Search results for "direct democracy"
showing 10 items of 13 documents
Participación en la distribución: un análisis experimental de las instituciones políticas
2009
Este artículo analiza el papel de de las instituciones políticas sobre la distribución de recursos en procesos de negociación política. Para ello, recurrimos a la metodología experimental y estudiamos 3 instituciones políticas diferentes en el laboratorio, con el fin de determinar los resultados (desde el punto de vista del bienestar y de la igualdad) de la democracia y la participación directa en las instituciones. En la institución no democrática (Dictadura), un dictador es elegido aleatoriamente al comienzo del experimento para elegir como distribuir una cantidad constante de recursos. Dos instituciones democráticas son comparadas a este tratamiento base: (i) Democracia Indirecta, en la …
Parliamentary Democracy Versus Direct Democracy? : Challenging Liberal, Representative Democracy in the German Bundestag During the Anti-nuclear Demo…
2019
In German politics, concepts of parliamentarism and the relationship between parliamentarism and democracy have evolved since the nineteenth century. Politicians, citizens and scholars have regularly redefined and challenged conceptions of parliament’s task of representation, public debate and legitimate decision-making in different historical circumstances. One such crucial phase in re-evaluating and redefining conceptions of democracy in Germany was the second half of the 1990s, when a vigorous anti-nuclear movement arose. In the German federal parliament, members had to explain their understandings of German democracy. The tradition of liberal, representative democracy was in a conflict …
La “democrazia diretta” e la sua comunicazione visuale
2021
This text explains the current call for direct (or pure) democracy as a consequence of the pervasive weight of visual culture in the contemporary world.
Una nueva forma de hacer política: dar la voz a la militancia ¿realidad o mera apariencia?
2020
Political parties have been accused of being controlled by an elite or caste that has looked more for their own interests than for general interests. A new way of doing politics and new parties has appeared whose stated objective has been to return the voice to the militancy, assuming that it had been kidnapped by the inbreeding elites of the parties. This paper analyses whether the parties, whose power has traditionally been built from top to bottom, have assumed this change that would mean that power flows from the bottom up or has simply taken a cosmetic operation that apparently responds to this new way of doing policy, although the power is still in the hands of a minority. Summary:1. …
Conceptualizing and Measuring the Quality of Democracy: The Citizens' Perspective
2018
In recent years, several measurements of the quality of democracy have been developed (e.g. Democracy Barometer, Varieties of Democracy Project). These objective measurements focus on institutional and procedural characteristics of democracy. This article starts from the premise that in order to fully understand the quality of democracy such objective measurements have to be complemented by subjective measurements based on the perspective of citizens. The aim of the article is to conceptualize and measure the subjective quality of democracy. First, a conceptualization of the subjective quality of democracy is developed consisting of citizens’ support for three normative models of democracy …
After the Referendum
2015
During the years 2011–2014, Latvia experienced a significant increase in the adoption and use of militant democracy measures—constitutional amendments, refusals of party registration, restrictions on referendums and popular initiatives. These events, triggered by a widely attended referendum on the introduction of Russian as the second state language, highlighted the problematic relations between democracy and nation-building in Latvia. Despite earlier expectations that the original militancy of Latvian democracy would decrease with the gradual integration of the Russophone minority, recent developments show that the defence of a particular type of nation-building has become an integral pa…
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…
Is money where the fun ends? Material interests and individuals’ preference for direct democracy
2020
Abstract Are people’s attitudes towards referendums as a decision-making procedure predominantly driven by their material self-interest, or do individuals also value direct democracy as such, regardless of the material payoffs associated with anticipated policy outcomes? To answer this question, we use a survey data set that offers information on respondents’ support for referendums as a procedure to decide on tax policy, their income levels, socio-economic characteristics, and, most importantly, their expectation about the majority’s support for higher taxes. We find that the support of low-income individuals for referendums increases substantially if they expect a clear population majorit…
From the Blogosphere into Real Politics: The Use of ICT by the Five Star Movement
2014
Research on ICT and the public discourse often focuses on how ICT can be used to increase citizen participation in political decision-making processes. The Italian Five Star Movement (5SM) represents a novel approach to using ICT to include citizens, and a big challenge for the traditional political actors. The 5SM was initiated outside the established political systems, with the use of Internet tools as cornerstones to promote political actions based on the directly expressed will of citizens. In this paper, based on an exploratory case study approach and informed by the introduction of E-Democracy models, we investigate the role of ICT in various phases of the 5SM, from its birth through …
Partiti, Movimenti, democrazia diretta e divieto di mandato imperativo
2018
The paper focuses on the limits of direct democracy and on the fundamental importance of the prohibition of imperative mandate as a guarantee against parliamentary omnipotence.