Membership ballots and the value of intra-party democracy

On the face of it, membership ballots present a clear case in which intra-party democracy comes into collision with core principles of representative democracy: they weaken the autonomy of representatives, and undermine the authority of the voters. In this article, I investigate whether this is correct, and whether membership ballots are, therefore, democratically illegitimate, using the controversial 2013 Mitgliederentscheid in the German Social Democratic party as a critical case. I argue that there is nothing democratically suspect about membership ballots and mount a defence of intra-party democracy as intrinsically valuable, appealing to a principle of equal respect for persons as autonomous agents. It turns out that endorsing this principle has two possible implications: that the content of the ballot must be open to deliberation, and that these deliberations should be rendered open to non-members. I discuss these implications and offer some institutional design guidelines.     

If territorial fragmentation is a problem,is amalgamation a solution? – Ten years later

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, municipal territorial amalgamation has occurred in 15 European countries. The same period has seen spectacular progress in research on the relationship between municipal size and the functioning of local governments, as well as the impacts of territorial reforms on economic performance and local democracy. Quasi-experimental designs treating territorial reforms as specific “research laboratories” have constituted an important part of that trend. However, there are still important gaps in the knowledge and the study results are often inconclusive. These observations call for a research agenda for the future.     

The culture of skilled work in a Norwegian shipyard, 1945–90

We anatomise the culture of skilled work in the Solheimsviken shipyard in Bergen, Norway, from 1945 to 1990, linking it to democratic impulses within the workforce. This independent culture had strong if bounded democratic elements that were ultimately reflected in the institutions of a worker’s cooperative which operated from 1985. However, a shift away from shipbuilding immediately preceded the cooperative’s foundation and eroded the position of the older skilled workers who had carried the culture, undermining it even before the cooperative’s collapse.     

Direct democracy and subjective regime legitimacy in Europe

While much research focuses on the causes and consequences of direct democracy and regime legitimacy, little attention has been paid to the potential relationship between them. In an attempt to fill this void, this paper focuses on the legal provisions for direct democracy and its use. The key argument is that possibilities for the public’s direct involvement reflect high importance given to citizens, openness of the regime towards different modes of decision-making, and ways to avoid unpopular institutions. Consequently, citizens are likely to accept and support the regime, improving or maintaining its legitimacy. The cross-national analysis includes 38 European countries ranging from transition countries to established democracies. It uses bivariate statistical analysis and country-level data collected from legislation, secondary sources, and aggregate surveys.     

Does China’s middle class prefer (liberal) democracy?

Many surveys show that China’s political regime, under the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rules, enjoys a high level of public support. However, it is still uncertain whether China’s emerging middle class will become the “agent of democratization” as suggested by modernization theory. Using the data of Asian Barometer Survey conducted in China in 2011, this article demonstrates that the relationship between class identity and preference for liberal democracy in China may be inverted U-shaped. The Chinese middle class shows a higher preference to features of liberal democratic regimes than its counterparts of the lower- and upper-class. Members of the Chinese middle class also tend to regard democracy as the best form of government. Thus, the middle class has the potential to initiate democratization in China if the Chinese government fails to keep satisfying the middle class’ quest for economic well-being and protection of property rights.     

“Most MPs are Not All that Sharp.” Political Employees and Representative Democracy

The article analyses the orientations of political employees in Sweden. It finds that their roles are diffuse: there is no agreement among political employees about whether they are politicians or not, and their mandate is fleeting and unclear. They hold the average politician’s intellectual abilities in low regard, and sometimes take on clearly paternalistic views toward elected representatives. They see little attraction in pursuing a career as elected politicians, because of intrusive media scrutiny and since they hold a view of elected politics as slow, boring, and shallow. The professional route to politics is seen as more fast and fun.     

Regime resilience and presidential politics in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

This article builds on insights from the coalitional presidentialism literature and a more ideational regime-based approach to examine the reasons behind Indonesia's ongoing democratic stagnation. It argues that this stagnation is not, as institutionalists might posit, an ultimately inevitable result of the institutional setup of multiparty presidentialism. Nor is it merely a manifestation of unchallenged oligarchic domination or the cartelization of party politics as other influential approaches to Indonesian politics have argued. Instead, this article argues that presidential politics in Indonesia is above all a reflection of a complex regime configuration in which presidents need to navigate between popular demands from the electorate, the interests of powerful veto actors who use democratic procedures only as an instrument to defend their predominantly material interests, and a constantly evolving but still inefficient set of political institutions that has largely failed to ensure accountability and transparency.     

Totalitarian tendencies in drone strikes by states

Lethal drones or unmanned combat aerial vehicles have been used to kill thousands of persons suspected of complicity in terrorism. Despite concerns aired by legal scholars that drone strikes outside areas of active hostilities violate international law, the US government contends that targeted killing is distinct from assassination, and has persisted in the practice to the point where it has become normalised as a standard operating procedure and taken up by other nations as well. Drone strikes have been championed by Western politicians as a “light footprint” approach to war, but the institutional apparatus of remote-control killing rests on totalitarian, not democratic principles. Secretive targeting criteria and procedures are withheld from citizens under a pretext of national security, resulting in a conflation of executive with judicial authority and an inversion of the burden of proof, undermining the very framework of universal human rights said to be championed by modern Western states. Moreover, lethal drones hovering above in the sky threaten all persons on the ground with the arbitrary termination of their lives and as such represent a form of terrorism no less than the suicide bombings of jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.     

Problems and contradictions of participatory democracy: lessons from Latin America

The participatory innovations of the last few decades, particularly in Latin America, seem to suggest that the establishment of more participatory democracies is possible. However, limitations have characterized important participatory experiences. While the Bolivian, Ecuadorian, and Venezuelan attempts to promote popular participation have produced both positive and negative effects, some of these participatory experiences’ limitations are useful to highlight more general problems and contradictions that seem to be inherently associated with the establishment of participatory democracy in poorly functioning liberal democracies and in exclusionary and unequal societies. This analysis suggests that, paradoxically, the establishment of effective and inclusive participatory institutions may be less feasible where participatory mechanisms appear, at first glance, as most needed and promising.     

Direct Democracy and Political Trust: Enhancing Trust,Initiating Distrust–or Both?

This study investigates the relationship between direct democracy and political trust. We suggest a solution to the controversy in research centering on positive versus negative effects of direct democracy by analytically differentiating between the availability of direct democratic rights and the actual use of those rights. Theoretically, greater availability of direct democratic rights may enhance political trust by increasing citizens' perception that political authorities can be controlled as well as by incentivizing political authorities to act trustworthily. In contrast, the actual use of the corresponding direct democratic instruments may initiate distrust as it signals to citizens that political authorities do not act in the public's interest. We test both hypotheses for the very first time with sub‐national data of Switzerland. The empirical results seem to support our theoretical arguments.