Taiwan's Democracy: Towards a Liberal Democracy or Authoritarianism?

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...

Information Technology: Weapon of Authoritarianism or Tool of Democracy?

Strong tendencies exist to apply information technology to support centralist, authoritarian world views. It is argued that alternative architectures can be readily created, which are more attuned to the openness and freedoms which are supposed to be the hallmarks of democratic government. It is questioned whether authoritarianism will be capable of surviving the complexities, dynamism and wide...

Subjective Measures of Liberal Democracy

Using democracy in empirical work requires accurate measurement. Yet, most policy and academic research presupposes the accuracy of available measures. This article explores judgespecific measurement errors in cross-national indicators of liberal democracy. The authors evaluate the magnitude of these errors in widely used measures of democracy and determine whether their results replicate durin...

Authoritarianism, Democracy and the Transition to Socialism

A Brief Analysis on Elite Democracy in Authoritarianism Countries

This paper, commencing with the revision of classical concepts on democracy, puts forward that democracy is not only the aim but also a kind of means and method, based on which the paper further analyzes the shaping of democracy, and points out that elite democracy is an inevitable trend and that the role and function that elite democracy plays in the process of democratization is the exhibitio...