Evaluating the Democratic Quality of Local Democratic Practices – Sampling Seven Frameworks

Democratic Quality in Stable Democracies

The major predecessor to Ringen's and my own efforts to measure democratic quality in terms of the purpose of democracy is Robert Dahl's seminal book Polyarchy (1971). Measuring the quality of democracy requires two prior judgments: (1) making sure that, in terms of institutional characteristics, a country is sufficiently democratic, and that, as a minimum, it has universal suffrage, and (2) th...

From Democratic Peace to Democratic War?

The “democratic peace” is not only a fancy idea of academia, most prominently advanced by the philosopher of Enlightenment Immanuel Kant in his famous essay on “Perpetual Peace” (1795), but two hundred years later, is established as a liberal research program in the U.S. International Relations discipline. The famous statement “democracies do not fight each other” seems so far to represent a re...

The renewal of democratic practices in knowledge societies

Democratic and Anti-Democratic Regulators of the Internet: A Framework

We employ Lessig’s framework of regulation to conceptualize the relationship between the Internet and democracy. Lessig defines four classes of regulators, forces that control and define systems such as the Internet. They are markets, architectures, norms, and laws. We propose that a “democratic regulator” is a force that serves to enhance civil or political liberties. And we argue by example t...

Democratic Leadership: The Lessons of Exemplary Models for Democratic Governance

Since leadership plays a vital role in democratic movements, understanding the nature of democratic leadership is essential. However, the definition of democratic leadership is unclear (Gastil, 1994). Also, little research has defined democratic leadership in the context of democratic movements. The leadership literature has paid no attention to democratic leadership in such movements, focusing...