Democracy as a Latent Variable

We apply formal, statistical measurement models to the Polity indicators, used widely in studies of international relations to measure democracy. In so doing, we make explicit the hitherto implicit assumptions underlying scales built using the Polity indicators. Modeling democracy as a latent variable allows us to assess the "noise" (measurement error) in the resulting measure. We show that this measurement error is considerable and has substantive consequences when using a measure of democracy as an independent variable in cross-national statistical analyses. Our analysis suggests that skepticism as to the precision of the Polity democracy scale is well founded and that many researchers have been overly sanguine about the properties of the Polity democracy scale in applied statistical work.     

New Public Management and Substantive Democracy

The authors are concerned that a remaining refuge of substantive democracy in America, the public sector, is in danger of abandoning it in favor of the market model of management. They argue that contemporary American democracy is confined to a shrunken procedural remnant of its earlier substantive form. The classical republican model of citizen involvement faded with the rise of liberal capitalist society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Capitalism and democracy coexist in a society emphasizing procedural protection of individual liberties rather than substantive questions of individual development. Today's market model of government in the form of New Public Management goes beyond earlier "reforms," threatening to eliminate democracy as a guiding principle in public-sector management. The authors discuss the usefulness of a collaborative model of administrative practice in preserving the value of democracy in public administration.     

Democracy as an equilibrium

Observation shows that while democracy is fragile in poor countries, it is impregnable in developed ones. To explain this pattern, I develop a model in which political parties propose redistributions of incomes, observe the result of an election, and decide whether to comply with the outcome or to launch a struggle for dictatorship. Democracy prevails in developed societies because too much is at stake in turning against it. More income can be redistributed in developed than in poor countries without threatening democracy. Limits on redistribution arise endogenously, so that constitutions are not necessary for democracy to endure. A democratic culture characterizes the equilibrium.     

Democracy as a Tragic Regime: Democracy and its Cancellation

Abstract

To see "democracy as a tragic regime", as Cornelius Castoriadis did, is to recognize the ever-present risk of democracy's cancellation, but it also means to emphasize the anti-democratic nature of such cancellation, thus its incompatibility with democracy. In the context of this understanding of democracy, the article takes the political to consist of those relations among people and among institutions within the polis, which aim at deciding the polis' fate. It takes the social to be those relations among people and among institutions within the polis, to whom such decisions about the polis' fate apply and whom they create. If democracy is understood as tension between the two, then the relation between those who decide and those who are the subject of the decision is never entirely pacified - hence, always contested and in need of specification. Using the examples of the state of exception and totalitarianism (temporary and permanent self-cancellation), the article argues that these situations are outside a linear continuation with the democratic phenomenon and are due to a displacement, which is akin to the hubristic displacement.     

The inventory of differences

The new democratic left interprets socialism as involving the radical democratization of civil society and the state. Both conceptions of democracy and conceptions of socialism are variations on the theme of a self-govering community. The first part of this paper explores the diversity of accounts of democracy and of the issues in dispute between them. Part 2 then proceeds to identify conceptual difficulties with these ideas, and to examine some of their consequences for political analysis. While the theme of a self-governing community has always been somewhat problematic there are significant features of the modern world that further undermine any plausibility it may once have had. These conceptual weaknesses inherent in ideas of democracy and of socialism limit their untility as tools of political argument, and help to account for some of the difficulties socialists have in coming to terms with the world in which they now find themselves. The argument is not that the idea of socialism as enhanced democratization should be abandoned, but rather that such an idea is radically incomplete. A socialism that is worthy of support must address the substantive social and political problems of the societies in which it operates. The slogan of democratization is of limited value in identifying those problems or in establishing solutions to them.     

略论西方民主政治的理论基础

根据西方的民主理论,民主政治应当体现为多数人的统治。但是,如果多数的权力不受制约,多数人进行统治并不一定带来真正的民主政治,因为集体的智慧是有限的,多数的无限权威容易导致权力的滥用,多数的交易规则对少数人具有强制作用,这样常常会产生多数人忽视少数人权益的现象。因此,要使多数人的民主成为多数善政,要使民主政治具有适当的制度基础,就要对多数投票决定问题的范围加以限定,少教人应当被给予更大程度的自治,司法体系和社会力量要充分利用起来对多数的权力加以制衡。     

Fear's Anger: Virginia Woolf's Psychology and Deliberative Democracy

In A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf implicitly addresses the necessary conditions for equal participation in deliberative democracy. Woolf's analysis indicates that proponents of deliberative democracy must be attentive to the angry, unconscious resistance that is part of reasoning in a deliberative system—especially when political deliberation results in a challenge to a person's identity. Woolf's solution for women writers, the material security represented by a room of one's own, can be applied to the larger problem of political deliberation as well. This leads to an expansion of the conception of substantive equality required for a deliberative democracy. Further, Woolf's insight challenges deliberative democrats to de-center capitalist economic relations. As a way of protecting the individual from the psychological dynamic Woolf describes in A Room of One's Own, deliberative democrats should advocate a non-competitive economic space for those threatened by the powerful psychological reactions to deliberation.     

协商民主概念的提出及其多元认知

协商民主理论研究兴起之后,如何界定协商民主的内涵就成了学术界的研究重点。在毕塞特看来,当初美国立宪者设计的以人民主权原则为基础、以权力分立与相互制约的体制为架构、以定期选举和政党竞争为动力的代议民主体制,就是"协商民主",就是一种深思熟虑的、审慎的、尊重人民主权的民主政治。而曼宁、科恩等学者开始拓展其内涵,将合法性、追求理性自治与公民参与的政治理想赋予协商民主。吉登斯、扬、德雷泽克等学者分别从"对话民主""交往民主"和"话语民主"角度进行了新阐释。协商民主概念经历了一个逐渐丰富和发展的过程。总体上讲,协商民主就是基于人民主权原则和多数原则的现代民主体制,其中,自由平等的公民,以公共利益为共同的价值诉求,通过理性的公共协商,在达成共识的基础上赋予立法和决策以合法性。     

Democracy and the governing party (执政党): A theoretical perspective

The Fourth Plenum of the Communist Party of China held in September 2004 outlined a course of reform aimed at establishing the Party as a permanent governing party (zhizheng dang 执政党). This aim shares some of the values and procedures of legislative democracy, but is fundamentally different in structure. There are no existing cases of party-state democracy as envisioned in the governing party idea, so the theoretical question is asked, is party-state democracy possible? The paper considers the course of development and the limitations of the theory of legislative democracy and contrasts it to the course of Chinese political development. It then presents the essential elements of a democratic system, concluding with a discussion of the feasibility of party-state democracy.     

Markets in a Democracy

The global financial – and now economic – crisis has demonstrated that markets, and particularly financial markets, are not self-correcting and that, if left unregulated, they will inevitably overreach themselves and lead to excess. Governments have a duty to regulate markets in the public interest but where (as in the case of recession) markets produce adverse outcomes, governments also have a duty to lean against market logic in order to minimise those outcomes. These lessons extend well beyond purely economic matters. Unregulated markets will inevitably produce social and environmental outcomes that reflect narrow and short-term individual and sectoral interests rather than those of society as a whole. The whole point of democracy is that it allows the less powerful majority to use the power and legitimacy of government to offset and counteract the economic power of a minority. If the market cannot be or is not challenged, democracy itself is weakened, loses its point and forfeits the confidence of the people it is meant to serve.     

Enacting Democracy

We do not need more 'models of democracy', but we do need a fresh view of democratic theory to take full advantage of deliberative, ecological, cosmopolitan and other innovations of recent years. Approaches such as these can be understood in terms of the devices they deploy – deliberative forums and cross-border referendums, for example, as well as more familiar elections and legislatures. Devices enact democratic principles; indeed, it is argued that principles gain their meaning and force through enactment. Devices can also be reordered in different ways; democrats can construct sequences which enact democracy in particular, desired ways. Pursuing this argument involves adopting a reflexive and procedural perspective, which puts a premium on democracy as sensitive to context, open-ended, productive and adaptable.     

Global Democracy: A Symposium on a New Political Hope

The idea that the values and norms of democracy can also be applied to global politics is increasingly debated in academe. The six authors participating in this symposium are all advocates of global democracy, but there are significant differences in the way they envision its implementation. Some of the contributors discuss if and how substantial changes undertaken by states, mostly in their foreign policies, may also generate positive consequences in global politics. Other contributors address the nature of the international arena and the possible reforms it should undergo starting with the reform of international organizations. The debate combines theoretical aspects with normative proposals that could also be advanced in the political arena and offers a wide range of perspectives on the attempts to achieve a more democratic global political community.     

Economic Democracy and the Expediency of Worker Participation

The increased discussion of economic democracy in America in recent years makes sense given the context of crises in Keynesianism, the welfare state, corporate legitimacy and American 'competitiveness'. Departing from Dahl's recent analysis, this paper argues that one notion of economic democracy - the internal democratization of the firm - can be conceived and plausibly linked to objectives of increased American competitiveness and community stability. The argument rejects purist schemes of universal cooperative ownership as well as so-called shareholder democracy. It proposes a representative system for the firm based on a balance among shareholder, employee and community interests, a separation of powers between boards of directors and management, and a concept of transition based on democratic development of already widespread employee stock-ownership plans.     

Mechanisms of Issue Congruence: The Democratic Party Mandate

Issue congruence between voters and parties can be achieved if voters and parties follow the party mandate model. A central requirement of this model is that parties fulfil their electoral mandate. This article studies collective party mandate fulfilment by comparing parties’ election manifestos with the parliamentary speeches of their politicians in two countries: a typical consensus democracy, the Netherlands, and a typical majoritarian democracy, the United Kingdom. The central question is whether a difference in collective mandate fulfilment exists between these two types of democracy. Contrary to previous findings, this study finds that such a difference does not exist, at least not with regard to the two countries analysed. This can be explained by the way in which the party mandate is conceptualised. The article also analyses the development of party mandate fulfilment over time and finds no evidence for the idea that collective mandate fulfilment is declining.     

On Democracy1

This paper attempts to provide a modern, universal, conceptualisation of democracy. J. D. May's ‘responsive rule’ approach is analysed. It is argued that his approach, although on the right lines, is not satisfactory as it stands. Democracy should be seen as referring to the principles which underlie the political process for a given regime, and is logically independent of the detailed institutional practices. Following Easton's analysis of a regime in terms of authority structure, values, and norms, democracy is analysed in terms of three principles of upward control, political equality, and norms defining acceptable polices. procedures, and behaviour. Democracy is not a dichotomous concept: given regimes differ in the extent to which they embody the principles of democracy in the operation of their institutions. In practice it will be hard, perhaps impossible, to find any regime anywhere which does not embody some elements of democracy to some degree. This vitiates the almost universal practice of using democracy and non-democracy as underlying concepts in a system of categorisation of regimes. Such categories become wholly arbitrary. Because of the subtle ways in which the democratic principles may work in different contexts. and because measures of these various manifestations of democracy can only be combined on a purely arbitrary basis, statistical measures of ‘democracy’ also become arbitrary. It is concluded that, although facets of the political process may be investigated using statistical techniques. ultimately the main thrust of empirical studies of democracy must be qualitative rather than quantitative. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. (H. L. Mencken. Sententiae. A Book of Burlesquer, 1920)     

Representation and Democracy: Uneasy Alliance

The concept of 'representation' is puzzling not because it lacks a central definition, but because that definition implies a paradox (being present and yet not present) and is too general to help reconcile the word's many senses with their sometimes conflicting implications.
Representation has a problematic relationship with democracy, with which it is often thoughtlessly equated. The two ideas have different, even conflicting, origins. Democracy came from ancient Greece and was won through struggle, from below. Greek democracy was participatory and bore no relationship to representation. Representation dates – at least as a political concept and practice – from the late medieval period, when it was imposed as a duty by the monarch. Only in the English Civil War and then in the eighteenth-century democratic revolutions did the two concepts become linked.
Democrats saw representation – with an extended suffrage – as making possible large-scale democracy. Conservatives instead saw it as a tool for staving off democracy. Rousseau also contrasted the two concepts, but favoured democratic self-government.
He was prescient in seeing representation as a threat to democracy. Representative government has become a new form of oligarchy, with ordinary people excluded from public life. This is not inevitable. Representation does make large-scale democracy possible, where it is based in participatory democratic politics at the local level.
Three obstacles block access to this possibility today: the scope of public problems and private power; money, or rather wealth; and ideas and their shaping, in an age of electronic media.     

Understanding Democracy as a Prerequisite for Spreading Democracy

The cultural underpinnings of American democracy are discussed with emphasis on ideas made famous in Max Weber’s, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In particular there is emphasis on the way America built upon the British cultural tradition so that the American working class would not be dependent upon bread and circuses offered by a political elite, a tradition in Europe dating back to the Roman Empire. Instead cultural emphasis on moral integrity and the self-respect of the American working class, the underpinnings of moralistic individualism as a key component of democratic culture in America but not necessarily in many other parts of the world, is emphasized. These ideas are elaborated with discussion of a certain decay of these values in present-day America, and the problems the American government has had in conveying the importance of these values to other nations seeking to democratize partly under our influence.

Deliberative Democracy and International Labor Standards

Political theorists have argued that the methods of deliberative democracy can help to meet challenges such as legitimacy, effective governance, and citizen education in local and national contexts. These basic insights can also be applied to problems of international governance such as the formulation, implementation, and monitoring of labor standards. A participatory and deliberative democratic approach to labor standards would push the labor–standards debate into the global public sphere. It would seek to create broad discussion about labor standards that would include not only firms and regulators, but also consumers, nongovernmental organizations, journalists, and others. This discussion could potentially improve (1) the quality of labor standards by incorporating considerations of economic context and firm capability, (2) their implementation by bringing to bear not only state sanctions but also political and market pressures, and (3) the education and understanding of citizens. Whereas the role of public agencies in state–centered approaches is to formulate and enforce labor standards, central authorities in the decentralized–deliberative approach would foster the transparency of workplace practices to spur an inclusive, broad, public conversation about labor standards. To the extent that a substantive consensus around acceptable behavior emerges from that conversation, public power should also enforce those minimum standards.     

Restoring Ethnic Democracy: The Or Commission and Palestinian Citizenship in Israel

Israel's Palestinian citizens have historically enjoyed limited individual rights, but no collective rights. Their status as rights-bearing citizens was highlighted in 1967, with the imposition of Israel's military rule on the non-citizen Palestinians living in the occupied territories. It was the citizenship status of its Palestinian citizens that qualified Israel, a self-defined “Jewish and democratic state”, as an “ethnic democracy”. In October 2000 Israeli police killed 13 citizen Palestinians who participated in violent but unarmed demonstrations to protest the killing of non-citizen Palestinians in the occupied territories. Both the citizen Palestinian demonstrators and the police were engaged in acts of citizenship: the former were asserting their right as Israeli citizens to protest the actions of their government in the occupied territories, while the latter attempted to deny them that right and erase the difference between citizen and non-citizen Palestinians. Significantly, no Jewish demonstrator has ever been killed by police in Israel, no matter how violent his or her behavior. In November 2000 a commission of inquiry was appointed to investigate the killings. Its report, published in September 2003, is yet another act of citizenship: it seeks to restore the civil status of the citizen Palestinians to where it was before October 2000, that is, to the status of second-class citizens in an ethnic democracy. The Commission sought to achieve this end by undertaking a dual move: while relating the continuous violation of the Palestinians' citizenship rights by the state, it demanded that they adhere to their obligation to protest this violation within the narrow limits of the law. This article's key question is: could the Commission, by viewing the behavior of the Palestinian protestors as legitimate civil disobedience, have encouraged the evolution of Israel from an ethnic to a liberal democracy?