What kinds of electoral systems can help democracy survive in countries split by deep cleavages of race, religion, language, or ethnicity? As is well-known, politicians in such “divided societies” often have strong incentives to “play the ethnic card” at election time, using communal appeals to mobilize voters. “Outbidding”—increasingly extreme rhetoric and demands—can offer rewards greater tha...

O ver the past dozen years or so democratic theorists and activists have become increasingly worried about globalization’s adverse effects on democracy. Their concerns include: (1) democratic deficits, or the lack of democratic control over existing intergovernmental and supranational governance structures such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the European Union (EU); (2) democratic ...

Using a Santiago, Chile, health group as an ethnographic case study, I propose ‘‘accountable democracy’’ as an alternative normative project to the theory of deliberative democracy outlined by Habermas in Between Facts and Norms. Accountable democracy has at its center the impact of public-sphere opinion formation on decision making by officials in elected governments. [accountability, Chile, d...

Introduction This article is concerned with the challenges and (im)possibilities of reconciliation. Framed around the question, 'Can we reconcile?', in what follows I consider the political challenges involved in attempting to restore broken relationships and find ways to live together, democratically and non-violently, with radical differences (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall 2011 :246). The ...

Democracy as an advanced form of politics is not independent from socioeconomic development. This paper examines the developmental threshold for democracy, namely a point in the development process beyond which democracy can be effectively installed and sustained. Based on the two research trends on the issue, a framework of democratic transformation is proposed where two essential factors of s...

A scientific, economic relationship among self, society and nation is still not clearly known in philosophy, sociology and economics because of lack of concrete historical human data that would enable to substantiate it. Humanity experienced many conflicting economic and political systems. Consequently, philosophers, sociologists and economists have been investigating to study the economic rela...

On-line political communities, such as the Norwegian site Demokratitorget (Democracy Square), are often designed according to a set of un-reflected assumptions about the political interests of their potential members. In political science, democracy is not taken as given in this way, but can be represented by different models which characterize different relationships between politicians and th...

In this paper, we discuss the implications for social inclusion of the advent of Internet voting. Although the issue of social exclusion or social inclusion with regard to technological developments in the voting process is often approached as a matter of either security or turnout, we will take a broader view. Using the philosophical concept of technological mediation, as developed by Don Ihde...

Representative democracy faces profound problems. Electoral turnout has declined to such an extent that the legitimacy of the mandate to govern is drawn into question [19,p. 33]. This problem is exacerbated and reinforced by a feeling of disconnection and distrust between the governed and the governors and a perception that voting and other forms of participation do not influence electoral outc...