The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in democratic processes, often summarized by the term e-democracy, has seldom been analysed from a global perspective. Although the UN eParticipation index provides one of the few examples of an international measurement of e-democracy, it has been thoroughly criticized. At the same time, however, a number of studies have added knowle...

Against recent criticism, this article demonstrates that the effective democracy index (EDI) has scale properties that are fully consistent with the normative premises of the index’s construction logic. Empirically, it is shown that the EDI deviates from all other indices of democracy in a perfectly intended way that incorporates substantiating qualities of democracy which the other indices neg...

Academics and researchers face a challenge of making sense of the role e-democracy plays in the democratic process and with what implications. This requires a deeper understanding of the objectives and assumptions that underpin e-democracy innovations, as well as institutional and technology structures that condition their role in democratic engagement. This paper interprets case study data col...

In this paper, I argue that many recent interpretations of John Dewey’s vision of democracy distort that vision by fi ltering it through the prism of contemporary deliberative democratic theories. An earlier attempt to defend Dewey’s theory of moral deliberation is instructive for understanding the nature and function of this fi lter. In James Gouinlock’s essay “Dewey’s Th eory of Moral Deliber...

Democracy is more than just another brake or booster for the economy. We argue that there are significant indirect effects of democracy on growth through public health and education. Where economists use life expectancy and education as proxies for human capital, we expect democracy will be an important determinant of the level of public services manifested in these indicators. In addition to w...

How should open agent societies be organized? Should they be democracies, and, if so, what types of democracy? We present three normative models of democracy from political philosophy and consider their relevance for the engineering of open multi-agent systems: democracy as wise rule by an elite; democracy as the exercise of rational consumer choices by voters; and democracy as deliberative dec...

During the past half century, the political attitude of the Eastern European people toward the state, government and society changed dramatically. So did their value systems. Inglehart's materialist vs. postmaterialist comparative analysis gives a measure of this value change, but not enough as to fully characterize the phenomena underlining the differences in political culture before and after...

This study investigated the attitudes of university students toward political participation, as well four other selected democratic values – freedom and liberty, human rights/human rights protest, corruption resistance, separation powers in Nigeria. A descriptive survey design, with a tool entitled ‘Attitude towards Democratic Values Questionnaire (ADVQ)’, was used to collect data from randomly...

This paper develops a theory of the endogenous formation of a common market in a three–country, n factor political economy model. Ex ante policies in each of the prospective members are the result of direct democracy, and equilibrium outcomes may include both import restrictions as well as subsidies. The decision to join a common market is modelled as a simultaneous move game between the two pr...