Information Technology, IT, may play an important part in any community as a supporting tool in the democratic process. The conditions for that to happen are primarily a genuine wish of the community members to take democratic action, having access to the technology and the skills to use it. The purpose of this paper is to establish the “Democratic Functions of IT” in what we call “The Swedish ...

This paper develops a political economy model that is consistent with the fact that democracies have a preference for increasing marginal tax rates on income. We present a model in which there is an exogenous set of political parties with preferences over the set of admissible tax schedules. This set contains virtually any increasing and piecewise linear continuous function. Each party decides ...

With the irruption of ICTs and the crisis of political representation, many online platforms have been developed with the aim to improve participatory democratic processes. However, regarding platforms for online petitioning, previous research has not found examples of how to effectively introduce discussions, a crucial feature to promote deliberation. In this study we focus on the case of Deci...

This article evaluates the patterns of democracy in the 16 federal states of Germany. By replicating Lijphart's analysis for the German sub-national context, we attempt to explain the connections between the political-institutional variables in the Uinder democracies. Using factor analysis, it is possible to distinguish a three-dimensional pattern. Whereas the western area-states and Saxony ten...

Success and failure of democracy are interpreted as different equilibria of a dynamic political game with cost of changing leadership and incomplete information about politicians’ virtue. Unitary democracy can be frustrated when voters do not replace corrupt leaders, because any new leader would probably also govern corruptly. However, federal democracy cannot be consistently frustrated at both...

____________________________________________________________________ ii Chapter 1_____________________________________________________________________1 1. Towards Improving Representative Democracy in Canada _____________________________ 1 1.1. Defining Democracy: A “Dynamic Balance” ______________________________________________1 1.2. The Contemporary Model: Representative Democracy __________...

Many cross-national surveys examine the extent to which citizens of new democracies believe that democracy is always preferable to any other form of government. There is little evidence, however, regarding how such attitudes affect citizen behavior. This article examines the case of Bolivia, asking whether and how Bolivians’ attitudes toward democracy affect participation, including contacts wi...

The Spirit of Democracy project began in the summer of 2000. The project aims to strengthen the commitment to democratic ideals and institutions in Russia. The objective of the project is to enhance the capacity of civic educators to develop and sustain a dynamic and vibrant program of citizenship education. This goal is being met through supporting teachers in Canada and Russia by providing on...

We are now rethinking the idea of electronic democracy. Today nobody is looking at e-democracy from the perspective of a living room, push button, instant referenda democracy, hi the electronic age it is more and more evident that we are facing a complex evolution of the functioning of political systems that democracy is becoming not direct, but continuous; that we can look at an extreme democr...

Joshua Cohen In this essay I explore the ideal of a 'deliberative democracy'.1 By a deliberative democracy I shall mean, roughly, an association whose affairs are governed by the public deliberation of its members. I propose an account of the value of such an association that treats democracy itself as a fundamental political ideal and not simply as a derivative ideal that can be explained in t...