Search results for "representative democracy"
showing 10 items of 26 documents
How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums
2017
Direct democracy allows citizens to reverse decisions made by legislatures and even initiate new laws which parliaments are unwilling to pass, thereby, as its proponents argue, leading to more representative policies than would have obtained under a purely representative democracy. Yet, turnout in referendums is usually lower than in parliamentary elections and tends to be skewed towards citizens of high socio-economic status. Consequently, critics of direct democracy argue that referendum outcomes may not be representative of the preferences of the population at large. We test this assertion using a compilation of post-referendum surveys encompassing 148 national referendums held in Switze…
Innovations, Reinvented Politics and Representative Democracy
2020
"This volume focuses on the issue of change in democratic politics in terms of experimental or actual innovations introduced either within political parties or outside the party system, involving citizen participation and mobilization (...)"
The concept of the Royal Prerogative in parliamentary debates on the deployment of military in the British House of Commons, 1982–2003
2014
The article will discuss how one political key concept, the Royal Prerogative, was discussed in the British House of Commons in relation to the right to deploy and use armed troops abroad during the period 1982-2003, a time when the role of the British Parliament in decisions to deploy and commit troops to an armed conflict abroad was under extensive discussion in Parliament. This discussion began increasingly to address the state of the constitutional arrangements, more specifically the redefinition of the Royal Prerogative rights, the residual powers of the executive, as outdated in the understanding of modern representative democracy. The use of the concept was studied to reveal the atti…
Los derechos de participación en Ecuador siete años después de la aprobación de la constitución: de derechos constituyentes a derechos constitucional…
2015
Con la voluntad de cambiar el modelo de democracia liberal representativa y dar mayor protagonismo a la participación popular, la nueva constitución ecuatoriana de 2008 reconoció todo un conjunto de nuevos derechos de participación. El presente artículo parte de la idea de que estos derechos, igual que los demás, pueden adquirir la forma de lo que llamaremos “derechos constituyentes” o “derechos constitucionales”. A partir de aquí, el artículo plantea que si bien existió una voluntad constituyente, así como la base jurídica suficiente en el texto constitucional de 2008, para poder desarrolla…
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…
The Secondary Reality of the Media
2018
In this chapter, the author explores the relationship between Bourdieu’s idea on communication and his political philosophy. Bourdieu’s approach to communications was dominated by a paradox: on the one hand, he held communication to be a key social activity; on the other hand, he reach as a scientist for a level of existence where reality is not so much communicated as it is imposed on us. The author focuses on two central questions: Bourdieu’s analysis of the social activities as sign activity and his analysis of political representation and its links to civil society on the one hand and the critique of representative democracy on the other hand.
Democrazia e partecipazione politica nella giurisprudenza della Corte di giustizia dell'Unione europea
2011
L'articolo si propone di verificare il ruolo che ha avuto il concetto di democrazia rappresentativa nella giurisprudenza della Corte di Giustizia. The articles examines the role that the concept of Representative Democracy has played in the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Oltre la democrazia rappresentativa? Sovranità popolare e referendum nell’esperienza britannica, spagnola e francese
2019
In this paper the author elaborates on reflections about the role of the referendum in the British legal system, well-known to be characterized by a representative democracy, with the intent to examine the evolution of this institute. It is also a comparative study which examines the effects of the consultative referendum in the Spanish legal system and the characteristics and the effects of the legislative referendum in the French legal system in order to identify the analogies and the differences among these referendum.
Democratic Principles and the Economic Branch of the European Monetary Union
2017
L'articolo si propone di indagare sul valore che i vari principi democratici enunciati nel TUE hanno nello specifico settore dell'UEM, in particolare nel pilastro della politica economica, dopo l'entrata in vigore delle riforme contenute nel Six pack e nel successivo Two Pack. Il lavoro intende in particolare rispondere a tre domande: A) le regole contenute nel six pack e nel two pack in tema di controllo democratico sono espressione di un preciso modello di controllo democratico sulle scelte di politica economica nell'ambito dell'UEM? B) E' un simile modello compatibile con i principi democratici del TUE? C) I principi democratici non rappresentativi possono compensare il minor peso che vi…
Unpopular policies and the theory of representative democracy
1993
Their platforms reflect concern with enhancing the probability of being elected, but some candidates often, or all candidates occasionally, voluntarily adept stances that reduce that probability. Governments care about their popularity, but sometimes they choose, even before an election, to announce or implement policies that are unpopular. For most people, the phenomenon is no news and is not altogether a unhappy one. Deprecating words such as demagogy or "mob rule" and praising ones such as leadership or statesmanship express a deeply-rooted, widelyshared concern about the possibility that democratic politicians could be too subservient to public opinion.(...)