Promoting democracy through economic conditionality in the ENP: a normative critique

The Case for Promoting Democracy Through Export Control

" Is the Separation of Powers Principle Exportable? " That is the question posed to the contributors to this Symposium. The answer I offer here turns not on abstract principles but on my assessment of the real‐world consequences of exporting the presidential system of separation of powers to other countries. This approach is grounded in the belief that a system of gov‐ ernance should be judged ...

Promoting Democracy in Afghanistan

Tocquevillian Associations and Democracy: A Critique

Alexis de Tocqueville’s notion of political and civic association is a recurrent theme in his work Democracy in America. There he argues that associations are a necessary correlational feature of democratization that should be promoted “at the same speed as the spread of the equality of social conditions” (600). This is because they correct the natural defects of democracy in that they (i) prot...

Mises’ democracy–dictatorship equivalence theorem: A critique

Ludwig von Mises argues that public opinion, not the form of government, is the ultimate determinant of policy. The implication is that, holding public opinion constant, democracies and dictatorships will have the same policies—a result I call Mises’ Democracy–Dictatorship Equivalence Theorem. According to Mises, dictators have to comply with public opinion or else they will be overthrown. I ar...

Privacy for sale - Business as usual in the 21st century: An economic and normative critique

In this paper the author sets out to analyze and critique the commodification of privacy model advanced by Kenneth Laudon. Situating this marketbased model of privacy within the context of the resurgence of neo-classical economics of the last two decades, the author asserts that contemporary economic models, and in particular the intellectual property regime, have difficulty in adequately conce...