Conventional views of African politics imply that Africans’ political opinions are based either on enduring cultural values or their positions in the social structure. In contrast, we argue that Africans form attitudes to democracy based upon what they learn about what it is and does. This learning hypothesis is tested against competing cultural, institutional, and structural theories to explai...

The Internet revolution of democracy, which will transform earthly representative democracies by employing the communication and collaboration capabilities of the Internet, has yet to come. Here, we enlist the wisdom of our forefathers to lead the way. By consulting the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, we distill core values of democracy and derive from them requirement...

Neighborhood-representing organizations (NROs) are generally viewed as the most authentic form of citizen participation and local democracy. In this article, I question how democratic NROs actually are, both on the local level (participatory democracy) and in the external arena (representative democracy). I present a new conceptual model of the components of democracy in neighborhood organizati...

It is widely thought that oil and democracy do not mix. Rentier states, it is argued, need not tax their citizens, thus breaking a crucial link between citizens and their governments, and dimming the prospects for democracy. In this paper I examine the link between rentierism and democracy using a cross-regional dataset. I pay particular attention to the possibility that there are both positive...

Democracy is a notion whose legitimacy is based on its moral foundations. The first part of the paper demonstrates the moral qualities of democracy. For this purpose structural and material similarities between the concept of responsibility and democracy are especially useful. In the second part of the paper the impact of information technology, especially the Internet, on the moral foundation ...

experience of double revolutionary upheavals in russia during the 20th century which produced a new socio-economic regularity on one hand and changed the political system from monarchial to democratic republic and then soviet state and finally presidential republic at the end of 20th century on the other hand are treated as democratic movements. in this regard, crumbling of ex-soviet regime and...

the purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between religiosity of iranians and their attitude toward democracy. the subjects of the study consisted of 383 students (both male and female) from shiraz university, and the data was collected through a questionnaire in spring 2004. to determine the relationship, the writers used max weber's theory. students' religiosity was measured...

Digital platforms are a primary means of communication in society. Public libraries play an empowering role these processes, strengthening citizens’ digital competences. This raises questions about what democratic processes the technology is made to enable. The study investigates how Swedish Library (DL) envisioned and organised within national digitalisation strategy. Qualitative methods used,...

Democracy is defined by two core tenets: voice and pluralism. Within these constraints, a wide variety of regime types can be designed. We show that the only new, untested form of democracy is when every citizen is governed by the political party of his/her choice. Multiple full-fledged governments would coexist in the same national territory at the same time, each one sovereign only over the p...

Political theory from its very onset has determined that democracy is inconceivable without a crisis. This applies to the ancient writings of Plato, Aristotle, Polybios to the modern era with writings of Tocqueville, Marx and Max Weber or since the 1970s the leftists Jürgen Habermas (1973) and Claus Offe (1972), the conservative Crozier, Huntington, Watanuki (1975), the leftist NeoSchmittian Ch...