现代性语境中的"直接民主与间接民主"——对民主形式的一种政治哲学解读

直接民主与间接民主是民主的两种实现形式。在现代性的语境中,大规模的直接民主在政治上缺乏现实性,间接民主成为民主政体中的主流方式。间接民主作为一种治理模式本身也存在着由“代表权”与“科层制”引发的内在矛盾,这使得其运作往往会产生反民主的结果,对此可以从政府制度的完善与成熟市民社会的培育两个方面着手解决。     

Power and Democracy in Norway: The Transformation of Norwegian Politics1

The Norwegian Power and Democracy Project concluded that the parliamentary chain of government is weakened in every link; parties and election are less mobilizing; minority governments imply that the connection between election results and policy formation is broken; and elected assemblies have been suffering a notable loss of domain. Popular participation has moved from long‐term organisations and political parties to short‐term action groups and associations with immediate concerns. The judicialisation of politics has strengthen the legal system and weakened the autonomy of local democracy, while the expansion of market forces further affects the span of parliamentary rule. The mass media has become politically more independent, while adapting more closely to economic forces and the quest for return of investment. There has, accordingly, been centralisation of economic power through mergers and acquisitions following the globalisation of the Norwegian economy. The so‐called ‘Scandinavian’ (or ‘Nordic’) model is increasingly strained, while corporatism is partly weakened and partly restructured. After the end of the Cold War, there has also been a consistent strategy in foreign policy for the branding of Norway as a champion for peace and human rights. There is a cluster of corporate bureaucratic agencies around the high‐profile peace mediation and humanitarian engagement.     

Homogeneity and Democracy in Austrian Federalism: The Constitutional Court's Ruling on Direct Democracy in Vorarlberg

This article seeks to analyze how homogeneity between the federationand the constituent Lander is provided by the Austrian federalConstitution in general. Focus is then put on a recent judgmentof the Austrian Constitutional Court, which has been one ofthe most outstanding cases of the Court's "homogeneity jurisdiction."The Court held a provision of a Land constitution to be in breachof the federal Constitution and therefore repealed it. The reasongiven was that the provision, which had obliged the Land parliamentto pass a law if this was demanded by a people's petition andsupported by the Land people in a referendum, endangered thesystem of representative democracy as provided by the federalConstitution. This narrow understanding of democratic homogeneityand the negligence of the principle of federalism are criticallyviewed in the article.     

Mobilizing Interests: Group Participation and Competition in Direct Democracy Elections

We examine group mobilization in direct democracy elections by assessing the conditions under which interests will actively support or oppose ballot measures. Motivating our analysis is that the decision to mobilize is driven by the costs and benefits of group participation, a calculus shaped by issue characteristics, state political institutions, and the electoral context. Using data from initiative and referendum measures appearing on statewide ballots from 2003 to 2008, we find that ballot measures involving social and tax issues are likely to produce competition among groups and increase the overall number of groups involved. In addition, we find that group competition and levels of mobilization increased in response to how difficult it would be for the legislature to undo the change brought about from passage of a ballot measure. Lastly, group competition and levels of mobilization increased for ballot measures appearing in nonpresidential election years and for ballot measures featuring a close election. Taken together, our results suggest that groups engage strategically in direct democracy elections to pursue a mix of policy and political goals.     

Direct and Indirect Xenophobic Attacks: Unpacking Portfolios of Identity

Political Behavior - Political threats are typically conceptualized by scholars as targeting particular groups of people. We call for also conceptualizing threats as political attacks directed...     

自决与民主的异同比较及关系梳理

自决与民主在表面上有相似之处,但两者有着重大的差别,主要表现为它们在创设疆界、实质内容、与独立建国的先后关系、制度化保障、主体及功能、权利性质等方面的不同.两者之间也有密切的联系,主要体现在早期的自决与民主的交织性、自决与民主的同根性、自决成为推动民主的杠杆之一.现实中将自决与民主关系搞混的原因有三:一是混淆了宪政意义上的自决权和国际法意义上的自决权,二是对于国际法有关自决条文的误读,三是"内部自决"和"世界民主"等概念的出现又加剧了这种混乱.梳理自决与民主之间混乱关系的最好办法就是不要将国际法意义上的自决权划分为内、外自决权,也不要将内部自决权与民主权利相嫁接.     

Direct Democracy Paradox: State Fiscal Policies in the United States and the Threat of Direct Initiatives

Many studies have argued that the initiative process in U.S. state governments strengthened the proximity between the citizens' preferences and policy output. In contrast, this study hypothesizes that the direct initiative process weakens, rather than strengthens, the link between citizen preferences and state fiscal policy. Governments respond to the threat of initiatives but only those of conservative agendas. The results show that while the level and the progressivity of tax rates in the states without direct initiatives are influenced by citizen preferences, those in states with direct initiatives are more conservative than those without direct initiatives and the former are insulated from the influence of the citizen preferences.     

Earthquakes and Aftershocks: Race, Direct Democracy, and Partisan Change

Although dramatic partisan change among the electorate is infrequent, the issue agendas of parties may produce large shifts. A major cause of such change is the politics of race. In a political environment charged with racially oriented issues, racial groups often align themselves with different parties (as witnessed most recently in the American South). Yet, if racial appeals violate norms of equality, these appeals may rebound on the party using them. Consequently, members of the (white) racial majority and racially targeted minority may both move away from the offending party. Using data from the California Field Poll, we find that racially charged ballot propositions sponsored by the Republican party during the 1990s in California reversed the trend among Latinos and Anglos toward identifying as Republican, ceteris paribus, by shifting party attachments toward the Democratic party. Our results raise serious questions about the long-term efficacy of racially divisive strategies for electoral gain.     

The Clash between Security and Liberty in the U.S. Response to Terror

This study examines U.S. public opinion on civil liberties and security in response to the politically pivotal events of September 11, 2001—what shape it is in, what shapes it, and what it shapes. Public opinion is a critical restraint on political and administrative action today because so many regulators, rule makers, and law enforcers are making decisions or advocating policies that directly affect the balance between liberty and security. The general importance that is popularly attributed to terrorism is gauged by its ranking among the most important problems. The ostensibly contradictory public attitudes toward civil liberties are analyzed, as is the supposed inconsistency between perceived personal impact and the general significance attributed to the attacks. The data rebut the allegation that the public is readily disposed to restrict civil liberties as the price of security. Findings show the public does not perceive a personal or immediate threat to civil liberties. The implications for further research and good governance are laid out.     

The Language of Democracy: Vernacular or Esperanto? A Comparison between the Multiculturalist and Cosmopolitan Perspectives

Will Kymlicka has argued that 'democratic politics is politics in the vernacular'. Does this statement mean that democratic politics is impossible in a multilingual community, whether at the local, national, regional or global level? This paper discusses this assumption and maintains that democratic politics should imply the willingness of all players to make an effort to understand each other. Democratic politics depends on a willingness to overcome the barriers to mutual understanding, including the linguistic ones. Anytime that there is a community of fate, a democrat should search the available methods to allow deliberation according to the two key conditions of political equality and participation. If linguistic diversity is an obstacle to equality and participation, some methods should be found to overcome it, as it is exemplified by the Esperanto metaphor. The paper illustrates the argument with four cases of multilinguistic political communities: (1) a school in California with English-speaking and Spanish-speaking students; (2) the city of Byelostok in the second half of the nineteenth century, where four different linguistic communities (Polish, Russian, German and Yiddish) coexisted. This led Markus Zamenhof to invent Esperanto; (3) the linguistic problems of the Indian state and the role played by English – a language unspoken by the majority of the Indian population in 1947 – in developing Indian democracy; and (4) the case of the European Parliament, with 20 languages and a wealth of interpreters and translators.     

Sex, Resources, and Political Participation: Direct and Indirect Effects*

This article discusses the impact of sex and resources on political participation. The independent variables in the causal model are sex, education, organizational membership, and political involvement. Two measures of participation are used: frequency of voting and campaign participation. The results show that organization membership is the most important resource of participation. Organization is the only resource to have both indirect and direct effects. For sex and education, the effects are mediated through political involvement. The model is very weak in explaining variation in voting, but is clearly stronger in explaining variation in campaign participation.     

Market Failures and Government Failures: A Theoretical Model of the Common Agricultural Policy

Economic theory has tried to explain the characteristics of the Common Agricultural Policy inductively on the basis of certain economic peculiarities of agriculture. However, by overlooking the so–called government failures of the political system as an independent variable in explaining the Common Agricultural Policy it is impossible to explain, for example, the strong agricultural lobbyism. The deductive theoretical model of this article integrates economic as well as political actors in order to explain the characteristics of the Common Agricultural Policy. The proposed theoretical model is not “tested”, but the criteria for such a test are presented.     

The Government Deference Dimension of Judicial Decision Making: Evidence from the Supreme Court of Norway

Past research has revealed conflicting findings regarding the degree to which judges on European apex courts enact their policy preferences or instead disagree on the basis of divergent legal views. We investigate disagreement between judges on the Norwegian Supreme Court between 1996 and 2016. During this period, the court dealt with a greater volume of policy-relevant cases than previously. The method of appointment to the court was also changed to a judicial appointments commission. We analyse non-unanimous cases using item response theory models. We find that judges are not divided along left–right lines but instead disagree about the appropriate degree of deference to give to public authorities. There is no significant association between the appointing government and judges' ideal points either before or after the reform to appointments. Judges who were formerly academics are however much less deferential than career judges or judges who were previously lawyers in private practice.     

Globalization and the Choice of Governing Instruments: The Direct,Indirect, and Opportunity Effects of Internationalization

We propose to shed light on the effect of globalization on the choice of policy tools. Contrary to what is commonly believed, we find that the source of many of the changes in the patterns of instrument choice found in contemporary society lies in the domestic rather than the international arena. To the extent that global factors have had an effect, it is through what we term indirect and opportunity effects rather than direct ones. Further, we argue that traditional command and control instruments are not antithetical to globalization as is evident in their continued, and at times even increasing, use in a variety of settings. We conclude that what is important for policymakers is to ensure that their choice of instruments is consistent with traditional sectoral and national policy styles, with or without globalization.