A constraint on political cognitivism is that it give some basis for responding to certain worries. These worries prompt political liberals such as Rawls to deny that the search for truth can provide a shared basis for a conception of justice in a pluralistic democratic society.2 On this view, a pluralistic democratic state that avoids the authoritarian use of state power should be neutral abou...

The Voter Qualifications Clause of Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution makes federal voting rights dependent upon participation in state elections. This Article argues that the right to vote in federal elections, as defined by Article I, incorporates both i) state constitutional law governing the right to vote and ii) the democratic norms that existed within the states at the founding...

Title of Document: DISSOCIATED CHOICES IN DIRECT DEMOCRACY: PREFERENCES, POLICY RESPONSIVENESS AND TRUST IN BALLOT INITIATIVE ELECTIONS Joshua J. Dyck, Ph.D. 2006 Directed By: Professor James G. Gimpel, Department of Government and Politics This research begins with a simple question: do direct democratic voting systems fulfill their promise of generating more majoritarian policy outcomes? I pr...

This article explains why democracy and the important process of democratisation include but go beyond the ambit of the state and state laws, and how democracy and democratisation are both negotiated, contested, engaged with and made up by diverse state and non-state actors within plural legal orders and across multiple sites and transnational networks. This article aims to re-imagine the conce...

Why do legislators sometimes engage in behavior that deviates from the expressed policy preferences of constituents who participate in politics at high rates? We examine this puzzle in the context of Democratic legislators' representation of their senior citizen constituents on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). We find that legislators' roll-call votes on the ACA did...

Political participation in a modern, federal state is a complex business for an average educated citizen. These circumstances support political abstinence: Statistical studies prove the fact that as far as votes and elections are concerned, which are the most easy way to participate, the participation in votes and elections declined 20% respectively about 40%. Since 1900. Therefore it is necess...