Linking democratic anchorage and regulatory authority: The case of internet regulators

Scholars and practitioners have repeatedly questioned the democraticness and the authority of transnational multi‐stakeholder organizations, especially those that regulate the internet. To contribute to this discussion, we studied the “democratic anchorages” and the regulatory authority of 23 internet regulators. In particular, we conducted a fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis assessing whether and which anchorages correspond to necessary and/or sufficient conditions for exerting regulatory authority. Our results show that strong anchorage in democratic procedures is specifically relevant for this outcome. Further, we find that weak anchorage in democratically elected politicians leads to high regulatory authority, confirming the significance of non‐state actors in this policy field. More generally, our findings support but also qualify expectations about the compatibility and mutual reinforcement of democratic quality and regulatory authority at the transnational level.     

Back to the Future: The Pulling Apart of our Towns and Cities

Growing divisions between Britain’s towns and cities have created a dilemma for the Labour Party in seeking to represent very different parts of the country. There are some who argue that Labour must choose the global networked youth—who largely reside in cities—in order to maximise its electoral chances. This is an argument that defies electoral gravity and fails to address the root causes of the gulf between towns and cities. As jobs and investment have gone into cities, many towns have seen the local population age and local economies become unsustainable. In both towns and cities there is a clamour for power to move closer to home and for the renewal of democratic institutions, offering Labour the chance to win power and end the divisions that have come to characterise British politics.     

互联网 + 对中国企业民主管理实践的影响

当前,"互联网+"已经升级为中国国家战略,政府出台政策号召群团组织要拥抱互联网,中华全国总工会积极推动互联网与工会工作例如企业民主管理相融合,互联网正逐渐打破传统企业民主管理政治参与现状,职工由被动参与向主动参与转变,由部分参与向全部参与转变,互联网助推中国企业民主管理回归产业民主实质。     

The uses of history by the Polish democratic opposition in the late 1970s

During the late 1970s, members of the Polish democratic opposition revised and reinterpreted key elements in the Polish past in support of their contemporary ideas about Polish society and opposition. The birth of the independent press in Poland in 1976 provided these debates with a medium for wide dissemination and discussion. Analysis of democratic opposition debates in the independent press on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, historic Polish–Russian relations, and the struggle for and achievement of independence in the early twentieth century shed light on the ways in which the democratic opposition perceived Polish society and the legacy of tolerance, diversity, nationalism, and socialism within it. It also reveals the major divisions within the democratic opposition and its primary tactical proposals prior to the birth of the Solidarity trade union in 1980. Forty years later, these debates continue to reverberate.     

Deliberative democracy and the politics of traditional leadership in South Africa: A case of despotic domination or democratic deliberation?

A heated debate developed in South Africa as to the meaning of ‘deliberative democracy’. This debate is fanned by the claims of ‘traditional leaders’ that their ways of village-level deliberation and consensus-oriented decision-making are not only a superior process for the African continent as it evolves from pre-colonial tradition, but that it represents a form of democracy that is more authentic than the Western version. Proponents suggest that traditional ways of deliberation are making a come-back because imported Western models of democracy that focus on the state and state institutions miss the fact that in African societies state institutions are often seen as illegitimate or simply absent from people's daily lives. In other words, traditional leadership structures are more appropriate to African contexts than their Western rivals. Critics suggest that traditional leaders, far from being authentic democrats, are power-hungry patriarchs and authoritarians attempting to both re-invent their political, social and economic power (frequently acquired under colonial and apartheid rule) and re-assert their control over local-level resources at the expense of the larger community. In this view, the concept of deliberative democracy is being misused as a legitimating device for a politics of patriarchy and hierarchy, which is the opposite of the meaning of the term in the European and US sense. This article attempts to contextualise this debate and show how the efforts by traditional leaders to capture an intermediary position between rural populations and the state is fraught with conflicts and contradictions when it comes to forming a democratic state and society in post-apartheid South Africa.     

企业民主管理：议题与进展——对国内研究文献的简要评述

企业民主管理制度作为我国企业领导体制中的重要组成部分,一直是个研究热点问题。特别是 改革开放以来,相关研究也越来越丰富复杂,其中最主要的研究议题可归结为四大类,即企业民主管理的理论 依据、企业民主管理的法律与政策研究、企业民主管理的制度逻辑与变迁、企业民主管理与企业治理的关系。 而每一议题内部都存在着较大的分歧和争论,但正是这种分歧和争论,使得企业民主管理的研究得以不断地细 化和深入。     

What are we gonna be when we grow up? SYRIZA's institutionalisation and its new “governing party” role

The aim of this paper is to analyse the organizational model of one of the most successful European radical left parties, the Greek Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA). Our goal is to analyse SYRIZA's organizational transition from the electoral arena to the government (2015). Our main finding is that SYRIZA started as a socially-oriented organization led by an oligarchic dominant coalition and converted itself into a political party, characterized by a prevailing role of the party in public office/party government. Both the institutional environment and the party organization's first configuration have had an impact on this change.     

Change—and Scepticism—as a Constant: Anthony King on Parties and Party Systems

Tony King had a healthy disrespect for conventional wisdom but a deep appreciation for common sense. Drawing on an eclectic mix of sources, both qualitative and quantitative, he wore his learning lightly, the better to highlight and explain to academic and non‐academic audiences how shifts in society and public opinion drove change inside parties and in the party systems in which they operated. King asked great questions and provided answers that simultaneously captured complexity and the big picture. His provocative interpretations and analysis were always stimulating—and many of them proved highly prescient.     

Anthony King: His Intellectual Legacy. Introduction

The Department of Government at Essex University provided a favourable environment for the development of Anthony King's work. While his primary interest was the UK, his intellectual interests were far broader in scope and informed by comparative insights. His key work was on political leadership, but he also made crucial contributions on other issues such as ungovernability. He had a particular concern with the quality of government, reflected in the Blunders book he wrote with Ivor Crewe.     

Rethinking the Tunisian miracle: a party politics view

Five years on from the Tunisian revolution, Tunisia stands as the sole success story of the Arab Spring. The country since then has managed to adopt a pluralist and democratic constitution, and held three free and fair elections. Accordingly, in the eyes of several observers, Tunisia is now in the process of consolidating its new democracy. However, the reality on the ground seems much gloomier, as most recent opinion surveys suggest that there is a significant degree of dissatisfaction, not only with political parties and Parliament but also with the very institution of democracy. Nevertheless, what accounts for this change? After the collapse of the long-lasting and oppressive Ben Ali regime, how, just in five years, has Tunisians’ confidence in the democratic process changed? This article accounts for this state of affairs from a party politics view, arguing that political parties, which are the main protagonists of the consolidation process, fail to fulfill their role of acquiring legitimacy for the new regime. While party–state relations seem to be stabilized due to the inclusiveness of the constitution-making process, both inter-party relationships and the relationship between parties and society suffer from numerous flaws which, in turn, hamper the democratic consolidation process.