Theoretical arguments and empirical evidence are advanced to bolster the claim that direct political participation via referenda and initiatives constitutes an advanced form of democracy with beneficial effects on Transition Countries. Direct democracy raises trust and honesty and improves social outcomes. Per capita incomes and subjective well-being are raised. Standard arguments against direc...

The field of technoethics explores the ethical challenges that technology poses to the different spheres of society. Recently, scholars have begun to explore the ethical implications of new digital technologies and social media, particularly in the realms of society and politics. A qualitative case study was conducted on Barack Obama’s campaign social networking site, my.barackobama.com, in ord...

nowadays democracy is considered to be one of the most important parameters of development in new era. as a result, the trend toward democratization of a society’s culture is an essential step to achieve a stable development. in that case, identifying the relationship between acceptability of democracy and socialcultural factors is very important. in this study, using the method of survey and q...

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...

To most theorists of democracy in the West, India is an embarrassing anomaly and hence largely avoided. By most theoretical stipulations India should not have survived as a democracy: ƒ it's too poor ƒ its citizens largely rural and uneducated ƒ its civic institutions rather weak. ƒ It is a paradox even for those who believe in a positive relationship between economic equality or social homogen...

The paper will explore the key benefits and challenges in advancing e-Government for democratic participation and social inclusion, particularly from a Middle Eastern regional perspective (i.e., Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan). The use of online Internet services for applying e-democracy is studied with many clarifying comments and obstacles. The authors suggest that the implementation of e-Democr...

Conventional views of African politics imply that Africans’ political opinions are based either on enduring cultural values or their positions in the social structure. In contrast, we argue that Africans form attitudes to democracy based upon what they learn about what it is and does. This learning hypothesis is tested against competing cultural, institutional, and structural theories to explai...

Following the collapse of socialism in the late 1980s, Central and Eastern European countries initiated attempts to adopt capitalist economic frameworks and promote entrepreneurship. However, persistent economic difficulties and high levels of unemployment have led to dissatisfaction with political parties favoring capitalism. We integrate identity, institutional, and social movement theories t...

article: Processes of globalization raise thorny issues of legitimacy as global governance institutions find themselves making policy decisions that have little grounding in popular consent. One solution would be to implement global democracy. Desirable as this might be, however, many scholars argue that global democracy is simply not feasible, for the social preconditions of democracy cannot b...

A scientific, economic relationship among self, society and nation is still not clearly known in philosophy, sociology and economics because of lack of concrete historical human data that would enable to substantiate it. Humanity experienced many conflicting economic and political systems. Consequently, philosophers, sociologists and economists have been investigating to study the economic rela...