As democracy goes through various crisis and citizens increasingly disengage with traditional party politics, extra-parliamentarian, alternative modes of democratic politics emerge on many fronts; manifesting a development towards what is called counter-democracy. Debates on the role of the internet in democracy have been with us since its inception; today the discussions focus on social media,...

This article offers a critical assessment of Jürgen Habermas’s discourse theory of democracy. It suggests that the main thrust of a discursive account of legitimacy is the attempt to show how the demands of maximal democratic inclusion might be reconciled with a politics of reasoned agreements. While this aim is endorsed, the thrust of the argument is that a critical theory of democracy require...

Democracy is rule by the demos, but by what criteria is the demos constituted? Theorists of democracy have tended to assume that the demos is properly defined by national boundaries or by the territorial boundaries of the modern state. In a recent turn, many democratic theorists have advanced the principles of affected interests and coercion as the basis for defining the boundaries of democracy...

This article joins the debate on political aspects in participatory design (PD) in Scandinavia. The article argues that the political aspect is not missing but rather inherent in current Scandinavian PD research. Democracy is brought forward as a core political ideal. It is discussed whether democracy is an outmoded political ideal and how to reach democracy. Finally, the article touches upon t...

This paper argues that limits on campaign contributions may well be Pareto improving even under the most optimistic assumptions concerning the role of campaign advertising and the rationality of voters. The argument assumes that candidates use campaign contributions to convey truthful information to voters about their qualifications for office and that voters update their beliefs rationally on ...

This paper argues that limits on campaign contributions may well be Pareto improving even under the most optimistic assumptions concerning the role of campaign advertising and the rationality of voters. The argument assumes that candidates use campaign contributions to convey truthful information to voters about their qualifications for office and that voters update their beliefs rationally on ...

Web sites of Slovenian political parties do not fully exploit the Internet’s potential for interactive and deliberative communication on political issues with citizens, because they favour a competitive-elitist perception of democracy. As result, political party’s web sites are mainly used for political mobilization, agitation in persuasion. Supporting this model of democracy via web pages enab...

For ‘legal constitutionalists’, written constitutions, constitutive of the legal and political system, superior to other legislation, entrenched against change, and enumerating justiciable rights, guarantee equal respect and concern for all citizens. Judicial review is thus an essential support of democracy. In this book, Richard Bellamy offers a robust argument against this view of constitutio...