Designing enterprise architectures for accountability is to reason about options. Instead of taking enterprise architectures as products, the paper seeks to comprehend how they are produced. Considering enterprise architecture as an entangled category of sociological, political and democratic challenges provide an opportunity to determine the political topos of enterprise architectures.

The disintegration of the state socialist regimes in Eastern Europe cannot be seen as an isolated phenomenon, for it is only the final and most dramatic manifestation of a process which has been unfolding over the past two decades throughout the world. The popular rejection of centralist bureaucratic and authoritarian regimes has been a common feature of political developments in both East and ...

Students of political development have not always been good at understanding drastic political change (Myron Weiner and Samuel P. Huntington, Understanding Political Development, Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1994, 33). Kevin Deegan-Krause contributes to efforts to remedy this shortcoming. He seeks to answer a fascinating puzzle of post-communist transition: What can account for both th...

Increasing levels of democratic freedoms should, in theory, improve women’s access to political positions. Yet studies demonstrate that democracy does little to improve women’s legislative representation. To resolve this paradox, we investigate how variations in the democratization process—including pre-transition legacies, historical experiences with elections, the global context of transition...

The paper begins by examining the nomenclature and definitions of populism, left and right. It argues that labeling changing political realities in Latin America as “left” or “right,” is an inaccurate oversimplification. It defines populism as a political problem with entrenched disregard for democratic institutions, one that leaves a legacy of deteriorated governance and deeply divided societies.

This paper aims at connecting democratic theory with civic technologies in order to highlight the links between some theoretical tensions and trilemmas and design trade-offs. First, it reviews some tensions and ‘trilemmas’ raised by political philosophers and democratic theorists. Second, it considers both the role and the limitations of civic technologies in mitigating these tensions and trile...

We employ Lessig’s framework of regulation to conceptualize the relationship between the Internet and democracy. Lessig defines four classes of regulators, forces that control and define systems such as the Internet. They are markets, architectures, norms, and laws. We propose that a “democratic regulator” is a force that serves to enhance civil or political liberties. And we argue by example t...

Many Latin American countries democratized between 1975 and 2000, and research has confirmed that contemporary Latin Americans hold democratic political attitudes. Using AmericasBarometer surveys of 18 countries from 2008, we examine the commitment of Latin Americans to three democratic attitudes – preference for democracy over other forms of government, support for general participation rights...

Over the past two decades, donors increasingly linked foreign aid to democracy objectives in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet systematic research on this topic typically focuses on how aid influences democratic transitions. This study investigates whether and how foreign aid affects the process of democratic consolidation in sub-Saharan Africa by examining two potential mechanisms: (1) the use of aid as...