Download or read book Democratic Equilibrium written by Michael W. Fowler and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-11-12 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratic Equilibrium: The Supply and Demand of Democracy defines a model for political change, change that results in either an increase or decrease in democracy. The book presents a model that builds upon the existing literature to bridge several major gaps in political change theory. This book provides a holistic supply and demand model that draws upon works from political science, economics, and history. The work conducts an econometric test of the model and validates the results with field research cases from Mexico, the Philippines, and Senegal. The econometric chapter is a rare quantitative analysis of the effects of violence and development upon democracy. This topic is central to contemporary academic and policy debates about how to create democracies, consolidate democracies, achieve development and improve security, especially within developing countries. This topic is especially timely as the Arab Spring represents a unique opportunity and challenge for democratic change across the Middle East and North Africa. Recent events in Tunisia and Egypt demonstrate that democracy studies remain just as relevant today as they were twenty years ago. The findings indicate that common structural explanations of democracy are incomplete since the structural relationships are not stable or constant over time. Instead, democratic change (or lack thereof) can be explained using a supply and demand model. Key actors (including the military, political parties, NGOs, the ruling regime, and civil society) are the suppliers and consumers that determine a country’s resulting level of democracy. However, stating that actors are important is a major over-simplification. Each key actor builds preferences based upon a variety of factors, most importantly: security, income, and the adoption of democratic norms. It is this key dynamic that explains why insurgency, poverty, and under-development do not have a linearly negative effect on democracy. Instead, these factors have a centripetal effect on political development, pulling a country’s government towards an intermediate state of political transition in which regimes stagnate in a partially democratic, partially autocratic regime type. Conversely, the model also explains why high income, democratic norms, and security do not necessarily lead to democratization in all cases.
Download or read book An Ecological Theory of Democracy written by William Collins and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are a number of people I wish to acknowledge for helping me write this book. First, the idea of politics as a nonequilibrium process owes its origins largely to a series of ongoing conservations I have had with Father Richard Telnack, o. c. s. o. Our discussions of Augustine's city of God and Hegel's Phenomenology in the hours before the night office led me to think about the world more as an ongoing flux than as a static rational order. The use of structurally unstable dynamical systems to. model democratic politics was greatly enhanced by my interactions with Professor Alex Kleiner, department of mathematics, Drake University. Professor Manfred Holler of the University of Aarhus provided a detailed critique of an earlier version. His insights and remarks were invaluable in improving the work's content and structure. I also wish to thank Dr. Werner A. Muller, director of Physica Verlag for his confidence in my work and his efforts on my behalf. Miss Jane Blevins was a patient and thorough typist. I thank her for her attention to the production of the manuscript. Finally, writing a book is in one way a moral act. It requires committment to pursue a line of thought to its conclusion when the final results are not clear. without the encouragement and support of my wife over a long period of time, I would have certainly faltered. Whatever good emerges from the work is due largely to her example and patient endurance.
Download or read book Democracy Freedom and Coercion written by Alain Marciano and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy, Freedom and Coercion is a welcome addition to the public choice literature. It steps outside of the often used contractarian perspective and recognizes that all governments are ultimately based on coercion. . . the volume s chapters make important contributions that should be of interest to public choice scholars engaged in this research program. Benjamin Powell, Public Choice The big picture here is the tension between coercion and freedom within democracy. Each essay offers a view of this big picture through a different lens: empirical, theoretical, comparative, etc.; and also offers a different focus: on the conceptualisation and measurement of power, the legitimacy of economic democracy, the identification of the developing pattern of democracy, the impact of political violence etc. But the essays combine well so that together they illuminate the big picture from a variety of perspectives. Thought provoking and challenging an excellent read for anyone interested in the more detailed analysis of the issues that make up the big picture. Alan Hamlin, University of Manchester, UK So much of the academic analysis of democracy focuses on agreement and ignores the fact that all government action ultimately is backed by coercion. This volume offers a thoughtful examination of the inherent tensions between liberty and coercion that are an inevitable part of democratic government. Randall G. Holcombe, Florida State University, US States need to be strong in order to enforce private property rights; yet, this very strength can cause problems as representatives of the state can misuse it for their individual goals. This dilemma of the strong state has been occupying political philosophers for centuries. In this volume, to which economists but also political scientists have contributed, a number of new and unexpected variations on the topic are explored. This makes the volume an exciting read. Stefan Voigt, University of Marburg, Germany The contribution covers the niche between law and economics and the political theory of the state and its constitution. Now we can integrate traditional political theory into our doctoral seminars in law and economics a long overdue step ahead. Jürgen G. Backhaus, Erfurt University, Germany The essence of democratic power lies in the capacity to protect individual freedom while organizing the necessary coercion associated with any form of government. Yet, as the authors of this book maintain, developing coercion in order to protect freedom, and containing coercion in order to further protect freedom, is an arduous task, and one that faces any democratic Leviathan. The aim of this book is to explore this paradox and to analyse the intricate balance of freedom and coercion in developing states. In so doing it considers the legal and institutional conditions under which coercion and violence are admitted and/or permitted, and how these conditions should be organized in order to preserve and develop freedom as far as possible. Democracy, Freedom and Coercion comprehensively covers both private and public law, both applied and theoretical issues, and will therefore be of great interest to students studying law and economics. It will also serve as a reference tool to those academics in the field of legal competition, especially from the perspective of European issues.
Download or read book Behavioral Political Economy and Democratic Theory written by Petr Špecián and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-06-08 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on current debates at the frontiers of economics, psychology, and political philosophy, this book explores the challenges that arise for liberal democracies from a confrontation between modern technologies and the bounds of human rationality. With the ongoing transition of democracy’s underlying information economy into the digital space, threats of disinformation and runaway political polarization have been gaining prominence. Employing the economic approach informed by behavioral sciences’ findings, the book’s chief concern is how these challenges can be addressed while preserving a commitment to democratic values and maximizing the epistemic benefits of democratic decision-making. The book has two key strands: it provides a systematic argument for building a behaviorally informed theory of democracy; and it examines how scientific knowledge on quirks and bounds of human rationality can inform the design of resilient democratic institutions. Drawing these together, the book explores the centrality of the rationality assumption in the methodological debates surrounding behavioral sciences as exemplified by the dispute between neoclassical and behavioral economics; the role of (ir)rationality in democratic social choice; behaviorally informed paternalism as a response to the challenge of irrationality; and non-paternalistic avenues to increase the resilience of the democratic institutions toward political irrationality. This book is invaluable reading for anyone interested in behavioral economics and sciences, political philosophy, and the future of democracy.
Download or read book The Democratic Dilemma written by Arthur Lupia and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-03-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voters cannot answer simple survey questions about politics. Legislators cannot recall the details of legislation. Jurors cannot comprehend legal arguments. Observations such as these are plentiful and several generations of pundits and scholars have used these observations to claim that voters, legislators, and jurors are incompetent. Are these claims correct? Do voters, jurors, and legislators who lack political information make bad decisions? In The Democratic Dilemma, Professors Arthur Lupia and Mathew McCubbins explain how citizens make decisions about complex issues. Combining insights from economics, political science, and the cognitive sciences, they seek to develop theories and experiments about learning and choice. They use these tools to identify the requirements for reasoned choice - the choice that a citizen would make if she possessed a certain (perhaps, greater) level of knowledge. The results clarify debates about voter, juror, and legislator competence and also reveal how the design of political institutions affects citizens' abilities to govern themselves effectively.
Download or read book Democracy and Redistribution written by Carles Boix and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-21 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Employing analytical tools borrowed from game theory, Carles Boix offers a complete theory of political transitions, in which political regimes ultimately hinge on the nature of economic assets, their distribution among individuals, and the balance of power among different social groups. Backed up by detailed historical work and extensive statistical analysis that goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, this book explains, among many other things, why democracy emerged in classical Athens. It also discusses the early triumph of democracy in both nineteenth-century agrarian Norway, Switzerland and northeastern America and the failure in countries with a powerful landowning class.
Download or read book Democratic Devices and Desires written by Geoffrey Brennan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-13 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a novel account of key features of modern representative democracy. Working from the rational actor tradition, it builds a middle ground between orthodox political theory and the economic analysis of politics. Standard economic models of politics emphasise the design of the institutional devices of democracy as operated by essentially self-interested individuals. This book departs from that model by focusing on democratic desires alongside democratic devices, stressing that important aspects of democracy depend on the motivation of democrats and the interplay between devices and desires. Individuals are taken to be not only rational, but also somewhat moral. The authors argue that this approach provides access to aspects of the debate on democratic institutions that are beyond the narrowly economic model. They apply their analysis to voting, elections, representation, political departments and the separation and division of powers, providing a wide-ranging discussion of the design of democratic institutions.
Download or read book Political Competition written by John E ROEMER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Roemer presents a unified and rigorous theory of political competition between parties and he models the theory under many specifications, including whether parties are policy oriented or oriented toward winning, whether they are certain or uncertain about voter preferences, and whether the policy space is uni- or multidimensional.
Download or read book Democracy and Development written by A. Bagchi and published by Springer. This book was released on 1995-10-13 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between economic development and political systems is of major importance in today's rapidly changing world. This is the issue addressed in this volume by an international team of academics drawn from the social sciences. The chapters range from a theoretical exploration of the measurement of development and collective well-being under both democracy and dictatorship to case studies of the workings of different political regimes around the world. Of particular interest are models of political and economic equilibrium in procedural democracies and the detailed exploration of the working of economic systems that have operated as formal democracies for some time. Specialists in comparative analysis will find the chapters on the prospects for democracy and development in countries such as China, South Africa and eastern Europe of special interest.
Download or read book Democratic Theory and Causal Methodology in Comparative Politics written by Mark I. Lichbach and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barrington Moore bequeathed comparativists a problem: how to reconcile his causal claim of 'no bourgeoisie, no democracy' with his normative 'dream of a free and rational society'. Lichbach harmonizes causal methodology and normative democratic theory, illustrating their interrelationship. Using a dialogue among four specific texts, Lichbach advances five constructive themes. First, comparativists should study the causal agency of individuals, groups and democracies. Second, three types of collective agency should be paired with an exploration of three corresponding moral dilemmas: ought-is, freedom-power and democracy-causality. Third, at the center of inquiry, comparativists should place big-P Paradigms and big-M Methodology. Fourth, as they play with research schools, creatively combining prescriptive and descriptive approaches to democratization, they should encourage a mixed-theory and mixed-method field. Finally, comparativists should study pragmatic questions about political power and democratic performance: in building a democratic state, which democracy, under which conditions, is best, and how might it be achieved?
Download or read book An Economic Analysis of Democracy written by Randall G. Holcombe and published by Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democratic decisions determine the allocation of resources through the public sector. Holcombe uses the median voter model as a base, but goes on to develop a more general multidimensional model of democratic decision making that incorporates many theoretical developments of the past decade. He focuses upon the representative body of government and the fact that representatives can profit more from passing legislation to benefit special interests than from passing legislation in the general public interest. Using these insights Holcombe develops a model that describes the allocative effects of making economic decisions by majority rule. The model describes a stable equilibrium outcome for majority rule decisions made in a multidimensional setting; it is a logical extension of the framework established in his well-received Public Finance and the Political Process.
Download or read book Democracy Accountability and Representation written by Adam Przeworski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-09-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 6 Party Government and Responsiveness: James A. Stimson
Download or read book The Transformation of Democracy written by Vilfredo Pareto and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1984-01-01 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining a thorough introduction to the work of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italian social theorist Vilfredo Pareto with a highly readable English translation of Pareto's last monograph "Generalizations", originally published in 1920, this work illustrates how and why democratic forms of government undergo decay and are eventually reinvigorated. More than any other social scientist of his generation, Pareto offers a well-developed, articulate, and compelling theory of change based on a Newtonian vision of science and an engineering model of social equilibrium.This dynamics involves a shifting balance among the countervailing forces of centralization and decentralization of power, economic expansion and contraction, and liberalism versus traditionalism in public sentiment. By 1920, Pareto had developed a scheme for predicting shifts in magnitude of these forces and subsequent change in the character of society. This book will be of interest to students, teachers, or general readersinterested,in political science, sociology and late-nineteenth/ early-twentieth century social theory.
Download or read book The Political Economy of Democracy written by Enriqueta Aragonès and published by Fundacion BBVA. This book was released on 2009 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hay razones para pensar que llega una cuarta ola de democratización. En la actualidad existen más democracias en el mundo que en ningún periodo anterior. Desde el año 1991, nada menos que cuarenta Estados han emprendido la transición hacia la democracia. La existencia de naciones en vías de democratización o de redemocratización, como los esfuerzos para crear constituciones supraestatales -es el caso de la Unión Europea-, hacen imprescindible avanzar hacia un mejor conocimiento de los procedimientos legislativos y los modelos alternativos de constitución política. La división histórica de las ciencias políticas en distintos campos de estudio ha sesgado el enfoque adoptado por economistas y politólogos sobre numerosos temas y ha supuesto limitaciones artificiales para el análisis de muchas cuestiones sociales relevantes. De ahí la importancia innegable de un estudio unificado de la economía política que explore las fronteras de la interacción entre política y economía. La caracterización de la economía política como síntesis de diversos campos suscitará controversia, a la vez que abre una línea de investigación muy estimulante para elucidar nuestra comprensión sobre las democracias.Este libro recoge los resultados del seminario "La economía política de la democracia", celebrado en Barcelona entre los días 5 y 7 de junio de 2008 con el apoyo de la Fundación BBVA. En él se dieron cita líderes intelectuales en economía y ciencias políticas con el fin de desarrollar planteamientos equilibrados sobre temas comunes de análisis, tales como las estrategias preelectorales, las elecciones, la formación de coaliciones y las prácticas de gobierno, dentro de un único marco integrador. Se prestó una especial atención a campos actuales de desarrollo, entres ellos, la entrada endógena de candidatos, los comportamientos de políticos y votantes, negociaciones y acuerdos, y regímenes políticos.
Download or read book Preferences and Democracy written by Alb. Breton and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I. Until about a dozen years ago, the economic analysis of the relationship between political preferences and political demands was a rather straightforward, if dull, subject. The most common assumption was that the only political instrument available to citizens was the vote. Given this assumption, the analyst could express the outcome of the voting process in one of two ways. One possibility was to make the heroic assumptions necessary to obtain the median voter theorem, in which case, the political demands of the citizenry are simply the preferences of the median voter. The alternative was to make Arrow's Impossibility Theorem in which case even though individual preferences are well ordered, no collective preference function exists. On either of these approaches, institutions such as interest groups, political parties, or the structures ofpolitical representation played no role in the analysis. The work of "Chicago" scholars especially George Stigler, Gary Becker and Sam Peltzman took a different approach and emphasized the importanceoforganizationinmakingpoliticaldemandseffective, shifting thefocus from voting topolitical "pressure" byinterestgroups. However, in these models, voting as an instrument of political action simply disappears and the relationship between interest group pressures and electoral processes has never been clarified.
Download or read book Reconceiving Decision Making in Democratic Politics written by Bryan D. Jones and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are there often sudden abrupt changes in public opinion on political issues? Or total reversals in congressional support for specific legislation? Jones aims to answer these questions by connecting insights from cognitive science and rational-choice theory to political life.
Download or read book Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy written by Daron Acemoglu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.
