How should open agent societies be organized? Should they be democracies, and, if so, what types of democracy? We present three normative models of democracy from political philosophy and consider their relevance for the engineering of open multi-agent systems: democracy as wise rule by an elite; democracy as the exercise of rational consumer choices by voters; and democracy as deliberative dec...

Democracy as a political form of social organization offers humanity its best prospect for freedom and peace. Today, it faces deliberate threats from totalitarian movements that rely on terrorist tactics. Democracy also faces threats from its own leaders because of the consequential nature of their judgment and decision making. This article examines how threats to democracy are perceived and ma...

This study examines the relationships between foreign aid, levels of schooling and democracy for Pakistan using the ARDL cointegration approach. The results of study provide strong evidence for fairly robust long run as well as short run relationships among these variables for the period 1973-2008. The results state that foreign aid and primary school enrollments have negative impact on democra...

Democracy: Marx’s theory of history (ex. Organization of the mode of production determines superstructure; unequal distribution of labor) explains the lack of actual democracy in capitalist societies; however, Marx’s thought concerning progression (also a theory of history) states that capitalist societies would eventually progress to a democratic state after a revolution of the proletariat. Ma...

The eclipse of legislatures: Direct democracy in the 21st century JOHN G. MATSUSAKA Marshall School of Business and Law School, University of Southern California, Los Angeles CA 90089-1427 USA Abstract. Demographic, political, and technological trends are fueling an unprecedented growth in direct democracy worldwide. If the trends continue, direct democracy threatens to eclipse legislatures in ...

Observation shows that while democracy is fragile in poor countries, it is impregnable in developed ones. To explain this pattern, I develop a model in which political parties propose redistributions of incomes, observe the result of an election, and decide whether to comply with the outcome or to launch a struggle for dictatorship. Democracy prevails in developed societies because too much is ...

Studies of the relationship between political democracy and economic inequality have produced diverse findings. This study attempts to mitigate some conceptual and methodological problems inherent in such studies by using multi-indicator concepts of inclusive democracy and economic inequality. Data from the five major historically and culturally homogeneous South Asian countries covering 1980-2...

This paper develops a positive theory of growth and redistribution in which agents care about both their absolute and relative levels of consumption. As in Alesina and Rodrik (1994), public goods are productive and are financed by a tax on capital. Equilibrium tax policy is chosen by a pivotal voter and is shown to reflect the strength of status preferences and the distributions of wealth and p...

It is uncommon for a theoretical discussion of democracy to resonate throughout everyday political discussion. The removal of dictatorial regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq created a rare opportunity for political scientists to remind us of the historical thread connecting democratic theory with practice. Despite the devastation and dashed expectations of the Iraq war, in particular, one should no...

Analysis of democracy in Athens as an “epistemic” (knowledge-based) form of political and social organization. Adapted from Ober, Democracy and Knowledge, chapters 1-4. Jon Elster (ed.), volume on “Collective Wisdom” (to be published in English and French). © Josiah Ober. [email protected]