We compare direct democracy, in which members of a population cast votes for alternatives as choice problems arrive, and representative democracy, in which a population elects a candidate whose ordering of alternatives serves as a binding, contingent plan of action for future choice problems. While direct democracy is normatively appealing, representative democracy has practical advantages and ...

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in democratic processes, often summarized by the term e-democracy, has seldom been analysed from a global perspective. Although the UN eParticipation index provides one of the few examples of an international measurement of e-democracy, it has been thoroughly criticized. At the same time, however, a number of studies have added knowle...

How should open agent societies be organized? Should they be democracies, and, if so, what types of democracy? We present three normative models of democracy from political philosophy and consider their relevance for the engineering of open multi-agent systems: democracy as wise rule by an elite; democracy as the exercise of rational consumer choices by voters; and democracy as deliberative dec...

Introduction This paper applies the thought of Jacques Rancière to the concept of democracy as it is traditionally understood in library studies literature. Methods The paper reviews a cross-section of instances of the link between democracy and the public library in library studies literature. It offers a close textual analysis of Michael Gorman's Our Enduring Values as typifying the link betw...

Abstract This paper examines the relationship between democracy and economic growth in 30 Sub-Saharan African countries. As our proxy for democracy we first use the democracy index constructed by Freedom House and then check the sensitivity of our findings using, as an alternative proxy for democracy, the Legislative Index of Electoral Competitiveness (LIEC). We find support for the Lipset hypo...

In this case study, an e-democracy approach called liquid democracy is applied for gathering feedback from a large group of software end-users. Liquid democracy aims to leverage the scalability of decision processes to a crowd of people. The outcomes gave an indication of the added value of liquid democracy techniques for gathering end-user requirements. Traditional requirements engineering app...

Academics and researchers face a challenge of making sense of the role e-democracy plays in the democratic process and with what implications. This requires a deeper understanding of the objectives and assumptions that underpin e-democracy innovations, as well as institutional and technology structures that condition their role in democratic engagement. This paper interprets case study data col...

Democracy is more than just another brake or booster for the economy. We argue that there are significant indirect effects of democracy on growth through public health and education. Where economists use life expectancy and education as proxies for human capital, we expect democracy will be an important determinant of the level of public services manifested in these indicators. In addition to w...

Terrorism has been considered as a challenge with serious effect in the world as a result of instability, corruption and lack of democracy in most countries. Confronting this phenomenon requires recognizing its roots to find possible solutions. This study aims to examine the effect of some actual factors which causes the terrorism in short and long run. To this end, investigation has been condu...