The EU represents a new and complex political system which, according to numerous social scholars, suffers from the so-called democratic deficit. The basic argument behind this claim is that citizens lack control of the EU because, within its political system, national parliaments of member states possess only limited powers which have not been adequately compensated through steady empowerment ...

During the years before the surge of democratization in 1987-1993, reported happiness levels showed strong nation-level correlations with measures of democracy such as the Freedom House political rights and civil liberties scores: the correlations were in the .7 to .8 range. This could be interpreted as meaning that: (1) living under democratic institutions makes people happy; or (2) high level...

A decade has passed since the Third Wave of democratization brought an avalanche of new, relatively unstable democracies into being, raising the question, “How solid is support for democracy in these countries?” In the intervening years, public support for democracy has faded in some countries, many of which are democratic in name only. It is unclear how long even the pretense of electoral demo...

This paper argues that energy democracy could manifest in terms of public engagement at the community level, free of state intervention, government fostering, and donor support, even in locations where governments have been in flux from a democracy to a non-democracy. In currently non-democratic Thailand, for example, public engagement on community energy transitions had occurred, were sustaine...

In 2010 the Croatian Constitution was changed to lower the requirements for the implementation of direct democracy at the national level, in order to save the referendum on Croatia’s EU membership from possible failure. Since then, Croatia has witnessed a sharp increase in people’s initiatives that have managed to block a number of the government’s reform proposals. Therefore, the newly discove...

There is increasing interest in promoting participatory democracy, in particular by allowing voting by mail or internet and through random-sample elections. A pernicious concern, though, is that of vote buying, which occurs when a bad actor seeks to buy ballots, paying someone to vote against their own intent. This becomes possible whenever a voter is able to sell evidence of which way she vote...

This article intends to clarify views regarding important challenges that have originated from the political, social, cultural and geopolitical structures in the elections systems of Persian Gulf Arab countries. Challenges that determine the compatibility levels of elections systems of these countries with the world’s democratic systems. An efficient elections system is the prerequisite for the...

the concepts of democracy have been around for centuries in different fields of human sciences. however, in most of these fields the idealistic and far-fetched features attributed to democracy have not been manipulated yet. it should be mentioned that there have been only a few serious attempts to find proper go-between elements, which could make such a concept as comprehensible and tangible as...