Public Support for Democracy in Transitional Regimes

Hybrid Regimes and Arab Democracy

ON APRIL 30, 2006, the Egyptian Parliament voted by a large majority to renew the emergency law. This law grants the president extraordinary powers to detain citizens, prevent public gatherings, and issue decrees with little accountability to Parliament or the people. The vote was a famil­ iar ritual: the Egyptian Parliament has routinely approved the emergency law for most of the past forty ye...

Democracy and Public Health.

Rethinking Democracy Support

L democracy, and its promotion, are now facing a set of serious challenges.1 On the one hand, as the Arab Spring demonstrates, democratic aspirations are intensifying, which opens up significant new opportunities for democracy support. On the other hand, in the context of the financial crisis and austerity, levels of funding for democracy aid are being reconsidered, and the credibility and effe...

Public Service and Liberal Democracy

The debate on television’s "public service"obligations can only make full sense if integrated in the broader context of the debate on the best political model for society. In fact, the classic "public service"rationale is based in a normative conception of good and in a suspicious view of the average citizen that is largely tributary of a Platonic or Elitist approach to the political organizati...

Towards decision support for participatory democracy

In many parts of the world there is a growing demand for participation in public policy decision making. This demand could be satisfied by the design and deployment of webbased group decision support systems to aid large groups of, possibly, non-sophisticated, users in participating in such decisions. After describing several mechanisms for participatory democracy, we provide a framework for de...