Participatory democracy refers to an organizational form in which decision making is decentralized, nonhierarchical, and consensus oriented. It can be contrasted with bureaucracy, in which decision making is centralized, hierarchical, and based on a formal division of labor, as well as with majority vote. Participatory democratic organizations have been a prominent feature of many progressive m...

Latin America is committed to build more democratic social relationships as a part of its current democratization process. Mathematics education is a relevant set of social practices that could contribute to the consolidation of democratic social relationships in the school. This dimension of social interaction in mathematics education as a source of democratization is explored conceptually and...

Analysis of democracy in Athens as an “epistemic” (knowledge-based) form of political and social organization. Adapted from Ober, Democracy and Knowledge, chapters 1-4. Jon Elster (ed.), volume on “Collective Wisdom” (to be published in English and French). © Josiah Ober. [email protected]

When voting on a proposal one in fact chooses between two alternatives: (i) A new hypothetical social state depicted by the proposal and (ii) the status quo (henceforth: Reality); a Yes vote favors a transition to the proposed hypothetical state, while a No vote favors Reality. Social Choice theory generalizes voting on one proposal to ranking multiple proposals; that Reality was forsaken durin...

Does democracy improve the quality of life for its citizens? Scholars have long assumed that it does, but recent research has called this orthodoxy into question. This article reviews this body of work, develops a series of causal pathways through which democracy might improve social welfare, and tests two hypotheses: (a) that a country’s level of democracy in a given year affects its level of ...