The changing circumstances in which parties compete in contemporary democracies, coupled with the changing circumstances in which governments now govern, have led to a widening of the traditional gap between representative and responsible government. Although it is generally seen as desirable that parties in government are both representative and responsible, these two characteristics are now b...

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...

the aim of this research is to scrutinize the effects of democratic regional organizations on democratization. we will scrutinize regional organizations regardless of their functional time and space. but attending the democratic feature that was regarded, we will concentrate mainly on the last three decades. after studying democratization process and represent subjects on democratic regional or...

Recent developments in South Asian countries, especially the re-emergence of democratic governments, new growth momentum despite the global economic downturn and greater openness, warrant a fresh look at the region’s prospects for economic integration. On the basis of a thorough review of the literature on potential and prospects of regional integration in South Asia and after examining the tre...

This paper studies the stability of the coalition government formed in 1993 in Japan, called the Hosokawa government, by using a dynamic coalition formation model presented in Fukuda and Muto [2]. Ono and Muto [6] studied the stability of the same coalition government by applying the static coalition formation model of Hart and Kurz [4], which employed Owen’s [7] coalition value to measure part...

Governments, even the most liberal and enlightened, all consider it necessary to suppress at least some information and comment. Indeed, the key statements on intellectual freedom recognise that this may happen and that it can in certain types of case be considered legitimate. For instance, the European Convention on Human Rights, after setting out the essential rights to information and commun...

Recent research builds on the observation that democracies have more durable alliances to argue that democracies make more reliable allies. This need not be the case. Alliances serve as commitment devices, adding ex ante credibility to states’ claims about ex post behavior. Variation in alliance durability must reflect differences in the desirability of formalizing alignments. Put simply, democ...

It is becoming increasingly important to European democratic governments to increase public participation. We argue that more effective tools are required to clearly display local planning proposals and their consequences in web based interactive 3D, free at the point of access. Initial workshops have shown that such tools are only likely to be used if those so doing can influence the outcome. ...

Weighting in life cycle assessment (LCA) is a controversial subject due to its dependence upon value judgements. One of the issues that has to be dealt with is whose values that shall be reflected. In a democratic society, a fair candidate to put forward would be the government. In environmental economics taxes and fees set up by governments to protect natural resources and the environment are ...

The article describes the international cooperation of local governments, which are a form decentralization democratic states. This developed massively after Second World War. Today more than 200,000 and regional communities participate in it, cooperating not only by direct contacts, but also through various types organizations networks. is new growing phenomenon environment. On selected exampl...