The main aim of this final essay is to draw on the insights gathered in the Debate “Do Referendums Enhance or Threaten Democracy” to inform future normative and empirical discussions about the design of popular vote processes. We first offer some clarifications regarding three of the concerns raised by respondents about our introductory essay. We then propose a systematic classification of the lines of variation along which the design of popular vote processes usually varies. More precisely, (...) we highlight nine lines of variation: trigger, origin of the text, legal basis, scope, trigger requirements, time, ballot, information, and decision rule. We conclude by emphasizing the relevance and necessity of debating the formal institutional design of popular vote processes. (shrink)

This paper attempts to demonstrate that bottom-up popular vote processes (the optional referendum and citizens’ initiative) focused on ordinary legislation can help to improve democratic self-government by uniquely facilitating the development and expression of various forms of political agency. Most significantly, it is argued that such popular vote processes can be designed in ways that endow them with significant deliberative credentials. Methodologically, the paper employs Mark E. Warren’s problem-based approach to democratic theory, which provides the conceptual (...) tools necessary to advance a) a novel case for recovering popular vote processes as a valid institutional toolkit for exploration by democratic theory and b) an empirically informed set of best practices that can provide critical resources for normatively scrutinizing existing institutionalizations of bottom-up popular vote processes across the world. (shrink)

On the one hand, it seems important to bring real citizens into the constitutional processes of making and amending constitutions. This is important in order to foster a sense of ownership and commitment to constitutional principles, have those documents reflect the interests and concerns of ordinary people, and fulfill the principles of popular sovereignty and constituent authority of the people. On the other hand, there are many misgivings about handing over decisional power to the people (for example through referendums) (...) on constitutional issues. The worry here is that these means of bringing citizen into the process are easily hijacked by majoritarian or populist forces and may be used to undermine rather than strengthen principles of constitutional democracy. Constitutions are, among other things, supposed to protect individuals and minorities from majorities. This is the classic tension between democracy and constitutionalism. One solution is to shift ideas of popular sovereignty away from voting and towards fostering public dialogue. In this paper, I argue that one of the most effective ways to foster public dialogue about constitutional essentials is through initiating a referendum. Thus I defend constitutional referendums on the counterintuitive grounds that if properly structured they are effective in promoting the recognition of the limits of majoritarianism. (shrink)

What limits should there be on the areas of life that are governed by market forces? For many years, no one seriously defended the buying and selling votes for political elections. In recent years, however, this situation has changed, with a number of authors defending the permissibility of vote markets. One popular objection to such markets is that they would lead to a tyranny of wealth, where the poor are politically dominated by the rich. In a recent paper, (...) Taylor :313–328, 2017. doi: 10.1007/s11158-016-9327-0) has argued that this objection can be avoided if certain restrictions are placed on vote markets. In this paper we will argue that this attempt to rebut an argument against vote markets is unsuccessful. Either vote markets secure their purported benefits but then they inevitably lead to a tyranny of wealth, or they are restricted so heavily that they lack the features that have been claimed to make vote markets attractive in the first place. Using Taylor’s proposal as a test case, we make the more general claim that vote markets cannot avoid the tyranny of wealth objection and bring about their supposed benefits at the same time. (shrink)

As popular food writers and activists urge consumers to express their social, political, and ethical commitments through their food choices, the imperative to ‘vote with your fork’ has become a common slogan of emerging food movements in the US. I interrogate the conception of responsibility embedded in this dictate, which has become a de facto model for how to comport ourselves ethically with respect to food. I argue that it implicitly endorses a narrow and problematic understanding of responsibility. (...) To contextualize this claim, I utilize Iris Marion Young’s critique of a “liability model” of responsibility to demonstrate that voting with one’s fork is insufficient as model for taking responsibility for food-related injustices. Instead, I suggest that Young’s social connection model of responsibility is best suited for taking stock of responsibility for food and agriculture related injustices since they are structural and systemic ones. I conclude that although consumer choices and purchases may be important dimensions of our conduct with respect to food and eating, imagining responsibility to be centered on this type of conduct—consumer behavior—is detrimental to attempts to develop a more just food system. (shrink)

The popular view of shareholder activism focuses on shareholder resolutions and the shareholder vote via proxy statements at the annual meeting, which is treated as a "David vs. Goliath" showdown between the small group of socially responsible investors and the powerful corporation. This article goes beyond the popular view to examine where the real action typically occurs-in the Dialogue process where corporations and shareholder activist groups mutually agree to ongoing communications to deal with a serious social issue. (...) Use of the capitalized word "Dialogue" is intended to distinguish this formal process between corporations and shareholders from all the other forms of dialogue or twoway communication exchanged between a corporation and its stakeholders. The phenomenon of Dialogue between a corporation and dissident shareholders has not been analyzed in the academic literature or in the popular press because it occurs behind the scenes and out of sight from media scrutiny. Yet this is where a great deal of social change initiated by shareholder activists is negotiated. This article contributes both theoretically and empirically to the study of Dialogues between shareholder activists and corporations. We explain how Dialogues occur in the context of the shareholder resolution process and examine two Dialogues that focus on international labor issues in two industries. Then data on Dialogues during the period, 1999-2005, from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are analyzed. This research contributes to knowledge about the Dialogue process and the emerging literature on corporation-stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

The popular view of shareholder activism focuses on shareholder resolutions and the shareholder vote via proxy statements at the annual meeting, which is treated as a “David vs. Goliath” showdown between the small group of socially responsible investors and the powerful corporation. This article goes beyond the popular view to examine where the real action typically occurs – in the Dialogue process where corporations and shareholder activist groups mutually agree to ongoing communications to deal with a serious (...) social issue. Use of the capitalized word “Dialogue” is intended to distinguish this formal process between corporations and shareholders from all the other forms of dialogue or two-way communication exchanged between a corporation and its stakeholders. The phenomenon of Dialogue between a corporation and dissident shareholders has not been analyzed in the academic literature or in the popular press because it occurs behind the scenes and out of sight from media scrutiny. Yet this is where a great deal of social change initiated by shareholder activists is negotiated. This article contributes both theoretically and empirically to the study of Dialogues between shareholder activists and corporations. We explain how Dialogues occur in the context of the shareholder resolution process and examine two Dialogues that focus on international labor issues in two industries. Then data on Dialogues during the period, 1999–2005, from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are analyzed. This research contributes to knowledge about the Dialogue process and the emerging literature on corporation–stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

Under the first-past-the-post electoral system that is still deeply entrenched in such democracies as Canada and the United States, it is not at all uncommon in a provincial, state, or federal election for there to be a striking lack of correspondence between the share of the seats a political party is able to win and its share of the popular vote. From the standpoint of the democratic ideal what is morally unacceptable about this system is that the right (...) to vote it confers on members of the electorate is not a defensible instantiation of the fundamental right citizens have to participate on terms of equality in the collective decision-making processes that help to determine their options in life. Three common attempts by defenders of the system to shield it from this objection are considered and rejected. (shrink)

In his recent article in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 'The Paradox of Voting and Ethics of Political Representation', Alexander A. Guerrero argues it is rational to vote because each voter should want candidates they support to have the strongest public mandate possible if elected to office, and because every vote contributes to that mandate. The present paper argues that two of Guerrero's premises require correction, and that when those premises are corrected several provocative but compelling conclusions follow about (...) the rationality of voting and duties of elected officials: (A) Voting is typically rational for the members of a political party’s base; (B) Voting is often (but not always) irrational for “swing” voters (i.e. independent voters who are not affiliated with any political party, as well as “undecided” voters who are considering voting across party lines); and (C) Elected officials have a moral duty to respond to changing levels of popular support once in office, as indicated by properly monitored and corroborated public opinion polls of constituents, functioning more as delegates the lower their level of popular support. Finally, I suggest that the last of these conclusions has wide-ranging implications for political ethics. I illustrate these implications by focusing on the questions -- under debate in the 2016 US Presidential election cycle -- of whether a sitting President has a moral duty to nominate or not nominate a new Supreme Court justice during his or her final year in office, and similarly, whether US Senators have a moral duty to obstruct, or not obstruct, confirmation of the President’s eventual nominee. (shrink)

The popular view of shareholder activism focuses on shareholder resolutions and the shareholder vote via proxy statements at the annual meeting, which is treated as a “David vs. Goliath” showdown between the small group of socially responsible investors and the powerful corporation. This article goes beyond the popular view to examine where the real action typically occurs – in the Dialogue process where corporations and shareholder activist groups mutually agree to ongoing communications to deal with a serious (...) social issue. Use of the capitalized word “Dialogue” is intended to distinguish this formal process between corporations and shareholders from all the other forms of dialogue or two-way communication exchanged between a corporation and its stakeholders. The phenomenon of Dialogue between a corporation and dissident shareholders has not been analyzed in the academic literature or in the popular press because it occurs behind the scenes and out of sight from media scrutiny. Yet this is where a great deal of social change initiated by shareholder activists is negotiated. This article contributes both theoretically and empirically to the study of Dialogues between shareholder activists and corporations. We explain how Dialogues occur in the context of the shareholder resolution process and examine two Dialogues that focus on international labor issues in two industries. Then data on Dialogues during the period, 1999–2005, from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility are analyzed. This research contributes to knowledge about the Dialogue process and the emerging literature on corporation–stakeholder engagement. (shrink)

We suggest an equilibrium concept for a strategic model with a large number of players in which each player observes the actions of only a small number of the other players. The concept fits well situations in which each player treats his sample as a prediction of the distribution of actions in the entire population, and responds optimally to this prediction. We apply the concept to a strategic voting model and investigate the conditions under which a centrist candidate can win (...) the popular vote although his strength in the population is smaller than the strengths of the right and left candidates.  2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Two-stage voting is prone to majority inversions, a situation in which the outcome of an election is not backed by a majority of popular votes. We study the probability of majority inversion in a model with two candidates, three states and uniformly distributed fractions of supporters for each candidate. The model encompasses equal or distinct population sizes, with equal, population-based or arbitrary voting weights in the second stage. We prove that, when no state can dictate the outcome of the (...) election by commanding a voting weight in excess of one half, the probability of majority inversion increases with the size disparity among the states. (shrink)

Le Front national, en se revendiquant du populisme, s'inscrit dans une mouvance très répandue en Europe, qui pourrait se caractériser par le refus de la médiation, l'appel au peuple contre les élites. Mais la méfiance envers un personnel politique considéré comme corrompu est, par exemple, aussi fréquente dans l'électorat d'extrême gauche. L'électeur du FN se distingue plutôt par son ethnocentrisme, son rejet des autres. Et populiste n'est pas nécessairement synonyme de « populaire ». La catégorie sociale la plus défavorisée, celle (...) des ouvriers, est plus représentée dans l'électorat du PC ou des Chasseurs que dans celui du FN, qui fait de meilleurs scores chez les artisans, les industriels et les professions libérales. Les milieux populaires se singularisent d'abord par leur abstentionnisme. L'extrême droite est donc à la fois moins «populiste» et moins «populaire» qu'il n'y paraît.The National Front's claim to be populist makes it part of very widespread movement in Europe, which could be characterized by the refusal of mediation, the call to the people against the elite. But mistrust towards a political personnel considered as corrupt is, for example, also widespread in the electorate of extreme left. The voter of the FN is characterized rather by his ethnocentrism, his rejection of the others. And populist is not necessarily synonymous with "popular". The most disadvantaged social category, that of the workmen, is more represented in the electorate of the PC or the Hunters that in the FN, which makes better scores by the craftsmen, the industrialists and the liberal professions. The popular classes are distinguished initially by their abstentionism. The extreme right is thus at the same time less "populist" and less "popular" than it does appear. (shrink)

Legal statutes prohibiting felons from voting result in nearly 4 million Americans, disproportionately African-American and male, being unable to vote. These felony disenfranchisement (FD) statutes have a long history and apparently enjoy broad public support. Here I argue that despite the popularity and extensive history of these laws, denying felons the right to vote is an unjust form of punishment in a democratic state. FD serves none of the recognized purposes of punishment and may even exacerbate crime. My (...) strategy is not to argue for this conclusion directly. Rather, I consider seven arguments for the moral legitimacy of FD, each of which will be found lacking. My emphasis falls not on the legal or constitutional questions associated with FD, but with its moral justification within a broadly liberal political framework. These arguments draw upon a variety of philosophical outlooks; three justify FD by appealing to justice or desert, three others justify FD based on its allegedly beneficial social consequences, and a final argument is a hybrid of both sorts of considerations. Not only do all these arguments fail, but eliminating FD could have salutary effects on our present climate of political discourse. -/- . (shrink)

In this essay I defend an institutional approach to democratic legitimacy against proceduralist approaches that are commonly endorsed by deliberative democrats. Although deliberative democrats defend a complex view of democratic legitimacy that aims to account for both the procedural and substantive dimensions of legitimacy, most accounts of the relationship between these dimensions currently on offer are too proceduralist to be plausible (I). By contrast, I argue that adopting an institutional approach helps provide a more convincing account of the interplay between (...) procedural and substantive aspects of democratic legitimacy which in turn illuminates the intricate relationship between public deliberation and decision-making procedures such as voting (II). This account also enables us to see what is wrong with interpreting the legitimacy of majoritarian and non-majoritarian institutions in terms of an alleged conflict between popular sovereignty and rights protections. In opposition to this view, I argue that the proper standard for judging the democratic legitimacy of both majoritarian and non-majoritarian institutions is whether they enable an ongoing recursive process of deliberative contestation or whether they generate antidemocratic shortcuts instead (III). (shrink)

Why read the chapter of Rousseau’s Social Contract devoted to the Roman assemblies? Because that text relies on the best available historical sources at the time, especially Carlo Sigonio’s work, to examine a key issue in Rousseau’s political philosophy: the implementation of common interest. In other words, the chapter on the comitia raises the following question: how can the people take part in public life? How can popular action maintain a republican government instead of threatening it? To understand this (...) question, and why Roman history plays a crucial part in the argument of The Social Contract, it helps to remember that for Rousseau a Republic is a government that does not act on behalf of private interests. Res publica, the recent book by renowned historian Claudia Moatti, further highlights Rousseau’s representation of the Roman Republic. The article examines in particular the meaning of the expression “public thing”, a literal translation of res publica, which appears twice in Rousseau’s text, demonstrating an understanding of Roman history that seems quite close to Claudia Moatti’s. Like her, Rousseau seems to identify two distinct visions of the Republic: one based on citizens’ rights, the other focused on the defence of the state. Today, as these two definitions of the Republic both appear in public debate, Rousseau’s vision of Rome is all the more striking and topical. (shrink)

Political scientists generally consider that the incentive for legislators to switch parties lies in their desire to be re-elected. While some scholars attribute defection to the legislators’ popularity and strong connections with their constituents which enable them to be re-elected without relying on party labels, others assert that legislators switch if they perceive that staying put might threaten their chances of re-election. In this paper, we find that the two assumptions, to some extent, contradict each other. More surprisingly, the two (...) contradictory hypotheses cohabit under the single non-transferable vote system. From an analysis of the switching in the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan, the empirical evidence shows that because of fierce intraparty competition in the multimember districts, not only barely elected but also top-ranked legislators switched party affiliation in order to avoid the loss in votes or even seats to their copartisans and to maximize their chances of re-election. (shrink)

Felony disenfranchisement is best understood as a means of vote suppression. Quite apart from its significance as a form of criminal stigma, disenfranchisement is most properly characterized as one of the ways in which the American voting system reserves political participation for a privileged social and intellectual class. Thus understood, felony disenfranchisement reveals the theoretical underpinnings of an exclusionary version of American democracy in which more or less widespread disenfranchisement is an acceptable or necessary political tactic. Felony disenfranchisement should (...) not be characterized as a sanction for criminal conduct: It fits none of the usual justifications for punishment. Most commentators agree that felony disenfranchisement as a collateral sanction for criminal conduct stigmatizes alike a disparate collection of individuals convicted of crimes carrying a penalty of one year or more - everything from drug possession to murder - and extends, in many instances, long after former felons have completed their sentences. Justifications for refusing the vote to felons, and to former felons who are no longer incarcerated, are surprisingly weak and clearly related to larger issues of democratic participation. Accordingly, it is under the framework of democratic participation that the most persuasive justifications of disenfranchisement might be found. Under the framework of democratic participation, the disenfranchisement debate implicates competing theories of democracy, each of which has profound consequences for the constitution of the American polity. I contend that there are currently three models for the right to vote in American society: (1) a membership model premised upon popular participation in the democratic process as an expression of citizenship; (2) a deliberative model in which popular participation is conditioned upon the duty to be an informed and reflective citizen; and (3) an elite model entrenching political office in a political class that competes for votes among the electoral masses. The continuing vitality of these three models at the level of political debate and constitutional doctrine unsettles the dominant history of the franchise as one of progress from an exclusionary to an inclusionary extension of the mandate, and requires us to acknowledge felony disenfranchisement as part of a larger process of voter exclusion and suppression. (shrink)

Pakatan Harapan won the 14thGeneral Election held in May, 2018 in Malaysia. PH thus ended sixty-one years rule of Barisan Nasional.While the slogan of Malaysia Bahru, indicating changes to come in the country, became a popular slogan, one thing remained constant. This was the number of women contesting the GE-14 as candidates and the number of them who were elected was much less than the number of men contesting and getting elected in GE-14 although women represented slightly more than (...) 50% of the total registered voters in that election. The main objective of this paper is to examine the main factors that influenced the female voters in GE-14. Two states in the northern Malaysia were selected with 200 eligible female voters. They were clustered and conveniently sampled and were given self-administered questionnaires. Demographic variables were cross-tabbed while asking the women which factors had influenced their votes. The findings show that majority of the female voters were influenced by the candidates’ social background. Younger women were very concerned with the issues directly affecting them. Significantly, preference for political party was of least interest to them while voting. While the majority of women voters from the three main ethnic groups supported more women to be nominated as candidates in elections, the Malay women showed the highest level of disagreement on that matter as compared to the rest. The study also shows that majority of the female voters, whether young or old, rural or urban, use social media as the main and the most trusted source of news on election. These findings have concluded that, their demographic background interplayed with each other constructing their voting preferences. Female voters are crucial and each contesting parties need to pay closer attention to the women’s concerns in order to secure their votes. (shrink)

The "Commentariolum Petitionis" has long served to demonstrate the validity of the theory that Republican electoral politics were founded on relationships of patronage that permeated the entire society, and that appeals to the voting citizenry were relatively unimportant for election. Yet the attention the author pays to the necessity of cultivating the popularis voluntas strongly implies that a successful canvasser cannot rely on the direct or indirect ties of patronage and amicitia but must win the electoral support of the anonymous (...) mass of voters. A consular campaign emerges as to a great extent a public performance before the populus in which the candidate seeks to demonstrate to those who do not know him personally that he is dignus consulatu. While the exploitation of personal connections is undeniably important, certain features of the treatment of the studia amicorum in the Commentariolum suggest that the traditional, Gelzerian emphasis on noble patronage is misplaced. Noble allies are particularly prized not for networks of clients but for the luster they shed on a candidate; on the other hand, the homines gratiosi whose electioneering activities are most suggestive of patronage tend to be of middle and lower rank. Nor can all the personal political relationships discussed in the Commentariolum be plausibly subsumed under the concept of patronage, which entails asymmetry between the parties and a connection of some duration; rather, the picture presented here is one of a relatively "free market" of political deal-making between candidates and vote-brokers. The "Commentariolum Petitionis" offers no obstacle to a new model of Republican politics that assigns a much greater role to symbolic appeals to a voting citizenry, and a less dominant role to personal patronage, than have until recently been accepted. (shrink)

Majority rule is often regarded as an important democratic principle. But modern democracies divide voters into districts. So if the majority should rule, which majority should rule? Should it be the popular majority, or an electoral majority (i.e., either the majority of voters in the majority of districts, or the majority of voters in districts that contain the majority of the population)? I argue that majority rule requires rule by the popular majority. This view is not novel and (...) may seem obvious. But it is rarely defended, and often rejected. I defend it by arguing that this view about which majority should rule is best supported by the arguments for why the majority should rule, and best avoids the arbitrary and perverse verdicts of rule by electoral majorities. I close by considering the significant practical implications of the view. The Electoral College is often criticized on the basis that the winner of the popular vote doesn’t always win the election. But all district-based democracies have this feature, so all district-based democracies must be reformed if they are to satisfy the principle of majority rule. (shrink)

Why does #RepealedThe8th matter for feminist legal studies? The answers seem obvious in one sense. Feminism has long constituted itself through the struggle for sexual and reproductive justice, and Irish feminism has contributed a significant ‘legal win’ with the landslide vote of approval for lifting abortion restrictions in the referendum on the 25th May 2018. That win comes at a global moment when populist legal engagement is doing significant damage in countries that regard themselves as world leaders, and beyond. (...) #RepealedThe8th offers Ireland, and the world, the actuality that the popular vote, and everything that contributes to it, could be something else. Repeal shows how legal tools like the vote may be made into an expression of care for reproductive lives. This expression is important in recognizing pregnant people as knowing agents who are best placed to decide, and in seeking to do justice to those who contribute to everyday reproductive life. But repeal, like the many who brought it into being, has multiple meanings. #RepealedThe8th matters because it is a moving process of socio-legal translation, which draws on a collective energy, ‘repeal energy’, to turn the travesty that was the Eighth Amendment and all it represents into a search for the rest of reproductive life. In opening up the meaning of the vote, much like feminists elsewhere have opened up the meaning of the strike, Irish feminists have turned public mourning over past mistreatment into a series of reproductive connections. This is not a strategy that can be rolled out. Figuring out #RepealedThe8th will take many tellings. Rather we need to give repeal, and repealers, room to breathe and rest. We need to feel our way through repeal’s production of legal change so that this success is not reduced to some generic transferable set of legal instructions. I begin by reflecting on repeal as a process of feminist socio-legal translation, which shows us how legal change comes about through the motivation of collective joy, the mourning of damaged and lost lives, the sharing of legal knowledge, and the claiming of the rest of reproductive life. (shrink)

In his pithy indictments of democracy, Churchill captured a feeling prevalent among intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century; a feeling that government-by-the-people warranted, at best, a limited or half-hearted faith; a feeling that might be described as the “majoritarian creed.” This creed can be characterized by the following propositions. A believer-inthe-democratic-faith defends majoritarian methods—such as popular votes, polls and representation—as the best available means to signal the people’s collective political preferences.

Fifth-century Athens is praised as the cradle of democracy and sometimes treated as a potential model for modern political theory or practice. In this daring reassessment of classical Athenian democracy and its significance for the United States today, Loren J. Samons provides ample justification for our founding fathers' distrust of democracy, a form of government they scorned precisely because of their familiarity with classical Athens. How Americans have come to embrace "democracy" in its modern form—and what the positive and negative (...) effects have been—is an important story for all contemporary citizens. Confronting head-on many of the beliefs we hold dear but seldom question, Samons examines Athens's history in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in order to test the popular idea that majority rule leads to good government. Challenging many basic assumptions about the character and success of Athenian democracy, _What's Wrong with Democracy? _offers fascinating and accessible discussions of topics including the dangers of the popular vote, Athens's acquisitive foreign policy, the tendency of the state to overspend, the place of religion in Athenian society, and more. Sure to generate controversy, Samons's bold and iconoclastic book finds that democracy has begun to function like an unacknowledged religion in our culture, immune from criticism and dissent, and he asks that we remember the Athenian example and begin to question our uncritical worship of democratic values such as freedom, choice, and diversity. (shrink)

When can a group legitimately form its own state? Under international law, some groups can but others cannot. But the standard is unclear, and traditional legal analysis has failed to elucidate it. In The Theory of Self-Determination, leading scholars chart new territory in our theoretical conception of self-determination. Drawing from diverse scholarship in international law, philosophy, and political science, they attempt to move beyond the prevailing nationalist conceptions of group definition. At issue are such universal questions as: when does a (...) group qualify as a 'people'? Does history matter? Or is it a question of ethnic status? Are these matters properly solved by popular vote? Anchored in modern analytical political philosophy but with implications for a wide range of scholarship, this volume will prove essential for scholars and practitioners of international law, global justice, and international relations. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider some aspects of the question of how difficult it should be to amend or change constitutional laws through formal amendment procedures. The point of departure of my discussion is an amendment procedure that has recently been suggested by the prominent legal and political philosopher Bruce Ackerman. He defends a three-step amendment procedure – where a re-elected president is authorised to propose amendments that must thereafter be approved first by a two-thirds majority of (...) the legislature, and then by a simple majority of the citizens at the next two presidential elections. I propose and defend an alternative amendment procedure that can be termed the four-step procedure. According to this procedure, the right to propose amendments is granted both to legislators and voters via citizen initiatives. Thereafter, the proposed amendments should be placed before the legislature, where they must be approved by a simple majority in two successive parliaments, and there must be an interval of no less than one year between the two votes. If passed by the legislative assembly, the amendment(s) should be approved by a simple majority of the electorate in a referendum. However, a submajority of the legislators (i.e. a one-third minority) should be empowered to require an additional referendum on the proposed amendment(s), and this final referendum should be held two years after the first popular vote. In order to assess the outlined amendment procedures, I primarily focus on the following factors or criteria of evaluation, which I group under three headings: (1) Central ideas and ideals in deliberative democratic theory and the fact of persistent disagreement in modern pluralist societies (this includes considerations of how well alternative amendment procedures deal with disagreement among citizens); (2) rule of law values, stability and flexibility; and (3) the value of checks and balances that can guard against the abuse of power (or more precisely, whether the amendment procedures under consideration provide adequate checks and balances between courts, political actors and citizens). (shrink)

In his speech against Meidias Demosthenes describes the arrogant and proud behaviour of his opponent in which Meidias persists in spite of the popular vote condemning him. Whenever there is voting, Demosthenes says, Meidias is put forward as a candidate; he is the proxenos of Plutarch, he knows everything, the city is too small for his aspirations. This illustration of the enormous popularity of an Athenian politician shows his predominant influence in the two spheres of domestic and foreign (...) policy. The main line of this foreign policy —the passage is obviously intended as an accusation—is expressed by the relationship of proxenia and xenia between Meidias and Plutarch, the leading politician of Eretria who, pro-Athenian at first, changed his attitude and almost brought disaster on the Athenian army intervening in Euboea. (shrink)

Do democratic systems that include binding referendum and initiative processes violate a core principle of democracy, namely that legislators should be accountable? Some have argued that they do: these popular vote processes would grant the right to legislate to ordinary voters even though they cannot be held accountable—i.e., face possible consequences imposed by others for their actions and decisions. As a result, we should favor conventional representative systems over systems with popular vote processes. In this article, (...) I analyze this ‘accountability objection’ to referendums and initiatives and the conception of voters as ‘legislators’ on which it relies and argue that it does not withstand scrutiny. I first demonstrate that there is no sound basis to characterize only voters in popular votes, and not voters in elections, as ‘legislators’. Therefore, the scope of the objection is broader than anticipated by its proponents: it cannot be consistently used to dismiss popular votes without also being fatal to elections. I then argue that voters’ lack of accountability is not fatal to either mass voting process. The institutional role of ordinary voters provides them with co-lawmaking powers; but these are not the kind of special powers that justify holding certain actors accountable in democratic systems. This does not exclude that voters have responsibilities. I close by highlighting that, compared to conventional representative systems, democratic systems including well-designed popular vote processes could offer voters more supportive conditions to meet such possible responsibilities. (shrink)

O Estado Novo, apesar de ser uma ditadura, consagrou, na Constituição, a realização de eleições presidenciais, legislativas e para as Juntas de Freguesia, uma vez que só o voto popular podia fornecer a legitimação interna e externa de que necessitava. Todavia, os resultados eleitorais sempre foram controlados de modo a garantir a vitória do candidato ou da lista da União Nacional e todas as eleições foram fraudulentas. As eleições presidenciais de 1949 e 1958 foram dois desses momentos importantes para (...) Portugal, em que o povo teria podido votar e decidir o futuro do país mas em que a opressão, a censura, a violência e a fraude marcaram a campanha eleitoral e determinaram a votação, garantindo a vitória dos candidatos da Situação e a derrota dos da Oposição, apesar destes terem, inequivocamente, o apoio da maioria da população. Notwithstanding the fact that it was a dictatorship, the Estado Novo consecrated in the Constitution the realisation of presidential and legislative elections and also elections to the Juntas de Freguesia , given that only the popular vote could provide it with the internal and external legitimisation it needed. However, the electoral results were always controlled in order to guarantee the victory of União Nacional's candidate or list and all the elections were fraudulent. The presidential elections of 1949 and 1958 were two of these important moments to Portugal, in which the people could have voted and decided the country's future, but instead oppression, censorship, violence and fraud marked the electoral campaign and determined the voting, guaranteeing the victory of the Situation candidates and the defeat of the Opposition ones, despite the fact that the latter had, unequivocally, the support of the majority of the population. (shrink)

Trump’s election renewed discussion about the Electoral College, mostly centered on its disparity with the popular vote. Yet much commentary about the Electoral College neglects its original purpose grounded in the Founders’ concern to provide for indirect election to many important offices. The Founders’ project entailed determining the people’s aptitude to elect the types of individuals desirable for high office, in an attempt to harmonize their dual commitments to political right and political legitimacy. The Electoral College’s function was (...) soon frustrated by the rise of political parties, yet parties came to serve at least part of that function, with party leaders standing as a moderating force between the people and the presidency. However, the 2016 elections suggest that parties no longer play this intermediary role effectively. Examining the steps that led to this result, we seek to provide a reminder of the enduring thesis that the dangers inherent in republicanism require creative republican remedies. (shrink)

Does direct democracy enhance political efficacy? This article examines the effect of direct democracy on political efficacy. Normative theorists have suggested that direct democracy has educative effects on citizens, such as promoting political efficacy. While a number of studies have examined the corresponding hypothesis, their empirical findings are not clear-cut. This study attributes the inconsistent results to two problems of the existing studies: the employment of cross-sectional data and the heterogeneity of popular vote issues. This study closes this (...) gap by examining the effect of direct democracy in local politics on political efficacy in a more systematic and controlled way. More concretely, it utilizes the Japanese case: In the first decade of this century, more than 400 Japanese municipalities held a popular vote for the first time because the Japanese national government promoted municipal merger. Therefore, the Japanese case provides multiple popular votes on comparable substantive topics that can be conceived as an homogeneous treatment. By applying multilevel modeling to panel survey data, this study demonstrates the causal effect that the popular vote increases the level of internal political efficacy. (shrink)

Recoiling from the power that Athenian democracy placed in the hands of the poor, the founding fathers of the United States took Athens as primarily an anti-model, whereas nineteenth-century defenders of slavery found Athens a very congenial model indeed, seeming as it did to lend a mantle of legitimacy to an unspeakable practice. After a “honeymoon period” in which democracy was idealized as the only legitimate form of government, now at the outset of the twenty-first century the alliance of democracy (...) with a capitalism that often proves heartless to the less fortunate has raised some troubling questions about democracy itself. Despite its small size, classical Athens offers valuable guidance for tempering current difficulties in both the United States and elsewhere by adopting and adapting the selection of some officials by sortition, direct election by popular vote of elected officials, a rigorous system of accountability, and the fostering of civic and community values. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Sacred and the Myth: Havel's Greengrocer and the Transformation of Ideology in Communist Czechoslovakia Marci Shore University ofToronto There is nothing a free man is so anxious to do as to find something to worship. But it must be something unquestionable, that all men can agree to worship communally. For the great concern ofthese miserable creatures is not that every individual should find something to worship that he (...) personally considers worthy ofworship, but that they should find someming in which they can all believe and which they can all worship in common; it is essential that it should be in common. And it is precisely that requirement ofshared worship that has been the principal source of suffering for individual man and the human race since the beginning of history. In their efforts to impose universal worship, men have unsheathed their swords and killed one another.Fyodor Dostoevsky (306) Thus the conflict between the aims of life and the aims of the system is not a conflict between two socially defined and separate communities; and only a very generalized view (and even that only approximative) permits us to divide society into the rulers and the ruled. Here, by the way, is one of the most important differences between the post-totalitarian system and classical dictatorships, in which this line of conflict can still be drawn according to social class. In the post-totalitarian system, 1 64Marci Shore this line runs defacto through each person, for everyone in his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter ofthe system. Vaclav Havel (37) The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia arrived as a symbolically gentle conclusion to a half-century long era ofharrowing violence and totalitarianism in Eastern Europe. It was an era that saw the emergence ofNazism, Stalinism, and various indigenous fascisms, effecting a startling demonstration of the potency of ideology to co-opt minds and to wreak violence. The existence of communist ideology as a myth cohering communist totalitarian societies has been widely enough asserted. Yet this analysis can be taken to a further level through the aid oftwo paradigms. The first is a theory of human relationships developed by René Girard, which blends the disciplines ofliterary criticism, anthropology, philosophy, and political science. The second is a model arising from Vaclav Havel's parable of the greengrocer, told in "The Power ofthe Powerless" (1979). Girard's model posits the existence ofthe sacred, that locus of power that was once the pole of primitive religions. The core of the sacred is transfigured human violence. Girardian scholar Robert Hamerton-Kelly explains the process by which the sacred comes into being: Girard tells us that [the sacred] is a mendacious representation of human violence; "it is the sum ofhuman assumptions resulting from collective transferences focused on a reconciliatory victim at the conclusion of a mimetic crisis." The element of "the overwhelming" defines the Sacred...but its primary content is violence understood as being...outside ofnormal human control. (142) The sacred is established as the result of a crisis, one which finds resolution in the purging ofa relatively arbitrary scapegoat. Following this catharsis, three expressions sustain the sacred: myth, ritual, and prohibition. An examination ofthe evolution ofthese expressions in Czechoslovakia from the Stalinist period through normalization (the so-termed "posttotalitarian " period described by Havel in his essay) reveals much about the paradoxical dynamics ofideologically-based totalitarianism—which Havel defines most poignantly by suggesting that at the essence of ideological totalitarianism is the collapsing of the traditional dichotomy between victim and oppressor. The Sacred and the Myth: Havel's Greengrocer165 A Girardian deconstruction of Stalinism A political space for Stalinism developed in Czechoslovakia through the tumultuous period of Nazi occupation and the communist nature of anti-Nazi resistance. By the eve ofthe 1948 communist coup, the communists had claimed thirty-eight percent ofthe popular vote in free elections. Milan Kundera describes the coup as a usurpation of power "not in bloodshed and violence, but to the cheers of about half the population" (1986, 8). Defining this initial fanaticism was its honesty, especially among the younger generation. A young Stalinist later to become a reformist, and still later a dissident, Zdenek Mlynár, explains... (shrink)

The George W. Bush ascent to the presidency lacks a true precedent in the United States History. It is true that in three previous elections (1824, 1876 and 1888) it happened that a candidate gained the popular vote and the other the electoral vote. But that was not the distinctive characteristic..

Is there a rationale for an electoral college system or do these voting systems always waste useful information? This paper studies this question in a setup in which voting is supposed to aggregate decentralized information about individual preferences for two candidates. Individual perceptions may be affected by regional information. When such regional information plays a major role, an electoral college system may be superior to simple majority voting.

In this paper we show how a realistic normative democratic theory can work within the constraints set by the most pessimistic empirical results about voting behaviour and elite capture of the policy process. After setting out the empirical evidence and discussing some extant responses by political theorists, we argue that the evidence produces a two-pronged challenge for democracy: an epistemic challenge concerning the quality and focus of decision-making and an oligarchic challenge concerning power concentration. To address the challenges we then (...) put forward three main normative claims, each of which is compatible with the evidence. We start with a critique of the epistocratic position commonly thought to be supported by the evidence. We then introduce a qualified critique of referenda and other forms of plebiscite, and an outline of a tribune-based system of popular control over oligarchic influence on the policy process. Our discussion points towards a renewal of democracy in a plebeian but not plebiscitarian direction: Attention to the relative power of social classes matters more than formal dispersal of power through voting. We close with some methodological reflections about the compatibility between our normative claims and the realist program in political philosophy. (shrink)

Constitutional reform has been an important means to push populist authoritarian agendas in Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Venezuela. The embrace of constitutional means and rhetoric in pursuit of these agendas has led to the growing recognition of ‘populist constitutionalism’ as a contemporary political phenomenon. In all four examples mentioned above, democracy, popular sovereignty and direct plebiscitary appeal to the people is the rhetorical and justificatory framework for constitutional reform. This, I worry, gives democracy a bad name and reinforces the (...) widespread suspicion that citizens should not be directly involved in constitutional reform as popular participation can lead to dangerous majoritarianism and is easily manipulated by elite actors seeking to weaken constitutional checks and balances. But the problem, I argue, is not inherent in citizen’s participation in constitutional reform. In contrast to populist constitutionalism, I develop an idea of deliberative constitutionalism in which citizens can participate in constitution-making and reform without hijacking constitutionalism for majoritarian, nationalist or anti-pluralist ends. Deliberative constitutionalism as I understand it has four features: a Habermasian co-originality thesis that articulates the interdependence of democracy and liberalism mediated by a conception of discourse; a proceduralized idea of popular sovereignty that reduces the tension between appeal to the people and respect for pluralism; the centrality of the public sphere over the voting booth as the cradle of democracy; institutional innovations intended to include citizens in constitutional reform (including through referendums) but avoid majoritarian and populist pathologies. (shrink)

More than thirty-five years after its first release in 1971, Don McLean’s “American Pie” still resonates deeply with music listeners and consumers of popular culture. In a 2001 public poll sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America, McLean’s eight-and-a-half-minute masterpiece was ranked number 5 among the 365 “most memorable” songs of the twentieth century. In 2002, the song was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1997, Garth brooks performed “American (...) Pie” at a concert in Central Park, and in 2000, pop icon Madonna performed her own version of “American Pie” on the soundtrack of her movie The Next Best Thing. In 1999, American Pie became the title of a popular – and irreverently comical – coming-of-age movie starring Jason Biggs (the movie American Pie was followed by American Pie 2 in 2001, American Wedding in 2003, and American Pie Present – Band Camp in 2005). Like the movie to which it lent its name, the song “American Pie” presents a coming-of-age narrative; and, also like the movie, the song appealed strongly and immediately to its contemporary audience. Three months after its release in November of 1971, the song reached the number one slot on the charts in January of 1972, and it remained in the Top 40 for a total of seventeen weeks (longer than any other single during the year of 1972). Unlike the movie, however, the song “American Pie” is highly nuanced and sophisticated, containing multiple allusions and layers of meaning which challenge and heighten our understanding of rock ’n’ roll music and the possibility of self-reflection and self-critique in popular culture. (shrink)

Perspectivalism is a popular way to understand legal obligations. That there is a legal obligation, on this view, is equivalent to there being a moral obligation from the legal perspective. But Adam Perry argues that perspectivalism cannot account for arguments going from legal premisses to a factual conclusion. Take, for instance, the premisses (i) only those over 18 have a legal right to vote and (ii) Sarah has a legal right to vote. Seemingly we should be able (...) to arrive at the valid conclusion that Sarah is over 18. Perry says perspectivalism cannot explain the validity of this conclusion. We show that it can. So his objection – that perspectivalism cannot make sense of an important feature of legal argumentation – fails. Along the way, our discussion reveals an important lesson: those who endorse perspectivalism must take care to ensure that all parts of a legal argument, both premisses and conclusions, are true according to the legal perspective. (shrink)

Do you feel like you're the only person at your office without an "I Voted " sticker on Election Day? It turns out that you're far from alone - 100 million eligible U.S. voters never went to the polls in 2016. That's about 35 million more than voted for the winning presidential candidate. In this book, Christopher Freiman explains why these 100 million need not feel guilty. Why It's OK to Ignore Politics argues that you're under no obligation to be (...) politically active. Freiman addresses new objections to political abstention as well as some old chestnuts. He also synthesizes recent empirical work showing how our political motivations distort our choices and reasoning. Because participating in politics is not an effective way to do good, Freiman argues that we actually have a moral duty to disengage from politics and instead take direct action to make the world a better place. Key Features: Makes the case against a duty of political participation for a non-expert audience Presupposes no knowledge of philosophy or political science and is written in a style free of technical jargon Addresses the standard, much-repeated arguments for why one should vote Presents the growing literature on politically motivated reasoning in an accessible and entertaining way Covers a significant amount of new ground in the debate over a duty of political participation Challenges the increasingly popular argument from philosophers and economists that swing state voting is effective altruism Discusses the therapeutic benefits of ignoring politics--it's good for you, your relationships, and society as a whole. (shrink)

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a paradigm that empowers residents to directly decide how a portion of the public budget is spent. Specifically, residents deliberate over spending priorities and vote over how the budget should be allocated to different public projects. As such it is a mechanism of top-down transfer of decisions on the part of budgetary expenditure to citizens. In recent years, PB has become a central topic of discussion and an important field of innovation for those involved in (...) local development, considered one of the most successful democratic innovations of the last 25 years. Participatory budgeting contributes significantly to participatory democracy, inclusiveness processes and placemaking, but some factors limit the scale of these aspects. However, a relatively simple idea – that “ordinary citizens” should have a direct say in public budgets that impact them – has travelled the world by the most unexpected routes and landed in unlikely sites. There is no precise model for PB programmes. While there are similar tenets and institutional mechanisms, PB programmes are structured in response to each city or state’s particular political, social and economic environment. Therefore, it is necessary to consider to what extent PB strengthens the discussed processes, whether it allows reaching new, inactive groups of citizens and includes them in the decision-making process regarding shaping public spaces. The popularity of this tool carries the risk that it will be used to build the image of local government instead of significantly increasing the participation of citizens in deciding on local public spaces. The chapter aims to present and analyse participatory budgeting practices in four European and North American countries (Switzerland, Poland, North Macedonia and the United States of America) to show the role of PB in placemaking processes by the levels and forms of participation, the analysis of representativeness of PB participants (inclusiveness), placemaking impact and its level of digitisation. The proposed comparative analysis allows for assessing the importance of the tool for increasing social participation, which is participatory budgeting, for understanding its limitations and suggesting directions for its improvement to shape more inclusive, friendly and open public spaces. (shrink)

In response to the dozen essays published here, which relate my 1964 paper on “The Nature of Belief Systems in the Mass Publics” to normative requirements of democratic theory, I note, inter alia, a major misinterpretation of my old argument, as well as needed revisions of that argument in the light of intervening data. Then I address the degree to which there may be some long‐term secular change in the parameters that I originally laid out. In the final section, I (...) provide a case study of public understanding of factual trends in federal tax policy in recent decades which seems commendably veridical on average. The preferences of the public thereon add up to a remarkably clear popular mandate. But this mandate seems to disappear rather magically in the voting booth, probably due to a combination of limited contextual information on the public side, and considerable skill on the elite side in manipulating apparent political realities. (shrink)

In the 2016 American presidential election, 81% of White evangelicals voted for Donald Trump despite the obvious fact that he had little knowledge or interest in Christianity. This has continued to puzzle many commentators, as well as conservative Christian leaders. This paper argues that Theodor W. Adorno’s 1943 analysis of the radio broadcasts of Martin Luther Thomas provides insight into Trump’s popularity among evangelicals. Adorno compares the fascist-style broadcasts of Thomas to a pagan religious sect. He describes this practice as (...) “racketeering in religion,” which effectively results in the “liquidation of religion.” The article demonstrates ways in which this analysis is relevant for understanding the relationship between Trump and American Evangelicals. (shrink)

This paper argues that some words are so highly charged with meaning by a community that they may prevent a discussion during which each participant is on an equal footing. These words are indeed either unanimously accepted or rejected. The presence of these adjectival groups pushes the antagonist to find rhetorical strategies to circumvent them. The main idea we want to develop is that some propositions are not easily debatable in context because of some specific value-bearing words, and one of (...) the goals of this paper is to build a methodological tool for finding and classifying these VBWs. Our study echoes the importance of “cultural keywords” in argument, but is rather based on a German approach developed by,, and about “Miranda” and “Anti-Miranda” words that is expanded and refined here. In particular, our study tries to understand why some statements, fueled by appreciative or evaluative adjectives, have such rhetorical effects on a pragmatic level in the particular context of a vote on the Swiss popular initiative called “for more affordable housing”. This context is fruitful since two parties offer reasons for two opposing policy claims: namely, to accept or to reject an initiative. When one party uses arguments containing such universally unassailable adjectival groups to defend a “yes” vote, the opposing party cannot use a symmetrical antonym while pleading for the “no” vote. The methodological tool that is proposed here could shed light on the use of certain rhetorical and referential strategies in conflicting policy proposition contexts. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe continued rise of socio-economic inequality over the past decades with its connected political outcomes such as the Brexit vote in the UK, and the election of Donald Trump are currently a matter of intense debate both in academia and in journalism. One significant sign of the heightened interest was the surprise popularity of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the twenty-first Century. The book reached the top of the bestseller lists and was described as a ‘media sensation’, with Piketty himself (...) as a ‘rock star economist’. This paper, drawing from a major international and cross-disciplinary study, investigates the print media treatment in four European countries of economic policy proposals presented in Capital. Applying social semiotic and critical discourse analysis, we specifically focus on articles which are in disagreement with these proposals and identify five categories of counterarguments used against Piketty: authorisation, moralisation, rationalisation, portrayal of victimhood and inevitab... (shrink)

Music is an inescapable part of social, cultural and political life, and has played a powerful role in mobilising support for popular movements demanding social justice. The impact of David Bowie, Prince and Bob Dylan, for example, on diversity awareness and legislative reform relating to sexuality, gender and racial equality respectively is still felt; with the latter receiving a Nobel Prize in 2016 for ‘having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’. The influence of these composers (...) and performers reached far beyond the concert hall. Conversely, musical propaganda has been a common feature of many dictatorships, most notably Nazism’s Adolf Hitler and Communism’s Joseph Stalin, and is still instrumental in the election campaigns of political parties. US President Donald Trump’s winning retro classic rock campaign playlist conveyed an idealised version of the past which aligned with the tastes and interests of his core constituency, and evoked feelings of nationalistic pride and patriotism. The eclectic selection of upbeat music effectively masked the underlying capitalist initiatives, corporate greed and allegations of financial impropriety that characterised both the Democrat and Republican campaigns. Although unable to impart meaning with the same level of precision as language, music has a potentially broader semantic capacity due to its greater elasticity. It constitutes a common language which has the ability to create a community of people that sings, speaks, reasons, votes and even feels the same way. Accordingly, this article explores the symbiotic relationship between music and law, identity politics and social justice, via the lens of musical semiosis. (shrink)

Our actions and decisions are regularly influenced by the social environment around us. Can social cues be leveraged to induce curiosity and affect subsequent behavior? Across two experiments, we show that curiosity is contagious: The social environment can influence people's curiosity about the answers to scientific questions. Participants were presented with everyday questions about science from a popular on‐line forum, and these were shown with a high or low number of up‐votes as a social cue to popularity. Participants indicated (...) their curiosity about the answers, and they were given an opportunity to reveal a subset of those answers. Participants reported greater curiosity about the answers to questions when the questions were presented with a high (vs. low) number of up‐votes, and they were also more likely to choose to reveal the answers to questions with a high (vs. low) number of up‐votes. These effects were partially mediated by surprise and by the inferred usefulness of knowledge, with a more dramatic effect of low up‐votes in reducing curiosity than of high up‐votes in boosting curiosity. Taken together, these results highlight the important role social information plays in shaping our curiosity. (shrink)

We add a limited but useful form of quantification to Coalition Logic, a popular formalism for reasoning about cooperation in game-like multi-agent systems. The basic constructs of Quantified Coalition Logic (QCL) allow us to express such properties as "every coalition satisfying property P can achieve φ" and "there exists a coalition C satisfying property P such that C can achieve φ". We give an axiomatisation of QCL, and show that while it is no more expressive than Coalition Logic, it (...) is nevertheless exponentially more succinct. The complexity of QCL model checking for symbolic and explicit state representations is shown to be no worse than that of Coalition Logic, and satisfiability for QCL is shown to be no worse than satisfiability for Coalition Logic. We illustrate the formalism by showing how to succinctly specify such social choice mechanisms as majority voting, which in Coalition Logic require specifications that are exponentially long in the number of agents. (shrink)

Although they produced vastly more turmoil, the uprisings in the Arab world shared many characteristics with other early 21st-century popular protests on both the left and the right, from Spain’s Indignados and Occupy Wall Street to the anti-elite votes for Brexit and Trump. The conviction that political elites and the states they rule, which were once responsible for welfare and development, now ignore and demean the interests and concerns of ordinary citizens takes many forms, but is virtually universal. The (...) Arab world was only one site of this discontent, but the story of the Arab Spring insurrections provides a cautionary illustration of the perils in abdication of political authority and accountability and provokes questions about how we understand historical moments when passions outstrip interests. (shrink)