Dual citizenship and theories of democracy

Dual/multiple citizenship has become a widespread phenomenon in many parts of the world. This acceptance or tolerance of overlapping memberships in political communities represents an important element in the ongoing readjustment of the relationship between citizens and political communities in democratic systems. This article has two goals and parts. First, it evaluates dual citizenship from the perspective of five normative theories of democracy. Liberal and republican as well as multicultural and deliberative understandings of democracy deliver a broad spectrum of arguments in favour of dual citizenship. Only communitarians fear that dual citizenship endangers national democracies. Nevertheless, empirical evidence and national policies largely contradict these fears. The second part of the article reverses the perspective and shows that most theories of democracy do not only legitimate and facilitate the acceptance of dual citizenship – the phenomenon of multiple citizenships induces innovation in democratic theory in turn. A second look at the relationship between dual citizenship and theories of democracy reveals that dual citizenship stimulates refinements, expansions and reconceptualisations of these theories for a transnationalising world.     

Missing the overlap between theory and practice: Patten’s ‘equal recognition’ in the face of the Catalan case

Drawing on the particularities of Catalonia (and related cases), the general point of this contribution is to argue that Patten’s equal recognition theory is modeled upon a too-restricted set of empirical assumptions, a circumstance that might harm its value as a tool for the orientation, evaluation, and reform of public policy. What is absent in Patten’s account – or at least not properly inserted into it – are four built-in modules that we have named ‘history’, ‘democracy’, ‘international relations’, and ‘migration’. When it comes to recognition of minorities, the past matters more often than Patten is willing to accept; democracy can lead to permanent departures from equal recognition on the part of self-governing national minorities; in the recognition game, there are other relevant players than simply states and their minorities; and one of these players, namely immigrant groups, can (albeit involuntarily) distort equal recognition schemes.     

The political budget cycle across varying degrees of democracy

The political budget cycle (PBC) is a well-known theory claiming that leaders manipulate the economy in proximity to elections to improve their chances of re-election. While the existence of the phenomenon in democracies has been thoroughly discussed, little attention has been given to the theoretical justification and empirical evidence of its existence in autocracies. In this article, I present a hypothesis of the magnitude of the PBC in both autocracies and democracies, claiming that as the democracy level increases, the incentive of leaders to manipulate the economy rises, but their ability to do so is more limited. Therefore, I expect the magnitude of the PBC to be the lowest in states that are strongly autocratic (due to a lack of incentives) and in states that are strongly democratic (due to a lack of ability). The effect should be the strongest in weakly autocratic or weakly democratic states. The empirical analysis presented in the article supports the hypothesis of a non-linear correlation between the PBC and levels of democracy.     

Norberto Bobbio,liberal socialism and the problem of language

Norberto Bobbio's theory of procedural democracy grows out of his refusal of totalising knowledge in favour of a belief that the ‘sparrow's’ view is preferable to that of the ‘eagle’. Only in this way is irreducible human difference protested. History is reduced by Bobbio from both its liberal and its marxist presumptions about its total sense to a realm of partial empirical proof for assertions about the good. It cannot be understood as more than a contested area of facts whose overall laws and telos cannot be known. The good can only be agreed upon in a debate. Thus he sees politics as a place where all voices must be heard and consensus arrived at on contingent and limited goods. Thus practically politics becomes today the practice of more representative democracy in more places. The condition for such a practice is a liberal socialist regime of rights. His valuable theory of procedural democracy as the defender of difference in society finds its limits in an undeveloped theory of communication across difference. What is a common acceptable, undistorted language for the debate?     

Democracy and countries with Muslim majorities: a reply and update

My empirical results in Potrafke (2012) confirm past conclusions that Muslim-majority countries are less likely to be democratic. Hanusch takes issue with my results—and by inference with all past empirical results on the relation between Islam and democracy. In his comment on my study, Hanusch indicates that he believes I was using the POLITY IV index. He has not realized, as I made most clear, that the purpose of my study was to show results based on new data from Cheibub et al. (2010). Hanusch claims to have reversed the conclusion that having a Muslim majority is associated with having autocratic government. He establishes his conclusion by excluding the heartland of Islam from the estimation sample. For his estimates, Hanusch moreover uses data that do not appear to exist, at least in the claimed sources. I update my estimates to address issues that Hanusch raises. My new results confirm the conclusion that countries with Muslim majorities are less likely to be democracies. In deriving this result, I do not follow the strategy proposed by Hanusch of excluding from the data sample the countries in the heartland of Islam.     

Economic development and democracy: An electoral connection

Scholars continue to debate whether economic development affects regime type. This article argues that a clear relationship exists between development and the electoral component of democracy, but not – or at least less so – between development and other components of broader understandings of democracy. This is so because development enhances the power resources of citizens and elections provide a focal point for collective action. The theory is tested with two new datasets – Varieties of Democracy and Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy – that allow us to disaggregate the concept of democracy into meso- and micro-level indicators. Results of these tests corroborate the theory: only election-centred indicators are robustly associated with economic development. This may help to account for apparent inconsistencies across extant studies and shed light on the mechanisms at work in a much-studied relationship. Further analysis shows that development affects electoral democracy by reducing electoral fraud, election violence and vote buying.     

The partisan heuristic and the voters’ knowledge: The essential role of the information environment

The low-information rationality theory expects voters with low political knowledge to make more use of the partisan heuristic than those with high knowledge. However, empirical studies on decision making in direct democracy observe a positive correlation between political knowledge and the use of party cues. We resolve this tension between theory and empirical evidence by demonstrating that the relationship between political knowledge and the use of party cues is conditional on the information environment. We provide evidence for this hypothesis by exploiting a natural experiment in Switzerland and analyze a large variety of direct democratic votes. The results show that voters with lower levels of political knowledge tend to align less with their preferred party because they often have a wrong perception of their preferred party’s vote recommendation. However, if information on parties’ position is easily available, their vote choice is at least as much in line with their preferred party as among those with high knowledge. This suggests that in such an information environment voters with low political knowledge strongly rely on the partisan heuristic. Our research note supports the low-information rationality theory and this way contributes to the literature on the quality of political opinion formation and the political psychology of reasoning and decision making.     

Making User‐boards a School in Democracy? Studying Swedish Local Governments

In its final report, a Swedish Government Commission has argued that representative democracy should be complemented by a high degree of local participation. The Commission argues that user‐boards and citizen panels, for instance, are tools for vitalising democracy by educating people about democratic principles. This argument rests on two assumptions: (a) about the effects of participation in terms of a learning process at the individual level, and (b) about certain specific organisational circumstances that facilitate the learning processes. However, despite having long been evident in democratic theory, the assumptions lack empirical support. Thus, each of the Commission's assumptions poses an interesting empirical challenge: First, does local participation give rise to an individual democratic learning process? Second, does the link between local participation and representative democracy co‐vary with the individual learning process? This article presents results from a process‐oriented comparative study of two Swedish municipalities that introduced user‐boards in the school sector. The article shows that participation in user‐boards gives rise to various degrees of learning processes about democracy for individuals. It also shows that a relation between local governments and user‐boards, characterised by dialogue and cooperation, increases the possibility that participation in user‐boards will give rise to these learning processes.     

What Is Quality of Government? A Theory of Impartial Government Institutions

The recent growth in research on “good governance” and the quality of government institutions has been propelled by empirical findings that show that such institutions may hold the key to understanding economic growth and social welfare in developing and transition countries. We argue, however, that a key issue has not been addressed, namely, what quality of government (QoG) actually means at the conceptual level. Based on analyses of political theory, we propose a more coherent and specific definition of QoG: the impartiality of institutions that exercise government authority. We relate the idea of impartiality to a series of criticisms stemming from the fields of public administration, public choice, multiculturalism, and feminism. To place the theory of impartiality in a larger context, we then contrast its scope and meaning with that of a threefold set of competing concepts of quality of government: democracy, the rule of law, and efficiency/effectiveness.     

The influence of direct democracy on the shadow economy

We analyze, both theoretically and empirically, the influence of direct democratic institutions on the size and development of shadow economies. Our model suggests that, as the extent of direct democracy increases, implemented fiscal policies more nearly reflect the preferences of citizens and so reduce their incentives to operate in the informal sector. This theory implies a negative relationship between the extent of direct democracy and the size of the country’s shadow economy. We also theorize that direct democracy has a greater effect in reducing the informal sector when the former is at low or intermediate values and when the electoral system is characterized by a larger district magnitude. An empirical investigation of a sample of 57 democracies confirms our model’s predictions.     

On democracy and debt

As we explained there is really little a priori reasoning for a clear prediction that authoritarian regimes will incur more foreign debt. In fact, some other empirical literature reveals that such regimes will face a higher supply price for such debt. Anderson presents a study of a single year using an admittedly crude measure of authoritarianism that finds that such regimes do issue more debt.This study provides a fuller examination of the empirical relationship between foreign debt and the nature of the polity's regime. Utilizing a continuous democracy variable and a continuous political liberty variable, it tests the relationship between debt and political variables. It finds little empirical support for the thesis that democracy or autocracy influence foreign debt levels. Generally the continuous variables are not significant if we use a linear in the logs specification. While a linear specification obtains results more consistent with the idea that level of democracy decreases debt, it also obtains results even less favorable to the idea that extreme forms of autocracy increase debt.     

Deliberative Democracy and Social Choice

The paper contrasts the liberal conception of democracy as the aggregation of individual preferences with the deliberative conception of democracy as a process of open discussion leading to an agreed judgement on policy. Social choice theory has identified problems - the arbitrariness of decision rules, vulnerability to strategic voting - which are often held to undermine democratic ideals. Contrary to common opinion, I argue that deliberative democracy is less vulnerable to these difficulties than liberal democracy. The process of discussion tends to produce sets of policy preferences that are 'single peaked'; and within a deliberative setting it may be possible to vary the decision rule according to the nature of the issue to be decided.     

How parties compete for votes: A test of saliency theory

Saliency theory is among the most influential accounts of party competition, not least in providing the theoretical framework for the Comparative Manifesto Project – one of the most widely used data collections in comparative politics. Despite its prominence, not all empirical implications of the saliency theory of party competition have yet been systematically tested. This article addresses five predictions of saliency theory, the central claim of which is that parties compete by selective issue emphasis rather than by direct confrontation. Since a fair test of the theory's assumptions needs to rely on data that measures party issue saliency and party positions independently, this article draws on new manifesto data from the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES). Analysing all manifestos issued for the 2002, 2006 and 2008 general elections, it shows that saliency theory correctly identifies some features of party competition. For instance, parties disproportionally emphasise issues they ‘own’. Yet, the core assumption of saliency theory that parties compete via selective issue emphasis rather than direct confrontation over the same issues fails to materialise in the majority of cases.     

Partisanship and independence: the peculiar moralism of American politics

Against the background of historical antipartyism in practice and in democratic theory, and with a focus on American political thought, this paper takes issue with contemporary arguments that value the political identity ‘Independent’ and disparage partisanship. A typology of ‘Independent’ is offered and both empirical and moral claims about the superiority of Independent voters are rebutted, with particular focus on the ‘weightlessness’ of Independents. The reasons to appreciate the moral distinctiveness of partisanship for democracy are set out: commitment to political pluralism, to regulated political rivalry, and to shifting responsibility for governing. Inclusiveness, comprehensiveness, and compromisingness set the contours for an ethic of partisanship.     

Towards Robust Hybrid Democracy in Scandinavian Municipalities?

This article calls for the development of democratic hybrids that combine elements of representative democracy with elements of participatory and deliberative democracy. It presents and evaluates an empirical model of hybrid democracy from a Danish municipality and tests whether the positive Danish experiences can be transferred to a Norwegian municipality with less favorable local conditions. The finding is that the hybrid model of democracy is relatively robust in the face of context variation, not least due to conducive local dynamics in the Norwegian case. The relative robustness of the so‐called ‘Gentofte model’ may stimulate its diffusion in countries sharing key elements of the Scandinavian model and inspire municipalities in other countries to experiment with the development of hybrid democracy. The diffusion of hybrid democracy helps to enhance the overall performance of local democracy and reduce the inherent tension between democratic leadership and democratic equality.     

Economic Development and Democracy: the View from Latin America

This article provides a robust empirical test of the economic development thesis using time-series data on seventeen Latin American countries ( n =408). It specifies similar models (both linear and non-linear) to those found in the global comparative literature on economic development and democracy in an effort to replicate their findings at the regional level. The statistical analysis shows that the positive relationship between economic development and democracy is not upheld at this level, even when using alternative measures of both and controlling for sub-regional variation. Overall, the analysis provides a regional 'most likely' study that infirms the main claims of modernization theory.     

Democracy is a Failure Worthy of Infinite Repetition

Abstract

This paper argues that democracy is universalisable as a theory and practice that fails to be identical with itself. Firstly, the paradox that democracy's universality can be put into practice only in particular terms and contexts is discussed. Then four models of democratic universality are presented and assessed: (i) empirical or actual universality; (ii) hybrid universality; (iii) cosmopolitan universality; (iv) impossible universality. The final argument is that democracy can be universalised because of the impossibility of making the demos identical with political authority, which is akin to the impossibility of being identical to ourselves.     

Prospects for Democratic Transition in China

The core tenet of modernization theory is that as nation-states develop both economically and socially, they will inevitably transition to democracy. Yet, despite 30-years of robust economic development and growth, including increases in civil society, democracy remains elusive in China. In this article, we conduct a critical and empirical analysis to understand the challenges and possibilities of democratization in China. Should China transition to democracy, it will most likely occur through a top-down process that transforms the state and its institutions of government or through a cooperative pact by joint forces of top-down and bottom-up processes. Under either a converted or cooperative transition, the modeling in this study strongly suggests that China is likely to be successful should it undertake the process of democratization.     

Marin: a Pascalian diversion

Discussion of industrial democracy in Britain has been notably untheoretical, especially with respect to economic theory. There is economic literature on the issue, but it is very much dominated by neoclassical theories of the firm. This essay attempts to assess the arguments of that neo-classicism. Part of this involves some discussion of the basis of the hegemony of that type of economics within theories of the firm, which requires some discussion of the history of the theory of the firm. The conclusion is that whilst neo-classicism is not to be dismissed, an adequate theorisation of the economics of industrial democracy cannot be based on neo-classical premises about the structure and conduct of firms.     

Dialogue in American Political Campaigns? An Examination of Issue Convergence in Candidate Television Advertising

The theory of issue ownership holds that competing candidates should avoid discussing many of the same issues during a campaign. In contrast, theories of democracy suggest that competitive elections are the mechanism by which the public can hold politicians accountable. To determine the extent to which each theory depicts current campaigns, we develop a new measure of "issue convergence" and test whether or not issue convergence increases as the competitiveness of the race increases. Using new data based upon television advertising aired in U.S. Senate campaigns from 1998 through 2002, we find that issue engagement or dialogue occurs more frequently than indicated by previous research. We also find that issue engagement increases with the competitiveness of the race but that issue engagement decreases as the gap in financial resources between candidates increases.