For some time the notion ‘technocracy’ has been, for better or for worse, associated with the functioning of the European Union (EU). But what role do technocratic assumptions play in the EU’s new ‘symbolic’ policy agenda of democracy promotion, if any? Some authors have suggested that ‘depoliticising’ technocratic biases exist in the EU democracy promotion framework, despite its ‘normative’ rh...

One condition for the stability of democratic systems is the development of a political culture that is congruent with the implemented structure. As the presented data shows, in unified Germany this kind of congruence exists only in West Germany. In East Germany a majority of citizens is supporting democracy as well, but have a rather skeptical attitude toward the liberal democracy of Germany. ...

12 Synaptic democracy is believed to be an important effect that enables distal 13 synapses to contribute information to the soma. Synaptic democracy is found in 14 hippocampal CA1 pyramidal neurons, which is an important area of the brain 15 for learning and memory. Previous computational work by Sterratt et al [1] 16 show that synaptic democracy arises in a model of a CA1 pyramidal neuron 17 ...

The field of e-Democracy has suffered from fuzzy conceptualizations about the actual role of ICT in the field. That is, the contribution of “e” in e-Democracy has been difficult to justify. To address the role of ICT in e-Democracy projects we contribute theoretically by combining knowledge on IT artefacts, genres and E-Democracy models to be able to explore ICT in its embedded surroundings. IT...

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...

The Internet revolution of democracy, which will transform earthly representative democracies by employing the communication and collaboration capabilities of the Internet, has yet to come. Here, we enlist the wisdom of our forefathers to lead the way. By consulting the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, we distill core values of democracy and derive from them requirement...

Neighborhood-representing organizations (NROs) are generally viewed as the most authentic form of citizen participation and local democracy. In this article, I question how democratic NROs actually are, both on the local level (participatory democracy) and in the external arena (representative democracy). I present a new conceptual model of the components of democracy in neighborhood organizati...

It is widely thought that oil and democracy do not mix. Rentier states, it is argued, need not tax their citizens, thus breaking a crucial link between citizens and their governments, and dimming the prospects for democracy. In this paper I examine the link between rentierism and democracy using a cross-regional dataset. I pay particular attention to the possibility that there are both positive...

Democracy is a notion whose legitimacy is based on its moral foundations. The first part of the paper demonstrates the moral qualities of democracy. For this purpose structural and material similarities between the concept of responsibility and democracy are especially useful. In the second part of the paper the impact of information technology, especially the Internet, on the moral foundation ...