawls's account of the central bank in his property-owning democracy, Democratic Central Banking (DCB), assigns authority over monetary policy directly to the government and prioritizes low unemployment over price stability. I contrast DCB with Central Bank Independence (CBI), which requires that the central bank is independent of the government and pursues low inflation. I evaluate DCB by asking whether justice as fairness requires democratic control of the central bank and argue that it does not. Instead, so I argue, the choice between DCB and CBI should be justified in terms of the difference principle. By reflecting on central banking in a property-owning democracy, I cast new light on the Rawlsian realistic utopia of a just capitalist society, while also investigating democratic objections to today's independent central banks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the theoretical literature on global democracy, the influential transmission belt model depicts transnational civil society as a transmission belt between the public space and the empowered space (decision-making loci), assuming that civil society actors contribute to the democratization of global governance by transmitting peoples' preferences from the public space to the empowered space through involvement in the political decision-making. In this article, two claims are made. First, I argue that the transmission belt model fails because insofar as civil society has formalized influence in the decision-making, it is illegitimate, and insofar as it has informal influence, it is legitimate, but civil society's special status as transmitter is dissolved. Second, I argue that civil society is better understood as a transmission belt, not between the public space and the empowered space, but between the private space (lifeworld) and the public space. It is here that civil society is essential for democracy, with its unique capacity to stay attuned to concerns in the lifeworld and to communicate those in a publically accessible form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that limitarian policies are a good means to further political equality. Limitarianism, which is a view coined and defended by Robeyns (2017), is a partial view in distributive justice which claims that under non-ideal circumstances it is morally impermissible to be rich. In a recent paper, Volacu and Dumitru (2018) level two arguments against Robeyns' Democratic Argument for limitarianism. The Democratic Argument states that limitarianism is called for given the undermining influence current inequalities in income and wealth have for the value of democracy and political equality. Volacu and Dumitru's Incentive Objection holds that limitarianism places an excessive and inefficient burden on the rich in ensuring political equality. The Efficacy Objection holds that even if limitarianism limits excessive wealth it still fails to ensure the preservation of political equality. In this paper, I will argue that both of these objections fail, but on separate grounds. I argue that the Incentive objection fails because one could appeal to limitarian policies that are different from the ones discussed by Volacu and Dumitru and which escape the problem of reduced productivity. I argue against the Efficacy Objection that limitarian policies are a partial but highly valuable step towards establishing political equality, and that they can and should complement or be complemented by other strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is Confucian democracy philosophically justifiable? In recent decades, prominent Confucian theorists have answered this question in the negative, arguing that the political system that is consistent with Confucianism is political meritocracy or elite rule. This position presupposes an antithetical relation between democracy and Confucianism. In order to counter such a position, this article proposes a philosophically justifiable normative conception of Confucian democracy. By carefully examining democracy theories of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Carl Schmitt in the civic humanist republican tradition and Confucian political philosophy in the Mencian tradition, this article demonstrates that the substantive value of democracy as popular sovereignty is a fundamental idea undergirding and safeguarding the ideal Confucian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation from low- to high-choice media environments has triggered concerns of rising inequalities in news media use. This concern has been buttressed by research showing that motivational factors have become more important predictors of news media use. Less attention has been paid to how changes in media environments have altered the impact of socioeconomic status on news media use. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate the changing impact of socioeconomic status on newspaper and television news consumption, empirically focussing on Sweden between 2000 and 2016. Among other things, results suggest that the impact of socioeconomic status on news media use has increased with respect to reading morning newspapers but decreased for reading tabloids and watching television news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of who ought to be included in the demos is distinct from, and yet related to, the question of how to distribute decisionmaking power among those who are included. Political equality is the most common answer to the former question within democratic theory. In democratic practice, it is usually realized through one person one vote. Within democratic theory, there is not as much agreement as to what the answer to the latter question should be. The answer that has attracted most attention within the scholarly literature is that all those who are affected should be included. However, prominent scholars have argued that this all-affected principle is incompatible with political equality and therefore an unattractive answer to the question of inclusion. This article challenges this critique and argues that it is based on a misconception of political equality and a narrow reading of the all-affected principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that reliance on political testimony conflicts with two democratic values: the value of mutual justifiability and the value of equality of opportunity for political influence. Reliance on political testimony is characterized by a reliance on the assertions of others directly on a political question the citizen is asked to answer as part of a formal democratic decision procedure. Reliance on expert testimony generally, even in the context of political decision-making, does not similarly conflict with democratic values. As a consequence of the argument, citizens have a pro tanto reason to rely on their own political judgment when determining their vote, and democratic societies have a reason to only ask citizens questions they are able to answer without reliance on political testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the limitations of the ideal of political equality under non-ideal circumstances and focuses specifically on the way in which structurally unjust social contexts endanger individuals' perception of their own worth. Starting from Rawls' definition of the social bases of self-respect as a primary good to be fairly distributed, the paper main goal is to provide normative arguments in favor of a power sensitive theory of political agency. A power sensitive theory, in fact, proves to be necessary as it sheds a light over the way in which power relationships affect the very possibility, for some members of the constituency, of fully enjoying the status of political reflexive agents. Against this background, in the paper I defend two main theses. First, I argue that the contemporary debate concerning the implementation of the ideal of equality within liberal democracies has been overlooking the epistemic dimension of the basis of political equality. Second, I claim that specifying the epistemic dimension of political equality has at least two important effects. a. It is important from the perspective of conceptual analysis, as it allows to properly distinguish between the normative job played by moral arguments on the one hand, and the epistemic aspects of political equality on the other hand. b. The specification of the epistemic aspects of political equality has at least on important normative upshot, namely the possibility to show that epistemic forms of injustice are detrimental to the very ideal of political equality as an essential feature of liberal conceptions of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neste artigo procuro responder a uma questão específica: é possível recuperar o valor e papel determinante do conceito de soberania popular, na condição das democracias contemporâneas? Presumindo de que é ainda possível (e também desejável) recuperar este ideal e princípio regulador, quero explorar que condições temos à nossa disposição hoje que nos permitam fazê-lo. Isso implica, antes de mais, expor criticamente os perigos eminentes trazidos pela globalização e pelo novo imperialismo neoliberal, que põem em cheque as aspirações democráticas fundamentais de liberdade, igualdade e justiça social. Neste sentido, questionar sobre as condições de possibilidade da soberania popular significa questionar as condições de possibilidade para a própria democracia. Só conseguiremos recuperar a democracia se redefinirmos: a) a relação entre indivíduo e comunidade; b) a relação entre nações democráticas e organizações globais não-democráticas; c) o espaço onde a democracia deve acontecer (da nação-estado para comunidades locais). Assim, este artigo tem quatro momentos. Primeiro, ofereço uma leitura do conceito de soberania popular na modernidade, tendo como ponto de referência a obra de Rousseau. No segundo momento caracterizo a constelação democrática contemporânea, a partir das leituras oferecidas por Bernard Manin (1997) e Nadia Urbinati (2006). No terceiro momento concentro-me na tensão entre ideais democráticos e hegemonia neoliberal. Por fim, questiono as condições de possibilidade para recuperar a democracia, e com ela, o conceito de soberania popular.

The ongoing rise of inequality and the outbreak of the economic crisis since 2008 have fueled the debate about the effects of macro-economic processes on democracy in general, and on political participation in particular. Whereas the effect of economic disparity is well documented in the literature, the implications of the economic downturn have not been sufficiently evaluated so far. The article addresses this gap by offering a comprehensive overview of the impact of these macro-economic factors on individual political participation in Europe. Using data from the first six rounds of the European Social Survey, it shows that income inequality reduces participation and enlarges the participatory gap between better- and worse-off. In contrast, economic contraction has no effect on the overall level of participation and makes the poor participate more and the rich less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines theories on the relationship of market and democracy. Four theorems may be distinguished: (1) The necessity theorem: market (M) is the necessary condition of democracy (D) ([M→D]+). (2) The inequality theorem: market undermines democracy ([M→D]-). (3) The optimality theorem: democracy is the optimal condition of market ([D→M]+). (4) The disability theorem: democracy undermines the market ([D→M]-). My question is whether these theorems include or exclude each other. After the reconstruction of the four theorems I examine the six possible combinations of them. My conclusion is that the theory stating that market and democracy mutually reinforce each other is compatible with the theory discussing the conflicts between market and democracy: the two theories do not constitute a logical contradiction. This analysis assists in understanding why the relationship of capitalism and democracy may be relatively stable: the selectivity of democracy and the political restrictions of market do not undermine, do not eliminate economic and political freedom, but sustain it in a modified form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presence, of bodies and ideas, is often taken as the primary indicator of political equality and, hence, democratic health. Intersectionality and constructivism question the validity of measuring presence. Turning theory into practice, we propose a comparative reflexive design guided by two research questions: (1) Who are the groups? and (2) What are their problems? This reveals both prototypical and non-prototypical groups and interests, from the perspectives of politicians (from above) and citizens (from below). We suggest concrete qualitative and quantitative methodological strategies to study these questions empirically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The article elaborates an original intertwined reading of republican theory, deliberative democracy and political equality. It argues that republicans, deliberative democrats and egalitarian scholars have not paid sufficient attention to a number of features present in these bodies of scholarships that relate them in mutually beneficial ways. It shows that republicanism and deliberative democracy are related in mutually beneficial ways, it makes those relations explicit, and it deals with potential objections against them. Additionally, it elaborates an egalitarian principle underpinning the resulting model that I label Equality of Access and Deliberation. The upshot of these considerations is a novel and mutually reinforcing interrelated three‐tiered theoretical and institutional proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though falling turnout in recent decades has been recognised as a problem for democracy, the solutions that have been proposed have mostly been drawn from the realms of the marketplace and society, rather than that of democracy. The inadequate empirical theory that subtends many policy initiatives designed to improve turnout accounts for why these initiatives have largely failed to achieve their stated aims. I argue that electoral participation should be seen through the conceptual lens of collective action, and that this approach suggests mandatory electoral participation as an equitable and effective coordination device. I further argue that compulsory turnout offers a good fit with democratic norms of equality, rights and political obligation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I demonstrate that a set of well-known objections defeat John Stuart Mill’s plural voting proposal, but do not defeat plural voting as such. I adopt the following as a working definition of political equality: a voting system is egalitarian if and only if departures from a baseline of equally weighted votes are normatively permissible. I develop an alternative proposal, called procedural plural voting, which allocates plural votes procedurally, via the free choices of the electorate, rather than according to a substantive standard of competence. The alternative avoids standards objections to Mill’s proposal. Moreover, reflection on the alternative plural voting scheme disrupts our intuitions about what counts as an egalitarian voting system. Undue emphasis on Mill’s version of plural voting obscures three important reasons to reject plural voting in favor of strictly egalitarian voting systems: (1) that certain choices that generate inequalities of political power are morally impermissible; (2) that even chosen inequalities may undermine the potential epistemic benefits of democratic decision-making; and (3) that such choices may undermine citizens’ commitments to democracy understood as a joint project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporatism is being reinvented in current theories about global democracy. As I see it, corporatism can be regarded as a practical way out of democracy's intensity problem: whether those more involved in an issue should have greater say. By the same token, corporatism can be perceived as a response to the all-affected principle: whether those especially affected by a decision should have more influence. In nation-states, corporatism was to a large extent dismantled during the 1980s. In world politics, by contrast, NGOs are now called upon to play an important role in not only articulating intense and affected interests but also, in so doing, realizing a global democracy. The weakness of this argument is that today's NGOs do not reflect the will of most people--as national organizations once managed to do--and, consequently, cannot fulfill the integrative and representative function associated with this form of interest politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing economic inequality fosters inequality in the political processes of American democracy. Since the 1970's inequalities in earnings and wealth have increased dramatically in the United States creating a higher level of inequality in disposable income than in other developed democracies. The United States also lags behind other rich nations in the way it provides for those at the bottom of the income distribution, and there is no evidence that the opportunities for success promised by the American Dream compensate for inequality in America. Technological and economic developments are significant causes of this growing economic inequality. The role of politics is more controversial, but government policy influences the distribution of income and education by the way it determines government benefits, taxes and the way markets function. For a number of reasons--including, most importantly, the relationship between education and income and the ability of the affluent tomake large campaign donations--thosewho are economicallywell-off speakmore loudly in politics. They are more likely to engage in most forms of individual political participation--not only ones that involve using cash but also ones that cost nothing except time. Moreover, when it comes to political voice through organizations, a professionalized domain dominated by hired experts in which the volume of political voice can be altered to reflect available economic resources, affluent interests are more likely to be organized and active. This essay considers the growing economic inequalities that form an important part of the backdrop for unequal political voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I aim to establish that, according to almost all democratic theories, instrumentalist considerations often dominate intrinsic proceduralist considerations in our decisions about whether to make extensive use of undemocratic procedures. The reason for this is that almost all democratic theorists, including philosophers commonly thought to be intrinsic proceduralists, accept 'High Stakes Instrumentalism' (HSI). According to HSI, we ought to use undemocratic procedures in order to prevent high stakes errors - very substantively bad or unjust outcomes. However, democratically produced severe substantive injustice is much more common than many proponents of HSI have realised. Proponents of HSI must accept that if undemocratic procedures are the only way to avoid these high stakes errors, then we ought to make extensive use of undemocratic procedures. Consequently, according to almost all democratic theorists, democratic theory ought, for practical purposes, to be reoriented towards difficult moral and empirical questions about the instrumental quality of procedures. Moreover, this is potentially very practically important because if there are available instrumentally superior undemocratic procedures, then wholesale institutional reform is required. This is one of the most potentially practically important findings of normative democratic theory. In spite of this, no-one has yet explicitly recognised it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]