L democracy, and its promotion, are now facing a set of serious challenges.1 On the one hand, as the Arab Spring demonstrates, democratic aspirations are intensifying, which opens up significant new opportunities for democracy support. On the other hand, in the context of the financial crisis and austerity, levels of funding for democracy aid are being reconsidered, and the credibility and effe...

Following the introduction of democratic institutions in the countries of central and eastern Europe, the question of the consolidation of these newly implemented democracies arises. One of the most important conditions for consolidation is support for democracy from the community of citizens in the respective countries. In the theoretical frame of reference of this analysis, it is postulated t...

In this paper, I argue that many recent interpretations of John Dewey’s vision of democracy distort that vision by fi ltering it through the prism of contemporary deliberative democratic theories. An earlier attempt to defend Dewey’s theory of moral deliberation is instructive for understanding the nature and function of this fi lter. In James Gouinlock’s essay “Dewey’s Th eory of Moral Deliber...

Overestimation of the level democracy is prevalent among citizens in nondemocracies. Despite such prevalence, no research to date has systematically documented this phenomenon and examined its determinants. Yet given renewed interest role legitimacy authoritarian survival, studying whether why arises important our understanding resilience. I argue that, even absence democratic institutions nond...

This article argues that population policies need to be evaluated from macro and micro perspectives and to consider individual rights. Ecological arguments that are stringent conditions of liberal democracy are assessed against a moral standard. The moral standard is applied to a series of reasons for limiting procreative rights in the cause of sustainability. The focus is directly on legall...

The number of electronic participation (eParticipation) projects introduced by different governments and international organisations is considerably high and increasing. In order to have an overview of the development of these projects, various evaluation frameworks have been proposed. In this paper, a five-level participation model, which takes into account the advantages of the Social Web or ...

The level of trust inherent in a society is important for a wide range of microeconomic and macroeconomic outcomes. This paper investigates how individuals’ attitudes toward social and institutional trust are shaped by the political regime in which they live. The German reunification is a unique natural experiment that allows us to conduct such a study. Using data from the German General Social...

In this paper, we study representative democracy, one of the most popular classes of collective decision-making mechanisms, and contrast it with direct democracy. In a direct democracy, individuals have the opportunity to vote over the alternatives in every choice problem the population faces. In a representative democracy, the population commits to a candidate ex ante who will then make choice...

The established view in political science is that a sound and functioning state has to be in place before democracy can be introduced. State first, and then democracy. While acknowledging that the basic infrastructure of state authority and administration has to be there for a democratic system to be established and work, this paper examines the possibility that democratisation itself may play ...

Over the past decades many countries have experienced rapid changes in their economies, their democratic institutions and the values of their citizens. Comprehensive data measuring these changes across very different countries has recently become openly available. Between country similarities suggest common underlying dynamics in how countries develop in terms of economy, democracy and cultural...