A Soiled Password: Democracy,the Word and Democracy,the Thing

The word‘democracy’ to be distinguished from the thing‘democracy.’ Removal by the Italian parliament of a corrupt and scandalous Premier for a respected, honest technician and a form of civil service government does not infringe the second category. Referendums give strength to a handful of already overmighty rich men controlling media outlets. Witness Fox Radio and TV and the poison of Glen Beck, also the virulent nationalism of the Murdoch and Desmond papers. Note the fifty plus year lag in enfranchising women in Switzerland, a self‐evident democratic advance held back by ‘the voice of the people’ in successive referendums. Government should be free from populism and be run by educated, intelligent people both in parliament and the Civil Service. ‘Yes Minister,’ however amusing, has done us a disservice. I would trust a senior civil servant above a press lord any day of the week. Witness the good sense of the Upper House in its current informed and experienced composition. The Lords blocked Tony Blair's plans to by‐pass Habeas Gorpus, refusing authoritarian government to an elected Premier with no sense of the rule of law or constitutional principle.     

Contractualism, Democracy and Ethics

Contractualism, as concept and practice, may be defined in different ways (Yeatman 1995, 1998). In this article I am concerned with contracting out or outsourcing as it is otherwise known. That is, I focus upon the process whereby functions undertaken formerly by government are now performed by private or voluntary organisations in a contractual relationship with public service departments and agencies. Whereas departments and agencies once provided a full panoply of services directly, government purchasers now select providers by tendering competitively for an expanding range of employment, education, health, social welfare and local government services. Contractualism, then, involves the recon-figuation of public service provision to favour quasi-commercial rather than bureaucratic forms.     

Democracy,preferences and paternalism

Democracy is essentially a political system that respects people's preferences, with models of democracy differing principally in how they accomplish that. Choice among those models can be facilitated by reflecting upon various public policies which are not preference-respecting. Examination of policies which are paternalistic, and justifiably so, reveals which sorts of preferences ought be to respected and which not. These findings are then used to reflect back onto our choice among models of democracy.     

Economic Development,Violent Leader Removal,and Democratization

This article argues that autocratic regime strength plays a critical mediating role in the link between economic development and democracy. Looking at 167 countries from 1875 to 2004, I find that development strengthens autocratic regimes, as indicated by a reduced likelihood of violent leader removal. Simultaneously, greater development predicts democratization, but only if a violent turnover has occurred in the recent past. Hence, development can cause democratization, but only in distinctive periods of regime vulnerability. Although development’s stabilizing and democratizing forces roughly balance out within autocracies, they reinforce each other within democracies, resolving the puzzle of why economic development has a stronger effect on democratic stability than on democratization. Further, the theory extends to any variable that predicts violent leader removal and democracy following such violence, pointing to broad unexplored patterns of democratic development.     

Justice, Democracy, and Hazardous Siting

In this essay we examine some issues of justice associated with the siting of hazardous industrial facilities. Utilitarian justifications of siting decisions are inadequate because they fail to address questions of fairness. Approaches that consider questions of distributive equity provide a better framework for siting justice, but are still incomplete. Limiting questions of justice to the distribution of benefits and burdens fails to examine the justice of procedures for deciding such issues of distribution. We argue that justice requires a participatory communicative democratic process for siting hazardous facilities, in two respects. It is prima facie unjust to impose a risk on citizens without their having participated in the siting process. Participatory communicative democratic procedures in facility siting, moreover, when structured according to specific norms of discussion and inclusion, are likely to yield the most just outcomes. We propose procedural as well as substantive conditions for such democratic procedures, and briefly apply these conditions to evaluate the siting of a landfill in Switzerland.     

Deliberation, Legitimacy, and Multilateral Democracy

Is deliberation essential to legitimate democratic governance? Deliberation may have epistemic value, improving the quality of information and arguments. Deliberation may be transformative, shaping beliefs and opinions. Or deliberation may be part of a conception of justice that constrains authority, by requiring that procedures be justified in terms of reasons acceptable to those burdened by authoritative decisions. Although appealing, the epistemic and transformative arguments are limited by the scale and complexity of many problems for which democratic solutions are sought. But the reason–giving argument is persuasive whenever collective decisions allow burdens to be imposed on others.     

Democracy,accountability, and coalition bargaining

European Journal of Political Research -     

Democracy in an Age of Tragedy: Democracy,Tragedy and Paradox

Abstract

Democracy and tragedy captured a delicate poise in ancient Athens. While many today perceive democracy as a finite, unquestionable and almost procedural form of governance that glorifies equality and liberty for their own sake, the Athenians saw it as so much more. Beyond the burgeoning equality and liberty, which were but fronts for a deeper goal, finitude, unimpeachability and procedural norms were constantly contradicted by boundlessness, subversion and disarray. In such a world, where certainty and immortality were luxuries beyond the reach of humankind, tragedy gave comfort and inspired greatness. The purpose of this article is to draw explicit links between democracy, tragedy and paradox. Given that tragedy's political ascendancy coincided with the birth of democracy in ancient Athens, we may assume that democracy was somehow, if not implicitly, tragic. But what was it that made democracy and tragedy speak so intimately to each other and to the Athenians who created them? The answer, at least the one which this article entertains, is paradox.     

Democracy,dictatorship and decision costs

This paper tries to help bridge the inductive and the deductive traditions in the study of democracy. I identify two empirical patterns, which I call the paradox of conflict and the paradox of decision importance. More conflict ridden societies are both less likely to be democracies, and, when democratic, more likely to be consensual rather than majoritarian. Similarly, important (revolutionary, regime-transforming) decisions are less likely to be democratic but, when democratic, they are more likely to be consensual. I use a decision-cost-minimizing model of democracy to explain those patterns. The model is developed out of the metaphor of institutions as decision producing firms, attempting to maximize quality and minimize cost of those decisions. Its main intellectual source is the transaction cost-minimizing view of organizations but the formalism owes most to Buchanan and Tullock's Calculus of Consent.