This article suggests that in the origins of modern state, there is a paradox: the state concentrates the use of violence and, in this way, it is the main source of violence; but at the same time, attempts to delete it. To solve this paradox is the main challenge of the democratic state. If modern state provides security without rights, it would lose legitimacy, its moral advantage. At internat...

This article seeks to build a bridge between the empirical scholarship rooted in traditional theory of political representation and constructivist on by focusing authorization claims. It answer how claims can be authorized beyond elections - selecting three democratic innovations tracing through claim-making process. Different participatory are selected providing various taking place different ...

Key institutions of the pre-modern Middle Eastern economy, all grounded in Islamic law, blocked the development of democratic institutions. This talk identifies three mechanisms that played critical roles. Islam's original tax system failed to produce lasting and credible constraints on governance. The waqfs (Islamic trusts) founded to provide social services to designated constituencies were p...

The point of departure of our analysis on the evolving role of the state in contemporary society is offered by the innovations introduced by e-government within the democratic, administrative and bureaucratic processes of the modern state. A vast literature on this topic presents e-government as a great opportunity to innovate the business of government, for instance by the re-introduction of N...

On the face of it, civil marriage represents both the most typical and most anodyne aspect of modern law. One might say that by instituting civil marriage, a bureaucratic, enumerative, and secularized state permits its subjects absolute individual choice of marital partners, and concurrently, by refusing to take into account the religious affiliation of any party, grants total freedom of religi...