The purpose of this paper is to assess the democratic potential of New Community Schools (NCS) as initiated by the Scottish Executive as one of its first major interventions. It traces the background to the initiative, locates it within the particular circumstances of the historical, political and cultural contexts of Scotland, and defines its particular ambivalence with regard to deliberative ...

A sequence of irreducible Markov chains with increasing state cardinality is called democratic if the sequence of corresponding invariant probabilities converges to 0 uniformly. Democracy is a relevant property which naturally shows up when we deal with opinion dynamic models and cooperative algorithms over a network: it says that each agent measure/opinion is going to play a negligeable role i...

1 Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium, 2 University of Kinshasa, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, 3 Division of International and Humanitarian Medicine, Geneva University Hospitals & University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 4 Programme National de Lutte contre la Trypanosomiase Humaine Africaine, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, 5 Médecins Sans Frontières Access...

The paper discusses the state of Czech democracy and current research agendas on democracy in the Czech Republic, focusing in particular on the role of political parties. It considers Czech democracy both in relation to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and in the light of the evolving relationship between CEE and Western Europe. It suggests that current CEE states such as the Czech Republic gra...

Leader changes induce changes in the pattern of protection and of filings of disputes at the WTO. Additionally, political institutions play an important modifying role. We offer a model that explains changes in trade policy and dispute onset induced by shifts in the sectors represented in government when leaders change. Democratic leaders are more likely to initiate WTO disputes than autocrats....

This article explores the inter-relationship of collective action within the business community, the nature of the political regime and the security of firms’ property rights. Drawing on a pair of surveys recently administered in Russia, we present evidence that post-communist business associations have begun to coordinate business influence over state actors in a manner that is sensitive to re...

! Abstract The predominant normative justification for research on economic voting has been its essential role in shaping democratic accountability. A systematic examination of this literature reveals, however, that economic voting is highly contingent on two critical moderating factors: voters themselves and the political context in which they make judgments. The trend toward a better and more...

This paper examines the recent political economy of trade policy in Indonesia against the backdrop of two key events: the deep economic crisis of 1997-98, and the transition from three decades of rapid growth under an authoritarian regime to a weaker but democratic state. We investigate both international and domestic trade policy. The international trade policy regime has remained largely open...

In every society in many arenas, the reality of collective decision making falls far short of the democratic ideal in countless ways. These shortfalls include disenfranchisement, unequal influence operating through formal and informal mechanisms, political apathy and alienation, misinformation, and misperception. Part of the solutions to these challenges lies in a sound democratic constitution....

I BEGIN WITH A QUANDARY that is very familiar to Martin Ostwald: Classical Athens saw the invention of both democracy and political theory, yet while we have a number of examples of criticism of democracy, no systematic defense of democracy-no democratic theory-survives from an Athenian pen. I propose that the conundrum is best explained by assuming that from the late fifth through the late fou...