Search results for "CRAC"

Preferences for Referenda: Intrinsic or Instrumental? Evidence from a Survey Experiment

2019

The call for more direct democracy, and referenda in particular, is often heard and met with support from large numbers of citizens in many countries. This article explores the motives for supporting referenda: Do citizens support them for intrinsic reasons, because referenda allow them to exercise their democratic rights more directly? Or are preferences for referenda predominantly based on the expectation that they will produce desired policy outcomes and thus instrumentally motivated? Our survey experiment explores such instrumental preferences by assessing how substantial policy preferences affect individuals’ choice of referenda over alternative decision-making procedures. We show tha…

Reflexiones sobre una eventual reforma constitucional de los institutos de democracia directa y semidirecta

2017

Resumen:Pese a la teórica vinculación de la participación directa a la idea de democracia, la constituyente española fue extraordinariamente prudente en la regulación de los institutos de democracia semidirecta por temor de la izquierda a la repetición de las negativas experiencias históricas en el uso del referéndum; su decidida opción por la democracia representativa quedo fuera de toda duda en los debates parlamentarios. Por ello el texto de 1978 es extraordinariamente sobrio en la aceptación tanto de la iniciativa popular como del referéndum. Y no lo ha sido menos la práctica durante 40 años de estos instrumentos.Sin embargo, las más recientes formaciones políticas presentes en el Parla…

¿Se han hecho más democráticos los partidos en España? La evolución en las reglas de elección del líder (1977-2008)

2011

En este trabajo, los autores verifican si, entre 1977 y 2008, ha habido un aumento de la democracia interna en los principales partidos políticos españoles. Para ello, analizan el proceso de selección del líder, al tiempo que cuestionan si ha habido un incremento de la igualdad en la participación para elegirlo, favoreciendo sistemas representativos o de elección directa. El artículo plantea también la hipótesis de si el grado de igualdad en las reglas de la elección influye en el grado de competencia en la lucha por el liderazgo del partido. Para comprobar tal supuesto, los autores examinan las condiciones de elegibilidad así como la representatividad del cuerpo electoral que escoge al líd…

The Beginning and End of Parental Responsibility — Finnish Parents’ Views

2012

INTRODUCTIONParental responsibility is a topic much discussed in present-day society. In these discussions the concept of parental responsibility appears self-explanatory, and it is often seen as the common denominator in dealing with child behaviour and educational issues, particularly in problem-centred discussions. Generally, responsibility seems to be one of the key concepts in policy-making and public debate about the lives of children and parents (Such & Walker, 2004).A theoretical model of present-day life that deals with parenting but also relates to parental responsibility is the theory of individualization (Giddens 1991, 1992). Individualization is a term used by Beck and Beck-Ger…

Local Powers and a Distant State in Rural Central African Republic

1997

‘The State Stops at PK 12’ – i.e. 12 kilometres from the capital, Bangui.The situation described by this statement, often heard in the Central African Republic, seems to conform to the objectives of the currently fashionable policies of decentralisation and structural adjustment – for example, to end ‘too much state’. However, the absence of the state in the rural areas of the CAR is so striking that the position in certain respects has almost reached the level of caricature. It also reflects the more general situation in other parts of the continent where the excesses of a centralised, over-staffed post-colonial regime can coexist perfectly with the pronounced absence in the rural areas of…

Procedural justice and democratic institutional design in health-care priority-setting

2013

Health-care goods are goods with peculiar properties, and where they are scarce, societies face potentially explosive distributional conflicts. Animated public and academic debates on the necessity and possible justice of limit-setting in health care have taken place in the last decades and have recently taken a turn toward procedural rather than substantial criteria for justice. This article argues that the most influential account of procedural justice in health-care rationing, presented by Daniels and Sabin, is indeterminate where concrete properties of rationing institutions are concerned. Such properties inscribe substantial norms into institutions. These norms can derive validity only…

Institutional Agonism: Axel Honneth’s Radical Democracy

2017

Axel Honneth may be criticised for reducing political philosophy to moral psychology. In what follows, I argue that if his theory of recognition is reframed as one of democracy, quite another pictu...

Emotions and political rhetoric: Perception of danger, group conflict and the biopolitics of fear

2016

Abstract In the present article I shall argue that human emotion is multifaceted and has a cognitive dimension in virtue of its intricate connections with beliefs, memories, imagination, and other products of human rationality. Human emotion also has a social and political dimension. When we think about fear we cannot characterize it as a mere stimulus-response phenomenon: it is, due to its cognitive facet, more complex and related to our ideas about survival and well-being. This leaves fear exposed to political rhetoric, and thus to political manipulation. Fear can be aroused, guided and nourished amongst the population, giving rise to a biopolitics of fear. In this article, I will conside…

2018

A vigorous anti-nuclear movement emerged in Germany in the mid 1990s, when spent nuclear fuel elements began to be transported to the interim storage facility in Gorleben, Lower Saxony. Resistance ...

On Trojan Horses and revolving doors: Assessing the autonomy of national officials in the European Commission

2014

National officials working in international bureaucracies regularly invoke the fear that member states strategically use such officials for influencing decision making and agenda-setting to their advantage. This article theoretically analyses conditions under which the autonomy of national civil servants in international bureaucracies might become compromised. The ensuing predictions are then tested using a unique survey among seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Commission (N ≈ 400). Finally, evaluating the characteristics linked to reduced autonomy among SNEs in the Commission, the article illustrates that these officials are, in practice, likely to be relatively independent from …