The problems of weak state structures, including state territoriality, in the South Caucasus has highly influenced political developments and the building of a democratic state. This paper explains the difficulty of recovering statehood in the cases of Armenia and Georgia, both in the context of post–Soviet state transformation and post–conflict state-rebuilding. It argues that recovering state...

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...

A constraint on political cognitivism is that it give some basis for responding to certain worries. These worries prompt political liberals such as Rawls to deny that the search for truth can provide a shared basis for a conception of justice in a pluralistic democratic society.2 On this view, a pluralistic democratic state that avoids the authoritarian use of state power should be neutral abou...

The Voter Qualifications Clause of Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution makes federal voting rights dependent upon participation in state elections. This Article argues that the right to vote in federal elections, as defined by Article I, incorporates both i) state constitutional law governing the right to vote and ii) the democratic norms that existed within the states at the founding...

Title of Document: DISSOCIATED CHOICES IN DIRECT DEMOCRACY: PREFERENCES, POLICY RESPONSIVENESS AND TRUST IN BALLOT INITIATIVE ELECTIONS Joshua J. Dyck, Ph.D. 2006 Directed By: Professor James G. Gimpel, Department of Government and Politics This research begins with a simple question: do direct democratic voting systems fulfill their promise of generating more majoritarian policy outcomes? I pr...