Executive summary This deliverable proposes the software infrastructure and the data representation and exchange format for the ConCreTe project which will build concept creation systems that cooperate across the Internet, enabling ConCreTe partners to collaborate efficiently. To this end, the underlying technology is based on the concept of Web service architecture, allowing software developed...

Democratic governments constantly need to make sense of their citizens’ needs to make appropriate decisions that reflect the overall wishes and needs of the population. However, except for mandatory voting scenarios, a low rate of citizen participation in government decisions through democratic processes is an aspect that defies democracy itself. Brazil’s participatory budget policy emphasizes ...

This essay turns to ancient sources in order to rethink the relationship between political apathy and democracy. If modern democratic theorists place political apathy entirely outside of democracy – either as a destructive limit upon the full realization of a democratic polity, or, more sanguinely, as a pragmatic necessity which tempers democracy so that it may function in a workable yet watere...

We ask what redistributions of income and assets are feasible in a democracy, given the initial assets and their distribution. The question is motivated by the possibility that if redistribution is insufficient for the poor or excessive for the rich, they may turn against democracy. In turn, if no redistribution simultaneously satisfies the poor and the wealthy, democracy cannot be sustained. H...

1 Democracy assistance may contribute to democratisation in a number of ways. It can channel support for elections, it can strengthen legislatures and judiciaries by creating checks and balances on the executive and other bodies, and it can promote democratic participation by strengthening civil society organisations, among others. Against a background of growing concern for democracy worldwide...

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Contents Acknowledgements page vii List of abbreviations ix Introduction 1 1 The question: is 'liberal democracy' good for economic development? 10 1.1 The context 13 1.2 The pro-'liberal democracy' and anti-'liberal democracy' camps: situating the democracy–development debate within the general debate about 'liberal democr...

This paper, commencing with the revision of classical concepts on democracy, puts forward that democracy is not only the aim but also a kind of means and method, based on which the paper further analyzes the shaping of democracy, and points out that elite democracy is an inevitable trend and that the role and function that elite democracy plays in the process of democratization is the exhibitio...