Some studies have contended that direct democracy has secondary benefits unrelated to its impact on policy. In particular, recent scholarship claims that the American ballot initiative process enhances political efficacy. We began with concerns about the logic and empirical methods underlying this conclusion. We connect this research to the broader political psychology literature and in doing s...

This paper creates democracy indicators for over 4000 municipalities in Brazil, and studies their impact on economic performance. Municipality-level growth regressions control for the effects of local crop production and their price movements, the sectoral composition of the local economy, income inequality, inflation, ethnic and religious composition of the population, and a conditional conver...

Why are some states more corrupt than others? More specifically, why is post-communist Romania significantly more corrupt than post-communist Hungary even though both transitioned to democracy from USSR satellite states in 1989 and both went on to enter the European Union? This paper argues that though the implementation of communism in political institutions at the time of transition cannot se...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to advocate and contribute to a more nuanced and discerning argument when ascribing a democratic role to libraries and activities related to information literacy. Design/methodology/approach The connections between democracy and libraries as well as between citizenship and information literacy are analysed by using Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism. One example is pr...

This paper critically explores the political theology of Carl Schmitt. It argues that Schmitt’s analysis, which links the transcendence of God with the political concept of sovereignty, is both too nostalgic and too severe. In the place of Schmitt’s political theology that disdains democracy for the failures of modern liberalism, this paper instead draws on the recent collaborative works of Mic...

In discussions on democratic legitimacy, Christiano’s position is often characterized as a monistic position, i.e. a strong and persuasive version of fair deliberative proceduralism. Democracy is thus seen as a realization of public equality in collective decision-making. The presented case for democracy is non-instrumental, and the quality of outcomes produced by a democratic decision-making p...

The European Union (EU) faces a pressing challenge with democratic backsliding potentially resulting in an authoritarian member state. EU institutions have sought to safeguard state democracy. Most normative studies submit that the can legitimately intervene based on either current treaties or theory of militant democracy, but they leave unanswered fundamental question EU's political authority....

In groups people can accomplish what they cannot do alone. Now new visual and social technologies are making it possible for people to make decisions and solve complex problems collectively. These technologies are enabling groups not only to create community but also to wield power and create rules to govern their own affairs. Electronic democracy theorists have either focused on the individual...