The possibilities for promoting an expanded conception of democratic political participation through information and communications technologies (ICTs) have been widely observed. Potential synergies between ICT developments and democratic renewal arise from the two-way, interactive nature of new digital media, and their technical enhancement of citizen capacities to access, produce, distribute,...

At the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, the science and technology communities, along with other nonstate actors, were singled out as major partners in the quest for sustainability. This is in line with calls for refashioning scientiac expertise into a more transparent, accountable and democratic enterprise. Participatory, civil, citizen, civic, stakeholder and democratic s...

Arguably, liberal democratic societies are seeing the emergence of a ‘Fifth Estate’ that is being enabled by the Internet. This new organizational form is comparable to, but potentially more powerful than, the Fourth Estate, which developed as a significant force in an earlier period with an independent press and other mass media. While the significance of the press and the Internet to democrat...

Reporting bias – the media’s tendency to systematically under-report or over-report certain types of events – is a persistent problem for participants and observers of armed conflict. We argue that the nature of reporting bias depends on how news organizations navigate the political context in which they are based. Where government pressure on the media is limited – in democratic regimes – the ...

Research into the determinants of foreign aid giving suggests different predictions for the effect of recipient country democratic institutions on the probability and amount of aid given by donor countries. While some suggest that better governance in recipient countries may increase the amount of aid provided by donors, others adhere to the notion that less democratic recipient governments may...

Increasing levels of democratic freedoms should, in theory, improve women’s access to political positions. Yet studies demonstrate that democracy does little to improve women’s legislative representation. To resolve this paradox, we investigate how variations in the democratization process—including pre-transition legacies, historical experiences with elections, the global context of transition...

Several studies have suggested the possibility of reverse causation in the ‘democratic peace’ relationship: that the well-known extreme rarity of wars between democratic nations may be partially or wholly explained by a negative impact of war on democracy. Three kinds of war-on-regime effects are discussed. Anterior effects are regime changes that occur in preparation for wars; concurrent effec...

In dealing with scarcity of resources within healthcare systems, decision-makers inevitably have to make choices about which services to fund. Setting priorities represents a challenging task that requires systematic, explicit and transparent methodologies with focus on economic efficiency. In addition, the engagement of the general public in the process of decision-making has been regarded as ...

Abstract:Oil is undoubtedly the most important, and at the same time, the most politico-economic commodity in today’s world. As the most important source of economic and political power, oil has constantly played a significant role for Iranian governments both before and after the revolution [1979], and has served as a major fuel for their economic power. However, historical experience in...