When Does Deliberation Begin? Internal Reflection versus Public Discussion in Deliberative Democracy

Political deliberation involves both internal reflection and public discussion. The former might be far more important than implied by deliberative democrats' heavy emphasis on the discursive component. Analysis of the deliberations of a citizen's jury on an Australian environmental issue shows jurors' attitudes changing more in response to the 'information' phase of the jury proceedings, involving a large degree of 'deliberation within', than during the formal 'discussion' phase. Various ways can be imagined for evoking internal reflection of that sort, even in mass-political settings.     

Party Politics and the Common Good in Swedish Local Government

Local government in Sweden is usually classified as the northwest European type of local government, together with the local government systems of the other Nordic countries and Britain. In the 1990s and the early years of the new millennium, Swedish local government has been especially susceptible to the ideas of 'new public management' (NPM). At the same time there has been a long-ongoing trend of increasing party-politicisation of local councils. In this paper a selection of five local authorities are examined in order to see how party politics and party-politicisation are confronted by the new organisational doctrines. It is concluded that in this respect the doctrines guiding local government organisation can be characterised by three common traits: the legitimacy of particular interests is denied in favour of the common good of the locality; it is denied that conflict and competition between political parties perform any democratic function; finally, when it comes to the relation between politics and administration there is a common confession of the management-by-objectives doctrine. Somewhat surprisingly, these three principles guide organisation and politics not only in those authorities most enthusiastically adopting NPM but also in the authorities implementing organisational reforms based on more communitarian principles and even organisationally conservative municipalities not even considering any organisational change. One interpretation of this contradictory observation may be that NPM concepts and ideas have also found their way into local doctrines that are based on quite different principles. Another interpretation is that there is a consensus tradition in Swedish political culture that can also account for similar results in municipalities not explicitly introducing an apolitical organisation doctrine.     

Bremse oder Gaspedal? Eine empirische Untersuchung zur Wirkung der direkten Demokratie auf den Steuerstaat

This article analyzes the relationship between the different forms of direct democratic participation and the size of the tax state in the Swiss cantons for the period from 1983 to 2000. The analysis distinguishes between the different effects of the financial referendum and the initiative. Theoretical arguments suppose that the financial referendum curb the tax state, whereas the initiative is expected to contribute to its growth. Pooled time series analyses show that legal conditions of direct democratic participation in general and especially the legislation on financial referenda are much more important than the frequency of plebiscites for the explanation of the different sizes of the tax states in the cantons. As an additional result of the analyses, the impact of direct democracy on the tax state turns out to be much larger in the 1990s compared to the decade before.     

Mobilisierung, Verstärkung, Konversion? Ergebnisse eines Experiments zur Wahrnehmung der Fernsehduelle im Vorfeld der Bundestagswahl 2002

Based on an experimental study about the televised debates in the last German federal election campaign, the article analyses how the candidates — Schröder and Stoiber — were perceived by the audience. Based on real-time-response-data, the crucial role that already existing attitudes play in the process of debate perception is shown. Still, debates do have effects, although these vary among voters depending on their specific situations. Debates have a mobilizing effect on partisans, while there is a potential persuasive effect on independent voters.