Religious Democracy and Civilizational Politics: Comparing Political Islam and Political Catholicism

Party Politics, Political Polarization and the Future of Ethiopian Democracy

Political Parties and Democracy

A central claim of democratic theory is that democracy induces governments to be responsive to the preferences of the people. Political parties organize politics in every modern democracy, and some observers claim that parties are what induce democracies to be responsive. Yet, according to others, parties give voice to extremists and reduce the responsiveness of governments to the citizenry. Th...

Political Legitimacy and Democracy

The stability and functioning of any kind of political regime—including democratic or representative ones—relies on the combination of the capacity of rulers and government officials to use coercion and the development of political legitimacy. Political legitimacy can be described as people's recognition and acceptance of the validity of the rules of their entire political system and the decisi...

Democracy and political boundaries

If democracy implies political equality, in the sense that everyone has roughly the same opportunity to influence political decisions, we may ask: ”Who are included among ‘everyone’?” In other words, if ”democracy” is government “by the people”, who are included among “the people”? This may be called ”the boundary problem in democratic theory”. The problem is not what actually existing peoples ...

Political Islam and Militancy: a Political Economy Approach

Given inevitable constraints of the fiscal year framework for development planning, not to mention the day to day rush of project design and implementation, development policymakers and practitioners often simply lack the time to engage in longer term strategic planning. While there is usually a general sense of what they want to see happen 10 years down the line, there is still a need to think...